We have had another busy week at South Grafton Public school.

Last week Year 5 were involved in the ‘Check-in Assessments’. They are an optional online reading and numeracy assessment that have been offered to all Department of Education schools. We readily took up this opportunity as they supplement our existing school practices to identify how students are performing in literacy and numeracy and to help our teachers tailor their teaching more specifically to student needs.

As a school we are looking forward to exploring the results and learning opportunities this data delivers.

Our Year 3 students will participate in a similar online Check-in Assessment early next term.

We are taking enrolments now for kindergarten 2021.

Please complete your enrolment forms and lodge with either office to help us with our planning for 2021. Its very important we have a very good idea of our numbers as our staffing is decided each year on school numbers which have to be processed by November.

We are currently following up next year Kindergarten enrolments with our parents and community.Mrs Knight, Mrs Ensbey and Mrs Vickers are visiting preschools, our office staff are ringing our parents and we have sent home a lovely booklet for our preschoolers showing our wonderful staff helping in many different areas around our school. Thank you to Mrs Knight and her team for all their assistance supporting these initiatives.

To assist our community and preschoolers, our PPP team are preparing a Kindergarten Orientation Video anda series of PPP activities which will be posted on our Facebook page.

We are also preparing a PPP participation home pack for our preschoolers. If you have already returned your child’s enrolment form please contact the Infants office after Thursday August 27 to arrange collection or return your enrolment form asap so you may collect this pack for your child. This pack will include pencils, scissors, glue stick, white board marker and a personalised laminated name sheet and all required resources to participate in the online PPP activity.

Good luck to our boys and girls hockey teams who are playing Grafton PS and Westlawn PS at the Grafton hockey fields. Our Thanks to Mr Kelly and Miss Emily Ryan for coaching our teams.

This week we will be holding a modified performing arts concert in our Primary hall. Unfortunately our choir, verse speaking and band are unable to participate due to current guidelines. However we are still able to involve our multiple dance groups and skipping team who are looking forward to performing. We will endeavour to incorporate our normal Performing Arts Concert in Term 4 if guidelines allow. A big thank you to all our staff and students who have spent many hours preparing for this concert.

Our book fair for students has started and will continue until Thursday 3rd September. Students will be able to browse and write a Wish List when visiting the library in their class library time. Due to COVID-19 restrictions purchasing is a little different this year.

Information is available at https://sites.google.com/a/education.nsw.gov.au/librarywithmrsheyman/book-fair-2020 

Our ‘Book Character Parade’is on Tuesday 1st September. We will be holding a parade on each campus to abide by NSW DEC guidelines. We are looking forward to seeing the amazing costumes and which characters our students will come dressed as this year.