From the Principal

Wonderful to be back at school with everybody well rested and ready for the busy end to the year. The weather has warmed up but there has still been a bit of rain for crop growers and livestock producers alike to get through to harvest and a dry summer.

We have only a couple of weeks left now with our Year 12’s and are now getting prepared to support them for their graduation and upcoming exams. Whilst we obviously want them to be doing their very best during this period and preparing by revising their learning, year 12 exams are not the be all and end all and this should be kept in perspective. As a staffing group we are all here at any time to provide support for our students and we ask them to continue to seek out assistance when required.

Student Communication

This term I have begun focusing on getting feedback from all of our students in planning for teaching and learning for 2019 and beyond. Part of this message is encouraging our students to respectfully have discussions now with teachers as to how they best learn, sharing their interests and asking for more choice to demonstrate skill development. The role of a teacher is to cater for a huge range of abilities and interests and the more information they have the better they can cater for individual needs and better personalise the learning.

Litter Reduction

We have had a lot of rubbish in the school this week and so in consultation with the Student Representative Council we will be asking all students who normally eat on the West Campus to sit in the undercover area to eat their lunch and drop their rubbish in the bin before heading out to enjoy the sunshine. We hope this can encourage out students to consider their environment and enjoy sitting and talking with each other while they eat.

Chinese for 2019

Due to the increasing difficulty in attracting Italian staff to the school and the similar difficulty with finding Indonesian staff in the past, we are hoping we can attract Mandarin language teachers for 2019. In the past we have supplied some of our feeder schools with the language teacher to encourage a smooth transition of the language from primary to secondary and hope this will continue. We intend to advertise the position in the next few weeks and look forward to seeing our students reaping the benefits that learning another language can bring.

Hats

Parents and students are reminded that Terms 4 and 1 are SunSmart Terms and bucket hats must be worn. Hats are available to purchase at the front office for $15 and should be named to ensure speedy recovery if lost.