It has been an inspiring beginning to Term 4 already – with our students and staff continually displaying our Values of Aspiration, Growth, Respect and our Term 4 focus – Courage. Every day, in every way, our school community display courage in their learning – the courage to ask questions, the courage to share their thinking, the courage to have a go and be willing to ‘get it wrong.’  The courage to stand proud and be truly awesome individuals – who all appreciate everyone for their uniqueness and the value that brings to our world.

During Term 3, we ran a Values Poster Competition where students created their own posters to show what the value of Respect means to them. The winning entry was from the Prep/1 class – can you find these posters proudly displayed around our school? If you would like to view all the entries we received you will find them on display near our Library – please parents/carers/community members come and have a look – We have many creative geniuses at work here at Havenview Primary. As we are focussing on Courage this term, our poster competition will, naturally address this value. Please encourage your children to get the template from their class teacher and get creative. The competition will close for judging at the end of week 5.

Our Havenview Primary School community are curious inquirers and already this term our Prep students are comparing and contrasting earthworms and compost worms, and the Year 4/5 team are exploring our solar system. Did you know that there are 1.9 billion asteroids in the asteroid belt and one of those asteroids is named after J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books – Xavier Howard was the inquiring mind who found out that tid-bit of information! I wonder what else they will discover. Stay tuned for their Expo to find out.

Another exciting happening was the visit from Philip ‘Wildman’ Green on Monday. He shared with us his knowledge and love of Ugly Bugs and Mini Beasts. Did you know that the Wanderer butterfly is toxic to birds and if they ever eat one, they will never ever eat another again!  And some wasps paralyse other insects and lay their eggs in them! Amazing!

Ever seeking to improve, our teaching staff regularly unpack and analyse relevant school data. Recently we have received our collated NAPLAN results and staff have begun unpacking these results. Some of the things we have noticed so far are:

• In Year 5, none of our students sit below National Minimum Standard (NMS) for Reading, Spelling and Grammar and Punctuation. And in Numeracy, 6.3% of our student cohort achieved below the NMS – but 8% of students in similar schools sit below the NMS
• In Year 3, all our students are achieving above the National Minimum Standard in Reading and Numeracy.

I look forward to sharing other data sets as they become available, as this is what informs our Annual Review and leads to the development of our new School Improvement Plan for 2023.

Australia will celebrate the teaching profession on World Teachers’ Day on Friday 28 October 2022.

Our teachers have shown great resilience during challenging times, all so they can give Australian students the best future possible.

Hats off to teachers this World Teachers’ Day! 

I will finish with a reminder. We all know that Term 4 is always a busy time of year, so please:

• keep checking the important dates section on page 2 in this newsletter
• be on the lookout for our upcoming events flyer that will be sent home on non-newsletter weeks
• or check the calendar in school zine.

For now, take care everyone and remember if you have questions, queries, concerns or you notice things we are doing well and are worth celebrating, please come and see me – my door is always open.

Yours in our educational journey

Duncan Murfet

Principal