Dear Parents and Caregivers,

LEARNING CURVE WELLBEING PROGRAM

The Learning Curve focus this week is from the Health and Strengths category. The wellbeing skill builder is Treasures Breathing. This skill helps students to learn how to combine deep breathing exercises with thinking about people and the pets they treasure as a way of calming down and focussing. Students are working on this topic during their Health lessons and then following up with their class teachers as well as using their ESS Learning Curve diaries. The parent article regarding this topic is attached for your information.

‘GIANTS IN THE SKY’ MUSICAL

Our first whole school musical is getting very close! Next week the show will be performed across four performances on the 22, 23 and 24 August. We are so looking forward to sharing this special event with the school and wider community. Tickets can be purchased through Try Booking, here is the link or QR code below;

https://www.trybooking.com/1220955

We have already seen an amazing response from the community with sales soaring! There are however still lots of seats available for each of the shows. Please pass the word around to other community members who might like to see the show as we are hoping to see four sell out shows.

PREP 2025 ENROLMENT MEETINGS

A reminder that our 2025 Prep Enrolment Interviews will be held in the last three weeks of this term and the beginning of Term 4. These will be followed by our Prep Transition and Information sessions in Term 4 on November 1 and 15 from 9-11am and then our final roll up afternoon in week 10 of Term 4 on December 4. The SOBS link to book enrolment interviews is below and information has also been emailed out to the Prep 2025 mailing list. Bookings are open now and will remain open until 24hrs prior to each booking date.

https://eq.sobs.com.au/pt3/parent.php?schoolid=70109

If you know of families who live in our catchment and are planning to come here next year, please let them know of the Enrolment meetings coming up, where enrolments for next year are finalised and important information gathered to inform Prep class placements. Families who have made their decision can drop in enrolments forms to the office at any stage to enable us to get them on the system and into the communication channels for next year.

OPINION SURVEY

A reminder that the School Opinion Survey will close this Friday 16 August for students in Year 5/6, parents and staff can have their say via the individual survey links emailed out by the DoE. The data from these surveys is collated by the DoE and shared with schools at the end of the year to inform planning for the following school year. We encourage as many families as possible to complete the survey.

STUDENT COUNCIL MAJOR FUNDRAISER

Our Student Council have planned their major fundraiser for this year which is to be a Spell-a-thon! This will be followed by a Spelling Bee competition. The idea is that students will be provided with a list of 50 spelling words appropriate to their year level from the Australian Curriculum to learn. They will find sponsors per word correct eg. 5c/word. They will then be tested on the words in class to get their score to work out how much money to collect from their sponsors. 

After the Spell-a-thon the classes will choose their class spelling champion who will then play off to find the champion speller in each year level. The Spelling Bee Competition will be held in EPAC where the year level champions play off against each other word for word, using year level differentiated lists to determine our ESS Spelling Bee Champion for 2024. The lists are differentiated so the winner could be from any year level as it is based on an elimination style competition where they are eliminated if they get a word incorrect. 

Our Student Council look forward to our community getting behind this event to help them to raise money for their legacy item for this year.  They are still deciding as to whether to purchase another table tennis table for the students to allow more students to play each day, or to get a cold-water bubbler to fill up drink bottles or maybe both depending on how much they raise.  Not only will there be financial gain, but this should help to put a spotlight on the importance of being good spelling. 

Letters will go out to all families next week with a sponsorship card and the spelling lists for students to commence getting sponsors or donations.  All information will be explained in the letter.

PLAYGROUNDS AND OVALS OUT OF SCHOOL

A reminder that all of our play spaces are out of bounds to students and visitors before and after school each day. Our OSHC lease these facilities during this time for the students in their care and it is very difficult for them to supervise their children when other students are on the playgrounds and ovals who are outside their duty of care.  We ask parents to ensure that their children are not on these spaces after school at all and that if you are wanting to meet up with other families for after school play dates you move to other parks for this. This includes students attending rehearsals at EPAC for Music, Dance, the Musical etc, as they are not to be on playgrounds when attending these events as there is no staff supervision.

Mrs Anne Robinson

Principal