Thursday 10 April

Principal Report

Exciting News – Funding Success for Our Outdoor Courts!

We’re thrilled to share that Illawarra Primary School has been successful in receiving $50,000 in funding from the State Government to support the redevelopment of our outdoor courts. This generous contribution, combined with the school’s pledge of $20,000, brings us very close to fully funding this much-anticipated project!

Thanks to this support, we’re excited that we will likely be able to complete the court redevelopment without needing to draw on all of the funds raised by our amazing School Association. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone in our community who has supported fundraising efforts to date – your time, energy, and contributions are what make projects like this possible.

With the outdoor courts project now well on its way (with works to be prioritised across the state over the next four years), we believe it’s the perfect time to reach out to our school community for your input into our future school improvement works and fundraising plan 2025-2029.
As a school, we recently shared some ideas with the School Association, which included (but are not limited to):

•    Covering the new courts (to allow for outdoor assemblies, sport, and learning in all weather)

•    Kinder redevelopment – upgrade of the outdoor area

•    Student wellbeing initiative or curriculum (e.g. The Resilience Project or Smiling Mind)

We’ve created a short survey (it takes less than 2 minutes!) to gather your ideas and hear what you’d like to see us focus on next. Whether it’s wellbeing initiatives, early years play spaces, or something else entirely – we want to hear from you!

👉 Click the link below to complete a quick survey (it takes less than 2 minutes):
🔗  Illawarra Primary School Survey

Thank you for helping shape the future of our school!

Every School Day Matters (including Fridays) 

Mr Hayen and our school psychologist have been including information in our newsletter this term about attendance and why Every School Day Matters. 

As they have explained, absences disrupt a child’s learning routine, leading to gaps in knowledge and skills that can be difficult to catch up on later. Repeated absences can accumulate and lead to significant learning challenges, and children who miss school frequently also generally find it harder to maintain strong peer relationships. 

One thing our school data has shown so far this year is that we have had significantly more absences on Fridays, compared to other days of the week. For example, our absence rate on a Friday is 45% higher than on a Tuesday and 39% higher than on a Thursday. 

On Friday, our teachers, including our teachers taking a class one day a week, are focused on teaching the curriculum, as well as consolidating the week’s learning. While it may not seem like a lot, if a child is regularly taking Fridays off to have a day at home or to go away early for the weekend, they are missing important learning.  

I would encourage everyone to keep this in mind and help to make sure that our students have the best opportunity to be successful at school by attending every day possible, including Fridays. 

Regards,

Kristy Hay
Principal

Calendar of Events

End of Term BBQ

End of Term BBQ tomorrow - ORDERS OPEN UNTIL 7PM TONIGHT 

This is a fundraising initiative from ISPA - Illawarra Primary School Association. All funds raised go toward IPSA projects for the school. 

If you can spare some time on the day, we would love your help. At this stage we currently have no volunteers signed up to help out.

'Sign Up' to volunteer on the day - https://signup.com/go/gwdWppU

Thank you from IPSA

School Association News

Easter Raffle

5 Cooke News

In Grade 5 Cooke we have been looking at what is “Respect”. It is a complex thing to answer but we looked at some quotes as a starting point that got us thinking about our perspective of the topic. These quotes were:

• Who am I to judge what I don’t understand?
• No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted
• Respect other people’s feelings, even if it means nothing to you, it means everything to them.

We then had a discussion about what we thought the quotes meant and came to the conclusion that aspects of respect have differing importance to different people, and that is an important because we are all different.

We then came up with statements about what element of respect was important to us and here are some of the statements that we wanted to share.

Cooper S- Respect is allowing people to do the things they need to do.

Chloe W- The most important part of respect to me is when people always tell the truth.

Abs W- My way of seeing respect is being treated equally and fairly for our actions.

Claire E-I think it means like everyone should be respected in every way.

Georgia G- Respect to me is when you treat someone the way you want to be treated.

Shinji V.H.- Respect is about if something you do to others, good or bad, considering the consequences you get from the actions you make.

Harlie C- People respecting my interests and what I like but also needing to respect other people's interests.

Charlotte P- Respect means to me being listened to, it makes me feel respected by others.

5 Genford News

5 Shaw News

2025 School Cross Country

Japanese - Year of the Snake

This year the IPS Japanese Language and Art students collaborated to acknowledge the Year of the Snake by creating a graphic art poster. Their brief was to celebrate the symbol of the 巳(hebi – snake) as well as include the Japanese term へび or 巳(hebi) or へびどしor 巳年(hebidoshi – year of the snake) written in either hiragana script or kanji script. Grade 4 - 6 students were invited to participate.
The creative calibre of the posters was so impressive that judging/selection of works was an extremely difficult one for the judges. Illawarra art students should be extremely proud of their efforts.
Student posters that were selected to represent IPS in the statewide JATNET Japanese Poster Competition were Gr5/6 – Grace G, Audrey M and Isabelle C.

Gr4 – Elsie W, Paddy W and Hazel SG.

Audrey M received an honourable mention in the final competition.

ウエッド先生
(Wedd Sensei)
Mrs Petersen (ART)

Art News

Japanese Children's Day

City of Hobart are running a day of activities at the Youth Arts and Recreation Centre (YARC).  Activities will be based on the themes of Children's Day, as well as learning about Japanese culture and customs.

Activities will include:

• Climb the Kumundar Gujo – jungle gym constructed of traditional Japanese woodworking techniques.
• Find a Japanese story book among the Australian Wooden Boat Festival's travelling book barge.
• Meet the adorable bonito fish Yai Chan, Yaizu City's mascot.
• Make some cool origami – we'll show you how!
• Add your dot to a community made koinobori (carp streamer).
• Try some yummy Japanese foods
• See the interesting Japanese arts, crafts, cultural displays.
• And more.

https://www.hobartcity.com.au/Community/Events-and-activities/Upcoming-events/Japanese-Childrens-Day-celebration

Chess Competition

On Tuesday, 1 April our chess team competed in an inter-school chess competition against other southern schools.   The quality of chess played by our students was very high, and our team competed in a  very positive manner over the seven rounds.

At the end of the tournament our team placed 4^th overall, with Ted B placing 4^th out of all the primary entrants!

If you would like your child to be involved in chess club next term, please see the information about this in this newsletter.

Michael Hayen

Assistant Principal

School Holiday Chess Program

Launch into Learning - Term 2

Community Events