David's Message

Dear Sunshine Heights Parents and Carers,

Welcome to 2026 at Sunshine Heights Primary School. I hope each of you has had an amazing holiday and rest with your family, and that you and your child are ready for a fantastic year of learning and connection. 

Firstly, a welcome to some new members of staff. Bella Volani joins our prep team and will be working alongside Miss Thomai, and is really excited about joining our community. Tash Vargas joins our Specialist Team as the new Spanish teacher after Miss Patricia has left to take up a full- position. Angela Truong returns from maternity leave to join Seher Tan and Britta Hansen in our Grade 6 team. Emma Probert moves from the tutor program to our Grade 4 team, working alongside Daniela Balakas and Paige Stokes. We welcome each of them to the team and can't wait to see how they add to our beautiful community. 

Secondly, a big welcome to all the new families in our community. Our new preps have settled in well, and we love the contributions that our parents make to this school. In particular, there are many volunteering opportunities for our parents, and if you are keen on making breakfast for our students or helping out when our library reopens in the coming weeks, we would love to hear from you. Chat to Vicki McMahon, our Assistant Principal for Wellbeing, Inclusion and Community. 

Each year we begin with two Curriculum Days to privilege professional learning for our staff team. Our Curriculum Days this year allowed us to focus this learning on our new Strategic Plan, with two clear goals:

1: To further improve student outcomes in literacy and numeracy 

2: To further increase engagement and wellbeing outcomes for every student 

What this looks like in practice is a redesign of our Systemic Knowledge Curriculum, Core Literacy and Applied Literacy to increase alignment between the diverse learning areas and our approaches to reading and writing, specifically focusing on building background knowledge and vocabulary for all our students. This will be coupled with a renewed focus on our Multi-tiered Systems of Support for students, both with curriculum and wellbeing supports, to ensure the growth we have achieved in the last strategic plan continues for the next four years. 

You may hear from your child that we have begun the year with a Learning Launch, designed to help students focus their learning through self-regulation strategies, clear expectations and a structured approach to learning about our school values. You might also see the evidence of these changes in how explicitly we are sharing the norms we are setting up as a school to ensure we build a cohesive learning community where every child is able to thrive. 

In the coming Newsletters I will be sharing more information about how we are working on our Annual Implementation Plan to reach the goals of our new Strategic Plan 2025-2029.

Best wishes,

David and the entire Sunny Heights Team