Bagdad Primary School eNewsletter

Principals Report

Here we are again, the final newsletter of the school year. Term 4 has gone way too fast, and as always at the end of the year it is always good to look back on the highlights and achievements across our school:

Learning – Across this year we have seen some great improvements in our student's literacy outcomes, but we still have a lot more work to do. The number of students meeting the minimum literacy standard has increased this year, as well majority of students demonstrating an increase in their personal growth score in our end of year testing. Students are becoming more confident with their reading and writing skills, which is what we want to see.
Literacy Programs - We have a very explicit and well-structured literacy program running each day at our school that is consistent from Kinder to Year 6. All classes engage in explicit phonics lessons, readers workshop lessons and explicit writing instruction across the school week. In addition, we have a very well structured and explicit literacy intervention program running to support our kids who need a bit of extra support. This will continue in 2025.
Values – Our School Values are embedded in everything we do at Bagdad Primary School, and you only have to walk around for a few short minutes to see and hear this. We are really proud of how our students support each other and living and breathing our School Values each day.
Behaviour – Overall student behaviour has been excellent this year. Over the past 4 years we have seen challenging behaviours decrease more and more each year. Majority of students understanding how to get help, use regulation strategies to stay in the Green Zone and how to get support to solve problems they might be having.
Student Wellbeing – Our Student Wellbeing data has improved this year across most Wellbeing domains, and we are only 3% behind similar schools. Student Wellbeing does not just measure how a student is feeling at school, but in all aspects of a child’s life. To further support our kids this year we have successfully implemented the Resilience Program, which is continuing in 2025.
School Environment – Our school is looking fantastic both inside and out. We have new swings, an amazing veggie garden, new garden beds with lots of natives planted and overall, the place looks stunning. Our staff continue to ensure that classrooms are a place our kids want to be in, they are covered with the kids amazing work, especially the art!

As always there are a lot of people to thank at the end of each school year, and this year is no different:

School Association and Parent Volunteers – Thank you to all the parents and friends of the school who have given up their own time and given so energy and happiness to our school. You are truly an amazing bunch of people who really make a positive difference to our kids through your generosity and kindness.
Students – You are all amazing, even the ones that drive me nuts frequently! Everyone in our school community is proud of what you do each and every day at school. We love to see how much you grow over each year in terms of your learning and becoming awesome people going out into our wider community.
Staff – I really cannot emphasis enough to everyone how good our whole staff team are at Bagdad Primary School. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes at our school every minute of every day. Thanks to the people we have working at our school we are able to provide a calm, safe and supportive environment for our kids to learn in. Our staff go above and beyond for our kids. Thank you to each and every one of you.

Staff Farewells

Miles Griggs – Miles will be retiring at the end of 2024 after a very long music teaching career across many schools in our state. He demonstrates a passion for music and this can be seen in his classes each week, especially seeing our students constantly learning to play new instruments. From everyone at Bagdad we thank you Mr Griggs and wish you all the best with your retirement!

Teena Wheeler – Teena joined our Kinder team this year and it became apparent she was in the right place due to her warmth and care with our youngest students. Teena is off to spend time with her family, especially her grandchildren. Thank you, Teena!

Janna Leaman – Janna has been a part of our school for a bit over two years now, first as our School Chaplin and now as one of our Literacy Intervention teachers. Janna has shown that she is a “jack of all trades” easily jumping into numerous roles to support our staff and students. She has always gone out of her way to support our students and ensured the best in them is brought out. Janna is off to Oatlands District School in 2025 where she will have her own class of 3/4 students to keep her busy. Thank you, Janna, for all your kindness, care and support of our school.

Canteen 2025 Update

Parkside Foundation who has ran our canteen for a number of years will no longer be able to support our school in 2025 due to circumstances that are beyond anyone’s control. Over the years the people from Parkside have prepared and served countless lunch orders and counter sales for our kids. They have been absolutely amazing at what they do and will be greatly missed next year.

A big thank you to Cathy Tuck who has been a regular face in our canteen for years. From our whole school community, we are going to miss you and thank you for all your support and dedication to our school.

Moving onto canteen in 2025, unfortunately with Parkside leaving us it has made running the canteen extremely difficult at the start of 2025. At this point we are going to pause lunch orders until further notice. However, the school will still do counter sales with the help of staff and our SRC students. More information to come in early 2025.

As we are now a School Lunches Program school in 2025, we will be offering a hot lunch for students on a Monday and Friday. We originally were going to do a slow introduction to this with only our Year 3 to Year 6 students, however we may revise this plan!

Christmas Carols – Friday 13^th December

Back by popular demand is our Bagdad Primary School Carols on the Oval will be on Friday 13^th December on our school oval. The Carols items start at 5:30pm, however food sales will start at 4:30pm.

A program will be released online closer to the date. We also ask that you bring all your family and friends along to the event, the more the merrier!

A reminder that this event acts as our whole school celebration and gives you the opportunity to see you children perform at the end of the school year.

Levies 2025

We have needed to put up our school levies moving into 2025. This is something we do not do very often and try keep the increase at a minimum. If you have any questions or concerns about levies, please contact the school office.

Increase by $5 from 2024 to 2025

Kinder - $160
Prep to Year 2 - $200
Year 3 to Year 6 - $220

Reminder from last time - Reports and Evidence of Learning

Reports will be going home for our Prep to Year 6 students on Thursday 12^th December. The reports will include the following:

Cover letter and information about the end of year reports.
Student ratings for the year against the 9-point scale.
Evidence of learning for writing and for specialist subjects.

Evidence of Learning for the end of the year will include:

Evidence for PE, Art, and Music (1 piece of evidence for each subject).
Teachers are available for you to talk to personally if you wish for a follow up discussion about any evidence of learning. Please organise a time to speak with them if you wish.

Kinder students will receive the following in the end of year reports:

Kinder Development Check (KDC) Assessment 2 report.
Portfolio of work for the year in the last week of school with evidence of learning against the Early Years Learning Framework.

Combined Sports Carnival - Winning House 2024

1^st Chauncy - 1,187

2^nd Cornelian - 957

3^rd Huntington - 860

Combined Values Points – Winning House 2024

1^st Huntington - 4135

2^nd Cornelian - 3595

3^rd Chauncy - 2774

Kind Regards,

Phil Novak

Principal

2024_SWES_Data_Infographic.pdf

Kinder with Miss Matthews

We have had such a wonderful year in Kinder in 2024. We have all shown growth in our literacy and numeracy and have done so many fun things such as our weekly Bush Kinder sessions. We have attended lots of exciting excursions such as our recent visit to the Littlewood Berry Farm.

What a fantastic year we have had in Prep/One. We have seen some amazing achievements and growth from all students throughout the school year.

Here are some of our 2024 highlights:

I liked the Molesworth excursion and learning about all the animals (Holly)
The excursion to the park. It was lots of fun (Issy W)
Doing something fun at school to decorate Christmas (Elsie)
I liked swimming because I needed it for my big holiday next year (Blake)
Art because I can paint a T-Rex (Bentley)
Reading and playing at school (Hazel)
The colour run because you get sprayed with all the powder run and get a prize (Harrison)
Learning the number sentences and doing pluses (Hudson)
All the excursions and the water one (Marine Discovery Centre) to see the cucumber ones and puffer fish (Issy M)
Going to the Oatlands Pool because we got to do lots of swimming and lots of backstroke (Lacey)
I like maths because I like to do takeaways (Lucy)
Playing with my friends in 4/5 Balzer (Logan)
The Colour Run because they throw colours at us (Layla)
Learning maths because we do pluses and the excursions to the park (Milla)
Going on the bus on excursions and getting to shop for a book at the book shop (Makenzie)
The excursions and Oatlands Pool because I liked going swimming in the pool (Stein)

We know that Term 4 gets hectic and stressful for all of us. Solution: we had a lovely 15-minute mindfulness session in our classroom so that we could concentrate on our learning.

2/3 with Mr Wood

Grade 2/3 Wood have had a wonderful year of learning. In English we have focused on inferring information as we read and write, exploring all there is to know about poetry, and developing our understanding of informative texts. Students have had a great time learning all about multiplication and division, we have been working hard on speed sheets, Mathletics, rotations, and all the fun maths games we play. We are looking forward to winding down and getting ready for Christmas and the summer holidays!

3/4 with Miss Shephard

3/4 Shephard have been enjoying the warm weather and sunshine. We are looking forward to the carols on the 13th and have been busy practicing. The 3/4's have created incredible art works all year. Here are some favourites.

4/5 with Miss Peters

In 4/5 we have been busy moving classrooms to prepare for next year. We have had lots of fun practicing our songs for the Christmas carols. We created a kindness Christmas tree to share and recognised the kind moments we have seen at school.

My New Gallery

Grade 6 with Miss Stokes

Year 6 have had a great term 4! We have had lots of fun completing historical narratives on convicts, information reports and posters on chosen countries. Every group loved picking a new and exciting dish to cook for the class. We have had a time learning, making memories and friendships.