IMPORTANT NOTICES

What if my child is unwell?

Any child who is showing signs of illness or feeling unwell, should stay at home.

If a child is showing signs of illness at school, the school will contact the parent or carer to collect the child.

Dr Carmel McGrath

Professional Office Staff Day

On behalf of all staff and families, I wish to thank our office team (Jenny, Stan, Viv, Natalie, Olivia, Tayla and Nicola) for the professionalism and the positivity they demonstrate in their roles each day. Their dedication to our students, staff and community is very much appreciated by us. Students and staff sent beautiful cards and special gifts for our office team last Friday to acknowledge their valuable contribution to our school.

Parent Teacher Interviews

Thank you to the many parents who are attending this week’s parent-teacher interviews. Thank you to the leadership team for managing the booking, timing and catering and to admin/facilities staff for setting up and cleaning up for the event. It takes a team effort to ensure these events go well. Any feedback on how we can improve the process is always gratefully received, please email admin@newfarmss.eq.edu.au

Mother’s Day – Sunday 12^th May

I hope this year’s Mother’s Day is a special time for all families, recognising, remembering and celebrating all those significant people in your lives who are loving, compassionate, endearing, kind, protective, extraordinary, intuitive, caring and mindful. Happy Mother’s Day.

P&C AGM – Congratulations to our newly elected 2024 P&C Executive:

President – Rachel Frizzo

Vice President – tbc

Treasurer – Dahna Gallantree

Secretary – Catherine Lloyd

Thank you to our outgoing 2023 P&C Executive member Tenielle Elliot for her contribution as secretary.  Rachel and Dahna have generously continued on this year which is great for the continuity and succession planning for our school. It is wonderful to see such a large group of parents attending our meetings and getting involved in the tuckshop, gardening, fundraisers and uniform shop. P&C is a great way to find out more about the school and an opportunity to build a strong school community partnership.

Upcoming Events

• Wednesdays Term 2 (6 sessions) – Senior student High Achievers City Collective program
• Parent – Teacher interviews Wed 08^th and Thurs 09^th May
• Gala Days – 10th, 17th and 24th May
• Term 2 Lockdown drill week 3 and Evacuation week 4
• Choir and Dance Performances at Teneriffe Festival (tentative) Saturday 8th June 
• P&C Trivia Night Saturday 15^th June
• Last Day Term 2 Friday 21^st June

Melinda Norman

Uniforms

With the weather suddenly turning cooler this week, it’s time to check that your child/children have school jumpers.  Whilst other jackets and jumpers can be worn to and from school, New Farm School jumpers only should be worn whilst at school. 

Uniform shop is open every Wednesday 8am – 9:30am.

GALA Days

Gala Day for Year 5 and Year 6 students - Friday 10, 17 and 24 May. Payment of $50.00 due now as a matter of urgency. Please note that permission and full payment are required for your student to participate in all school activities. Students will be travelling by bus so please ensure your child is at school be 8:15am. Students will assemble on the Netball Court.

Parent Teacher Interviews

Parent Teacher Interviews begin on Wednesday 8th May and continue on Thursday 9th May. Interviews are conducted in the same format as last year and involve sessions held in the hall. Interviews are 10 minutes in duration.

Our NFSS Teachers were recently involved in City Collective Moderation.

Language, Literacy for Learning (3Ls) Functional Grammar

3L’s is a comprehensive and innovative professional development program that supports teachers looking for a pedagogical approach that puts language and literacy at the very heart of teaching and learning.

Our teachers Mrs Krohn and Mrs Joynson are currently undergoing training in 3L’s delivery of curriculum this week. We look forward to seeing the students benefit from this learning.

What a Load of Rubbish Incursion

Our Year 4 students are enjoying the What a Load of Rubbish incursion this week. In this geography program, students are encouraged to lead a sustainability change within the school community. The program integrates aspects of the Science, Geography, Literacy and Health to harness the passion of the students and create a sense of enviromental responsibility and empowerment.

Sandy Chambers

RWI Phonics Speedy Green Words

From Term 2 we will be sending home an extra list of reading words to practise. These words are called Speedy Green Words. Speedy Green Words are high frequency words found in lots of stories. They are decodable (they can all be Fred Talked), have been taught in our RWI lessons by sound blending and have been read lots of times by the students in past RWI lessons and in RWI books. Instantly recalling Speedy Green words is a very important part of learning to read. It will help build your child’s reading fluency allowing more effort to go into comprehending the story.

The aim in sending these words home is for your child to read these Speedy Green words quickly without sounding them out loud. Ideally words should be read at a pace of one second per word. This will take some practice.

Practise Ideas

• Test your child’s ability to read each word on the list quickly. Tick off the words that they can read speedily.
• Write out unknown or slowly read words and put them on the fridge, on a door, a wall or on flash cards. Your child could read each word every time they open the fridge etc.
• Ask your child to move from reading them out loud (Fred talk) to reading them in their head (Fred in Your Head) building speed as they go.
• Practise every day.
• Play games such as snap with the words.
• Write unknown words out in the sand pit or with chalk on the concrete before they read them.
• Keep sessions short and fun.

If your child/ren have a medical condition requiring regular or emergency administration of medication, please make sure you have supplied school with the following:

1. A CURRENT Action Plan for Asthma and Allergies – these are to be reviewed on a yearly basis, if your current action plan expires by the end of March 2024 please arrange a new one.
2. A 'Consent to Administer' form – providing guardian consent to administer the provided medication, detailing when, why and how much medication is required to be administered at school.

IF YOUR CHILD/REN SELF ADMINISTER THEIR MEDICATION THIS NEEDS TO BE CLEARLY DISPLAYED IN BOTH THE LETTER FROM THE DOCTOR AND IN THE ACTION PLAN

Parents are also required to provide a letter detailing their consent for their child/ren to administer their own medication.

1. Medication must be in the original container and must have a pharmacy label with your child’s name and the prescribing Doctor/Dentist’s details.
2. If required, Parents will need to fill out an “Administration of Medication” form. If your child requires more than one medication, a form for each medication will need to be filled out.

Providing Medication to the School

Parents are welcome to drop medication to the Admin Office between 9am – 3pm daily.

Students are not permitted to transport their own medication. An adult must attend and provide medication and complete any require consents.

For all emergency medication, once it has been received and recorded by administration, all medication (e.g. asthma medication, anaphylaxis medication) will be put into a labelled box and stored in the administration building First Aid Room.

If your child/ren’s medical status changes (e.g. asthma action plan no longer relevant, allergy severity decreased etc) please let the school know via email through firstaid@newfarmss.eq.edu.au so that we may update our systems.