Weekly
news
Term 1, Week 4
Coming up this week
Calendar
Upcoming Events
MISSION STATEMENT
To work under God in partnership with parents to provide an inclusive, nurturing and high quality education for every student.
VIsion
Flourishing through faith, belonging and the pursuit of excellence.
From The Principal
Meet & Greet Information Night
Thank you to those parents who joined us at the Meet & Greet/Information Night. We appreciated your presence at this event and hope you found it informative and a good opportunity to both meet other parents and chat with your child’s teacher.
Please click on the link below to access the slides from the presentation.
Meet & Greet Information Night
Obviously, they are brief and there was more information shared verbally to go along with the slide, but it will give you an overview of what was presented on the night.
ALWS – Celebrating 75 years by supporting 75,000 children
Last week in Chapel, we welcomed Michael Stolz the Executive Director of Australian Lutheran World Service. Michael shared with students about the work that ALWS do and spoke about an upcoming event – 75 Years of ALWS! To celebrate 75 years of service, ALWS aims to support 75,000 children with the essentials for a happy, healthy life – food, school and safety. On 22 March in Albury/Bonegilla there will be a day of celebrations – including a 10km Walk my Way that we are inviting our school community to support. We have registered a team – Lutheran School Wagga Wagga and would like it if there were members of our community who would like to join us or perhaps donate if you are busy on the day.
Your child should have brought home a flyer. If not, perhaps it’s lost in the depths of school bags, visit, https://walkmyway.org.au/
to find out more.
Communication
If you haven’t already updated your family details on Parent Lounge, please remember to do so. Check your address, phone numbers, emails, etc. Also, we are aware that some families who have a gmail account aren’t always receiving communication from us. If this is you, please click on the link below to learn how to add our school emails to your safe sender list.
Gmail Safe Senders Instructions
Blessings for the week ahead.
Hollie Kinning
Principal
From The DEPUTY Principal
Clubs
Special Interest “Clubs” were introduced as part of our holistic approach to wellbeing, aiming to foster engagement across multi-age groups in a variety of learning areas. This year, we’ve added some new ‘Club’ options. It’s fantastic to see our teachers and students come together to enjoy fun and engaging learning experiences in diverse areas. Clubs will take place again this term on Friday afternoons during Weeks 5, 7, and 9. We look forward to sharing more details about the activities and opportunities our students will be involved in later in the term.
Book Club
A big thank you to the families who supported our first issue of Book Club by purchasing books for their children. Orders closed on Monday evening and should be arriving soon. Our next issue will be early in Term 2.
Student Representative Council (SRC)
Congratulations to the students who were elected as SRC representatives for Semester One this year. They received their badges at Assembly last Friday.
SRC MEMBERS – SEMESTER 1 2025
Year 1 Pippa Antrim and Max Lewis
Year 2 Harriet Price and Samuel Barrett
Year 3 Isabella McGauley and Isaac Sheather (absent from photo)
Year 4 Thea Kinning and Floyd Fennell (absent from photo)
Year 5 Ava Baxter (absent from photo) and Eli Poole
Year 6 Ella Labens, Matilda Mercer, Liam Bruce, and Charlie Forsyth
Care Coordinators
Thank you to the parents listed below who have volunteered their time to be Care Coordinators for this year. This is an opportunity for you to involve yourself in the life of the school and be a conduit for communication between teachers, the P&F, and Parents. It might involve liaising with the school in supporting a family in need from your child’s class or organising some social events with the grade’s parents to continue to build the school community.
There are still some spots that need filling for some grades. If you are interested in the role, please contact Chaplain Darren or myself via the office.
Kindergarten: Alana Palau and Amy Fowler
Y1: Lauren Waugh, Alice Jack, Jennifer Skidmore and Kristin Browning
Y2: Amanda Keyes and Tori Phillips
Y3: Brenna Sheather and 1 more volunteer required
Y4: Britt Harris and Jenna Lamont
Y5: Leah Adams and 1 more volunteer required
Y6: Jodie Mitchell and Sarah Mercer
Parent Facebook groups
The LWSS parent Facebook groups serve as a valuable resource for our parent community to ask questions, share advice, find support, and connect with other parents in the community. It’s a place to share experiences, offer help, and build a sense of community and belonging. To maintain the privacy and security of our groups, we’ve updated the membership questions and rules.
If you find that you are no longer a member of your child’s year group, please use the links below to update your membership by answering the provided questions.
Year 6 https://www.facebook.com/share/g/19z94kcPht/
Year 5 https://www.facebook.com/share/g/18kWuTR438/
Year 4 https://www.facebook.com/share/g/18bUDMJCHA/
Year 3 https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1A7uSqK4WY/
Year 2 https://www.facebook.com/share/g/19sPUD554j/
Year 1 https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1AA7dAWG1d/
Kindergarten https://www.facebook.com/share/g/12FJD3Juquv/
Traffic – Drop off and Pick Up
Thank you to those parents who continue to abide by the school routines and traffic signs to ensure that our school drop off and afternoon pick up routines are safe and prompt.
A reminder that the main carpark is not a quick pick-up area. Parents must park, exit their car and pick up students from the resource centre. Queuing of cars in this area causes congestion of buses in the bus circle. If there are no carparks in the main can park, please do not queue, please exit and use street parking.
For those parents using the quick pick-up zone in the Kindergarten carpark, please do not queue across the crossing or the main car park entrance. For those parents that are waiting for students in the 3-6 area of the school, please wait until at least 3:25pm to come through quick pick up. It takes longer for our 3-6 students to walk up to quick pick up and this congests this area. Parents that are waiting for longer than 2 minutes will be asked to park to ensure the line moves quickly. If you need to exit your vehicle to secure your child in their car seat, please do not use quick pick up. It is best to park and collect your child from the gate.
We greatly appreciate your support in ensuring our students arrive and get home safely.
Emma Davenport
Deputy Principal
Lutheran Legends Awards
Congratulations to the students that received Lutheran Legends Awards at last Friday’s assembly.
Values Focus
Love Love Love..........
Pancake Day
Next week the Church will be entering the season of Lent. Lent is the period of time that leads into Easter, and the story we tell of Jesus and his Disciples as we move towards death and resurrection.
Many people in the Church practice fasting throughout Lent, others may give up something (coffee, phones, chocolate…) and use that fasting as a way to reflect on Jesus and our life as disciples. To prepare for fasting people would use up all their fattening ingredients, many would make pancakes. As a way to mark the season our school will be celebrating by sharing pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, the 4th of March.
This week’s Chapel included an address from Michael Stolz, the Executive Director of Lutheran World Service. ALWS is celebrating 75 years of service, advocacy, mission and aid. Michael reminded us all that both we are all called to be people of love and compassion and that the Church has tried to live out that love through the work of ALWS.
We listened to the story of the Good Samaritan and reflected on the work of ALWS as it provides support and aid all over the world, providing shelter, clean water, opportunities for education and much more to our brothers and sisters. Perhaps at home this week your household could have a conversation over a meal about how you could show love to your neighbour this week?
If you want to celebrate and support the work of ALWS check out the information in this newsletter on how the school is supporting their work by participating in the Walk My Way event on March 22.
This term’s value is Courage, one of the songs we sing during Chapel this term is Be Strong and Courageous by Colin Buchanan. If you’re interested in listening to the song at home you can find it here
https://youtu.be/YBJr-KGDBnU?si=HoLIpWrOxFguatjw
Shalom
Darren Wright
Chaplain
Curriculum Matters
Teacher Professional Learning
Teaching and learning at Lutheran School in 2025 will continue to strive for academic excellence while fostering and supporting student growth. Our ongoing focus is to grow together as a community of learners through the implementation of high-quality, research-based teaching and learning programs.
In the week leading up to the start of the school year, our teaching staff participated in the Primary Writing Project professional learning initiative, developed by AISNSW. This project is designed to enhance the explicit teaching of literacy skills and incorporates evidence-based strategies for effective writing instruction. The initiative will continue throughout 2025, led by Renae Watkins from AIS.
NAPLAN
This year students in Years 3 and 5 will participate in the annual NAPLAN assessments. A letter was sent home last week with detailed information about this assessment. The dates for each test are listed below.
This year all NAPLAN tests will be completed online, apart from the Year 3 writing test.
If you have any questions of concerns regarding NAPLAN, please speak to your child’s teacher or contact Jane Antrim at the school.
Premier’s Reading Challenge
This year, all students will be given the opportunity to participate in the Premier’s Reading Challenge. The Challenge aims to encourage a love of reading for leisure and pleasure in students, and to enable them to experience quality literature. It is not a competition but a challenge to each student to read, to read more and to read more widely.
Next week, all students will receive a letter with their login details and information about how to add books to their personal reading log. Books that students read with their teacher in the classroom will also be added to their reading log.
Learning Links
Please refer to the following flyer regarding some upcoming free parent webinars which may be of interest.
Jane Antrim
Learning Innovation Coordinator
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From The Finance Office
Please see below for March direct debit dates:
March Direct dates:
Weekly
Thursday 6,13, 20 & 27 March
Fortnightly
Thursday 13 & 27 March
Monthly
Thursday 27 March
Term and Annual
Any changes to bank accounts or credit cards please let me know as this could result in a payment being declined.
If a payment is declined this can be paid either through direct deposit, credit card over the phone, or in person at the office.
Term 1 fees are now due for families not on a direct debit.
Feel free to email me http://[email protected], phone or call at the school office to see me with any questions regarding your account.
Jenny Hausfeld
Finance Officer
Other Information
Families leaving the school
Please note that one full term’s written notice is required if you are withdrawing your child from Lutheran School. We purchase learning materials based on projected enrolment numbers at least one term in advance. Hence, the enrolment contract you signed specifies that failure to provide a term’s notice will result in you being charged for the subsequent term.
Uniform Shop Orders
If you would like to purchase uniforms from the Uniform Shop, please email [email protected]
We will email you once the order is ready to be picked up from the office. Thank you.
