What a busy Term 2 here at Forest Primary School! A great school to be at and with many educational opportunities offered. Lots of fun things coming up – Brixhibition, Spice Kids Eras Tour, Silent Disco!!!! We can’t wait!!!

We welcome Poppy to our Year 6 class as she is being supervised by Sarah Cuthbertson and Toni Popowski on her 2^nd year University teaching placement.

The Department of Education for Children and Young People throughout schools regularly review the practices and processes used throughout the Department to gauge the effectiveness of performance outcomes of all schools. Forest Primary is undergoing an External Review in the first week of June – this is a wonderful opportunity for you to provide any feedback and I appreciate those of you who are able to be involved in this process. 

A reminder to families that mid-year reports will be sent home Friday the 14^th of June. The report will show your child’s learning achievement on a 9-point visual scale for students in Years 1 to 10 (and for Prep students at the end of the year). The 9-point scale shows where your child’s learning achievement is against the expected standard for their year level. There will be no teacher comments in the report. This term parent/teacher/student conferences will be offered in Week 8 (week beginning 17th June). These are a great opportunity to discuss how your child is progressing with their learning.

For more information about reports:

• School Reports FAQs
• Understanding the 9-point scale
• Visit the Department’s website at: Reporting - The Department for Education, Children and Young People Tasmania (decyp.tas.gov.au)

Students from Grade 6 had an amazing time away on camp – supported by Toni Popowski, Sarah Cuthbertson, Margaret Ollington and Aaron Moles. Thank you to our staff for their massive contribution for supporting our students and school. 

For our 5/6 Netball team training has commenced with Toni Popowski during lunchtimes as they prepare to represent Forest Primary School at the Hart Primary School Netball Championships in Devonport on Friday 21st June.

Little Learners & Mini Movers are back every Monday, with thier "new spot" in the Multi Purpose room. The feedback we have been given from our families is that the space is wonderful and its great to be connected to the school with access to the Kindergarten playground.

We held our Cross Country event last week on our new school track which was very successful. It was so fantastic to see many families attending to support our school. From our Cross Country event we took our year 3 - 6 students who placed in the top 4 positions to the CHSSSA carnival which was held at Redpa on Monday. It was a lovely day and well done to everyone for representing our school with pride. From this event we have Ari Korpershoek, Sienna Korpershoek and Dustin Brown off to Ulverstone on Tuesday to represent the Cluster at the North West Carnival. Goodluck!

A huge thank you to all the wonderful ladies who joined in on the fun with their children at our Mothers Day celebration breakfast making the morning very special, it was great to see so many happy faces.

A reminder that it is a student free day on Friday 7^th of June. Staff will meet here at Forest Primary School to be involved in moderating students work to ensure consistency across our schools.

Megan Hills

Principal 

What a start to the Term we have had in Prep-1 continuing to build and grow on our learning from Term 1. This term in literacy the Preps are beginning to use their phonics knowledge to read and write and surprising themselves with all they can now do. The Year 1’s are learning to write longer words of 4-5 phonemes (sounds) that include consonant diagraphs as well as extend and get creative with their writing ideas, and they are so proud of all they have been achieving. Students have been loving our explicit phonics lessons and then practicing their new knowledge in a variety of hands-on ways, where students read words, create words and manipulate the phonemes in words.  We have also been learning how to create and write our own ideas.  Last term we explored how to construct simple sentences orally and how they require a Who (noun) and a Do (verb) and this term we have begun writing simple sentences and beginning to explore how to use punctuation and finger spaces whilst the Year 1’s explore how to add adjectives or additional information such as when, where and how to make their simple sentences more interesting.  Students have then been transferring this knowledge into personal recounts about events. It has been heartwarming to watch the smiles light up their faces as they realise they can now read and write and the excitement they have to show everyone their new found abilities. I look forward to watching their continued growth in literacy this year.

On the 6^th of May Grade 6s left Forest Primary at 7:00 in the morning. We were headed to Hobart for our Grade 6 trip. We had lots of fun activities planned for the week; we will now tell you about some of the things we did on camp.

On our way to Hobart we stopped at HollyBank Tree Top Adventures. Once we got there, we sat down and had recess before getting our harnesses and gloves on. We got shown how to work our harness on a practice course. There were green, blue, red, and black courses, each of them meant a different level going from easy to really hard. Most of us did all the colours except black. On red was a big drop at the end of the course. Hollybank was really fun.

At bowling all the people in the class went into groups of 4s and 5s. We played two games each in separate groups. We had a lot of fun and the whole class loved it.

We went to Rockit in Hobart. There were tunnels and rock-climbing walls. Some people liked the tunnels the best. The tunnels had a range of difficulties, including easy, medium, hard and extreme. Most of us did all the easy levels, but some were very ambitious and did the harder levels as others did all the tunnels. The rock climbing was very tall but all of us had a go. There were lots of different crazy kinds of rock walls. There were easy to hard levels and lots of ambitious people challenging themselves including Ms C. We were very grateful for all of the Rockit staff and how nice they were for letting us all come as a giant group and letting us all have a go at all of their amazing rock walls, and challenging tunnels.

On Tuesday we went to Zoodoo. We went to go see the monkeys, they smacked the window and scared Miss Pop. We saw a baby monkey eating an apple in its enclosure, it was cute. We saw lions, tigers, emus, loud birds, alpacas, Tasmanian devils, meerkats and loads of other animals. We got to feed the kangaroos and wallabies some grain. We saw a mummy kangaroo with a joey in her pouch. There were zookeepers getting a kangaroo that had escaped to go back into its cage.

At Bounce we were playing dodgeball and bouncing on the trampolines. We also loved doing more rock climbing. There was a massive airbag that we enjoyed doing flips onto. We climbed onto an air walk and the obstacles were very difficult to get past. We had heaps of fun, but we were very tired after Bounce.

On Wednesday we went to Port Arthur. It was a good day, and we learnt a lot about convicts. We also went on a boat and went on a tour on water. We passed the Isle of Dead that had around 1100 people buried on it. We made bricks as we learnt about what the convicts went through to make their houses, jails and churches. We also went and looked at the gaol where the convicts stayed and slept. We talked about if you were behaved you got better treatment than when you didn’t behave. We had a lot of fun. We loved it and spending time together was the best part.

On the Thursday, we went to Blundstone Arena. There was an AFLW player having a run. We got to go on the oval and we looked at the clubrooms and the players each had their own cubbies to put their belongings in. We got to sit in the commentary box where the commentators commentate the games. We pretended that we were the commentators. We went to the room where the ice baths are. They were very cold. We went into the cricket memorabilia room. We went to the VIP area, it was very fancy. They had wooden plaques on the wall of all the players stats such as wickets, goals, runs and tackles. There was a hallway with all the captains and coaches of the premiership winners.

We also went to Parliament House. We overlooked the House of Assembly. Our class became the parliament members and we debated on a bill about the inclusion of therapy dogs in schools in Tasmania. Brax became the speaker and kept us all under control. It was amazing to see parliament house with our own eyes.

We loved going on grade 6 camp and we all felt like a big family. We would like to give a big thank you to Mr Moles, Margaret, Miss Pop and Ms C and Mr Wells for driving the bus. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed it.

This term, the students of 3/4 Higgins have embarked on an exciting journey into the world of Information Texts. Our young learners have been exploring the unique features that make these texts so engaging and informative. Through our studies, we have discovered the importance of elements such as captions, headings, diagrams, and photographs.

Each of these features plays a crucial role in helping readers understand and navigate through the text. Captions provide additional information about images, headings organize the content into manageable sections, diagrams illustrate complex ideas, and photographs bring the text to life with visual context.

To put our knowledge into practice, we paired up for a fun and educational scavenger hunt. Using online books, we searched for and identified these special features. This activity not only reinforced our understanding of Information Texts but also enhanced our digital literacy skills as we navigated through various online resources.

The scavenger hunt was a wonderful opportunity for collaboration and teamwork. It allowed students to discuss their findings, share insights, and learn from each other. We are proud of the progress our students have made and look forward to seeing how they will apply their new skills in future projects.

Share your thoughts on school attendance

Help us better understand any barriers that may be in the way, and what supports are needed to help with getting to school.

The Department for Education, Children and Young People is doing statewide consultation on school attendance. 3P Advisory is independently running the consultation. Your answers are confidential, and you won’t be identified.

We want to hear from you. You can take part in an online survey, share or vote for suggestions, or join an online drop-in session via the 3P website. The survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.

You can also share your thoughts about what you like or don’t like about our Every school day matters campaign.

As a parent or carer, please have your say. Please encourage your child/ren, too.

Every piece of feedback counts. Thanks for helping shape future DECYP initiatives, school-based engagement strategies and public awareness campaigns.

Smithton Auskick and Superkick

Date: Friday evenings (happening now)

Age Group: 4 to 12 (kinder to grade 6)

Location: Smithton Recreation Ground - bottom oval

Details: Welcoming all footballers! Whether you've never touched a footy or are an aspiring AFL/W star. Everyone is welcome to attend our fun-filled sessions! Participants will work alongside their peers to develop their skills and learn all things footy!

Bonus Information: Use code 03D529BA during checkout to save $10 on AUSKICK registration (not applicable to Superkick)

Open to all genders with an All-Girls Group or Mixed Group available. Please spread the word and bring your friends. We look forward to growing the budding AFL talent in Smithton.