Ashy News September 4th 2025 - Ashburton Primary School

Mr T Retirement

On Wednesday this week we farewelled a much beloved figure at Ashy - Mr T. Kevin Terrasson first arrived at Ashy at the end of 2014 after many decades teaching in NSW. Over the next ten years, Mr T filled a number of different roles - classroom teacher across Years 2-6, library teacher, tutor learning teacher. But Mr T also filled hearts with his kind words, gentle ways and positive attitude. Mr T finished up in a teaching role at the end of 2024, but with his busy new schedule we haven't been able to give him a proper farewell until this week. We won't be missing him though, as we'll see Mr T back for a few days as a CRT next term.

Gearing up for the Art Show

It's not just the students who have been busily preparing for next term's Art Show. This week Miss T opened up the Art Room to staff and laid out a range of resources and styles for teachers to unleash their creative flair. Some dabbed at water colours, others tried their hand with pipe cleaner flowers, while others attempted to re-create animals using sketching techniques. A big thank you to Miss T for offering up her expertise and for the teachers in giving their time. We will see the staff art as well as student masterpieces at next term's Art Show.

Ashy Olympics

We had a great day at the track today for Ashy Olympics. We'll have a more detailed report next Ashy News!

Hats are back in style

This week as we begin Spring it's a reminder that students need to be wearing hats during playtimes and outdoor events at school. It's a great idea to ensure your child's hat is NAMED because they have a nasty habit of getting lost. Naming uniform items means that you've got a really good chance of lost items making their way back to you!

We need to thank the organisers of the amazing Father's Day morning event held today.

The volunteers were Kimbalie MacKenzie, Natalie Greening, Liz Prendergast • Lisa Panetta • Sarah Day • Debbie Moirt • Anna U • Namrata Theisen • Clarissa Boudou • Liz Prendergast • Shab • Aleksandra Filipowicz • Kartik Shah • Ash Howarth • Melanie Young

Students and their dads/special people enjoyed a danish supplied from Marshall White, creative endeavours inside, a hit of tennis from Next Gen tennis on the courts and a free coffee from Team Kids. Thank you to everyone who attended!

Parent Opinion Survey

So far we have had 48 families respond to the Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Survey and we thank those people for their feedback! As an entire school, it is only a 14% response rate which is not really enough of a collection rate for the data to be useful to both the school and the Department of Education. If you haven't yet, I invite you to follow the link emailed to you last month and complete the survey. We really do want to hear from you!

This week, Year 4s are wrapping up our class novel, Charlotte’s Web. Students have loved following Wilbur and Charlotte’s journey, and next week we look forward to exploring how this story has been adapted into film.

Students have begun an expositional speech unit. Each student will be developing a speech for an audience member from Ashburton Primary School staff. We’ll be exploring the differences between formal and informal tone, and learning how persuasive devices can be used to strengthen arguments and engage listeners.

We continue to investigate tenths and hundredths in decimals in maths. Alongside this, students have been revising units of measurement and are now turning their attention to angles - identifying and working with right, acute, and obtuse angles in everyday contexts.

Within our Allies for Inclusion unit, students have started brainstorming ideas for an inclusive picture storybook. They are storyboarding the layout of their texts and drawing on skills developed during our recent narrative writing unit to create meaningful and imaginative stories.

Students are looking forward to upcoming events;

Friday 5th September - Ashy Olympics

Friday 12th September - AuslanHub Incursion

In Year 2 we have been:

Working with our Reading Buddy to practise fluency: volume, tempo, expression and comprehension.
Using the Kids World Travel Guide, National Geographic Kids and texts from the library to research facts about our chosen topic.
Reading and interpreting multiplication worded problems and showing our understanding by making and drawing groups, using arrays, skip counting and finding the product.
Participating in team building activities to problem solve and collaborate with others.
Choosing our favourite book characters and dressing up for Book Week. We enjoyed the activities and participating in the Whole School Parade.

Our Year 5 students have been diving into the world of poetry through a special Poetry Incursion. They explored a range of poem types and discovered how different structures and styles can be used to express ideas. Each class took part in their own workshop where students brainstormed topics, created mind maps, wrote rants, and then pulled all their ideas together to perform their very own Poetry Slam. The creativity and confidence on display were a real highlight.

As part of Book Week, we were thrilled to welcome Gabrielle Wang, award-winning author and current Australian Children’s Laureate. Gabrielle inspired students by sharing how she finds ideas for her stories and captivated everyone with her creative process. She also guided students step by step in illustrating a dragon, leaving them amazed by what they could achieve.

In Connected, Year 5s have been investigating important global issues. They have begun planning and designing their own Call to Action Projects, aimed at inspiring others to take small but powerful steps towards making the world a better place. The thoughtful discussions and collaborative teamwork so far have been impressive, and we are excited to see their final presentations at the end of the term.

It 's been another exciting and productive fortnight in Year 6, filled with hands-on learning experiences and creative challenges. Over the past two weeks, students have been:

Exploring their poetry skills during a recent incursion, which was a huge hit! The session ended with a slam poetry competition where students had the chance to perform their own pieces. This has been the perfect launch into our new poetry unit, which we’ll be focusing on for the rest of the term.
Diving deeper into multiplication in Maths, using both the area model and grid method to strengthen their conceptual understanding. Students will soon be moving on to lattice multiplication and the vertical algorithm as they continue developing their strategies.
Collaborating in groups to kick off their Call to Action projects, where each group has chosen a topic they’re passionate about and are working to raise awareness and create meaningful impact.
Celebrating Book Week in style, with our final dress-up day and parade that brought the whole school together. The costumes were creative, colourful, and full of character!

The students have had an amazing past two weeks and are super excited for the Ashy Olympics this Friday!

From Brooke, Chloe & Kristen