Dear Parents/Carers 

Attendance 

As you would be aware we have an aspirational goal in our school improvement plan this year to have every child attending school for AT LEAST 85% of our students having less than 5 days of absence per term. A new strategy that we are trialling is sending out nudge letters to all parents of students that had an absence rate greater than 15% (which is the acceptable norm) in term 1 that was not due to an explained extended absence . If you receive a nudge letter, Mr Moore, our attendance leader will be making contact with you over the first few weeks of this term to find out how we can help you and your child improve their attendance rate in term 2.  We look forward to working together to reach our aspirational goal and thank you in advance for your support.  

Friends of Evandale 

Our P&F is actively seeking new members and is looking for a fresh start and a fresh approach to finding ways to include everyone in our community who wishes to help our beautiful school. Vanessa Douglas has some great ideas for broadening our scope of members and when and how this group might meet.   

Your first opportunity to get involved is already coming up with a food stall at the school on Election Day (1/5/21).  We will be cooking bacon and egg rolls from 8:00-9:30 and sausages 9:30-2:00pm.  Please ring our school office on 6391 6231 or Vanessa Douglas on 0409 535 469 if you are able to help for an hour or two on 1 May 2021.   

JAG - Junior Action Group

We wish to congratulate the following students who have been selected to join JAG this year.  Meetings will commence on Tuesday 4 May.  We thank Annie Harvey, Billie-Jo Lowe and Ursula Miller for donating their time and efforts into running this wonderful civic service program for our school.  Nick Evans is also constructing our Green house with resources that will be donated by the Northern Midlands Council.  We are one lucky school to have so many wonderful community members helping us.   

Archie F., Sommah G, Leisl M, Ruby M, Gabrielle T, Noah R, Ashlyn H, Taylah T, Erin R, Cody R, Coby P, Ella S, Summer M, Eamon F, Cooper W. 

Chicken Coop Working Bee 

Given the fact that our working bee date (1/5/.21) has been hijacked by a state election, we will be moving our date to Saturday 15 May (fingers crossed for the weather).  Thank you to everyone who has already let me know they are available to join us at 9:00am to help and also to those offering to donate some items. It's not too late to add your name to the working party list – just ring the school or let Jen know that you can come and help on the day. We are also seeking a project manager to make sure we have all of the materials on hand on the day and enough tools to get the job done.  How egg-citing!! 

Before School Reading Club 

We are extremely excited about starting the Before School Reading Club next week. It will run on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings in the flexi room alongside the breakfast club which will also be in the flexi room.  If you have a spare 20 minutes on any one of these mornings (8:30am-8:50am) to listen to a student reading their home reader please drop in and join the club – the more the merrier! 

Focus Value 

Our focus value this term is Growth.  This is a whole of department value – here is what it means to us. 

Why Growth? 

At the Department of Education, the value of growth is intrinsic to the work we do. It encompasses all types of learning as well as personal development, system improvement and organisational progress. Having a value of growth means: 

• Reflecting on our current situation and looking for ways to improve 
• Learning new skills 
• Taking on bigger challenges, even if we’re not sure how we will achieve them 
• Asking for help or constructive feedback 
• Learning from our mistakes 
• Being prepared to put the effort in, even when we don’t see results right away 
• Believing that our potential is not fixed, but rather depends on our effort and attitude. 

Growth can be sudden and obvious, but also subtle and slow. Having the value of growth means that we are focused on the process of learning, not on the results. 

Road Safety 

Unfortunately, we continue to have reports from parents and community members about unsafe behaviours by a small group of students who either ride or walk to and from school.  Whilst we will now include a short road safety learning program we really do need you to talk to your child about road safety in general before someone gets seriously hurt.  This includes road awareness and safety as a pedestrian (crossing the road, staying on the foot path), bike/scooter safety and passenger safety.  I ask that you ensure your child is using the road crossing at the end of our driveway, not crossing where the cars exit, that they ALWAYS wear a helmet when riding their bike or scooter, that they know how to look both ways and look again when crossing a road and that they are riding single file with both hands and feet on their bikes as a part of riding safely.  I thank everyone for taking some time to talk to your child about these things and even have a few practise sessions to help them know exactly what is expected of them. Let's work together to ensure all of our kids stay safe.   

Cyber Safety and Online Bullying

Unfortunately, some online bullying continues to happen between students at home which is having a negative impact on some students feeling safe at school.  It is important that as parents we are checking our children’s online behaviours, including their language and images that they are sending to each other.  Whilst we support students being respectful to each other at school, this unfortunately is lacking by some kids when they are in an online platform at home.  Recent examples of this disrespectful and inappropriate behaviour include name calling, making threats to physically hurt students at school (which has not happened, but the threat is very real and present unfortunately), blocking people, recording and reposting other students snap chat songs to their own pages to make nasty comments, sending inappropriate images and online “gossiping”.  Please know that we will support you to help this stop if it is happening to your child - this may be helping you to take this evidence to the police. This website Homepage | eSafety Commissioner has some fantastic resources and information that can help you keep your child respectful and safe in an online world.  The free webinars for parents are particularly useful I have found.  It would be also beneficial if you checked the age recommendations for different social media platforms as many problems arise when students are using online communications in ways that they are not yet mature enough to manage.  Thank you for taking the time to be informed and to again work with us at school to ensure our kids stay safe,  even on line! 

All Schools Athletics Carnival 

The All Schools Athletics carnival will be on Friday 7 May at St Leonards.  Unfortunately there has been a delay in the team selection process however we hope to get letters home to selected students by the end of this week.  We apologise for the delay in getting confirmation about which students are invited to take part in this event. 

Kind regards, Jen

The P & F will be holding a BBQ on Polling Day at the school as our site is a designated polling booth location. If you are able to volunteer some time on this day between 7am and 2pm, it would be greatly appreciated. Please contact the school office so that your details can be passed on to Vanessa Douglas who is co-ordintating the BBQ.

Alternatively, you can contact Vanessa directly on 0409 535 469. 

SOFT SHELL JACKET ORDERS:

If you would like to order a soft shell jacket, please place your order by Wednesday 30th April so that we receive orders before our weather turns really cold. Orders can be placed in person at the school office or via the Qkr! app. Payment is required when placing order. 

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QKR! App - for uniform orders:

Just a reminder that the school now runs the Uniform Shop. You are able to order via our new Qkr! app or with a hard copy order form. To download app: Qkr_information_sheet.pdf

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Printable Order Form: Uniform_Shop_Order_February_2021.pdf

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