We will all need to be doing our best to keep our eyes on the calendar with long weekends and Easter breaks happening prior to the Term 1 holidays. Some weeks will start on a Wednesday and others finish on a Thursday.  I’m sure we will all experience the ‘Is today Tuesday or Wednesday effect’ over the next few weeks. To help our children (and ourselves) keep on track it would be advisable to have a calendar visible or a timetable on the fridge. The calendar on our fridge at home is covered in notes and scribbles of who’s meant to be going where, when and why and more closely resembles a Melbourne laneway covered in graffiti art, than a daily organiser due to our family’s busy schedules.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the local production of American Idiot in Burnie. What amazed me the most and made me really proud to be part of the PDS community, was the significant contribution from our staff in leading and supporting the production through Direction (Mrs Tash Turner), Vocal Coach (Ms Murphy), Backstage (Mr Owen) and previous staff member Mr Turner on guitar. Further to this, seeing past students Heidi and Caitlin strutting their stuff on the stage was a testament to the school’s Fine Arts program, with both girls having been key performers in previous PDS Productions. I am now looking forward to our school production later in the year when we will get to see our current courageous students take to the stage.

Today I had a visit from Lenny from Year 1. Lenny glowed as he proudly passes his gold card towards me for some well-deserved stickers. Lenny had shown great courage in managing to put his head completely under the water on his last Learn to Swim session for the year. The growth shown across the week by all students is amazing whether it’s blowing bubbles under water for the first time, doing a star float or managing to swim across the pool for the first time. Thankyou to our Year 5 and 6 helpers who provided great encouragement and support in the pool across the week.

Tom from Year 2 demonstrated courage earlier in the week demonstrating his ability to count beyond the thousands in front of his classmates. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to answer their ‘hairy’ question of how do you say this number and settled on a gazillion billion. Please feel free to email me if you have the courage or ability to tell me what the whole number is.

Our 5/6s demonstrated loads of courage today as they presented their Student Leader and Sports Leader speeches in front of their classmates as they made their claims as to why they would be the best person for the role. I look forward to seeing who the students and staff have voted as our Primary leaders for 2024.

On Monday our Secondary students hit the sand and surf at Preservation Bay for their annual Surf Carnival. A highlight of the day was seeing students stretching their comfort zone to paddle or swim in the surf and hearing the encouragement from their peers for having a go. A big thanks to Mr DeRuyter for his organisation of the event and an enormous thanks to Mr Hughes for assisting during his leave accompanied by little Tom who received plenty of care and attention from some of our students. 

Mr Baldock and Alanah took our 3-6s up to the athletics track across Wednesday and Thursday to participate in the NWSSA Athletics Carnival. Our outstanding 5/6 results enable us to progress from 3^rd to overall second at the completion of the carnival. Congratulations to the dozen students who have been invited to participate in the upcoming twilight carnival where they will be able to race and jump against the best kids in the north of the state.

All our Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students will have their courage and personal best efforts put to the ‘test’ from Wednesday of next week as they undertake NAPLAN. Students will have had the chance to use the demonstration site at school, however if you don’t have much on over the long weekend, I encourage you to take a look at the platform with your children. NAP - Public demonstration site

I look forward to seeing you in at school over the next couple of weeks at our Primary assembly on 14^th April with 6A and 2A presenting or at our Welcome back BBQ on the 19^th April.

Yours in partnership,

Matthew Perry