Improving our reading is very important in 3/4A. Each day, we rotate through groups which focus on important reading skills from making predictions, questioning, summarising, and comprehending texts. In recent weeks, we have been consolidating our understanding of phonics using Teach Your Monster to Read and have used other online tools such as Kids Lit TV, to look at character building. We have engaged in a variety of read and respond activities, as well as worked with Mrs Heazlewood, the Literacy Coach, to complete 10-point retells about stories we have read.

In HaSS, we have inquired about the past, looking at old photos of places in Tasmania. In groups, we discussed what we noticed and our wonderings.

Miss Chloe Brown / Mrs Abby Bent (3-4A Class Teachers)

On Tuesday, 16 August, our Year 3-4 classes journeyed to George Town to visit the Bass and Flinders Maritime Museum and the Watch House. As part of their HaSS studies, classes have been learning about the expeditions of George Bass and Matthew Flinders, as well as early European settlement of the Tamar Valley.

At the Bass and Flinders Museum, students were excited to explore the life-size replica of the Norfolk boat used to circumnavigate Van Diemen’s land and prove it was an island separate to mainland Australia. Students enjoyed venturing down into the cabins, including the Captain’s quarters, galley and sleeping bunks! At the George Town Watch House, each class had a guided tour of the miniature village representing early George Town. They learnt about how the main settlement moved between George Town, York Town and Launceston due to the demands of fresh water and suitable grazing land. Students also had fun exploring (being locked in) the cells in the Watch House, which used to be the gaol.

Students also spent some recreation time at the newly re-developed playground in Regent Square.

Our School Fair is fast approaching (less than 2 weeks to go!!). We hope to see lots of our families coming along to support this fabulous event.

Friday, 9th September - 3:30pm - 7pm.

Our amazing TA's Louise, Deb, Christine and Mark continue working hard to put this event together and we're sure it will be a wonderful Fair.

If you are available to help on a stall, set up or pack up, please contact Louise via the school office on 6395 0100. It would be greatly appreciated for sure.

Humpback Whales

Humpbacks are friendly mammals, that never go on land, only in the ocean. Interestingly, they can swallow 1,000 or more fish at a time.

Humpback whales are large sea mammals and are 15 metres long. These gentle giants can weigh up to 40,000 kg (they usually weigh 25-30 kg). They are mainly blackish, grey with a white belly. Humpbacks have big pectoral fins that are helpful for moving further and can blend in with the sea floor. I wonder why humpbacks are so big?

Although humpback whales are a large mammal, they only eat fish and use their soft teeth to stop small fish. The singing mammals use their songs to attract a mate. They only eat small fish like krill, salmon and cod. Before they use the bubble net to catch fish, they have to find the fish and then eat them. Let’s hope that all of them will get a mate every year!

These gentle giants are very active swimming creatures, so they travel a lot. They migrate to warm places like Hawaii in winter while in summer, they move to cold places like Antarctica and Alaska. The whales can travel up to 25,000 kms, only stopping for food, with the summers and the winters going bye. (Humpback whales stop only to eat and get back to what they wanted.)

In conclusion, I hope that the humpbacks always gets to the spot the wanted to in the end. For all of their glory they travel and eat while they do  nice, interesting things like eating while they move around the seas.

By Madeleine 3-4C

National Science Week occurs each year in August – and this year at Lilydale District School, it didn’t disappoint! Last Wednesday, 17 August, our Prep to Year 1-2 classes enjoyed a spectacular display of experiments run by Miss Brown and lab technician, Mr Rollie. Students participated in dry ice demonstrations, a favourite of which was to catch the mysterious disappearing ‘ghost poo’ when the dry ice was added with water and detergent. Students also made enormous, oozing ‘toothpaste’ fit for an elephant, after deciding even elephants need to brush their teeth too!

Our Year 3-4 classes used the ‘predict, observe, explain’ model in their experiments. They compared the properties of dry ice with normal ice and explored ‘magic milk’ by adding detergent and food colouring to milk and describing the reaction. The flying film canisters were a definite favourite for all classes, as was the ‘whoosh’ bottle finale demonstration.

What a wonderful opportunity to challenge, nurture and inspire our younger students’ curiosity in the Sciences! We thank Mr Rollie and our Primary teachers for promoting National Science Week.

We celebrated a wonderful Book Week last week. In addition to all the wonderful reading activities that we shared between classes and teachers we had fantastic participation with our Book Week Parade. Having students and staff dressed in their favourite characters and having their books with them provides another way for us to promote and foster reading which we know is a critical skill for life. Thank you to our community for supporting our learners with this event. Please continue to read with your children when you can.

Respect is one of our Department of Education values and one of our school values and expectations. Whilst we understand that no-one is perfect, we still need to provide feedback to students, and adults too, when their behaviour is not at the standard that we expect.  Disrespectful behaviours can range significantly, as do any associated consequences. What we are aiming for is an alignment of consequences that create a change of behaviour and increased periods between students overstepping the mark.  There are also a significant number of conversations and regular teaching that sit alongside this. We are also seeking support with reminders at home for the simple but significantly important respect behaviours such as manners and considering others.  These are key foundation skills for life.

Given the inclement nature of our weather during term 3 we have been forced to spend break times inside or on hard surfaces. When we have been able to go outside the initiative to have structured play activities in front of our 3-4 classrooms and the hard courts at the front of the school has seen a significant increase in collaborative play and shared responsibility.  Skipping, down ball, connect 4, Velcro catch and more are really gaining popularity.  Similarly the increased use of our ICT lab across the week has attracted dedicated game play and has freed up the library space for reading and board games.

As mentioned last newsletter we have the Student Wellbeing and Engagement Survey happening soon. A letter will come to families with children in Years 4-12 explaining how and when the survey will be conducted.  Student voice is a key aspect for us to measure our success but also to assist with future planning. We will strongly encourage students to be reflective and honest with their responses.

As part of the new Reporting to Families processes we will be offering opportunities for student/parent/teacher conversations in Week 9.  This opportunity is available to ensure that we are able to continue to refine goals and learning targets for students as well as share successes and growth.  Information about scheduling a discussion will come out in Week 8.

Our Year 10 students will be visiting Newstead college today as another opportunity to help inform their decision making for 2023. To assist students with this important choice they will get the opportunity to visit classes that they may be interested in for next year and ask questions about college life.  Being able to hear from past students and their experiences is also a fantastic learning opportunity and gives another perspective for our Year 10s to consider.

Our school fair in happening on Friday, 9 September. There has been a significant amount of planning and work done behind the scenes with this event and I encourage you to bring your family and friends to enjoy a great afternoon. All our fundraising will go towards further improvement of our school.

Colin Pearson – Principal

Just a reminder that the School has a very convenient app called Qkr, which familes are strongly encouraged to utilise to order school lunches and recess for students.

The Canteen does not have any over the counter purchasing options, it is all either via the Qkr App orders or classroom ordering.

If you have placed an order for your child and they don't attend on the day for some reason, the onus is on you to cancel the order PRIOR to 9:30am on the day. The canteen is unable to hold over orders anymore, it has been happening too much and becoming very hard to keep track of.

In addition to this, please be aware of when your child has an excursion which takes them out of school for the day, or sometimes just over lunch break and not place an order for them. The school sends letters to advise of excursions and that students need to bring their food and drink to school with them to take on the excursion.

Soccer

The soccer players showed a lot of enthusiasm and sportsmanship in their games. Due to changing numbers students needed to be flexible and support across both teams and were willing to adapt and back up their teammates. We faced some strong opposition, but we still put in our best effort and managed to hold our own while still walking away with a smile. 

It was great to see the two Lilydale teams supporting each other and playing consistently throughout the day even when faced with strong competition. Connor’s skilful goal keeping did us proud as did the field finesse of Jamie and Vicktor.  Congratulations to all players for the wonderful way in which you represented our school.

Football

The Football team had a successful final North East Cup game at Blue Gym Park. The boys started very strongly and beat Scottsdale in a comfortable win. Dominic stamped his dominance in the game early with some blistering bursts up and down the centre field causing some headaches with a despairing opposition coaches box. Ably assisted with the agility and pace of Kaiden and the bustling and communicative Danyen. Up front Connor making his debut was providing an elusive player for his opposition as he danced around them sending them on a futile chase to tackle him. Riley was providing some athletic guile in the ruck giving our on ball brigade first use of the ‘pill’. Down back holding up the defence with stout resistance was the ‘batman and robin’ duo of Brock and Seth.

It was pleasing to note an up and coming mosquito fleet of Kade, Josh, Hamish, Lachie and Hayden amongst others who were giving the opposition coaches some cause for concerns with future battles with some tenacity and skill belying  their tender age on the big stage.

Whilst this positive attitude generally emulated for the remainder of the day, the boys despite being competitive and mostly showing persistence and resilience in the tricky conditions did not get the ‘chocolates’ ahead of a bigger and more experienced Brooks and Port line ups.

Best player on the day was Dominic followed by Kaiden. Best team mate award went to the dynamic duo of Seth and Brock. Thanks to the small but parochially crowd that gave their support throughout the day.  

Netball

The last NE cup at Port saw the 3 netball teams enjoy some great games against the other schools.  The div 2 had to challenge themselves by competing up in Div 1, only losing one game. Both our Div 3 teams, kept battling and encouraging each other. The sportsmanship from all teams was fantastic and is what these days are all about.

We are all very excited to be playing Mixed Netball, although we aren’t sure whether the boys or Ms McNear are more excited to have mixed in the roster.

Best Players:

Best team player: 

Guest Speakers

My name is Wendy Cocker, and I will be at Lilydale District School on Mondays and alternate Tuesdays for the next 8 weeks as your School Health Nurse (28 August – 17 October 2022). The role of the School Health Nurse is to provide health education, student support as well as health & wellbeing promotion to students and the school community. This includes health assessments for kindergarten students and engaging across all grades in lessons and group activities surrounding health and wellbeing. Some of these lessons and activities will include education on nutrition, personal hygiene, oral care, sun safety, growth and development, positive mental health and mindfulness.

Vision and hearing screens for all students are also available on request if there is a specific concern. Consent forms must be signed by a parent/guardian prior to all assessments, including Kindergarten health assessments.

Please feel free to visit me for a chat or contact me via the school office if you have any concerns or questions regarding your child’s health or the role of the School Health Nurse. Alternatively, you may email at your convenience wendy.cocker@education.tas.gov.au

I look forward to meeting and supporting students, parents, carers, guardians, as well as staff at Lilydale.

We have a bit of a collection of lost property gathering at the school office.

If your child has misplaced any school clothing, please pop into the school and check out the pile. Any remaining lost property that is not collected by the end of Term 3, will be washed and put into our emergency clothing cupboard for redistribution when necessary.

Any clothing that is not school uniform will be donated to charity.

Thank you.

Get your Ticket to Play and join in!

Ticket to Play provides two vouchers up to $100 each towards club membership/registration for children aged 5-18 years who are listed on a Services Australia Health Care or Pensioner Concession card or in Out of Home Care.

What can I use the vouchers for?

Vouchers can be used towards the cost of sporting club membership, as well as for Learn to Swim, Dance, Scouts, Guides and Cadets.

Vouchers can be used at two different activity providers or both can be used at one activity provider. 

Important dates

Ticket to Play voucher applications are open until 31 May 2023. Vouchers must be given to an Approved Activity Provider by 7 June 2023.

• www.tickettoplay.tas.gov.au 
• Contact Ticket to Play at tickettoplay@sportrec.tas.gov.au  or on 1800 252 476