I just wanted to update families regarding some changes to our organisation over the last 12 months. We are no longer the Department of Education. We have been restructured with other government organisations and renamed the Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP). We are now aligned with other agencies that work with children and young people in the state and our Vision statement is “Bright Lives, Positive Futures”. Underpinning this statement are some shared values which our staff unpacked recently to have a deeper understanding of what this means for us and our students.

The values of Growth, Courage and Respect are the same as before and we now have Responsibility and they are all wrapped around the core value of Connection.

Principal Awards

Today we had our first Principal Award assembly. The award recipients have embodied these values to achieve success this term and we got to celebrate by recognising them formally in front of their families and the rest of the school.

The Principal Award is something new that we’ve introduced this year to celebrate the overall academic achievement of a student in each class or academic achievement in a single curriculum area. The students were selected by class teachers.

This doesn’t necessarily mean they had the best marks in the class but individually they have made outstanding progress academically.

Prep - Grade 2 students receive Principal Awards at the end of all 4 terms. Grade 3- 6 students receive Principal Awards in terms 1-3.

A huge thank you to staff, students and families for your commitment this term. Have a safe, restful break and we look forward to working together again in Term 2.

Merit Certificates Thursday 04 April, 2024

Grade 3/4 Atkinson	Sophie, Codie
Grade 3/4 Zandavar	Geoffrey, Chris, Eliza
Grade 5/6 DeHaan	Hayley, Chase
Grade 5/6 Gee	Darcy, Ebony, Hunter
Grade 5/6 Petrohilos	Zoe, Cooper
Grade 5/6 Sundra	Jesse, Ruby
Grade 5/6 Wood	Leo, Ada

Principal Awards Thursday 11 April, 2024

P1 Lockwood	Lachlan
P2 Mahar	Jasmine
Grade 1/2 Achilles	Wyatt
Grade 1/2 Hardman	Stella
Grade 1/2 Hookway-Dare/Gee	Lily
Grade 1/2 Kerrison/Poxon	Elizabeth
Grade 3/4 Atkinson	Osman
Grade 3/4 Duncan	Charlotte
Grade 3/4 Eastley	Oliver
Grade 3/4 Zandavar	Ellie
Grade 5/6 De Haan	Isabelle
Grade 5/6 Gee	Eve
Grade 5/6 Petrohilos	Milla
Grade 5/6 Sundra	Stephanie
Grade 5/6 Wood	Ada

Last Friday 50 students from Grades 3-6 headed to St Leonard’s for the 3-6 TPSSA Athletics Carnival. The Carnival required our students to show a range of skills such as organisation, resilience, teamwork and sportsmanship just to name a few. There were some outstanding individual performances highlighted by Oscar and Zoe collecting medals for being the fastest year 6 runners. Despite the individual efforts, it was the support and teamwork that were most impressive. Our students represented Exeter Primary School in the best way possible.

Oliver Wood

Talent abounded yesterday afternoon as 9 performances entertained the student audience with singing, dancing and acting. The performers ranged from grade 3-6. They were confident, well-rehearsed and courageous. and there was even a card trick interval from Nate and Isla while the judges deliberated about the winner. Congratulations to the winners who were from Grade 5-6, Zoe who sang Runaway by Aurora and Isabelle who sang Try by Pink. We are so fortunate to have such talent within our school!

What did the ECO leaders do at the Tasmanian Youth Climate Leaders Conference?

On Tuesday the 19th of March, the Exeter Eco leaders when to Ravenswood Heights Primary to attend the Youth Climate Leaders Conferences. At the conference, we learned how people as a society have change and impacted the environment.

After we did some whole group learning, we split off into focus groups with mentors. We chose to do three workshops that related to our project. We chose gardening sessions on compost, using water and soil in a changing climate and conserving water. We also got extra help from additional people who were there.

For our project, we are hoping to make a new garden with edible native plants. We will be working with the community to make this a success.

By Olivia L

Earth Hour was in Week 7. We hope you were able to actively support this initiative. One of the activities held in Year Six, while Naplan was running, involved watching part of an Episode of War on Waste (definitely recommended viewing and available on iview). After learning about food wastage in Australia, we created some mini-posters (on recycled scrap paper). We learnt that up to one in five bags of groceries is thrown out of the average family shopping visit. Now that we are aware, we will try and promote better use of our Earth’s precious resources.

To ensure our students are successful in the modern digital world, Exeter Primary school includes Digital Technology as a specialist lesson. From Prep to Grade 6, all students have a 40-minute lesson in our Super Lab each week with a specialist teacher.

This term in our specialist lesson, upper primary students have been learning about the daily responsibility of taking care of our digital equipment, the different kinds of software available to access at school and the etiquette of how to send emails to other people.

Our lower primary students have been practising how to log on and off computers. They have been using software called ‘paint and paint 3D’. They have also been learning to type sentences using ‘Word’.

The focus in Digital Technology is to build all student’s digital literacy in a fun, safe and engaging way.

Here are some screenshots of our grade 5-6 assignment, creating a PowerPoint on words of wisdom.

This term, 5/6 Petrohilos have read the novel, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ whilst working on our reasoning skills to support personal preference. We have mixed feelings about this text. Some of us like it because of the crazy upside-down world where nothing is as it seems. Others found that this world was just too busy and very confusing, and thus do not like that element of the text. We enjoyed the way Lewis Caroll portrayed some characters and were perplexed by the actions of others.

As you may know, one of the main events in this story is ‘The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party’. After completing an Art history lesson on funny face jugs (from America) and British Tudor mugs, we set about creating our own funny face mugs. They look fantastic and we are positive they will make any Mad Hatter’s Tea Party extremely farcical.