4 March 2024

Principal

Hello Parents and Carers,

Welcome to 2024.  We are looking forward to a wonderful year.

Welcome back to all our wonderful staff, and a special welcome to those who are returning from leave or who are new to the school.

We are delighted that so many of you have been able to meet with your child’s teachers. 

Thank you so much.  Your input is a vital support to the teachers’ as they plan learning activities for the students.

The term is very short with only nine weeks in total so please check the calendar for upcoming assemblies and events.

Kind Regards,
Linda Lane
Principal

Missing File: Principal folder

Early Years News

Dear Families,

Warmest welcome to a new year at Durham Road School and to all our new and/or returning students and their families. I trust you had a good holiday break and are keen to get started on an exciting year ahead.

I am delighted to return to Durham Road School after working at SSEN Disability for the past two and a half years and have already met with many parents and carers as part of Individual Education Planning meetings.  I encourage regular communication with classroom staff through your child’s communication book, attending assembly and planned meetings and engaging with our social media forums.  This communication will ensure we continue to build a stronger community together and focus on supporting our students.  I can be contacted through the front office with any questions or concerns you may have and look forward to meeting all our Early Years families when you are next at school.

For the parents of our kindy students, we hope that as you begin your journey, you find the community at Durham Road School to be welcoming and supportive, and your experience throughout the years to be an enjoyable one. I look forward to working together with you and your child, to face all the challenges and rewards the schooling experience can bring.

Kind Regards,
Susan Moran
Deputy Principal

Primary News

Dear Parents and Carers,

The Primary Phase has had a great start to the year as we welcomed everyone back after the holidays. The students have all seemed keen to get stuck in to their school work and activities!

Teachers are in the process of forming Individual Education Plans (IEP) and having meetings with families. Please get in touch with your child’s classroom teacher to arrange an IEP meeting if you would like to and haven’t had the opportunity yet.

The Primary classes are looking forward to a number of exciting things this semester. On Tuesday 26^th March, The West Australian Football Commission (WAFC) are running some AFL clinics at the school. This was well received last year and it will be great to have WAFC return to Durham Road School.

Also, we will be commencing our assemblies for the year on 22^nd March- Room 15 and Room 18 will have a combined assembly on this day.

I hope everyone enjoys the upcoming long weekend. If you have any queries regarding the Primary Phase, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email: Simon.Hume@education.wa.edu.au or the school office.

Kind Regards,
Simon Hume
Deputy Principal

Satellite News

Dear Parents & Carers,

Warmest welcome to new and returning students and families in the Satellite Program at Embleton Primary School.  We hope you all had a relaxing break and are ready for the exciting year ahead.  All the students have settled into their new classes, eager to learn and build new friendships.

I am the new Program Coordinator for the Satellite classes.  I will work between Embleton Primary and Durham Road Wednesday to Friday, if there is anything you need, please don’t hesitate to contact me cassandra.camacho@education.wa.edu.au 

We welcome two new teachers to the Satellite program- Mr Nick Janes (Satellite 3), Ms Kristy Brown (Satellite 4), and three Education Assistants who have come over from Durham Road School.

Term One is an exciting and busy term.  I hope all families have had an opportunity to meet with the classroom teacher, to discuss this year’s priorities and individual education plan for your child.

Congratulations to Jake who is this year’s Student Councillor.

We have a few upcoming events to note in the diary:

• Students have begun their four-week soccer clinic (held on Tuesday mornings)
• Satellite 4 Assembly Week 5- 1/3/2024 (at Embleton Primary) All families welcome!
• Swimming Lessons at Bayswater Waves starts Week 7 for two weeks. Can you please complete and return the forms and payment ASAP.
• Satellite 3 Easter Assembly Week 9- 28/3/2024

Kind regards,
Cassie Camacho
Programme Coordinator

Secondary News

Welcome to a New School Year.

I hope everyone has had a great school holiday and is ready to go for a new year.

Secondary has had a few changes with Chris Ralph and Megan Rhodes leaving the school to take up Deputy Principal positions elsewhere and so we wish them all the best and thank them for their amazing efforts over the years.

This does mean that we have some fantastic new teachers who have joined our team. Stefanie Yearn has stepped into Rm 26 and Ian “Harry” Harrison has joined Tim Kerr in Rm 10.  We are lucky to have such quality teachers joining us I and have been really impressed by how quickly they have settled in.

I would also like to welcome the new students to secondary both those from our primary phase and students new to the school. It has been a smooth start, and everyone seems to be settling in nicely.

Teachers should be conducting IEP meetings and as always, we are looking forward to catching up with or meeting parents.  Transition information should have been sent home to fill in so please the more information you can give us the better.

We are also processing a significant number of therapy applications, so a reminder is that we do have a therapy application process and guidelines around what therapy can be accommodated at school. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the school on how this works.

Hope to see you around soon!

Kind regards,
Heath Bradley
Deputy Principal

Room 1

Room 1 has had a great start to the year.  This term we are learning about transport.  We have enjoyed learning about different types of transport in our shared reading sessions.  So far, we have read “Dig, Dump, Roll” by Sally Sutton and “Go, Go Pirate Boat” by Katrina Charman.  We were especially eager to jump back into our favourite activities including swimming, music, art and messy play.

We cannot wait to see what the rest of 2024 has in store for us

Room 2

It has been a lovely start to the school year.  The students have been enjoying their hydrotherapy sessions and attending the Multi-Sensory Room with Bev and Angela.  They have been participating in different sensory-based art experiences and have each made cards for some of their classmates who have had birthdays this month.  The students have been there using their communication systems to write a message in their card. We have had a slight change of classrooms. We are now in Room 2. The students have settled in well into their new classroom!

Room 3

Welcome to Term 1, 2024.  We have had a brilliant start to the year with an amazing bunch of students.  Our incredible team consists of Nancy, Sara, Kerry and Cheryle. Our focus this term transport.  We have loved learning about trains and diggers (or excavators for some students). Making train noises has been a lot of fun.  We have already celebrated Archie’s 7^th birthday and some brave students have even lost a tooth.  It's been lots of fun getting to know each other and getting back into the school routine after such a long holiday

Room 32

What a sensational start to the year 2024 with our class of 8: Adam, Aries, Avik, Bhavya, Daniel, Darius, Manaki, and Samuel.  Our wonderful team of Educational Assistants include: Miss Roxy, Miss Chloe, Miss Antonia, Miss Anna, and Miss Emily.  Our students have been excited to return to school after the long holiday break and have jumped straight back into routine with enthusiasm.  We are enjoying our literacy and numeracy mat sessions – especially songs about counting to 100 and learning about digraphs.  Thanking all the parents for making the time to chat with me in our IEP meetings.  We look forward to lots of positive growth and fun learning experiences this semester!  

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Room 10

Room 10 have made a great start to the year.  For most of us this is the beginning of secondary school and we’ve embraced the challenges that come with new uniforms, new routines, new subjects, and even a new playground!

In literacy we’ve been enjoying the adventures of Pig the Pug and Aliens Love Underpants, while in maths we’ve been working on our numbers, shapes and sequences.  We’ve also begun our science program by examining what objects float and sink.  That was a lot of wet toys to tidy up!

Room 11

Welcome back to school 2024!  We hope you enjoyed spending time with your family over the Christmas break.

Room 11 have started the year with lots of fun interactions.  We are getting to know each other and creating exciting friendships with our new friends from primary school.  Over the term, we will help the students in Room 11 look at how they express gratitude and kindness in and outside the classroom.  We will be doing lots of exciting work and using our independence to cater to our needs with our teachers' help.

We will focus on several different topics and are so excited about everything we will do this term.

Please enjoy our photos.

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Room 12

Welcome to Room 12!  This year we have welcomed new kindy and pre primary students.  We have all been exploring our new learning environment and school.  It has been a hot start to the school year, but we have kept cool by playing in the classroom.  This term we are learning all about ourselves and how to communicate our likes and dislikes.  We love our new classroom.

Room 14

Room 14 has had a wonderful start to the school year!  We have welcomed two new students to our class and school, Imogen and Gabriel, and twice a week, Zoe joins our class from Embleton, so it’s a fun-filled class.

Room 14 has loved exploring the Multi-Sensory Room, beginning our hydrotherapy sessions, and exploring the playground, when it’s not too hot.  We have been learning to play the drums in music, mixing colours to make birthday balloons in art, and laughing a lot during literacy reading about farts!

Everyone is settling into the school routine and having fun.

Room 15

Hello from Room 15.  What a great start we’ve had to Term 1 2024!  We have a fantastic group of students and a wonderful team.

We are all settling well into our new classroom routine and as always we all love our time in the sensory room with Ange, thank you Ange.  With the recent heatwave we have also been enjoying water play and of course we have also been working hard!

Room 16

We have an awesome bunch of students in Room 16 and they have had a great start to the year. They are settling nicely into our class and are enjoying being back in the school routine.

Our theme for the term is ‘All About Me’ and we have loved getting to know all about each other, our likes and dislikes, favourite things and families.

In Science, the students have been enjoying learning about their 5 senses with their DOTT teacher, Kristy and it’s been a hot few weeks, so we have really enjoyed getting into swimming and doing water and sensory play to keep cool.

With such a fun start to the term, we can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds.

Room 25

We have a new group of friends in room 25. We have been busy getting to know each other. Some of the cool things we have done are hands on experiments.

We also made mixtures that cooked in the oven to make healthy corn muffins. Yum!

In other news, we had a great celebration for Harley and Sandinu who had birthdays. Congratulations!

Room 26

Room 26 is an active and busy class of twelve Y 7 – Y9 students.  We have settled in to the 2024 school year establishing our weekly routine and forming new friendships.

Our Current focus in Literacy is gaining confidence in spelling and giving it a go.  We write stories together and independently working towards editing our own work. Numeracy this term is learning all about halves and quarters and telling time to the quarter hour.

This semester we are learning about our organs and their functions in Biology. In HaSS we are currently learning all about Natural Disasters such as Volcanos, Tsunamis and Earthquakes. As part of our practical hands on learning we have made a Tornado in a Bottle, used crackers and cream cheese to represent the tectonic plates moving over the Earths Mantle. We have simulated an earthquake using a seismograph model to observe how to measure the magnitude of an earthquake.

Socialising and regulating emotions is a key feature of our Health focus where we are identifying our own emotions and finding different calming strategies that could help us when we are feeling overwhelmed.

Numeracy – Telling time to the half and quarter hour.

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Room 27

The year has started off with a bang!

Here in Room 27, the boys have been very productive getting straight back into the school routine and showing amazing coping strategies with changes to our classroom and schedule.  Our community access program took us down to IGA, where we will now start to buy our own ingredients for our cooking lessons.  This program not only gives us independence but teaches us how to be a valuable and safe member of our local community.  We have some very exciting things planned for this year, so stay tuned

Room 31

All Room 31 students have had a very busy start to the year.  We have welcomed new faces to the Room 31 team and are getting familiarised with the classroom routines.  Work experience placements has commenced at Westcare, E Fire and Safety, Good Sammys Industries, Toy Library and Active Industries, as well as the Pre-Employment programs at the Enterprise Training Centre (ETC) and onsite here at school. In particular at the Toy Library, students have overcome challenges with cataloguing the returned puzzles and toys.

This year already, students have been out for an excursion and an Incursion, both hosted by Transperth to support them to safely and successfully travel by public transport.

It has been a fantastic start with lots of positives so far and we are looking forward to many more amazing experiences in the coming months.

Satellite 1

Satellite 1 students have been learning their new routine at the Embleton school site.  Healthy eating through our daily morning Crunch and Sip program, keeping hydrated throughout the day, and learning to apply their sunscreen as well as wearing their hats during play to maintain sun smart habits.  It is great seeing everyone getting along, forming new friendships, enjoying each other’s special days - such as Ader’s birthday this month.  They are becoming more accustomed to whole class activities, including mealtimes, library, Jump Jam and fitness.  During structured sessions the students are learning to play together, share and take turns.  The highlight has been the big trampoline and the taxi bikes.

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Satellite 2

The students in Satellite 2 have had an amazing start to the year! Everyone has settled in to the class routine and have loved being back to school. In Literacy we have participating in Talk for Writing lesson and learning the story The Rainbow Fish. The students are excited to say the story with the actions and participate in activities focussing on the characters, setting and events.

We have also been learning about the visual art element, line and have been very creative in using different types of lines to create amazing artwork.

Satellite 2 have started Soccer Clinic with coach Mick. It has been fun learning to dribble the ball, kick goals and play in team games.

We can’t wait to see what the rest of the term has in store for us.

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Art

Kaya, welcome back to ‘The Arts’ at Durham Road School, 2024. Although the weather has been scorching hot, we have managed to begin our art program. We have been doing rotations on site and not at the ETC. Students have worked hard to begin their portrait lessons. They are learning about placement of facial features but have also been looking at the bizarre nature of Picasso’s portraits. Thanks to all the staff who have worked well as a support team for our students. I am looking forward to seeing where this program progresses to, as we all get into our rhythm for 2024.

Volunteering with sister schools in Cambodia

Kaya and welcome back to school for 2024.  Over the summer holidays, Denise, Michelle and Karli travelled to Cambodia with a group of education volunteers from schools across WA.  All volunteers were paired up and visited sister schools in Kampong Speu Province to teach.

Throughout 2023, sister schools in WA participated in many fundraising activities so they could offer financial support to schools in Cambodia. These funds have allowed the schools to purchase and build much needed facilities such as toilet blocks, water tanks, lap tops, basketball courts and more. All volunteers purchased stationary supplies and sporting equipment to donate to their schools. These supplies were accepted with much grace and gratitude.

It was an amazing experience.  The students were some of the most grateful people we’ve ever met and the staff welcomed us with open arms.  What a wonderful experience and program between the Western Australian Education Department and the Angkor Education Department.  Thank you to everyone who participated in last year’s cake stall and who purchased items at last year’s Annual Exhibition, as these funds were donated and were put towards basic and necessary items at schools in Kampong Speu Province.

Workplace learning

Companion Cards and Free Travel:

This term teachers are investigating which students have Companion Cards.  The parent or carer of any student who does not have a Companion Card will be encouraged to apply for one; a process that has become far more simple recently.

Ms Linda Lane, the Principal of Durham Road, has been given permission to be the professional who verifies eligibility for all DRS students.  This means that parents need only sign the form and the school can do the rest.

Companion Cards are an amazing resource for families as they allow the companion, usually an adult, free entry to a wide variety of places (including movie theatres, Perth Zoo or AQWA).  It also allows the parent free travel on public transport when accompanying their disabled child.  To see the many places a Companion can have free entry through use of a Companion Card, a list can be found here: 

As a free resource to families, a Companion Card is certainly something to utilise.

An additional potential saving for families is “Free TransPerth travel for school age students”.  This government promotion is only open to school-age students who hold a SmartRider card.

Students access the free travel by using their SmartRider to tag on and off TransPerth buses, trains and ferries Sundays to Fridays at any time of day between now and the 12^th December 2024.  Students will only be charged a fare if they forget to tag on or tag off as they enter and leave the vehicle or station.

If the student has a SmartRider kept at school, the school ensures that the SmartRider has sufficient funds.  If it is also used at home, this becomes the family’s responsibility.

These two resources could facilitate quite a saving for families wanting to get out and about with their children or employing carers to take their children into the community.  If you would like help applying for either of these cards, please contact Durham Road School or your child’s teacher.

Family Liaison Officers

We want to give all our families a big welcome back to the new year.  We hope you all had a wonderful break with your family.

Lisa and I are available every day if you need any type of support, that is helping to fill out forms or helping you navigate the NDIS, we also sit with you at your child's IEP meeting if you would like us to.

We also provide a breakfast club for those families that might benefit from some extra support, this could be as simple as time management in the mornings.  Please let us know and we supply breakfast for your child.

We would like to give all our New Families a big Welcome to Durham Road and we are looking forward to meeting and helping you in any way we can.

Our contact details are PH: 9238 0900.

Kerry Potter & Lisa Burgess

First Aid Corner

Durham Road is in the process of transitioning its health related documentation.  You may have received a form that has been sent home in your child’s school bag or communication book.  These forms relate to Seizure medication, Asthma Action Plans, Feed Plans, Allergy Information and Medication Administered at School.  We really appreciate your cooperation in returning these to us promptly.  Without the correct paperwork, the school is unable to undertake some of the support your child may require.

If you require any support in completing these forms or you are not sure why the form has been sent to you, please do not hesitate to contact myself, Sarah Pfaff 9238 0964.

With the arrival of 2024, the school welcomed a very valuable addition…we now have a portable defibrillator.  This is the same as the defibrillators that you will have seen in shopping centres and swimming pools.  It is a very welcome asset to have here at Durham Road and it has been registered on the St. John First Aid App, so the wider community can access it if required