Junior playground

For those of you walking past you would have noticed the ongoing developments to the Junior Playground. The existing shadesail has been removed as construction begins on the new wooden structure closest to the pod. The five large tree trunks are already in the ground, with more natural wooden components to be added soon. Thank you for everyone's understanding as we work with reduced playground and thoroughfare space. 

New policies

A number of policies were ratified by School Council last week and can be viewed on our Policies page. One of interest to many is our Dogs in School policy. Basically, dogs ARE allowed on site with their owner, but they need to be on a lead and under the control of their owner. Check out it, and other policies, on the Policies page.

School Expo

What a great way to mark the final School Expo of the year this week. On Wednesday and Thursday, we were inundated with visitors to classrooms to see the term's work. A particular highlight this time was the Bizarre Bazaar in the hall for our Year 5 and 6 students. Showing off their self made wares, the senior students displayed creativity and business nous as they ran small businesses for the visitors. Well done to the students and our Year 5/6 teachers too who have been driving this little industry all term.

Student Leadership

Recently, our Year 5 students have undertake a leadership training through the Unleashing Personal Potential incursions. This week, they were asked to nominate up to 3 portfolios they would like to lead as part of our Ashy Community Teams for 2026. As has been the case this year, the student cohort elect two people to lead on of the 6 ACT teams - Assembly, Specialist, SMILE, Green Team, Community and Digitech. 

The students who have nominated have written a blurb on what would make them a good leader and have them on display on the Year 5 pod windows. As a group the Year 5 students will read through each blurb, before they vote for each portfolio. We will be announcing the successful candidates at next week's assembly, Friday December 12th. 

A reminder, those who weren't elected as part of the leadership positions are still part of the ACTs - each term they will be assigned to one of the teams and work in that area, before moving to another team the next term. In Year 6 all of our students are leaders. 

Book the special lunch by Friday, December 5th - https://www.trybooking.com/DHONT 

Our Year 5 students have been working enthusiastically on their Connected projects in preparation for our upcoming market stalls. They have been exploring advertising, product design, and persuasive techniques. Students are carefully planning products they believe will be both appealing and profitable, and we’re excited to show off their hard work at the Expo.

In maths, students are focusing on time by creating a detailed holiday itinerary. They are documenting flight times, destinations, maps, currency, and weather as part of their planning. Alongside this, students are also learning BEDMAS to create number sentences and solve worded problems.

Our afternoons have been filled with energy as we rehearse our end of year song and dance. The students are putting in great effort, and we can’t wait for you to see their final performance next Wednesday!

Prep Week 8 Term Four

This fortnight the Prep students have been busy designing and making a bridge inspired by the fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They have chosen materials that they experimented with this term during our Connected sessions and that they think will be strong enough to hold a mini goat or troll that will try to cross it.  The Prep students are so excited to share their plans and designs with their families during next week’s EXPO. 

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

• Learning their last long vowel sounds in the Soundwaves program - ear, eer, air and er
• Revising over their addition and subtraction skills by playing games and learning to differentiate between addition and subtraction in worded problems. 
• Writing their own versions of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, including a clear beginning, middle and ending. 
• Comparing objects based on the attribute of length and measuring items using informal units like unifix blocks. 
• Building a new house for the little pigs out of the fairy tale, The Three Little Pigs. The house had to be stable enough to stand up on its own and not be blown over by the Big Bad Wolf! 

Year ¾

Our Year 3/4 students have been working incredibly hard this term as they progress through Code.org’s Course D. They have shown impressive patience and resilience, especially when debugging some of the trickier challenges such as the “Bounce” module, where they coded their own basketball game. Throughout the sessions, students have demonstrated excellent problem-solving skills, carefully testing, adjusting and refining their work. One of the standout strengths has been the way they support one another, collaborating and sharing strategies to help everyone succeed. We are so proud of their coding growth and their fantastic teamwork!

Year ⅚

Our Year 5/6 students have been enthusiastically designing and constructing their own marble runs using only paper, scissors and sticky tape. Working in groups, they have taken a hands-on approach, testing their designs with marbles and problem-solving together when things didn’t go to plan. Many groups quickly discovered the importance of height to help the marble build enough speed to make it through loops and turns, which led to some excellent discussions about momentum, gravity and friction. The creativity, persistence and collaboration shown by all students has been wonderful to see, and their marble runs are becoming truly impressive engineering creations!

Term 4 Week 9 - where has the year gone?

The year 1s have worked really hard again in the last fortnight. Lots of fun and interesting things have happened. We had our year level reward in the hall with Mr Worlley and played lots of new games. It was great fun! In Craft, we read a book called ‘The Colour Monster’. As a follow up activity, we created our own little monsters using paint and markers. They looked so colourful. We have also started swimming, so we have a different timetable and are getting on the bus to go to Korowa’s pool for our lessons. We have also been getting ready for the Expo and practicing our song for the concert next week - so busy!

In Writing, we have been learning about persuasive writing. Shivani, Miss Whitehead and Miss Goss told the year 1s that Mrs Roberts and Mr Hone had decided that next year in 2026, the year 2s would not be allowed on the P-2 playground, the 3-6 playground or the Ga-Ga Pit (not necessarily the truth!!). The students were suitably shocked, so we asked them to write a persuasive piece and then invited Mr Hone and Miss Roberts to come and listen to our arguments. They were so impressed that we managed to change their minds and year 2s were allowed back on the playground for 2026 - success!

In Reading, we looked at non-fiction texts and how diagrams helped you understand what was happening.

In Maths, we started learning about arrays and also revised our fact families.

We have had a fabulous year and hope to finish it off strong in the same way.

We've added some new policies to the website. Look for more as we continue to ratify and update policies on our Policies page