Dear families,  

We’re having a fantastic start to the year and I would like to thank families that have been involved with special events so far. I would also like to extend a massive thanks to the King Meadows High School Year 10 students that volunteered to help at our Athletics Carnival and delayed their school photo day! They upheld all of the DECYP values and demonstrated initiative and perseverance throughout the day, it was especially nice to see ex-student Georgiana one this day. 

Please know that you are always welcome at school and we love to see you for a chat and see you connecting with other parents/carers. However, if you don’t already, we would really appreciate Prep-6 parents/carers beginning to organise to use the external door of their child’s classroom. You can use the deck (ECE playground side) to access P-6 classes, but please be mindful that this can be slippery when wet. 5-6s and 1-2s could also use the entry from the primary playground, up the steps. P-1s and 3-4s could also use the entry from the primary playground, up the ramp past the toilets. We are aiming to limit foot traffic through the office and along the corridor at the beginning and end of the day, so that staff and students can continue to focus on their teaching and learning through until 3:00pm. This will also support our students that are feeling overwhelmed with a busy corridor. As always, if students arrive after 9:00am they will need to sign in at the office or if you require an early to pick up (or anything else!) please visit the office first and the friendly admin team will help you. 

We would love to have as many parents/ carers/ grandparents/ community members involved with and supporting our school as possible. However, it is a requirement, as of today- 29/2/24, that all adults that are working with or near children understand their safeguarding responsibilities and have completed the following training and gain a certificate for presentation at school -

Safeguarding Training - Department for Education, Children and Young People (decyp.tas.gov.au)

Please remember that if you are considering volunteering (parent-help, excursions, events) you are required to have registration for working with vulnerable people (RWVP) - Apply for registration to work with vulnerable people | Service Tasmania. We are more than happy to help you with either of these processes. 

School Association AGM and Vacancies for our SA Committee 2024 reminder 

Our School Association Committee has vacancies this year in the following categories 

• 2 parent representatives 
• 2 community representatives 
• 1 staff representative 

We would love to create a fun and enthusiastic committee to support the running of our great school and support an active P&F group (please let us know if you’re interested in this group too!). Nomination forms can be collected from the school office or downloaded using the link. Please note parents do need 2 other parents to support their nominations. Nominations close 11 March 2024 at 3:00pm. Completed nomination forms can be dropped off at the office to our returning officer, Naomi Shelton. Our AGM and first committee meeting will be held on Monday 7 April in our Learning Support Room at School (olive door) starting at 3:30pm.  All parents are always invited to attend and observe the process. 

Attendance

This is a DECYP priority again this year and schools are required to have actions around improving the attendance rates in their schools. Therefore, as a school we will enact recommended and mandated processes to follow up on absences particularly unexplained or prolonged absence. Please continue to inform the school office if your child is unwell or if there are ways that me may be able to support you or your child to improve their attendance.  

SLC 

The SLC have already been busy organising our first assembly for the year, and preparing ways that they can help lead the involvement of the following events this term. As well as thinking about fundraising initiatives and ways that they will model the PURR and DECYP values. 

Please check the parent calendar of events for the following events and others that we may become involved in, and keep an ear out for further information in regards to these. 

CLEAN UP AUST DAY- Monday 4th March 

HARMONY DAY- Thursday 21st March 

RIDE TO SCHOOL DAY- Friday 22nd March 

Going forward, if you know of local events or ways that the school can be involved in the local community, or anyone wanting to partner with us, then we would love to hear from you! 

Choir  

Two Evandale locals, Valerie and Chris, are kindly volunteering to lead a choir with our students at Evandale Primary on Fridays at 2:00-2:45. Please encourage your child to participate or give it a try tomorrow - Friday 1st March.  

NAPLAN 

Students in Years 3 and 5 will be completing NAPLAN National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy between 13-25 March 2024. Students complete writing, reading, language conventions and mathematics assessments. NAPLAN is a snapshot of what a student can do at that point in time, there are many other formative assessments that teachers implement daily, weekly, monthly, termly and yearly. This assessment will be used to inform teaching and learning programs, monitor school progress and identify areas of strength and challenge for student’s this year. Please contact your teacher to find out how we are steadily preparing our students. 

Kind regards,

Bella Mitchell

ACTING PRINCIPAL

On Thursday 22^nd of February we had our annual school athletics carnival.

Everyone did an excellent job and tried really hard in every event that they participated in. The spirit and fairness showed by everyone was amazing.

A big thank you to all the parents and visitors that volunteered and helped us run our athletics carnival. Another thankyou to Mrs Mitchell and Mr Lynch who kept track of events and helped to start races. Thank you also to the parent helpers who cooked our delicious BBQ!

We know everyone is very intrigued to know the winners of our athletics carnival, but that will be announced once the grade 5/6s run their 1500 event on today. 

By your house captains Ruby and Bonnie.

What an amazing start to Kinder 2024

We have been focusing on new routines, building new friendships and developing a sense of belonging (one of our big Early Years Framework outcomes!) 

We have been exploring our new learning environment and learning important skills along the way. 

These first few weeks in Kinder are busy and exciting! Thank you Kinder parents for a fantastic start! 

A reminder- Gumnuts has started. Meet us in the Kinder room 9:30-11 every Monday 

We look forward to seeing you! 

Launching into Learning- Gumnuts 

On Monday, we had a wonderful turn out for our first Launching into Learning- Gumnuts for the year. We met many new families and reconnected with familiar faces too. Mrs Smith had prepared an enticing space to engage our birth – 4 families. We look forward to supporting your child’s development throughout the year. Our school nurse- Kylie will be visiting and other support and service providers through the year too. Please reach out at anytime if there is anything that we can do to support or anything that you would like us to offer for our birth to four families. 

Hello families,

My name is Kylie Gibbins and I will be working at Evandale Primary School this year as your School Health Nurse.  I am excited to be returning to the school and to the community after spending my primary school years here.  The school looks quite different to what I remember and it is fantastic to see what an amazing and progressive space it now is.  I really look forward to meeting and working with students and their families this year.  I will be here every Tuesday and please don’t hesitate to get in touch if there is anything I can help with regarding your child’s health and wellbeing.

A great health and wellbeing opportunity currently available for EPS students is free games and activities after school every Wednesday which are being run by the PCYC. Mark would love to see you there 3.00-4.30pm at the Memorial Hall. (See flyer in the Community Notices section of this newsletter). 

Kind regards,

Nurse Kylie 

kylie.gibbins@decyp.tas.gov.au

On Friday, 23rd of February, the Evandale Eagles and AFL Tasmania visited our school for football clinics. First we learnt a bit about football and played a game called Football Tag. How you play the football game is first someone chooses two taggers and they have to hold the football to tag you but if you get tagged, you keep on running. At the end they say how many people they tagged and the person with the most wins! 

After Football Tag, we got a partner and a footy and we tried to see how many hand balls we could do in 30 seconds and then we did it with the other hand to make it harder. 

Lastly, we did a competition to see who could kick the longest. Cooper and Casey did really long kicks. 

We all had heaps of fun and many of us will be playing club footy in winter. Thank you Evandale Eagles and AFL Tasmania for coming to Evandale Primary School. 

By Ruby - Gr 3-4

Dear Parent/Guardian

Our School will be switching over to a new messaging platform for communicating with you.   This will replace our current system Schoolzine.

The new platform, called EdSmart is an Australian platform which is designed to improve communication in school communities by allowing electronic messaging i.e. SMS and emails. For now, it will be used to manage absences messages i.e. you will receive a SMS or email alert if your child is absent from school requesting a response.  It will also allow us to send a communication message to all parent/guardians.

The platform will, over time, be rolled out across all Tasmanian Government Schools and new features will be added. 

You will receive a text message and/or an email with further details.  Note, the text message sender will be a shortened version of our school’s name - Please keep an eye out for it!

Further information is available on the Department’s website

Communicating with your child's school - Department for Education, Children and Young People (decyp.tas.gov.au)