Newsletter 27 August
From the Principal
We now have a School Association!
It is my absolute pleasure to announce that last Thursday afternoon we elected a Springfield Gardens Primary School Association! It was an excellent meeting with a good number of parents attending. It was great to see the commitment as people came along determined to support the filling of positions to ensure a committee was established!
What was even nicer was to hear how many people shared, “I don’t want a job, but I’ll help you”, while others offered to take on support roles when elected members are unable to attend.
Our elected positions are as follows:
Chairperson – Kristy Kelleher with Nicole Riley supporting,
Deputy Chair – Cheyanne Cowen with Naye Forrest supporting,
Secretary - Naye Forrest with Helisha McPherson supporting, and
Treasurer – Helisha McPherson with Skye Arnold supporting.
Parents also had the opportunity to identify their priorities moving forward. Support through Parent Help, a school fair and fundraising were all priorities, while participation in the current 7HOFM School of the Year Competition, more whole school special breakfasts (like the pancakes for Book Week), Mothers and Father’s Day Stalls and a school disco were mentioned. A number of safety issues including the possibility of having a school crossing guard was also bought up.
I am really excited to see how our school will grow over the next couple of years as our School Association becomes an active and valued part of our school community. I would like to take the opportunity to encourage anyone & everyone to come along to meetings, to have their say and to contribute to this work. While we have lots of great people already attending and a strong committee in place, please don’t feel you are not welcome, and your voice is not important. Just as every child is important – so is every parent.
Our next School Association meeting will be held on Thursday September 18 – please feel free to come along, we will be adopting a formal meeting format and will begin to create a calendar of events as well as attend to school business.
I can’t conclude this report today without thanking the previous members of the School Association and committee. To Brendan Carley and committee, I would like to thank you for all the work you did for our School Association and hope we can build on your example to make our school the very best it can be.
Nadine Davey
Principal
1/2 Sun
Term 3, Week 6 (2025)
This term, 1/2S have been excited to apply our counting skills in a brand-new area of learning: measurement! We began by exploring how to measure everyday classroom objects using informal units such as blocks, popsicle sticks, and hand spans. This hands-on approach helped students understand the concept of length and how different units can be used to compare sizes.
As our confidence grew, we transitioned to using standard measuring tools. Students learned how to read measurements in length using rulers and measuring tapes and explored mass using scales. Through guided activities and real-life examples, students discovered how measurement is part of our daily lives—from estimating the length of a pencil to weighing their apples!
We’ve also focused on building vocabulary around measurement, including terms like longer, shorter, heavier, and lighter. Students enjoyed working in pairs and small groups to compare objects and record their findings.
It’s been wonderful to see the curiosity and enthusiasm in our classroom as students develop their understanding of measurement through hands-on exploration and collaborative learning.
4/5 de Paula
This term, the Year 4/5s have been diving into the world of forces: pushing, pulling, friction, gravity, and more! There’s a lot to remember, but we started off with a lesson that was both fun and easy to understand.
We began by heading out to the playground, where students explored and played with the equipment while thinking about the invisible forces at play. Back in the classroom, we discussed and identified which forces were acting on the playground structures, and even on the students themselves. Right from the beginning, they shared some fantastic insights in very hands-on way.
Over the following weeks, our class carried out a range of exciting experiments: creating marble races, comparing how a feather and a hammer fall, and playing with magnets. Each activity sparked curiosity and discussion, making science not only educational but also quite engaging!
It’s been a wonderful journey so far, and the students are having a great time learning about the forces that shape our everyday world!
5/6 Marshall
In Science, this term we have been investigating electricity and circuits. We discovered there are two types of electricity – static and current, and conducted some experiments to find out what we could do with static electricity. It turns out that we could move paper and bend water. These experiments used household items so please ask how we did it and we could repeat it at home for you.
Book Week 2025
This year’s theme for Book Week was ‘Book an Adventure’ and an Adventure we had at Springfield Gardens Primary School! It began with a Quiz, with worthy winners 5/6 Grech answering questions about popular Australian books, taking out the prize with the most questions correct, out of all of our classes. Wednesday saw our annual Book Week Parade – thank you to families for the support shown by dressing up your children and coming along for our pancake breakfast and to watch our parade. It was a wonderful turn out and we saw some very creative costumes, which looked like they took time and thought to put together. Our guest judges: Ms. Davey, Rachel, Belle Parker and Mayor Sue Hickey of Glenorchy City Council, awarded a ‘Best Costume’ from each class, recognising the effort involved in thinking about connecting your costumes to showcase a book. The winners were given a voucher to spend at Fullers Bookshop, kindly donated by Glenorchy City Council.
Best Costume Winners:
Kinder – Zayden (Willy Wonka) and Xavier (Minecraft)
1/2 Sun – Charlie (Thelma the Unicorn)
1/2 Poke – Malaki (The Green Sheep)
3/4 Balhatchet – Ray (Beaver)
3/4 Pears – Jazzy (Granny)
4/5 de Paula – Jayla (Babysitter)
5/6 Marshall – Niko (Rod)
5/6 Grech – Alyssa (The Lorax)
It was wonderful to see everyone participating and getting involved in the parade and we look forward to doing it all again, next time!
Throughout the week, we had our Book Fair and Books in a Bag which were raising funds to purchase new books for our school library – thank you to your support of these, we raised over $700 which will be going back into the library.
Another Book Week celebration was Adventure Bingo, which was completed by each class – focussing on different adventures we could take books on! The winning class, 3/4 Balhatchet, read books in the playground, created story maps of a character from an Adventure story and read their favourite books with their Buddy Class. The students in this class will get to choose a book, donated by Belle Parker, to take home and add to their home library.
We were also fortunate to have guest readers come in to share their favourite stories with us. These guests were from our school community and broader community and shared with us their roles in the community and what they did to support our local area. Our guests included Tasmanian Tigers Cricketer Maisy Gibson, Glenorchy City Council Mayor Sue Hickey, Alderman Steven King, Alderman Stuart Slade, Alderman Justin Stringer, Rachel from our School Office and of course, Ms. Davey!
Thanks for all your support over the past week and I look forward to working with our School Association and community to continue to bring reading opportunities to our students.
Tasmanian Learning Commission Excursion
At Springfield Gardens Primary School, we and a variety of other schools have joined a group called The Tasmanian Learning commission; otherwise known as the TasLC. We are a group of student and teacher commissioners planning ways to improve the school ethics and education. We have participated in meetings where commissioners have worked together to look through school data such as the Wellbeing Survey and identify where we can make improvements in our school. Our plan is to tell the school who we are, what we do and our purpose. We will then decide on our inquiry question and begin putting things in place at school to make improvements.
On Tuesday 12 August, we went to Brighton High School to have a meeting with our fellow commissioners from other schools. During our time there, we talked with the other commissioners about how to help people feel safe, loved and like they belong at our school, because they are areas that we think we can improve on. Then we talked about the other focus of other schools, like why their students didn’t feel they had strong relationships with their teachers.
We gave ideas to help them with student-teacher relationships because this was a strength we found in our data. Then they helped by giving ideas to let students at SGPS feel safer. We will continue to work on our inquiry question over the next few months.
Book Club
Orders for Issue 6 of the Scholastic Book Club closes on September 12.
Jeans for Genes Day Fundraiser
A big thank you to everyone for supporting our Jeans for Genes Day Fundraiser!
We were able to raise a huge $154.55.
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