Term 1 - Issue 3 2025
Principals Report
And just like that, Term 1 2025 is pretty much done. It went way too quickly! Term 1 is often one of the busiest terms of the school year, and this one wasn’t any different.
Walking through the classrooms during the day you can see that our structures, processes and expectations are firmly in place as our students are engaged in their learning and are demonstrating all of their values. I am so proud of our students each time I see them in class doing their best each and every day.
Mr. Novak on Long Service Leave for 5 weeks
For the first 5 weeks of Term 2 I will be away on long service leave. As many of you have noticed I have been hobbling around a bit this term. Short of it my back isn't good at all, so it is time to get that sorted out and rest a bit.
While I am on leave Mrs. Carla Brown will be the Acting Principal of Bagdad Primary School. Carla is currently one of the Assistant Principals of Howrah Primary School and comes with an amazing wealth of experience and most importantly is a fantastic fit for our school. I have no doubt you will all make her welcome.
Activities Day – What an awesome day!
Our first whole school activities day was an absolute success. This was not a small undertaking as we had 140 students going to 8 different venues in one day, and they all managed to have fun.
Finally thank you to our School Association and all our families, as through your fundraising and contributions you have paid for the whole day. Looking ahead to next year we are hoping to do another whole school activities day and for it to become a yearly event for everyone to look forward to.
A reminder that our kinders will have an extra excursion later this year, as they were a bit little at this time of the year to be mixed up with other classes for an excursion. Ms. Matthews will let you know when this excursion will be on.
There are plenty of photos in this issue of the newsletter, I think the pictures will speak for themselves in terms of showing how much our kids enjoyed themselves.
Literacy Results Sharing
We are going to attempt something a bit different next term. In all schools across the state, teachers are constantly completing screeners and other tests with students to see how they are progressing and what areas of their learning might need additional support. Believe me; to translate the information from these screeners and tests is tricky at the best of times and over the years our staff have done a mountain of work on this.
We are going to attempt to send of these results home twice a year, at the start and end of the year. We are a bit late with this year’s as this is the first time we are doing it, so it will be with the mid-year reports instead.
Results will be sent home for Prep to Year 6 with a brief explanation of what each result means, where your child should be at for their expected age and what the results are telling us in terms of their learning.
Fluency
Over the past few years as a school, we have completed a mountain of work with our conditions of learning (calm classrooms, high expectations etc.), had (and still do) a big focus on work recognition (phonics, morphology etc) and our readers workshop (reading strategies). This year our school focus has moved to introducing the explicit teaching of fluency across our school.
Fluency is “how a student becomes progressively faster, smoother, more accurate and expressive in their reading aloud of increasingly complex print texts.”
In our school we now start the day off with the explicit teaching of fluency each morning from 9:00 until 9:15. There are also other opportunities for fluency throughout the day, especially throughout our literacy block each morning from 9:00 until 10:45.
Parents you can support fluency at home by reading to your kids, no matter how old they are. By reading at home to your kids you are showing them the appropriate speed that you should read at and the importance of using expression when reading such as pausing or adjusting the tone of your voice.
Home Reading
As I just mentioned, reading with your kids is one of the most powerful things a parent or carer can do to help support their reading. Please take the time to listen to your kids read or read to them. Reading to your children allows them to see what good readers do, as well as being able to spend some time with their parents!
As always students will get a book for every 50 nights of reading they do at home.
For those students who aren’t reading at home we are asking them to read at school on arrival each morning to ensure they are getting as much reading time in as possible.
House Points - Values Points
As with last year we continue to hand out Values Tickets to recognise when our students demonstrate our school values, which is part of our school wide positive behaviour structures (On our webpage of course Positive Behaviour and Wellbeing - Bagdad Primary School).
The winning house each term gets an icy pole on the final day of term, and in term 4 we have a pizza lunch and games for the winning house. The winning house this term was Cornelian, but it was very close overall:
Cornelian 1168
Chauncy 1110
Huntington 1109
Another way of looking at this is that our students have done about 3300 positive things this term in relation to demonstrating their school values and being great learners. Congratulations to all of our kids, you continue to do us proud!
Mother’s Day Breakfast and Open Morning
On Wednesday 7th May we will be holding a Mother’s Day breakfast and open morning for all our mums. If a mum can’t make it, we are happy with another special person to come along.
Breakfast will be available from 8:30am onwards for kids and their parents, and no it won’t be a bit of toast from breakfast club! From 8:55am onwards classrooms will be open for mums or the special person to come into the room, look around and do a few simple activities.
More information will go out in the first week of term 2 including what is actually for breakfast and RSVP details. Please save the date on Wednesday 7th May from 8:30am until 9:30am.
Lunch Program - Term 2 Update
Our School Lunch Program will resume in week 2 of term 2. Please send your child with a packed lunch in the first week of term 2.
Our Kinder to Year 2 students will be participating in the School Lunch Program starting next term. Kinder students will eat in their classroom to keep things a bit easier and to avoid rushing them in and out of the hall.
For our Prep to Year 2 students, they will go down to the hall at 12:15 for their sitting for the school lunch program. This means that they will still have time after lunch for regular lunch eating time in their classrooms. As the students get better at the routines we will see if we can reduce the time they are down there, but we will take that as it comes.
As many parents are aware our younger students can be a bit picky with food, so please send along lunch as normal for the first few weeks to see how they go. We will serve sample size servings to our Kinder to Year 2s and if they want more there is always more there.
Our Year 3 to Year 6 students will still attend the lunch program from 1:15 until 1:35 as they did this term.
Uniform Update
A few parents have mentioned that Lowes have been out of stock on a few uniform items. This was expected as part of the transition to Lowes as our uniform providers as they needed time to design and get our uniforms made and stocked up. We have spoken to them this week and they should be fully stocked in the next 2 weeks. From this point onwards they will have plenty of stock available at all times.
Hats Off and the Colder Winter Months at
From the start of term 2 hats are not required outside during play, so this is a good time to give them a good wash! As we all know Bagdad gets chilly in winter. School uniform is required still in the colder months; however, we are more than happy for students to wear warm jackets and beanies outside and take off when they get into the rooms.
From Last Time - Now, 5 Years and the Future Survey
We have asked our staff and students what their thoughts, wishes and hopes for our school are now, in 5 years’ time and in the future (we are thinking 15 to 20 years here).
We would love as much feedback as we can get from our community with the same questions. This is to help give us some ideas with planning for our growing school in the coming years. A lot of things are directly out of the school’s control, so please keep this in mind, and no we can’t afford a swimming pool!
All the information from the kids, staff and community will be compiled and shared hopefully next term.
The survey will stay open until Monday 26th May 2025. Please click the following link or scan the QR Code:
https://forms.office.com/r/5MjvAFXbuw
Basketball Court Mural – Touch Up
You may have noticed that our mural on our basketball court is looking a lot brighter as of this week. Over the past few weekends, a wonderful group of people have volunteered their own time to clean and touch up the mural, which was certainly in need of some TLC. Thank you to the following people:
- Carolyn Bassett
- Jim Clifton
- David Hall
- Jill Hall
- Chris Harman
- Kay Harman
- Rita Husband
- Catherine Johnson
- Wendy Wagner
- Gary Wagner
- Christine Wessing
- Neville Wessing
Many of the people who volunteered their time have had a strong connection with the school over the years, and it was great to have them supporting us once again. A big thank you to all of you once again from our whole school community.
I hope everyone has a great Easter break with their families, and I also hope the Easter Bunny is generous with the chocolate. I will see you all again in the middle of term 2.
Kind Regards,
Phil Novak
Principal
Prep with Miss Shephard
I'm so proud of our preps! We have come a long way in such a short time. Our preps are doing a fantastic job of signing-in of a morning, keeping our noise levels at an acceptable level, and working hard in all subject areas. We've been learning patterns, writing numbers, and doing lots of counting in maths.
1/2 with Mr Balzer
We have had a busy term in 1/2 Joeys. Here are just a few photos of what we have been doing, including construction during play based learning, reading, science and visualising during our readers’ workshop.
4/5 with Mr Wood
In 4/5 Wood this term we have been working on narratives. We have looked at how a narrative is structured, which words we can use to engage a reader, and we have written our own narrative. We did illustrations to go with our narratives, using the adjectives to help guide our drawing.
We have been focusing on decimal numbers in maths this term. We have looked at how values of digits can change after the decimal point. We have participated in lots of learning through whole class, rotations and on Mathletics.
Music with Mr Wood
We have had a fantastic start to music, all students have been engaged and are having fun.
In Years 3 to 6 we have been learning to play songs on the xylophones, learned chords on the ukulele and spoken about rhythm.
In years Prep to 2 we have been doing lots of work with percussion instruments, including xylophones. We have been learning to sing a class song in 1/2 and we have had lots of time to play music games.
Aussie of the Month
Congratulations to Darcy and Cammy who are our Aussie's of the month for March and April.
Darcy always has an enthusiastic attitude towards all aspects of school life. Darcy has the ability to cheer anyone up and make them smile.
Cammy is caring and shows warmth towards all members of the school. Cammy is always happy to help others and consistently demonstrates our values.
News from OSHC Uniting
It is with the greatest of pleasures that I can and wanted to share Leeza has been awarded Uniting's Educator or the Year!
Although this award obviously speaks to the importance of what Leeza has accomplished, but for other perspective - Leeza won based on over 1000 Early Learning staff, in both Tasmania and Victoria, based out of over 70 services. Absolutely astounding!
I'm sure we can easily agree on the impact and contributions Leeza has made to our community and wider, so it was my honour to have presented this award to her, this afternoon.
I'll be looking to celebrate with Leeza and the team over vacation, so I can do it right and to the lengths she deserves for this accomplishment.
Bridge Art prize Finalists
8 of our students entered an art competition where they were asked to draw what the new Bridgewater Bridge would mean to them and the community. All 8 of our students were chosen as junior finalists and attended a function at New Norfolk last weekend where prizes were awarded and students recognised for their achievements. Students' artwork was displayed and could be bought.
A fantastic achievement to all students involved including Claire, Mackenzie, Ryder, Eden, Evie, Madelyn, Mollie & Xavier C.
https://www.readysteadygokids.com.au/search/hobart-7000-tas