Rylstone Review Term 3, Week 7, 4 September 2025

SASS APPRECIATION WEEK

SASS Recognition Week, is an opportunity to celebrate the essential role school administrative and support staff and other non-teaching staff play in NSW public education. Our SLSOs (student learning support officers), General Assistant Mr Slapp and Office Admin staff go above and beyond to support the students and teachers at our school. They work tirelessly behind the scenes, supporting student learning in classes, sewing and creating MULTIPLE costumes for the play and generally keeping our school a beautiful and safe place to learn.

Thank you does not seem enough for all that you do. Thank you to Ms Karon Grant, Ms Sasha Gilks, Mrs Tracey McKay our amazing office superstars.

Thank you to Mr Slapp our meticulous and hard-working grounds keeper.

And THANK YOU to Mrs Shannon Morris, Mrs Cheryl McCouat and Mrs Rachel Mann for the work you do for our students and teachers and the (unpaid overtime) creation of nearly all of the costumes for our annual play!

You are the foundations of our school and an integral part of the Rylstone Public School success. Thank you once again for your support and participation. Your involvement helps to foster a strong sense of community at Rylstone Public School, and we look forward to many more collaborative events in the future!

We encourage all families to get involved in our school community. Your support and participation are important for the success of our programs and events. Please keep an eye on our school calendar, Sentral, Facebook and newsletters for updates on activities and volunteer opportunities.

As always, any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me on 6379 1404 or jodee.burcher@det.nsw.edu.au

Kind regards,

Jodee

Teaching and Learning News

Explicit Teaching Insights

As a school, we’ve committed to intentionally using explicit teaching as our core teaching practice.

Why EXPLICIT TEACHING matters

• It leads to improved learning outcomes, particularly of new or complex material.
• It helps students manage their cognitive load (amount of information being processed and stored by the brain).
• It benefits all students in all key learning areas.

What EXPLICIT TEACHING looks like

• Explicit teaching includes 3 main phases: teacher modeling (I DO), working with support (WE DO) and independent practice (YOU DO).
• During the process, teachers conduct checks for understanding and are responsive to the needs of the students by adjusting the phase of working as needed.
• Teachers question, provide feedback on learning and monitor student performance to inform the next steps in teaching.

If you have any questions or wonderings about explicit teaching, please ask here! https://forms.gle/woL7vHhFXdWKocmc6

Year One Phonics Screening

Last week our Year 1 students completed the Phonics Screening Check. The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is a short assessment that tells teachers how students are progressing in phonics. All Year 1 students in NSW department schools are required to complete this.

We are incredibly proud to know 82% of our students are on track for reading success. Whilst most of our students are on track, it is important to note that those students identified at the “monitor” or “support” levels already have strong supports in place to ensure their success.

These strong results are not by chance - they are the result of explicit literacy instruction. Our team of expert teachers and our schools targeted learning support processes ensure every student has the opportunity to thrive.

We look forward to seeing their continued success as skilled and confident readers. Amazing work Year One!

Mrs Mulvaney

In the classrooms

Kookaburras

Kindy Kookaburras have had a wonderfully productive and successful few weeks, making exceptional progress across all learning areas. We are fortunate to have Mr Ryan Morrissey here visiting the class on his first practicum doing observations. I am sure he will learn so much from the students.

In Literacy, we have continued exploring digraphs and introduced trigraphs—where three letters combine to make one sound. We’ve been focusing on when to use these sounds, especially with tricky combinations like c, k, and ck, which make the same sound. The students are becoming more confident in using these in their writing and are practising rereading their sentences to check their spelling. We enjoyed reading the book When Billy Was a Dog and created “lost posters” about the dog Fluff from the story or about our own pets. The children drew pictures of their dogs and wrote descriptions, and I was very impressed with the number of sentences they wrote and how accurate their descriptions were.

In Maths, we have been learning to compare quantities and read data. The students practised counting items carefully and identifying which groups were larger. We collected data about the class and worked on presenting it clearly, making sure to label our findings so others could easily understand the information.

In Art, we have continued exploring artists from around the world. The children created fabulous cat drawings inspired by Laurel Burch, which turned out beautifully. We also made creative dog artworks using black paper and newspaper, inspired by artist Denise Fiedler. Although this was a different approach to art, the students embraced the challenge and produced exceptional pieces.

In Science, we have continued investigating the push and pull forces. The students designed and built marble runs, figuring out how to make the marbles move. While it was tricky at first, everyone created some very interesting and successful marble runs.

Our dance routine is also coming along wonderfully as we continue to practice and refine our moves.

With Father’s Day approaching, we would like to wish all the Dads a very Happy Father’s Day this Sunday. We hope you have a fantastic day and enjoy special moments with your children. As part of our art lesson, the students drew portraits of their Dads—these drawings are magnificent replicas of our Kindy Kookaburra Dads.

As you can see, Kindy Kookaburras continue to soar!

Mrs Rankin

Quolls News

The Quolls are always quietly questioning quandaries! There is SO much learning happening!

In Maths we’ve covered so many more ideas. We thought about adding and subtracting numbers using place value parts, rounding to the nearest 10 (and 100s, if we were ready), measuring volumes, transforming shapes by sliding and flipping them, collecting data using tally marks AND dividing by making ‘groups of’ a particular number.

We always make our brains stronger by doing a “Daily Review” to remember the things we’ve been learning recently to help our brains remember them for a long time!

In English, we’ve been working hard to apply all the sounds and spellings we’ve focused on this year! It can be tough to remember which spelling choice to make and seeing our words lots of times in different ways helps us with that. We’re also using all of our phonics skills to read really interesting texts! We’re learning to think about what we read and show what we know. In our writing sessions we’ve been planning and drafting a story that we are the main character in! We’ll share our finished products in our QR code folders when we’re done! Let Mrs Mulvaney know if you need a new copy of the code or if you’d like a link sent.

In our other Learning Areas, we’re doing plenty of dancing to prepare for the play, learning about light and sound energy, investigating weather and places with Mrs Fielder AND loving our hockey sessions. It was also a thrill to be able to celebrate Book Week and Grandparents’ Day in Week 5. We love where we learn!

Mrs Mulvaney

News from the 1/2 Goannas Lair

The Gorgeous 1/2 Goannas have been working hard and approaching every task with enthusiasm. This term, we have focused on teamwork, encouraging students to support each other and collaborate during lessons and activities. It has been wonderful to see everyone sharing ideas, helping friends, and celebrating each other's achievements.

In creative writing, students designed imaginative animals by combining three different creatures and gave their creation a special super power to solve an important problem. Using time connectives, descriptive noun groups, and a variety of sentence structures—including simple, compound, and complex sentences—students wrote detailed stories that showcased their creativity and writing skills. Their inventive solutions and storytelling impressed us all!

Mathematics lessons have challenged students with two- and three-digit addition, using partitioning and algorithms to find solutions. We also explored timing events using stop watches, recording results in both minutes and seconds. Our investigation into polygons focused on identifying quadrilaterals by their properties, and students showed impressive creativity by constructing quadrilaterals from other two-dimensional shapes.

In science, our focus has been on exploring the five senses. Students enjoyed a hands-on activity where we popped popcorn and used sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste to record our observations—this made for a very engaging (and delicious!) experiment. We also investigated how light travels by using torches to see if light can penetrate different materials. Through these fun experiments, students discovered how their senses help them understand the world around them.

During our wellbeing sessions, we learned about what it means to ‘crack our peanut’—understanding why we feel anxious and recognising our body’s responses. Students have practised strategies to calm down when they feel worried, such as deep breathing and positive self-talk, helping everyone to feel more confident and resilient.

Dance lessons are progressing beautifully! Costumes are looking fantastic and students are doing a great job remembering all the steps. We have been working on timing our moves and perfecting transitions for our routine. The Goannas are excited to show off their hard work and teamwork during our upcoming performance.

Have a great Father’s Day and I hope the Goannas spoil you all.

Mrs Grant

Kangaroos

What a busy and exciting few weeks it has been in Stage 2 Kangaroos!

In English, we wrapped up our novel The Callers by exploring how authors build strong characters, and we’ve now begun a new journey with The Little Refugee. This story has opened up rich discussions around perspective and context, helping us see the world through different eyes (or what we in 3/4 like to call different “lenses”). Students have also been practising their reading fluency with partners, and we’ve been diving deep into the themes and messages the book has to offer.

In Mathematics, our focus has been on arrays and area models, which are helping us multiply and divide more efficiently. We’ve taken this one step further by finding unknown multiples and strengthening our times table knowledge, setting a strong foundation for more complex problem-solving.

In Geography, we’ve been exploring Australia’s neighbours and discovering how their features—such as landscapes, cultures, and climates—compare to our own. This helps students develop a broader understanding of the world and appreciate the similarities and differences between countries.

Our Science lessons have been shining a light—quite literally—on shadows! Students are learning how light travels, how shadows form and change, and why this is important in our daily lives. These investigations build critical thinking skills and encourage curiosity about the world around them.

Stage 2 has shown wonderful curiosity and teamwork throughout all these activities, and we are excited to see where our learning takes us next!

Mr Langdon

Magpies

We have finished our book ‘Worse Things’ by Sally Murphy. This book is written in free form poetry, which most students were thoroughly engaged with. Many students have discovered a love of poetry throughout the year, and enjoy reading and writing poetry for different purposes. The book also included Definition Poems. Students wrote definition poems for themes based on the text.

Students have also been working on fractions, percentages and decimals. This work culminated in looking at the naturally occurring patterns in the Fibonacci Sequence, creating artworks using this pattern.

We have also enjoyed learning about measuring, creating and comparing angles.

Please enjoy these samples of students' work.

Mrs Newham

Debating

Congratulations to our debating teams for 2025. Each team had 4 debates against schools across the district, with the Chat Champs winning 2 debates and the Argument All Stars winning one.

All students worked hard to develop their craft, but the most pleasing thing was seeing how they supported each other. Well done to all.

Chat Champs - Acacia, Ori, Alice, Celeste and Charles

Argument All Stars - Jai, Charlotte, Olivia C, Rebecca and Sophie

Mrs Newham

Zone Athletics

Congratulations to the 35 students who attended the Zone Athletics Carnival in Mudgee last Friday. It was an incredibly successful day, and the students had a wonderful experience showcasing their talents and giving their very best in every event. Their enthusiasm, determination, and sportsmanship were truly outstanding.

We would also like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the parents who came along to support their children throughout the day. Your encouragement made a big difference and helped motivate the athletes to perform at their best.

A special thank you goes to Mrs Langdon for his exceptional skills in measuring long jump distances and keeping time with great accuracy.

We would also like to commend the 13 athletes who earned a place at the Zone level and will now be competing at the Western Athletics Carnival in Dubbo on Friday, 19th September. This is a fantastic achievement, and we wish them the very best of luck as they prepare to represent our school with pride and determination.

Mrs Rankin

State Football (Soccer) Trials

Premier’s Reading Challenge

SRC Update

SRC Fundraising

The SRC held a gold coin donation PYJAMA DAY to celebrate the end of winter, raising $126. With other fundraising this year, plus a bit carried over from last year, we have just over $1 800. We are looking at ideas to support students in the playground and will be looking at different outdoor toys we could purchase to have for students to play with during breaks.

Congratulations to our wonderful SRC representatives.

Book Week & Grandparents Day