Newsletter Term 4 - Newsletter 2 - Week 8

Principal's Report

Welcome to our students, staff, our Bothwell families and friends and our invited guests. Thank you for joining us this afternoon.

It was around about this time last year that I learnt that I had been successful in my application to be the Principal of Bothwell, and I was very excited to be returning to the school that started my teaching career. In many ways I can’t believe it has only been a year at the school as over the course of this year, we have accomplished so much together.

This year in Tasmania all schools adopted the new DECYP School values. For us, it was an opportunity to really focus on our positive behaviour supports for our students and to revisit the idea of a school motto. We introduced the 4 Bs: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, Be Courageous and Be a learner. We started a new daily rewards system based on the 4Bs with students earning daily VIPS – Values in Practice tokens. Rewarding and recognising positive behaviours has been a key focus of our behaviour support system and one that our students and staff have really embraced. We adopted the motto of ‘A Connected Community’ with the value of connection being the centre of our work. We demonstrated this value most recently in our Sports Day, Family BBQ and Colour Run. The event being so well received by all.

One of my very first conversations with parents at the start of the year was around providing leadership opportunities for our students. Our student leadership group have grown in confidence and capability as the year has progressed. They have worked hard to bring a strong House Culture back to the school and a friendly competitive spirit between Shannon and Clyde houses.  This term, our incoming leaders for 2025 have taken up peer support training opportunities and the future is looking bright. At the conclusion of this assembly, we will announce our winning house for 2024!

As the year has progressed, our students have had the opportunity to partake in a wide variety of excursions and incursions. Visits from the Antarctic Mobile Classroom, Robot Man, the travelling wellbeing puppet show, Tree planting with sustainable timber Tas and the team at Forest Education. Trips to Waddamana, the University of Tasmania, Fullers Bookshop, Richmond, The Botanical Gardens, RYDA defensive driving education, personalised driving lessons with RACT and a variety of Beacon initiatives and opportunities for our senior students are but some of these highlights. Our School 

Association have supported a number of initiatives and events for our students as well and our Chair Susan Webb will provide a summary in her report of what has been achieved.

This is the year where we, officially launched the new Agricultural Studies Building and officially opened our 11/12 Building. This is also the year where we debuted our Bothwell School Song and our new House Mascots: Indie and Ecki.

An event that I think really sums up how we as a small school have well truly been ‘punching above our weight’ and working hard as a community, was to witness the Children’s University Graduation this year, the culmination of many hours of activities and evidence of active participation in learning. We had 43 students graduate this year. In the words of Uni of Tas staff, ‘we smashed it!’.

Together with our school and group successes, we have had many individual success stories with students achieving personal growth in a number of areas. This includes a category winner in the What Matters Writing Competition and Two state winners in the National History Challenge as well as a representative in the Tasmania Devils U16 talent squad for football and a representative in the Hurricanes Rookie program for Cricket.

As part of the Midlands Cluster of Schools (together with Kempton and Bagdad Primary Schools and Oatlands DHS), we received a significant financial grant to focus on providing high quality reading programs and learning with our younger students. We have only just started to touch upon the opportunities of this grant and collaboration with our partner schools. Many of our students achieved positive gains this year and we have some students in the early years identified to participate in extension programs through Gifted and Highly Abled learning Tasmania. We will continue to build and grow such extensions opportunities into the future.

Recently, it was announced that we were successful in a VET in Schools Grant to supply equipment to the school to assist in vocational and applied learning opportunities for our students. We have received $24,000 worth of equipment to support this provision and in 2025 we are looking forward to supporting a small group of students to pursue VET studies in years 11 and 12.

Looking to next year, we have already begun planning some key community-oriented events, a Year 6-8 Trip to Canberra and another exciting collaboration with Sustainable Timber Tasmania and the Forestry Education Foundation, which will allow the school to be a part of the 'Trees on Farms' Program. In this project, our students will be planting a shelter belt within the school to coincide with National Tree Day. But first, a much-needed Christmas and holiday break for all! We all deserve it!

Thank you to all of our staff for supporting our learners to grow this year.

Thank you to our families for your support, including our wonderful school association team.

And thank you to all of our young people for being such an awesome group of learners and young community leaders.

Erika Boas

Principal

Our Reading Focus:

This year our primary school teachers have been working with Bagdad, Kempton and Oatlands primary school teachers to share English and literacy practices, reading strategies and student work samples. The work has been led by two Middle Level Leaders from each school. For us, this has been Mrs Quinn and Mrs Byers. The collective work has formed part of our Midlands Cluster Schools project where we have received a Schools Plus Grant starting this year and continuing for the next two years to support student literacy success. 

The principals of all four schools recently reviewed our targets for the year and the results have been very positive. 

Target 1: 

A Middle Tier leadership agreement has been developed and implemented 

Target: Achieved. 

• 8 Middle level leaders from the cluster have undertaken Growth Coaching Development PL which has provided them with tools and strategies to lead PLCs and individualised coaching sessions with staff within and across the schools. 

• 4 Sample Analysis sessions were led by the Middle Level Leaders with post session feedback indicating high levels of effectiveness. 

• Leadership capacity has been developed amongst the literacy leaders as they participated in 6 planning meetings throughout the year. 

Target 2: 

For Prep to Year 2 students, the number of students to have achieved low, medium and above growth in their reading shows an increase from 2023. 

Target: Achieved 
 
There was an increase of 20% across the Midlands Cluster for students achieving Low to above growth in PAT-Reading and PAT Early Years testings. 

• For early years, each school now has consistent classroom practices in the early years around PLD (Phonics program). 

• New staff were inducted so 100% of teachers in our cluster in the early years have been successfully using PLD. 

• Data from each school, showed strong levels of growth in reading in the early years. 

For Bothwell, an outcome from reading and numeracy data scan, is that we have identified students in our early years to enrol in gifted and highly abled learning programs for 2025 as we look to extend our learners. In 2025, we will also be introducing more structed Tier 2 and Tier 3 reading intervention programs to support our students who have not met expected year level growth in reading. Intervention programs for our older students where there are identified gaps in their reading fluency and comprehension will be a focus for 2025. 

In 2025, Mrs Smith will be returning as our Instructional Specialist within the school and will work closely with the principal and other members of the leadership team to lead this priority within the school. 

Our Wellbeing Focus: 

During our Show Day Professional Learning Day earlier this term, we looked closely at student wellbeing survey data and started to identify some ideas and strategies to support our learners in the future. Whilst our data for our primary students showed high levels of wellbeing there is more work needed to support our secondary students to feel more connected with each other and with the school.  

Mrs Byers will be working closely with the principal and other members of the leadership team to lead our wellbeing strategy in 2025. 

Years 9 to 12 Learning Provision 

We recently learnt that we were successful in our application for funding to support Vocational and Applied Learning within our school in 2025. Bothwell will be received around $25000 worth of new equipment for our Year 11/12 space that will also be available to Year 9 and 10 students who will undertake work readiness learning in 2025. Mrs Doyle will be working closely with the principal and other members of the leadership team to lead this priority within our school in 2025. 

Learning Showcase:

The K-6s had their excursion to see the Big Monkey Theatre production of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. We enjoyed the performance and had some lunch before heading for a look around the gardens. We visited the Subantarctic Plant House, the Japanese Gardens and the Duck Pond!

K/P:

We have been learning the comprehension strategy of visualising. We listened to a small text about Sam the Giant. We visualised how Sam might look and drew a picture of him.

Prep science – with Mrs Wise on a Friday have been studying the physics unit of movement.  We looked at what First Nations people used as toys and then tried to replicate these to get an idea of what they would be like.  We made rattles out of shells using string. 

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1/2:

We have enjoyed all our little visitors coming to our classroom! Thank you, Natalie, for sharing your baby chicks with us last week. They were only a week old, and we enjoyed giving them cuddles and watching them stretch their little wings. We also had the Downies bring in two of their puppies, Pipsqueak and Timmy. Pipsqueak had a lot of energy and Timmy was very timid.

3/4:  

We were lucky enough to have a visit from some baby chickens and this inspired some artwork. 

5/6:

For our HASS learning, the 5/6 students have been comparing wildlife between Australia and the American continents. This is a part of our larger inquiry around the Americas. Students posed their own inquiry questions and used at least two different sources to help answer/ explain the thinking for their questions. 

9/10 HASS

We congratulate Harry and Danielle for their success in the National History Challenge this year. 

A very big congratulations to two of our year 10 students, Danielle and Harry. In the awards ceremony for the National History Challenge held on 7th November 2024, Danielle was named the Year 10 winner of the Democracy Matters Award for the State. Harry was named the year 10 Young Historian State winner. Both Danielle and Harry were awarded silver and gold certificate awards. Silver signifying their entries this year qualified them for a national award and gold signifying their category wins for the state. Congratulations Danielle and Harry, and to their history teacher Mrs Doyle for supporting them throughout the course of the history challenge this year. 

Harrison: 

Our third silver finalist wrote an incredibly unique essay that examined the profound and far-reaching effects of colonisation in the Pacific. It delved into the historical actions of colonial powers and the crises they caused. The essay identified that initial European colonisation began with the Spanish and French, but intensified when British influence grew, and German and Japanese imperial ambitions developed. This work explored the many ways that colonisation impacted the indigenous populations of the Pacific islands, including the introduction of Christianity, the suppression of cultural practices, the alteration of trading systems, and the use of some islands for nuclear testing. While some responded to colonisation with violence and uprisings, others resolved conflicts through treaties. This piece was an enlightening and engaging piece for our judges to review. 

Danielle: 

Our third silver finalist wrote an essay about an event often considered as Tasmania’s worst modern crisis; the Port Arthur Massacre. Thirty-five innocent lives were taken, and many others were injured. This essay attempted to understand the motivations of the perpetrator of this horrific event and detailed how the crisis unfolded. Importantly, the work explored the short- and long-term responses to this event. It was identified that the most significant response to this disaster was the bipartisan support to tighten gun laws across Australia. By doing so this piece concluded that Tasmania and Australia have remained safer due to restrictive gun laws.  

Ag Studies:

We have had a big year in the Ag space, the building was complete, officially opened and now used by our students. Jo and I are always amazed about how much we have learnt this year, from the planned explicit teaching the incidental discoveries that students make. Throughout the school we have studied and investigated our veggie gardens, hazelnuts, chooks, eggs, native trees, fungi/mushrooms, Spring, Merino sheep, and the sheep and wool industry. We look forward to what next year will bring!

We would like to that thank our students, school and wider community for all their support.

Tamika Burrill.

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Lil:

On Wednesday, 27th November, in LiL we were very excited by a visit from the Downie family with two of their sheep dog pups. The children also enjoyed activities to strengthen their muscles in their hands and fingers by using eye droppers to transfer water and using tongs to pick up pom poms.  We then made paper chains which was so much fun.

Music:

A special thank you to all students have been coming along to choir rehearsals twice a week – on Monday and Thursday mornings. We recently held a special morning tea to acknowledge their participation, and we look forward to students continuing with the choir next year. The more the merrier!  

Matthew Ives. 

School Choir at End of year Awards assembly. We are all so proud of the job you do! Well Done, Mr Ives.

SPSSA Swim Squad Success 

A fantastic effort from our SPSSA Swim Squad who finished fourth in Division G of the SPSSA interschool carnival. A wonderful result for our small school. Congrats to all of our amazing positive ambassadors. 

House Writing Congratulations

Congratulations to the following students for their recent success in the House Writing Competition. 

The overall house taking out the win for House Writing was Clyde House.  

The Sports Activity Day and Colour Run: 

On Friday November 22nd, we co-ordinated a Sports Activity and Colour Run Day. A big thank you to Mrs Byers, Mr Nichols and Ms Boas for helping us by ordering coloured paint, BBQ supplies and prizes. It was such a wonderful community event, and we were happy to see so many parents at the BBQ and participating in the Colour Run.  

From the Gold Coin donations from the Free Dress Day and Colour Run, $143.60 was raised for The Leukaemia Foundation.  This is a fantastic amount for one day for our little school. Thank you also to families who have donated online via the QR code. We look forward to the 2025 Student Leaders running a similar event as it was so well received. 

Congratulations to Clyde House for winning House Writing and to Shannon House for winning House Quiz. The overall announcement of the winning house for 2024 was made in our Presentation Assembly. Congratulations to Shannon. Winning House for 2024! 

2024 Student Leaders 

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Cooking with Brigette

On Thursday 7th of November 2024, our students in Cooking Options made Poor Man's Biscuits.

On Thursday 14th of November 2024, our students made Mini Egg and Bacon Pies. These look wonderful.

On Thursday the 21st of November 2024 our students in cooking made Chicken Sushi. We hope our families are enjoying the different dishes made by our students.

Library activities with Brigette

Students had fun making these candle holders. They came in a kit which the students then made.

They look fantastic.

After School netball

Our students from Prep to Grade five have enjoyed playing netball for the last three weeks. From the look of the smiles on their faces they have had fun. 

Thank you. 

A thank you to Tania from Netball Tasmania and to the Sheep Station Cup for sponsoring three afterschool Netball Sessions for our primary students.  

Reminders:

End Of Year Family Invite to Assembly.

Summer Reads Program

Come along to the Bothwell Library and join in some fun, with the "Summer Reads Program".  The program runs statewide from the 1st of December to 2nd of February 2025.  There are lots of fun activities to do.

Merry Christmas to you all, from Tanya.

See you when you call in to register and begin reading.

School Office opening times 2025.

The School Office will be open on the 28th of January 2025 from 9.00 a.m. -3.00 p.m.

Come on in for School books and Uniform collection.

See you all, ready to start the new Year. 

Have a very safe Christmas and New Year.

Enjoy your break.

Christine and Tanya.

Bothwell Swimming Pool

Santa's Visit to Central Highlands.

New Norfolk Junior Football Club