Book Week 

A big thank you for Book Week! It really was a week of celebrations that culminated in the parade at assembly on Friday. You can read about the week in a couple of different stories in this edition of Ashy News, complete with lots of photos!

First up for Miss Lai for the Bookmark competition which the students absolutely loved! They really did get into it and produce some beautiful pieces. We also thank Miss Lai for organising the Bookwork competition and a lot of other liaising and organising. 

For Mrs Robinson for the Bookswap and for her part with Miss Cath for organising Gabrielle Wang as a guest speaker with our senior students. 

Thank you to the Book Week committee of Miss Lai, Mrs Robinson, Miss Whitehead, Miss Cath, Miss V, Miss Hooper and Miss Goss for their collective efforts.

Also to Mr Worlley, Mrs Robinson, Mrs Roberts, Miss Dooley, Mrs Rapson and Miss Abbott for reading in the library at lunchtime

For all of our staff  who dressed up - I particularly liked the C.S, Lewis inspired team effort in Year 5. 

A big thank you also to the families - as a parent myself I know the effort that is required to get a young person ready in a dress up! 

And to the students who all got into the theme in the right spirit, making posters, engaging in activities and dressing up. These days are the ones they remember! 

Ashy Olympics

It was sad that we had to postpone Ashy Olympics due to a poor weather forecast. While disappointing, the health and safety of students, staff and the crowd is paramount. With rain and possible thunderstorms, we simply couldn't take the chance with 300 people being exposed at the track and waiting for buses to return. We look forward to the rescheduled day on Friday, September 5th and hope for better weather! The reschedule means that we will not be running assembly on September 5th, rather Friday September 12th will be the last assembly for this term. 

Father's Day event

Next Friday is also our celebration for Father's Day. Running before school on the outside courts, we welcome students and their dads or special people for a variety of activities 

• Grab a coffee from the TeamKids coffee van
• Enjoy a Danish thanks to Ash Howarth from Marshall White
• Make a bookmark, key chain or Father’s Day card
• Get involved in some fun tennis games with Next Gen Tennis

• Snap a photo at our Father’s Day photo moment

  Everything will conclude by 8.45am, so it won't interrupt the school day or the rescheduled Ashy Olympics. 
  
  
  
   

Somers Camp

Our Somers Campers returned yesterday after a loooong 7 night camp as part of the 160 strong student contingent. A collection of a number of primary schools, Somers Camp is a limited opportunity for Year 5 and 6 students to experience a long format camp and meet new people. A big thank you to Issi and Miss T for representing the school and supporting the 28 Ashy kids who attended. 

Expos

A heads up that in the final week of term we will be running our regular Whole School Expo across the school. Parents, carers and extended family are invited to attend classrooms to share in the learning of students this term. We will run an after school and before school sessions to allow for greater flexibility for visitors. 

After school session Wednesday 17th September 3.30pm-4pm

Before school session Thursday 18th September 8.30am-9am

Book Week Competition Winners 2025

Well done to everyone who entered the bookmark competition and the ‘Guess the Bookworm’ competition.

We had 2 winners for our Guess the Bookworm competition, Darren (2A) and Zoe (3A)  who correctly guessed that the jar had 105 bookworms in it! They each received a gift voucher for our local bookshop - The Leaf Bookshop!

We had so many amazing entries in the bookmark competition it made it a challenge to pick the winning bookmarks. You can check out our winners and some of the other shortlisted bookmarks below.

Congratulations to our year level bookmark winners: Royce (PC), Bhadra (1C), Jaksh (2A), Elliot (3B), Elise (4A), Caleb (5C), Grace (6A)

As well as to our two winners of our special awards Sione (6B and Emaan (2A) who were our Principal’s Pick and Mrs Robinson’s Pick.

We will be getting the winning bookmarks professionally printed and each student will receive one later this term

It’s been another fantastic fortnight in year 1! The students have been working hard and having a great time.

In Reading, we continued exploring some of the Book Week shortlisted books and had a great time responding to them. We had a book tasting session where we got to decide if we liked a book or not and recommend it to a friend.

In Writing, we have been looking at the different types of sentences and we started our new unit on writing information texts.

In Maths, we have still been exploring sharing, both in our book and on the iPad. We have been also looking at money and comparing the value of money by building coin amounts with unifix and we then created paper items in our Craft lesson to sell this week in our pretend shop. We have also been studying shapes and this week we made shapes using the peg boards.

In Connected Learning, we have been flying around Asia and learning about India and the Pacific Islands. We did some Bollywood dancing, drew Rangoli patterns, learnt some greetings from Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and in Maori and learnt some of the flags of our island neighbours.

Book Week Celebrations

Last Friday we had our annual Book Week Celebration. The theme of ‘Book an Adventure’ was in full force with displays, activities and costumes abound.

Our Book Week endeavours have been in the works since the start of term, with our Year 6s helping to make fabulous displays for the library, our posters and helping to promote all the activities.

Prep - Year 3 enjoyed receiving their own Ashy Passports, travelling to different rooms to complete a range of book activities and even receiving custom stamps to mark their travels. 

Some activities included: making a piranha clip (Piranha's don’t eat  bananas), designing a hot air balloon (Oh, the places you’ll go), packing their important items into a suitcase (A Bear called Paddington), and looking through doorways and keyholes into fantastical worlds (Imagine and Alice in Wonderland).

Years 4-6 students had a workshop with former children’s laureate Gabrielle Wang - who we are lucky to have as a grandparent to one of our students. She discussed her inspirations and the process for her writing and then took students through the process of how to create an illustration.

We finished off this amazing day with our costume parade, where each year had the chance to show off their costumes walking across the assembly stage. The variety of ‘adventure’ costumes was spectacular and showed that even simple costumes look amazing.

We’d like to thank all the teachers, students and families that helped make this a wonderful event. Special thanks to Gabrielle Wang, Mrs Robinson, and teachers who helped facilitate this wonderful week.

Yesterday, 28 of our students and teachers Belinda Treseder and Issi Pellissier returned from an incredible nine-day adventure at Somers School Camp.

Somers School Camp is a nine-day residential program run by the Department of Education, located on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. 

From the moment they arrived, students were welcomed into a new community. They shared huts with students from other schools, joined mixed groups for activities, and quickly learned the importance of working together. Every day brought something different - whether it was facing the challenge swing, pushing themselves on the high ropes course, or slowing down to connect with nature through environmental studies and bush art. 

Somers School Camp acknowledges the Bunerong Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land. During their stay, students deepened their understanding of this connection through bush and beach walks, where they learned about the significance of Country, the importance of caring for waterways and coastlines, and the ways in which the land is protected for future generations. 

By the end of camp, our students weren’t just braver and more independent - they had built new friendships, discovered the joy of teamwork, and felt a real sense of belonging to the Somers community.

Year 3 update: We have had a wonderful and busy couple of weeks.

In Week 5, the Year 3s went on a Community Walk around Ashburton, in connection with our Connected Learning topic, Allies of Inclusion. During the excursion, the students surveyed the surrounding community, investigating how Ashburton is accessible for all.

The Year 3s also celebrated Book Week in Week 5, and everyone looked amazing in their costumes. The Year 3s teamed up with the Year 2s, and classes rotated between classrooms, showing their creativity during Book Week activities.

In writing, the students have completed their narrative writing piece, focusing on engaging the reader.

In reading, we have finished our class novel, Charlotte’s Web, and started consolidating our inference skills when reading fiction texts.

During our walk, the students collected data, which they then used to explore in Maths how to graph data both by hand and digitally with iPads. 

Week 6 Term Three

As part of the Term 3 Connected Unit “Celebrating our Differences,” the Prep students have been so lucky to have two parents share about their family’s culture. We have had Jazz, Nico’s mum from Prep B share about her family’s Mexican cultural background and John, Imogen’s dad from Prep A share about his family’s Irish heritage. The students have been using this information to create their own passports about various cultures, focusing on the culture’s flag, ways to say hello, landmarks, celebrations and food. Next week the students will rotate classes to experience a culture shared by the 3 Prep teachers. The students look forward to sharing their passports at the Expo at the end of the term. 

Other learning experiences in Prep over the past two weeks have included:

• Summarising what we have learnt after reading Non Fiction texts. The students have drawn pictures of the main idea to share with a partner. 
• Making mental models of ten in our minds. Students have worked on partitioning numbers into their whole and parts. 
• Learning that gender is not a barrier to what you like to do, wear or play during SMILE lessons. 

The Craig Family Centre Homework Club

As part of Ashburton Primary School's role of being a supportive local network for families and children, we have strong partnerships with many trusted local organisations, including the Craig Family Centre.

The Craig Family Centre Homework Club provides a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment where children can strengthen their literacy, numeracy, and study skills. This program is an invaluable resource, giving children the opportunity to thrive both academically and socially, as well as build their confidence and resilience through encouragement and positive mentoring.

Rachel Roberts

Assistant Principal