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What's happening:
September:
23 Wednesday: Kinder Bike Day
23 Wednesday: Garden Market at 3pm
24 Thursday: Prep Environment Day
25 Friday: LAST DAY TERM 3
October:
12 Monday: Staff only at school
13 Tuesday: First day Term 4 for Kinder - Grade 6
14 Wednesday: Committee Meeting at 7pm
19 Monday: First day Term 4 for Pre-Kinder
22 Thursday: ROYAL HOBART SHOW HOLIDAY
23 Friday: NO SCHOOL
The working bee list is pretty well all filled up with almost all families assigned to a job. Well done everyone!
As of this weekend there’s only 2 weeks to go until we ask that you please complete your job(s). So by 4 October.
Don’t forget to write “completed” against your name. Let’s aim to have no yellow highlighting by 4 October!!
All indoor jobs will need to be completed on either Wednesday 30 September or Friday 2 October after 11:00am when Julie has kindly offered to be at school to provide access to the buildings. Please let Hannah or Isabelle know which of these days in the school holidays suits you best.
Please be in touch with us about supplies so we can have these ready for you.
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From Julie
Committee met via Zoom on 16 September to consider our 2021 budget and there was agreement to not raise fees in 2021. Committee also met recently on 2 September to review our existing Strategic Plan. We have considerably tightened it up for the next year with a view to doing a major review and reimagining of our strategic future during 2021. The goals identified for 2020/21 were as follows:
- The right people in the right roles to ensure stability and leadership through change
- Building financial sustainability to ensure the school’s long-term future
- Build agility in order to anticipate, plan for and respond effectively to local and broader external influence (e.g. global pandemic, recession etc)
- Understand how the Cottage School philosophy integrates with contemporary family life
- Focus on enhanced inquiry pedagogy consistency across the school.
- Enhanced differentiation of teaching and learning.
- Maximise the capacity of the school learning environment to serve the attainment, learning and wellbeing needs of the students.
- Plan for the school’s long term learning environment.
- Communicate effectively with the school community and other stakeholders.
- Increase the profile of the school brand.
- Focus on optimizing enrollment
With these goals in mind, we are developing our operational plans around the following key focus areas for 2021:
- Develop a new Strategic Plan for 2021 – 2026
- Develop a Business Continuity Plan
- Professional learning to develop collaborative planning model
- Embrace integrated IT in our curriculum
- Develop a physical environment masterplan including financial implications and planning.
- Develop a marketing plan that encompasses use of a diverse range of marketing channels
- Succession planning for retirement of School Leader at the end of 2021 as well as any other key role
That should keep us focused and busy as a learning community...
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Bonjour tout le monde!
Do you realise you already speak a lot of French? All the words ending with -tion are similar in English and French so we are off to a great start ...
When William the Conqueror (Guillaume le conquérant) became king of England, French took over as the language of the royal courts, law courts and literature and was dominant for hundreds of years. During that time, English was the language of peasants and the uneducated.
There are still thousands of words that are used in both languages and that number is continually increasing because of the internet and television. Over half of our English vocabulary came from French and Latin. So every day we use French words in all sorts of topics, especially when we talk about food (eg. café, restaurant, dine, menu, picnic, salad, soup, casserole, chef) and the arts (gallery, art, collage, ballet, theatre, stage, cinema, encore). Plus we have borrowed many general terms such as bon voyage, RSVP, camouflage, detour, souvenir, chauffeur, cul-de-sac and cliché.
Meanwhile, the French have taken many English words into everyday use, much to the despair of purists. Young people especially like to use English expressions such as le weekend, le brainstorming, le relooking, le networking, and they think it is all très cool.
However, there is a tricky aspect of all this sharing. These are the words known as faux amis / false friends. There are many words that look the same in French and English, but they can sound quite different and mean rather different things.
Take chat - in English we would say ch as in Charlie + at as in hat (tʃæt in the phonetic alphabet that Kath is teaching to some classes) and it would mean “to talk” but in French we would say shu like the beginning of shut and not pronouncing the t (phonetically written ʃa), and it would mean “cat”.
Another example is store which sounds similar in both languages, but in French it means a window blind. That could become rather confusing. The Biggies will be looking at other examples of faux amis and using their new skills to spell them out phonetically.
Recently, in younger classes, we have met and commented on words that are markedly different in French and English: for example jam compared to confiture and pastèque which means watermelon.
It is a joy to explore words with your children and to foster communication skills.
And we all speak some French every day! Kate
GARDEN MARKET
A thanks to all the families who support Garden Market by either supplying goods to sell or by buying them. Keep it coming! The kids always look forward to it and it’s great to have healthy treats to offer them.
Also, a reminder to all to please include an ingredients label with your edible goodies as we recently had a close call where nuts slipped through.
NO NUTS OR NUT PRODUCTS PLEASE!
Garden Market is on again on Wednesday for those who would like to contribute.
From the Garden Marketeers.
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