150 Years of Public Education
On Friday 4^th and Saturday 5^th November we will be celebrating 150 years of public education at Yackandandah Primary School. On Friday 4^th we will be conducting school tours for past students, teachers or just members of the community who would like to see Yackandandah Primary School in its current form.

On Saturday 5^th there will be a photograph display of historical school photographs (including class photos), a short film display prepared by Brendan Hogan and senior students, visitor journals, school tours, old time games, food stalls and/or BYO picnic. We would love to see you drop in and help us celebrate!

We are trying to locate as many historical images of the school as possible – especially class photographs. If you have access to any old (prior to 2010) photographs that we could scan and use in our display, please let us know and/or drop into school. We won’t need to hang on to the original photographs as we can easily scan them.

OSHC
We are very pleased to welcome Kerryn Wright as our OSHC coordinator. Kerryn has previous experience coordinating OSHC and will be a great asset to our service.

2023 Classes
Classes for 2023 are being finalised over the next couple of weeks. Unless there are unexpected late enrolments or departures the following classes will be in place next year:

2 x F/1

2 x 1/2

2 x 3/4

1 x 4/5/6

1 x 5/6

At this stage staffing will be similar to this year. One exception is the retirement of Judy (Miss) Prlic. Judy has been an outstanding teacher over several decades. She has taught a significant number of people in Yackandandah and will be officially retiring after some well-deserved long service leave. I’m sure you will join me in wishing Judy all the best and saying a heartfelt thank you. Final placement of children in classes will be completed well before the state wide transition day in December.

COVID Update
You may be aware that the Victorian Government has announced changes to the COVID-19 isolation requirements.

This means that from 11.59pm on Wednesday 12 October, the mandatory orders around isolation for people with COVID-19 have ended and instead we move to health advice and recommendations for people with COVID-19 or COVID-19-like symptoms.

Our school will continue to adhere to the Department of Health’s recommendations to ensure that our school remains a safe environment for our staff and students.

The Department of Health strongly recommends that students and school staff:

• who test positive to COVID-19 stay home and isolate for 5 days and do not attend school after 5 days if they are still symptomatic
• who are symptomatic but have not tested positive not attend school. This does not include students with pre-existing conditions such as hay fever.

Parents and carers are recommended to continue to report their child having COVID-19 to both the school and the Department of Health.

We will, however, no longer report occurrences of positive cases to the school community.

We ask parents and carers to continue to remain vigilant in preventing COVID-19 transmission. Any student who is unwell should continue to remain at home. This is about keeping students healthy and well in our school and reducing the spread of both COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases. 

Free rapid antigen tests are available at the school for those who need them.

Parents and carers will be contacted if their child shows symptoms while at school.

Students who wish to wear a mask should continue to do so.

To keep our school as safe as possible, we will also continue to use air purifiers and other COVID-19 prevention measures.

Thanks for your continued efforts to keep our school community safe and well.

Michael Edwards
Principal

Nyssa Overall & Harvey Gosling

James Davis for excellent progress of reading high frequency words and unknown words in non-fiction texts.
Percy Gosling for outstanding progress with his reading skills, especially fluency and comprehension.
Mia Lockett for being enthusiastic and organised particularly during literacy activities.
Georgia Dowsley for great enthusiasm in completing your Water poster this week.
Zoe Glanville for great enthusiasm and focus in completing your Water poster this week.
Evie Burston for working methodically to create and represent many different arrays in our maths fluency task.
Zack Dickeson for working methodically to create and represent many different arrays in our maths fluency task.
Mia Bebbington for her wonderful work creating rules for spelling the ‘ur’ sound in word work.
Hugo Dickeson for taking a leading role in our maths challenge to form our whole class into an array.
Grace O’Dwyer for making use of anchor charts to generate original ideas for writing.
Lenny Graham for being a champion peer teacher in our STEM coding lessons.
Emerson Paull for demonstrating strong skills during our STEM sessions this week. Awesome work, Emerson!
Archie Korn for showing great skills during our STEM sessions this week and working well in a team to solve problems. Nice work, Archie!

The focus artist for Term 4 is Hervé Tullet! Be inspired by the Field of Flowers, masking tape and Giant Traffic Jam popping up around the school! 

We had a great start to the hot lunch menu with 132 egg and bacon roll orders cooked, packed and delivered on time.  It was great to have year six students, Isaac and Patrick join us in the kitchen.  They counted out orders, paying special attention to 'special orders', they washed and chopped fruit,  sorted and packed up the meals and delivered them to the classrooms.  Cheers boys, you were a great help.

A big thanks also goes out to the parent helpers who show up each week, you keep the ball rolling .. a big thumbs up!

Here is the helper roster for term 4... if you are able to fill a gap, then please let me know.  Year 6 students will also be helping throughout the term, a great contribution to the hot lunch program.

Many thanks
Jane

Jane Murphy
YPS Hot Lunch Coordinator
ypshotlunch@gmail.com
0416 051 473

On Wednesday all students will be participating in a Cultural Performance ‘Circular Circus” at 2.30pm at school.  Circular Circus is a mathematical concept circus with everyone getting involved exploring the maths behind the excitement of the tricks.

There is no cost for this performance as it is part  of the Curriculum Contributions that parents have been invited to pay.

Regional Athletics
Unfortunately, the Regional Athletics carnival was postponed last Friday due to the weather and flooding.  The carnival has been rescheduled for next Monday,  24^th October at the Les O’Brien Athletics Precinct in Albury Please note that we will not be taking a bus to this event and there will be no teacher representative from YPS there on the day. Competitors will need to make their own way there and present themselves for their event/s at the right time.            

Congratulations to Ella Williamson in 1/2E, who won third place in North East Water’s National Water Week School Poster Competition! Ella received a certificate and a $30 voucher for her beautiful poster.

It is great to see so many students enjoying our Dry Creek Bed! We have seen some wonderful creations and amazing teamwork at play times.

Students in Year 6 who are attending Beechworth Secondary College next year will be participating in a Half Day experience at the college on Wednesday 2^nd November.  Students will be travelling to Beechworth by bus under the supervision of BSC staff and will be supervised by their staff during the morning.  A staff member from YPS is not required to attend.  The bus will be leaving school at 9am and returning at 12.20pm.  Students need to bring their school bag with a pencil case, drink bottle and a snack.

Permission forms have been sent home tonight and need to be returned to school by Monday 24^th October.  There is no cost for this excursion.

New Co-ordinator
We welcome Kerryn Wright to our OSHC service as our new co-ordionator.  Kerryn worked at the school back in 2010-2016 and brings with her a wealth of experience and has some wonderful activities planned.  Please feel free to drop in and introduce yourself to her. 

Pupil Free Days
Monday 31^st October, Monday 19^th December & Tuesday 20^th December are Pupil free days.  Vacation Care will be operating on these days.  Please make any bookings through the Xplor App or be contacting the school office – Bookings are essential.    

January Vacation Care
We are hoping to be able to run Vacation Care during the last 2 weeks of the January school holidays commencing on Monday 17^th January.  If you will be needing Vacation please click on the link below and let us know what days you will be needing the care.  If we can’t offer the service every day due to staffing issues we will hopefully be able to run it on the days where it is most needed.  Please only complete the form for days that you would definitely use it.  We will not be operating on the Australia Day Public Holiday.

https://forms.gle/qxZWdQX8q1g6zHwr6

15^th October – Will Hutchings

15^th October – Nate Attwood

16^th October – Harlan O’Brien

20^th October – Billie McInerney

21^st October – Thomas Killen