Term 3 Week 8 3 September 2021

411 Carool Road, Carool NSW 2486 t: 07 5590 9876 e: carool-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

From the Principal’s desk

Gratitude

As we continue to learn from home, it’s hard not to start this newsletter without telling our community how much we miss our students and families. Schools are very odd places when they are not bustling with students. However, watching the Carool community navigate this situation leaves me feeling grateful. Grateful for a dedicated staff that are working tirelessly to keep our community connected and providing students with learning tasks for the home setting. Grateful for our students who keep waking up each day and getting on with the job and grateful for our families who are picking up the role of teacher, facilitator and master of monitoring how much work is getting done. Thank you again Carool for your support during Learning from Home.

Return to school

Unfortunately, we do not know exactly when we will return to school. At this stage our current stay at home orders remain in place till 11:59pm 10 September and if this holds, we will return to school for Week 10, our last week of Term 3. All NSW schools public and private, have been told when we do return to school, we return on Level 3 Safe Operations.

UPCOMING EVENTS

SEPTEMBER

SASS Appreciation Week

6 -10 September

Thursday 9

• RU OK day

Thursday 16

• Book Week Parade &

Sharing Assembly

Friday 17

• Last day of Term 3 & fun

sports tabloids day.

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Book Week - Week 10

Our teachers have planned to celebrate Book Week in Week 10 and we will continue to do this whether we are still learning from home or are back on site.

On Thursday 16 September we will be having our Book Week Character Parade, so start planning your costume ideas now! The theme this year is Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds. Students can take inspiration from this theme or dress up as their favourite book character.

If we are back at school, we will hold a Book Week celebration with some fun activities and a Book Week parade, which unfortunately parents will not be allowed to attend. If we are still learning from home, we will hold a virtual Book Week Parade. Our staff are all set with costume ideas planned and everybody prepping props. We can’t wait!

SASS Recognition Week

Next week is SASS (School Administrative & Support Staff) Recognition Week. Our SAS staff play an important role in the school community. They are often the first people you see when you enter a school and are essential to maintaining positive relationships with students, parents and the community.

SAS staff work in school offices, in classrooms and libraries and maintaining and caring for school grounds and buildings. They are often the ones to tend to students when they unwell and they ensure the efficient management of school financial and administration functions. I would like to thank Mrs Flaherty, Miss Juliet and Mr Shawn for all that they do at Carool PS.

Uniform

Even in these difficult times your P&C continue to work behind the scenes to support our students and our school. An area the team have been working on for quite some time is the issue we are faced with sourcing our school jackets and our sports shirt. Due to several complications over the past few years, such as suppliers changing material quality and colours of products, we have been forced to rethink where we source these two uniform items. The topic has been extensively researched and debated and the following decisions have been made.

We will now source all our uniform from the one supplier, LW Reid. Previously we have been using 3 different suppliers. The school day shirt, jacket and sports shirt were all from different suppliers and by moving to one supplier, will make life much easier for our school administration and save on delivery costs.

Our school jacket will now be a plain maroon fleecy zip jacket. The reason for this is we can no longer source the current jacket in the smaller quantities we require. We have also noticed that many families purchase a plain maroon jacket from Lowes or Big W for a significantly cheaper price . Through LW Reid we can offer families a similar jacket to the one being purchased at Lowes, for around $20. Families can continue to buy plain maroon jackets from other sources if they wish or from the school.

Our sports shirt will also be sourced through LW Reid. There have been significant unsatisfied families with the quality and colours of our last sport shirt batch. To be honest they are dreadful! By choosing a sport shirt through LW Reid, we will have guaranteed quality and

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UPDATE ON LEARNING 3 -6

consistency long term. The P&C committee chose a sport shirt style as similar to our current design as possible and Mrs Flaherty is in the process of getting a price for this shirt. When we have the price and a copy of our new sport shirt in correct colours, we will share it with you.

If you have any ideas about our school uniform, now is the time to contact the school and share your thoughts.

Stay safe, get out for walks, kick a ball around, get off the lounge and away from the screen and please take care. We can’t wait to have you back here at school.

Belinda Eadsforth Relieving Principal

Next Thursday 9 September is R U OK day

THIS YEAR THE MESSAGE IS: Are they really OK? Ask them today.

Do you know how the people in your world are really going?

Life's ups and downs happen to all of us. So chances are someone you know might be struggling. Your genuine support can make a difference whatever they are facing, big or small.

So, don’t wait until someone’s visibly distressed or in crisis. Make a moment meaningful and ask them how they’re really going.

Staying connected and having meaningful conversations is something we can all do. You don't need to be an expert - just a good friend and a great listener. So, if you notice someone who might be struggling - start a conversation. For more information visit https://www.ruok.org.au

I cannot believe it is the end of Term 3 and we are in the month of September. This has been my first experience of teaching students online. Thankfully Years 3-6 spent a couple of weeks learning how to communicate and engage in lessons via Teams just before it was announced that we would all be in lockdown. I want to affirm and congratulate all your children for their ability to embrace and make the most of online learning. I have spoken to a few Principals and teachers from other schools to check how their students are going and have to say that students at Carool are doing such a great job of staying connected and learning.

I was really impressed with the quality and delivery of the speeches in week 6. Thank you for the assistance you gave your children so they could say their speeches via Zoom. It has been such a steep learning curve for us all. This season has proven how resilient and adaptive students can be during their online lessons each day.

A highlight for me has been your child’s willingness to engage online and keep up with their daily learning. Each day when I wake up, I can see that some students are already doing their work from 6am and have finished by 9:30am. Some students have really embraced this style of learning and I know that others really miss the human contact. We really miss having students onsite at Carool. I look forward to seeing everyone as soon as this lockdown ends. In the meantime, stay safe and look after yourselves. Thank you for the support and encouragement during this time. Mr Krahe

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UPDATE ON LEARNING K/1

As you know it’s Fruit and Veg month.

Fruit & Veg Month is a health promotion event that aims to encourage increased fruit and vegetable consumption amongst NSW primary school children

We have seen some fabulous examples of fresh fruit and vegetables coming from our home learners this week! From mulberries, to coffee beans. Did you know that coffee beans are not themselves a fruit, but they are a part of a fruit called a coffee cherry! They are not technically a bean, but a seed. So many interesting facts!!

Some quick tips for adding more fruit and vegetables into our diet:

•Try adding some vegetables into muffins for a savoury snack instead of a sweet snack

•Try a fruit or vegetable that you wouldn’t normally try

•Try to create a fun and healthy snack

To finish off, here's a couple of fruit and veg jokes.

Why aren’t banana’s ever lonely? A. Because they hangout in bunches!

Why did the grape stop in the middle of the road? A. Because he ran out of juice.

Our Kindergarten and Year One students have been working really hard whilst learning from home. They have been eagerly completing their take home workbooks, which allows them to continue to develop their skills in literacy, numeracy and other key learning areas.

K/1 students have continued to work on their informative writing at home. They have been stating their opinions, gathering facts, organising information and labelling a range of different animals. Using a combination of drawing and writing, students have been applying their literacy skills to compose informative texts. We have also been holding face to face Zoom sessions, where we practice our reading, spelling and open-ended mathematical tasks. Not all our Zoom sessions are for learning activities, sometimes we just get together for a chat and a dance, or just to say hi. We really love the opportunity to stay connected with our classmates during this time.

We are so proud of our K/1 students, for their resilience and ability to adapt to these challenging circumstances. A huge thank you to our parents too for the amazing job you have been doing to support your child at home. It has been a pleasure to witness our students’ commitment to their learning. Mrs Bolt