Reading Priority – Growth and Courage

This week we welcomed our new Instructional Literacy Specialist, Stephanie Brown to Team Glenorchy. Steph shares our vision to ensure every child at Glenorchy Primary learns to read.

Our 2025 School Improvement Plan sets out clear actions on how we can achieve this vision. Steph is a member of our leadership team and will be working with us to coach our teachers and staff and provide technical advice on the programs we are implementing.

Our target is to reduce the number of students at Glenorchy Primary at risk of not achieving their reading benchmarks.

Our staff are committed to this goal, excited and hopeful that the learning they are doing is going to have a lifelong positive impact for our children.

We need your help too!

We teach reading every day and if a child misses a day of learning, that is one day that they haven’t don't have the chance to practice their letter sounds and reading.

More information will come home in Term 2 about how you can help with practicing the heart words and sounds at home.

Harmony Week- Connection and Respect

Our value of Connection at Glenorchy Primary School is how we create a sense of belonging and build positive relationships. We know that if children and families feel a sense of belonging to our school then we will have great learning and engagement at school.

We have the most beautifully diverse community which gives us so many opportunities to learn about our world and the cultures of our families.

At Glenorchy Primary we have 270 students.

Did you know that 50 of our students speak a language other than English at home?

Did you know that 57 of our students are First Nations Australians?

This week we celebrated that everyone belongs at Glenorchy Primary with dance, language and clothing. We also invited our students and their families to talk about a word or phase in a language that you would like to add to our Harmony Week Wall.

Wearing orange on Wednesday and having our dance party to different dances from around the world is best described by the Afrikaans word that Chloe-Ann placed on our Harmony Day wall- Samesyn! 'Togetherness'

Athletics Carnivals – Connection and Responsibility

Thank you to Mr Gordon, Susan, Gary, Alex, Ali, Lorraine, Luke, staff and Fitness Leaders from Montrose Bay High and Glenorchy Primary for running joyous and fun filled Athletics Carnivals. Everyone stepped up to make these days a huge success.

We saw courage, participation, teamwork and a wonderful huge attendance by our families cheering on our children. Stay tuned in our next newsletter for updates from Mr Gordon about the Interschool Athletics Carnival held yesterday at the Domain Athletics Carnival.

The school community came together to celebrate Harmony Day during the week - and what a fantastic array of colour and cultural costumes we had on display. It was so good to be sharing all the wonderful cultures that come together in our school grounds.

What a great day all our students had at their respective carnivals. Even though the day was overcast and threatened to rain on our upper primary carnival, it did not dampen the enthusiasm of our students nor affect the joy with which they all faced the day. Everyone was willing to take up the challenge and give at least one event a go.

Prior to the carnival our senior students were asked to provide a written 'application' detailing the reasons that they thought they would make good House Captains. We were very impressed with the applications.

Congratulations to our House Captains for 2025.

Our younger students were equally as enthusiastic and they all participated with courage and much excitement. It was certainly fun to watch and special to be sharing both these days with the many families who were able to come along to support our students.

What a great time we have been having in 2-3-4 Reid!

Along with completing our Evidence of Learning we have been starting our days with our Daily PE leaders from grades 5 and 6. This has been great getting us in shape in the lead up to the athletics carnival and for those students who represented our school on Thursday up at the Domain.

In Maths we have been learning about odd and even.  Have you ever wondered what makes a number odd or even?? If you’re not sure you can always ask someone from 2-3-4 Reid and they will be able to give you an answer.

We are also looking at measurement in particular length and talking about the importance of being exact when measuring.  We have been measuring things in and around our classroom which has included each other. If you come to our classroom, you will see us hanging around the room.

Since we are learning about and using scaled instruments, we thought it would be a good idea to incorporate that in with our next attempt at our new art piece where you need to be very precise with measuring.  Keep your eye out for our new art piece on See Saw.

Work will begin over the term 1 school holidays to improve safety for those entering  Glenorchy Primary School via the school crossing in Kensington Street. While work is being undertaken in the area, parts of the road will be closed. Weather permitting we hope this work will be completed before school returns.

The raised crossing willl slow vehicle speeds and define the crossing for both drivers and pedestrians.

The raised crossing will be in the same location as the existing crossing but will mean that vehicles will be unable to to park where pedestrians cross the road, making the area safer.

Next week we will be welcoming Speech Pathology student, Jo Roberts. Jo will be working at Glenorchy Primary School on Mondays from 7th April until 9th June. If your child is already on the speech pathology caseload they may work with Jo.

Speech pathology students have placements in DECYP as part of their university studies. They are fully supervised by a qualified Speech and Language Pathologist employed by DECYP. If you do not want the speech pathology student to see your child, please contact the school office or Megan Turvey, supervising Speech and Language Pathologist, by phone 6272 7574 or email - megan.turvey@decyp.tas.gov.au

School photo day is Tuesday 1 April.

Gosh we have a lot of 'lost', un-named jumpers, hats and other assorted items of clothing in the office.

Please check your childrens clothing - if anything is missing it is probably in our office - come along and check!

Nature Holiday Program