Slimefest 2021

P&F have been busy organising a great day for Slimefest, being held here at school on Saturday 23^rd October starting at 11.00AM. It will be a great family fun day with students completing an obstacle course while being slimed and finishing off with a waterslide!

Some important details;

Cars will be required to park in the school carpark area or along the verge

• Walk in entry to the event will be at the access road next to the Kinder, near the oval. At the entry, families will be required to complete the check in via the Tas Check In app & written sign in sheet.
• Headbands and glasses can be collected at the entry point.
• Children must be accompanied by an adult.
• Children are required to wear fully enclosed shoes to complete the course.
• Children are reminded to bring hat, water bottle and if you have one- a white tee shirt.
• Don’t forget to send back your booklets.
• P&F will be selling sausages, hamburgers & cold drinks.

End of Year Assemblies

For 2021,we will again separate the whole school assembly and Grade 6 assembly night.  Smithton High School will be having their Grade 10 Leavers Dinner on Monday 13^th December - so to avoid clashes for families, we will be holding the Grade 6 assembly on the evening of Wednesday 15^th December.

We will hold a Whole School Assembly during the afternoon on Monday 13^th December.

Students will be attending a whole school picnic day on Tuesday 14^th December.

Zones of Regulation Family session

A reminder to RSVP by next Wednesday 27th October for the Zones of Regulation Information Session! The session will be held on Wednesday 3rd November, starting at 5.30pm at the school with a light afternoon tea provided. More details are in the newsletter.

Grade 6 Camp

Murphy’s Law strikes again - at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon. With the Southern region in lockdown for three days, it was decided that travel to Hobart the next week was going to be too unpredictable, so in the spirit of “fly by the seat of your pants” planning, we organised a five day camp in Launceston. The experience of school camp goes beyond the places visited; it’s the building of relationships, it’s about learning to be independent of family and taking responsibility for helping others in the group. A huge thank you to Mrs Poulter, Miss Cramer and Mrs Ollington for their work this week and in preparations for the camp. Also, thanks to Mr Brad Poulter (Mikayla’s husband) for also being an extra staff member on camp. Mr Poulter teaches at Burnie High School and while on leave, offered to be an extra teacher for the camp. We’ll be keeping you updated on Facebook throughout the week.

Forest Primary Staffing update 2022

We are currently working through staffing for 2022 with a number of changes coming up. With a huge congratulations to Mrs Poulter and Miss Horton, both will be taking maternity leave next year. Miss King will be taking a compassionate transfer which will allow her to move to Hobart to be with her partner and Miss Skellington after 8 glorious years as Forest is transferring closer to home. Whilst it is devastating to lose an amazing group of staff, we wish them the very best for 2022.

Paul Verdy, originally from Queensland and a teacher at Rosetta Primary School is transferring to Forest Primary next year and will be working in the primary grades. Learning Services are working through the Department Recruitment process to determine teachers for a couple of our early childhood grades and we will be hopefully confirming our full staffing for 2022 by mid November.

School Nurse

The Department of Education has funded school nurses for all schools, with  Dr Robyn Kelly appointed to Forest Primary School.  Nurse Rob comes to the School Health Nurse program with an extensive background in Primary Health through Child Health and Utas. She is also a Secondary Teacher and has extensive background working in classrooms. As a new staff member, Nurse Rob will continue to work with another School Health Nurse to gain knowledge in the program and the requirements of the role.

The school nurse will be able to conduct hearing/ vision checks, assist the school in elements of health and hygiene; work with classes to learn about health and assist families with health related concerns. Nurse Rob will be working at Forest one day a week, starting this term.

This term in literacy we have been learning about homophones and how to make poems.

Mrs Morgan has been teaching us devices to add to our poems to make it better and funnier.

In maths we have learnt about fractions, shapes and a little bit of division. When we did fractions, we learnt how to cut things in half, quarters and fifths. We are learning about 2D shapes. We know a 4-sided shape is called a quadrilateral.

With the kinder class we got assigned to a buddy. In buddies we make things and play with them. This week we look at our zones of regulations and made Feeling Snowmen.

Lilliarna, Makybe and Zoey!

We have started this term with a focus on grammar and have been learning about different nouns and verbs and how we can use them in our writing. We have had a ‘noun hunt’ and ‘verb hunt’ around our classroom where we had to find cards with sentences and identify the noun or verb.

In reading we have been learning about inferring which is where a reader uses clues in the text and their own knowledge to make a conclusion about what they are reading. Making inferences is often called ‘reading between the lines’. We have learnt you can make inferences from many different text types and enjoyed looking at some pictures and making inferences to share with the class.

In Maths we have begun looking at collecting and displaying data and are looking forward to creating our own surveys to collect and represent data for. We have also continued to focus on solving written Maths problems using different problem-solving strategies.

Today we welcomed our Pre-Kinder students for their very first session. Thank you to all who came along and enjoyed exploring a room full of "watch me grow" activities. Pre-Kinder sessions will run on Wednesdays from 8.30am-10.30am for the next 5 weeks. Anyone turning 5 in 2022 is welcome to join. See you next week!

Wednesday 3rd November, starting at 5.30pm

Diana Cohen (Inclusive Learning Leader - Department of Education & Megan Hills AST - Forest Primary School) will be running the information session on the Zones of Regulation. They will cover topics including: What this looks like in our school, here's how we support it at school and suggestions for supporting it at home. Please RSVP to the school office on 64583141 before 3pm Wednesday 27th October, alternatively return your form that students bought home this week. Thank you.

STAS forms for 2022 can be collected from the school office or families can also apply online on the Department's web page at www.education.tas.gov.au.

If you have any further questions about STAS or Levies and Charges in general please contact the Department of Education’s Financial Assistance on 1800 827 055 or via email stas@education.tas.gov.au.