South Grafton Public School welcomes all our students back to Term 3. We hope all of our families had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday. We are looking forward to a very exciting term where our students will have the opportunity to participate in a number of school based initiatives.

This term beginning week 2 we will be operating a Breakfast Club on our Infants campus as well as our Primary campus which is very exciting for our students and our staff.  The Breakfast Clubs will operate Monday to Thursday and are a free service for our families. Our thanks to Mrs Shorrock and Mrs Dodd for their organisation of this terrific initiative in our school.

In Week 3 all NSW Public Schools will be celebrating Education Week. The theme is Learning Together.

In this year of bushfires, floods and COVID-19, the key messages of Education Week 2020 are:

*Schools are the cornerstone of communities.

*Parents and carers are our partners in learning. Schools and families benefit from strong, respectful relationships where responsibility for student learning is shared.

*Change and resilience.

*Our teachers and students are lifelong learners, collaborating in a positive learning environment to achieve their best. Learning together makes us strong and creates resilient communities.

*Connect better and learn together.

*Our school staff are dedicated professionals who know, value and care for all students. Technology enables learning together anywhere, any time.

During Education Week we normally invite our parents to visit our classrooms and our students perform in a wonderful concert. Unfortunately this year we are not allowed to have parents visit our school in large numbers. Our staff will still be participating in a number of activities throughout this week to recognise and celebrate Education Week 2020. Take a leisurely stroll down ‘The Link’ at Grafton Shoppingworld during Education Week to see our students art work on showcase. From the 3rd – 9th of August.

Last week our new school cricket pants arrived to support our boys and girls cricket teams. Our teams will look very smart when they represent our school in these new navy pants which will match with our school polo shirt.

This term our Primary campus will be participating in the annual Premier’s Sporting Challenge which runs for 10 weeks. All students have received log books which they use to record their daily physical activities in 20 minutes blocks. The log books daily entries accumulate to a weekly result which may be bronze, silver, gold or diamond award. Each student tracks towards an average final award level at the end of 10 weeks. Next term students will then receive a certificate which records their overall result.

This term we have organised a large number of initiatives to support our staff and students. Many of these activities you would recognise as our normal Term 3 activities but they will be operating under the NSW DEC guidelines. We will be highlighting these activities with photos for our parents on our Facebook page, website and in our newsletters.

Listed below is a calender of events for Term 3:

Tuesday July 28 – AFL;

Monday August 3-7 – Education Week the theme is ‘Learning Together’;

Wednesday August 12 – Rugby League;

Tuesday August 25 – hockey boys and girls;

Wednesday August 26 – performing arts concert for students and staff only; Tuesday September 1 – book character parade;

Friday September 4 – multicultural public speaking school finals;

Tuesday September 8 – soccer girls and boys;

Friday September 18 – infants sports carnival;

Tuesday September 22 – netball;

Thursday September 24 – primary athletics carnival – Barnier Park

Term 4

Tuesday October 20 – basketball girls and boys;

Tuesday November 17 – cricket girls and boys.

We are very excited we can offer our wonderful students these excellent opportunities and we will continue to endeavour to provide as many activities as possible.

This week our primary students will be participating in Littlescribe’s Mini Writing Festival. This is a unique opportunity to interact with 13 of Australia’s most treasured children authors. Each day students will participate in a workshop where they will meet a new author, focus on a specific writing theme and be given a writing challenge. Some of the authors include Andrew Daddo, Jackie French, Wendy Orr and Deborah Abela.

3KG were reading many books about kindness last term, including a book about Macca the Alpacca. They completed some fantastic Alpaca artworks for their ‘Kindness Display’. Image: contributed