KSS_Newsletter_W4T3

Acknowledgement of Country

Principal's Update

Good afternoon everyone,

As we enter this shorter week, I wanted to pass on my thanks to all of our Support Staff as we acknowledged them last week for all they do to support our students and staff at Kingston State School.  Please read the information below in Mrs Steers' update as she has provided an overview of the different roles that we have here at Kingston State School so that the parent community are also aware of the important roles each of these staff members play.

Thank you as well to those parents who came to our information session on the teaching of phonics last week.  This week, we have another session on offer.  We have offered these sessions to support parents and carers in understanding how reading is taught at Kingston.  I also wanted to pass on my thanks to the teachers and leaders who are organising these sessions, as well as teaching their amazing students.

This year’s School Opinion Survey runs from 28 July to 22 August. Parents, carers, students in selected year levels, and staff have been emailed a link to participate. Your feedback will help us understand our school’s strengths and areas for improvement. Survey responses are confidential. Find out more on the School Opinion Survey webpage or contact school administration.  Thank you to those parents and carers who have already taken the time to pass on their feedback.

We are also noticing that we have many families signing out their child/children regularly before the end of day.  This is causing a few concerns, primarily around interruptions for classrooms and other staff, but also, missed learning for students.  Our leadership team will be making contact with families about this, so that we can gain a deeper understanding as to why this is occurring so that we can work together with families to ensure that learning time is maximised.

Thank you,

Robyn Marshall

Principal

Deputy Principal's Update

Reading and writing at home and school

We are excited that we have had the opportunity to facilitate a parent information session this week. Miss Jess Sinfield, one of our Year 1 teachers demonstrated a phonics lesson to provide further understanding about our reading pedagogy and practical tasks that parents can then use at home to support their budding readers. Our explicit phonics lessons cover the following components:

1. Explicitly teaching the sound; including mouth shape​
2. Explicitly teaching the grapheme phoneme connection
3. Explicitly teaching letter formation​
4. Modelling and sharing word reading and writing​
5. Students practicing word building and writing
6. Explicitly teaching tricky words​
7. Differentiated application and practice of skills

We use consistent routines for student engagement, including hand signals, instructional routines and resource use, as well as routines for blending and segmenting.

We will be hosting another session about the teaching of reading, with Mrs Megan Huni at 2.15pm on the 13 August in the FamilyLinQ training room. We look forward to seeing you there.

Enrol Now for Prep 2026

If you have a child born between July 2020 - June 2021 they are ready to commence Prep in 2026. Please collect an enrolment pack from the office now to start the enrolment process. We look forward to meeting with you and your child to prepare for Prep in 2026.

Student Celebration

Congratulations to all our students who received Student of the Week certificates this week. We enjoyed celebrating student achievement in reading and wellbeing.

Parent Teacher Meetings

Parent teacher meetings will take place on Tuesday, 2 September 2025 from 3-6pm in the school hall.

Our teachers are looking forward to sharing with you their observations about your child’s academic, social and emotional development and the next steps in their learning journey.

Each interview will be scheduled for 10 minutes. A letter containing information and a booking link will be emailed to parents closer to the date.

School Support Staff Week

The week is dedicated to expressing gratitude and recognising the hard work and dedication of our support staff. School support staff encompasses a wide range of roles as you will see in the images below. We thank support staff for playing a crucial role in ensuring schools operate effectively and provide a positive learning experience for students.

School Support Staff

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Kara Steers

Deputy Principal

HASS Update

Hello,

My name is Jacob Allan, and I am the HASS specialist teacher. HASS is 'Humanities and Social Science'.  This week, I will be informing you on what some of your children are learning in HASS this term.

This term I have started teaching both 1B and 1C HASS. The year 1 classes have been learning about the language of time (past, present and future) and the special days that they have experienced and special days that other people experience.

For the Year 3 students, they have been learning about Australia and our neighbouring countries. They have also been learning about mapping and compasses.

The Year 4 students have been learning about sustainability and the actions they can do be contribute to it. They have also been learning about the local government and their role in sustainability.

Year 5 students have been learning about the different biomes in the world and about how it affects living things. They have also been learning about different continents, including North America and Europe, and the unique or similar biomes that they have compared to Australia.

Finally, Year 6 students have been learning about the continent of Asia and the countries of Asia. They have been developing their research skills and have been learning about the cultures of different Asian countries, in addition to the natural and constructed features that are unique to them.

Thank you.

FamilyLinQ Update

Are you interested in connecting with other parents and caregivers in the Kingston community? The FamilyLinQ hub is the perfect place to do this. On Tuesdays Rachael from Village Connect runs Crafty Conversations where lots of conversation happens over craft activities. We would love to see more people join the group so come along on Tuesday mornings from 9.30am.

This week we had a visit from KindyLinQ!  This was lovely to see the families come in and have fun in the space and learn all about being ready for Kindy next year. If you have little ones aged 2 or 3 years old why not come along? Kindy sets children up for lifelong learning and KindyLinQ is a great program to support children on their journey to kindy.

If your child is needing new school shoes then come into FamilyLinQ and talk to one of our Community Connectors about a fitting. Baby Give Back has given FamilyLinQ some high quality Clarks shoes in a range of sizes.

Lots of other activities happening for the Kingston community, including:

• Community Pantry (Monday after school)
• Move Your Body (Tuesdays after school)
• Circle of Security parenting program (Wednesdays)
• Kids Club (Science experiments after school this week)
• Hearing Checks (Thursday all day)
• KENG Playgroup and cooking (Thursday morning)
• Young Parents Playgroup (Friday mornings)
• Child Health / Parenting support / children’s mental health (just ask)
• Children’s weight management (Thursdays)

We can also support anyone looking for help on their journey to employment – whether this be driving lessons, financial support, resume help – you name it (just let us know what you need).

Have a great week everyone!

The FamilyLinQ team.

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