Dear Parents and Carers,
It’s amazing to think we have reached half way through term 1. I hope you enjoyed the long weekend break and were able to get out and about enjoying this wonderful autumn weather.
Building Update
As you would be aware, with the completion of the Master Plan last year, we have been working hard behind the scenes to start Stage One of the plan. You may recall this stage involves the building of a new adventure playground and refurbishing the heritage listed Parish Hall. I am hoping this project will start in the middle of this year with completion by the end of the school year. The School Board and the Steering Committee are all committed to this new and exciting venture as it will certainly improve our play space and gathering space for the school and the parish.
Running along-side this project will be the development of the bottom yard. This will include the demolition of the house at 9 Birkinshaw Avenue, which we purchased early this year, and the construction of a new hard play surface and additional grassed area for the students. We hope to have this project underway next term, with the aim of completion before the start of the top yard project. (fingers crossed).
I will certainly keep you up to date through communications on our website and Skoolbag.
This will be an exciting time for the development and improvement of our school facilities and I know the students are very excited and are looking forward to new play spaces for them to explore.
Star Program – formally the Eastern Star Project
We are now in the second year of the Star Program. This school cluster initiative involves the 5 parish schools in our eastern region. The schools have been working together on a range of projects, particularly focusing on improving literacy, numeracy and wellbeing in our schools across the east. The program has allowed us to support the introduction of Literacy and Numeracy Coaches, allowing teachers time to work closely with these coaches to improve their pedagogy, purchase new resources and access high impact professional development.
We are in the process of launching a new landing page for the program as this will allow you to visit the site and then access the schools’ own websites. We hope to see this as a solid marketing tool for our schools and provide new and interested families with an opportunity to find out more about what is happening in our schools.
One initiative from the program is the continuation of the Parenting Workshops with Madhavi from Positive Minds Australia. The second workshop is organised for Wednesday 24 March at 6:30pm, here at St Joseph’s School Tranmere. The wellbeing focus for this workshop will be around exploring the tools for supporting children to build positive and healthy relationships. Madhavi is an excellent presenter and has many useful tips and advice for all parents. I strongly encourage you to come along and be part of this informative hour-long session. If you are unable to attend the evening session, it will be repeated on Friday 26 March at 9:30am at St Joseph’s School, Hectorville. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to suzanne.budd@cesa.catholic.edu.au
School Uniform
School uniforms give students and families a sense of belonging and enhancing school pride. Wearing a uniform also shows identity and unity in a community. Thank you to all families and students who have been wearing the correct uniform and purchasing the items from our supplier, JS Sports. We are aware of some current delays in the stock of some uniform items and thank you for your patience with the uniform shop.
A few years ago, the school had a brand upgrade which improved the look of our school logo. This logo identifies our school at Tranmere and is now on a majority of our uniform items. We plan to increase the use of the logo on more of our school clothing items in order to reduce the number of generic items as this has resulted in students wearing a mixed range of items as part of our uniform. We hope this will provide a more constant approach and support the families who do select the correct uniform items.
Very soon the P & F committee will be having a second uniform sale in preparation for the winter uniform. If you would like to sell any items please note they must contain our current version of the school logo. This is a great opportunity to purchase good quality items at a reduced rate. Please see the article in this newsletter from the P & F for more information.
Thank you for your support in this matter.
Cybersafe Session
Thank you to those parents and carers who supported our recent cyber safety parent session run by Chris Greene from Cybersafe Families. Chris was able to provide the most recent information for parents about how they can support their child to be a safe digital citizen. This initiative has been an ongoing response to the need to assist our families at Tranmere when students are online both at home and at school. The session was very well received and provided a lot of useful and practical information for setting up a successful cyber safe environment at home.
Our Year 3-6 students also had a cyber safe session the same day , allowing for positive family discussions to occur as the students were able to hear the same important messages of how to be safe online.
Reminders:
I encourage you to support the P & F Easter Raffle which was launched last week. Students took home raffle books and for $1 you can enter to win wonderful easter prizes. If you would like more tickets, please pop into the front office.
Thank you to parents and carers who are using the QR codes located around the school when coming on site. It is important that you continue to do this each time you visit the school grounds. It is important to keep following the COVID safe requirements, including the use of hand sanitisers, physical distancing and staying away from school if you are feeling unwell.
Thank you for your support
Kind regards
Adrian Grbin
Social