Apart from the engrossing learning within each classroom, this week the students were entertained by the NSW Polce Concert Band. Our performance band had an opportunity to train with the Special Constable Musicians in the police band. This experience proved very popular with our performance band musicians. Then all students in the school had the privilege of learning about each instrument in the band and listening to known tunes in a fun and engaging way. Special mention to Special Constables, Conductor Gareth Lewis, and the NSW Police Band’s vocalist Belinda Parsons. Thank you to our band conductor, Mrs Heather Skinner, our P&C band committee and volunteering parents for making the visit so successful.

The theme for the 2025 International Day of Mathematics (IDM) is Mathematics for Everyone. This year’s IDM theme celebrates the creativity found in mathematical discovery and art. Using mathematics in art opens doors to new ideas, beautiful and captivating creations. IDM is officially on Friday, 14 March 2025. At the school we strive to provide opportunities every school day for students to engage, enjoy and retain mathematical concepts.

An exciting part of being a Year 6 student and a Kindergarten student is our ‘Buddy’ program. Each Kindergarten student is paired with a Year 6 student in the school as their buddy. The program is in place to support the smooth transition of our Kindergarten students when they commence the long journey of formal education. Year 6 students will act as mentors and provide social and emotional support for the children. The buddy program has commenced with the Kindergarten students recently meeting their buddies and getting to know them. Year 6 students will regularly be invited into the Kindergarten classrooms to work closely with their Kindergarten buddy, completing a range of curriculum activities together including arts and crafts, structured play as well as reading and writing activities.

Well done to all students who participated at the carnival last week whether in age races and/or novelty races. The Waves complex is amazing especially the highly popular Splash Pad. Congratulations to the students representing our school at the Castle Hill PSSA Zone Swimming Carnival next week. We are very fortunate to have professional staff who did their utmost to make the experience enjoyable for the students. Many thanks to the many parent volunteers for assisting with official duties on the day. The day was well coordinated by Mr Wicks and Mrs McLeod.

Healthy Harold the Giraffe, Angela and Ruth from the Life Education program are at school, talking with students about making good decisions and how our actions affect others. The themes include: Kindy –Harold’s Friendship (building friendship & safe places); Years 1&2 –Growing Good Friend (health & emotional wellbeing); Years 3&4 –Friends & Feelings (learning assertive communication skills & developing emotional literacy); and Years 5&6 –Relate, Respect, Connect (developing respectful relationships). We would like parents to take the time to discuss with your child some of those key messages.

We welcome Mrs Debra Johns who will be working in the school office fulltime. Should you visit the front office in the near future please extend a warm welcome to Mrs Johns.

The second 2025 Parent & Citizens (P&C) meeting will be held next Tuesday night at 7.30pm in the school library. Thank you to all parents for being part of this important school community forum. 

Each meeting is a great opportunity for all families at the school to be part of the significant roles the P&C undertakes. 

To our school families observing Lent, Maha Shivratri, Purim, Naw-Ruz, and Ramadan we wish you a peaceful and holy occasion.

Greg McLaren
PRINCIPAL

Thankyou to all parents who made the time to speak to their child’s Year 1-6 teacher during our parent teacher meetings over the last couple of weeks. Teachers enjoyed the opportunity to meet with you and hear from you about your child. We hope these meetings help to establish open lines of communication between you and your child’s teacher for the year ahead. 

Over the next few weeks Kindergarten teachers are looking forward to having the opportunity to meet with you to discuss your child’s transition to primary school, goals for the year and any other matters you feel are important to share. 

We would like as many families as possible to attend the interviews and encourage you to call the office for assistance if you are having difficulty making a booking. All information for making a booking will be available shortly on the app.    

The school has been busy preparing for the NAPLAN testing period coming up next week. Laptops have been prepared, Ms Keane and class teachers have worked with students to   prepare them for the way the tests are presented and we are set to go! Parents can help by ensuring students have a reliable set of headphones (not fluffy ones!) and that they are at school on time and each day of the testing. 

Children should be reassured that the tests are just one snapshot of their progress and certainly nothing to feel anxious about. It is better if they can complete all tests with their class mates rather than as a catch up test at a later time. 

Our planned timetable, with all going smoothly, is:
Wednesday 12 March – Year 3 & 5 Writing and year 5 Reading.
Thursday 13 March – Year 3 Reading.
Friday 14 March – Year 3 & 5 Conventions of Language
Monday 17 March – Year 3 & 5 Numeracy

Expressions of interest (EOI) are now open to parents of Year 6 students for high school placement in 2026.

Use the Enrolment tab on the school web page to complete your online EOI using the Moving to High School link to guide you through the process. 

All Year 6 students need to have an application entered even if they are not seeking an enrolment in a government school and a placement is not required (PNR). 

Submissions close on Friday 28 March but it would be helpful to complete prior to this date in case a problem is encountered. 

Don’t hesitate to call the office, speak to your class teacher, Ms Hayley or myself if you have any difficulties with this process. 

Kindergarten Best Start feedback will be coming home to parents next week. This feedback provides a summary of individual student responses to the questions asked by the teachers during the assessment. Please remember that the assessment provided the teachers with the opportunity to sit with your child and focus on what skills they brought with them to the primary school setting. As many of the students were assessed three weeks ago the feedback will show the knowledge and willingness to answer questions at that time and not the amazing growth that students now demonstrate, half way through their first term of school. 

Thank you to Mrs Buckley for coordinating our 2025 Swimming Scheme program and thank you to our Year 2 teachers for organising our students to and from the pool and all the lessons in between. This year we had 80 students attend and the results speak for themselves.

Students are assessed at the beginning of the program to allocate instructional groups.
 Pre-instruction (i.e. freestyle benchmark achieved on day one):
 0m: 31 (students)
 5m: 30
 10m: 19
 25m+: 0
 
 Students are assessed at the conclusion of the program to measure success:
 0m: 12 (students)
 5m: 14
 10m: 28
 25m: 20
 50m: 6
 
 Students have an opportunity to attempt a longest distance swim using a survival stroke:
 0m: 4
 5m: 15
 10m: 14
 25m: 8
 50m: 39

Congratulations on your achievements in the pool, Year 2 students. Your effort and impeccable behaviour at the pool has made us proud. 

Assemblies are held fortnightly on Friday afternoons at 2:00pm.
We will hold a whole school assembly once a term in Week 10 at the same time.
Years K-2 will hold their assemblies in the odd weeks and Years 3-6 in the even weeks.
2SB will host the Junior Assembly in Week 9.
This term the SRC Badge Presentation will take place in the Week 10 Whole School Assembly with a morning ANZAC Assembly replacing the Junior assembly on Friday of Week 11.

Congratulations to all students who attended the Zone trials day. 42 students were selected to attend and did themselves proud on the day. Particular congratulations to the following students who gained selection in a Zone team despite some very strong competition. 

Porter B., Charlie LB., Harry W., Claudia M. and Ariana E. – Softball
Ronny C. and Celine H. – Basketball
Archie P., Flynn DP., Riley K. and Blake T. – AFL
Sophia T. and Amelia S. – Netball
Sailor D., Savannah F., Zara M., Lara M. and Cooper S. – Touch Football
Jarlath J., Fox P., Cooper S. and Caelan D. – Rugby League 

Paper work should be returned to the team coach on the first training day. Please don’t return it to school. 

Congratulations to Isabella K, Flynn D & Levi M who participated in the first of three rounds of the Sydney West tennis trials on Monday. Students from Castle Hill, Auburn, Merrylands and Parramatta Zones played a series of matches at Dural to earn their spot in the final Sydney West Tennis Trial.  
With four consecutive wins Isabella secured her spot in the SW Final Trial convincingly. A huge achievement Isabella, congratulations and good luck in the final round.
Flynn and Levi progressed to the second round robin after some great results in the first but missed out on progression to the final trial. Congratulations on some great tennis boys. Well done.

Thank you to our SGPS P&C and OOSH for coordinating the 2025 Welcome BBQ for Kindergarten and new families. The event was very well attended with our newest families attending their Meet the Teacher evenings and then walking down to the canteen COLA for a sausage sandwich and drink. We hope that you had the opportunity to become a little more familiar with school grounds, staff and other members of your school community.

Cathie Barclay and Gilliane Appave
DEPUTY PRINCIPALS

Reading fluently is a significant part of being an effective and competent reader. So, what exactly does it mean to be a fluent reader? Fluency is reading expressively with accuracy and at a good pace. It is one of the key components of learning to read and is the link between reading words quickly and effortlessly and understanding and comprehending text. Fluency is reading with and reading for meaning. So, it is not just reading with speed or accuracy. It is the integration of speed, accuracy, and prosody. 

Fluency is made up of three core components:

Accuracy: is the reading of words correctly.

Rate: is the speed of word identification. It is usually recorded as words read per minute.

Prosody: is the sound of the reading. This can be explained as the expression used when reading.

Readers need to have developed the skills of phonological awareness, phonics and have a good sight word vocabulary to develop into a fluent reader. These foundational skills of word recognition need to be recalled quickly to the point of automatic recall. This automaticity of decoding and recall of words is to become unconscious. This then allows the cognitive space for the reader to access the meaning of the text.

At Samuel Gilbert Public School, fluency is explicitly taught in every classroom. Types of instruction include modelled fluent reading by the teacher, repeated reading of texts, paired reading and wide and deep reading across many types of texts. Through explicit teaching of fluency, students develop their reading skills from surface to deep understanding of texts alongside increased reading stamina. Deep reading refers to repeated reading of the same text. It supports the reader in becoming increasingly automatic and fluent on each read. The reader develops an improved awareness of fluency on each read and it helps the reader to not only improve reading on the current text but also, they can apply these skills to other texts they read. Over time, there is an increased knowledge of language comprehension skills.

How can you help your child become a fluent reader?

• Have your child read aloud the same text to you each day. 
• Model reading fluently to your child. Model expression, pace, volume and accuracy of the text.
• Encourage your child to read widely. Have your child read a range of texts that differ in complexity.

Amanda Keane
Assistant Principal, Curriculum and Instruction

A big thank you to our P&C volunteers and their families, OOSH staff and School for supporting us as we welcomed a number of Kindy and new families to the school at our recent Welcome BBQ. It was a fabulous opportunity to serve our new families and make connections with one another. Thank you to the school staff for their support and a special thank you to Matt and Fiona Young for their organisation of this event.

We have so many hard working volunteers at our school who spend many hours creating opportunities for our students. This week our Performance Band had the privilege of working with the NSW Police Band and our students from K-6 had the opportunity to hear their favourite pieces of music from these professional musicians. Thank you to the P&C Band Committee who organised this event as well as the catering. A special thank you to our Conductor Heather Skinner, Jaimy McGilvray, Greg Pratley and Jana Luchman as well as the parent volunteers who gave up their time on the day to help serve food and pack away.

The SGPS Class parents play an active role in assisting the School and the P&C in supporting our families. We are delighted to almost have a full complement of volunteers to cover every class this year. It takes time to be a class parent and so we thank our 2025 class parents for valuing and supporting our school community this year. A very big thank you to our school for supporting our class parents and especially Ms Appave for her assistance and support.  

Where consent has been given, parent contact details have been distributed to our class parents and class whats app groups are being or in the process of being established.

If you are not in the correct class or you would like to update your details, please complete the form here and we will redistribute any updated data to your class parent over the next week. There are some classes that we have less than half the students included. If you would like to stay up to date, please contact your class parent and register to be contacted as soon as possible.

Can you help? If you are a parent in 5C and would like to be a class parent, please contact Elizabeth Tye at etye@sgpspc.org.au.

Our P&C is a growing group of hardworking parents and carers who volunteer their time to build community and facilitate events and fundraising to benefit all students. Our next meeting is on Tuesday 11 March at 7:30pm in the Library. Please email secretary@sgpspc.org.au if you would like to attend online. All parents and carers are welcome to attend, we look forward to seeing you there.

All parents and carers are invited to attend our 2025 Trivia Night on Saturday 15^th March. This is a social event for parents only, held onsite at School. Please see the note on the School App for further information. Please register as soon as possible to secure your place at: https://forms.office.com/r/hYFU9QUgCYto

If you have any questions regarding the event, please reach out to Katie at katie.pike@sgpspc.org.au.

Download the School App
Like the SGPS P&C Facebook page 

Connect by signing up for the class contact page 

If in the meantime you have any questions regarding the P&C, how you are get involved or how we can support you, please do not hesitate to contact our President, Katie Pike at president@sgpspc.org.au.

Kind regards,

Elizabeth Tye
SGPS P&C

Calling all drummers 🥁 

Are you a drummer with 2 years of experience we need you in our concert band. Please contact sgpsbandcoordinator@gmail.com for more information. 

The school band has been hard at work in rehearsals, and things are sounding better than ever! Training band is busy developing their love for music and learning about their new instruments.

Concert Band and Performance Band have been learning exciting new pieces of music, and their progress is truly wonderful! Each rehearsal brings fresh energy and dedication, and we can't wait to showcase what we've been working on.

A special highlight this month was the visit from the Police Band. You couldn’t script a better day it was wonderful to see students and band members interacting so well. The performance band highly benefited from the morning tutorial session.

Then the whole school had the unique opportunity to watch a live performance and engage in singing and asking questions of the band. It was a truly memorable experience. The band also commented on how welcoming and wonderful the SGPS Community was and I think they enjoyed the morning as much as the kids.

 A big Shoutout to Jamie, Greg, Lynn for all their organising behind the scenes to make the morning a success and Margit, Kyong and Sally for volunteering their time in the day. These events can’t happen without our volunteers and we are very grateful for your help. 

We are excited to keep up the momentum and look forward to the upcoming performances! Stay tuned for more updates from the band!

Kind Regards

Band Coordinators
Samuel Gilbert Public School Band

Halfway through the term already! Time flies when you’re having fun. The children have all settled into their library routines, although some do still need reminders to bring their library bags to each lesson so they are able to borrow.

The Thursday Morning Read has been growing in popularity with more new faces appearing each week, it is on Thursday Morning at 8:20 am in the tiered Learning Space in the Library. All are welcome, students, siblings, parents, and grandparents, come along and listen to two fun stories before school. 

Book Club 
(wk7) Monday 10 March – Issue 2 will be distributed to classes.

(wk9) Monday 24 March – Orders for Issue 2 close.

Yours in reading,

Adam Hands,
Librarian.

We are now in week 6. We have had very little response to volunteers this year and that means staff are working more. This will increase prices and make your lunch orders more expensive. So please go to the sign up and put your name down.

The Easter raffle will be at the end of this term. The tickets will be going out in a couple of weeks, and donations will be due in the last two weeks of term.

We have a new product available on munch monitor called Cheesy Vegetable bake. It is from Good Food Hero where we get our other meals Butter chicken, Bolognaise Pasta, Fried rice etc.

Thanks Jenelle, Sue and Kiarn

On Friday afternoon in Week 5 Samuel Gilbert held our “Clean Up Australia / Samuel Gilbert Day”. Before the day students watched a video on the importance of cleaning up our local environment and classes made a series of pledges to take some form of action on an environmental issue that was important to them.

Some of the pledges included:

• We pledge to our rubbish in the bin and pick up 2 pieces of rubbish a day.
• We pledge think before we litter
• We pledge to use recyclable things.
• I pledge to not use a plastic drink bottle and to drink from stainless steel water bottles to avoid plastic waste.

During the clean-up students collected an amazing amount of rubbish from around the school and the local bushland areas that surround the school. There was a vast array of rubbish collected and it filled almost ½ of one of our big skip bins.

The things we collected included plastic and glass bottles, cans, broken pieces of metal, plastic tubing, old sporting equipment, used vapes and food wrappers, even parts of an old washing machine. Look at the photos attached.

Our school environment is so much better for the clean-up and thank you to all the classes who participated with enthusiasm to make our environment a cleaner place to live, work and play.

Thank you so much everyone at Samuel Gilbert.

Mr J. Wicks
Clean Up Australia Coordinator 

We have had a great start to Term 1, we currently have a small Lunar New Year display in the library, along with this year’s Lunar Zodiac animal on display in Lego. Visit the library to find out more about the Lunar New Year and the twelve zodiac animals of legend. All classes have commenced their library lessons with many grades having library lessons working closely with what is being studied during class time.

Kindergarten has had their orientation to Library lessons and borrowed their first books – please remember to bring your library bag on your library day. They have also begun learning the parts of a book and the features of each of these parts.

Year 1 has been studying the book, “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” by Mo Willems. We have been working on making connections to the book and how to use persuasive language. Did you know that in some books the characters speak to the audience? The pigeon does in all the Mo Willems books.

Year 2 visited the Mallee through Google Earth to compare it to our local area as we have been studying the book, “Mallee Sky” by Jodi Toering and Tannya Harricks. Using what we have seen in the book, what we saw on Google Earth and our own experiences around our local area, we have been able to write descriptions of both places and compare their similarities and their differences.

Year 3 has been getting very cold with the book, “Iceberg” by Claire Saxby and Jess Racklyeft. Looking at factual genres and analysing texts for their purpose, subject matter and form has been very interesting, texts can be found everywhere and can be classed as entertainment texts, informative texts or persuasive texts – sometimes they can even be mixed!

Year 4 has been blasting off into the farthest reaches of the galaxy, exploring informative texts about space with the book, “Deadly Science – The Solar System” edited by Corey Tutt. We found out that the Australian Aboriginal people were the first astronomers to record their observations of the night sky in cave paintings many hundreds of years old?

Year 5 have begun their research of the largest continent on the planet – Asia. Selecting two countries from different regions of Asia and researching important social and economical characteristics for comparison.

Lunchtime fun many children have been attempting the library fun task, attempting to name all of the different silhouettes in the “I see a little silhouette of…” challenge.

Week 7
Monday, 10 March
CHPSSA Zone Swimming Carnival  
Life Education
Tuesday, 11 March 
P&C Meeting at 7:30pm
Wednesday, 12 March
Naplan
Thursday, 13 March
Naplan
Friday, 14 March
Naplan

Week 8
Monday, 17 March
Naplan
Friday, 21 March 
School Cross Country