Leadership Report

I'm amazed at the absolutely fantastic start to the year we've had. Despite the long summer break, everyone has returned focused and ready to continue their learning journey. We focus much of our time and energy in the first few weeks on building relationships and setting our students up for success by negotiating important class routines and structures. I look forward to our students participating in the many fun and exciting experiences planned for them this year. 

A big welcome to all our new students and families, particularly our Reception students. All 99 of them! They have settled so well and are loving life at Magill School. 

Acquaintance Night is being held on Tuesday 13th Feb from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm. It's a great opportunity to meet teachers and hear about aspects of life in their classrooms. This year, we're changing things up a bit. You will have received information about our scavenger hunt and free sausage sizzle via email. Teacher sessions will be less formal and provide more time for questions. We hope that everyone enjoys the new format.

Our AGM will be held straight after Acquaintance Night in the Resource Centre. I encourage parents to attend. 2023 reports will be shared and the election (if needed) of Governing Council representatives will take place.  

You may have read or heard about some of the exciting changes to our teaching or reading and spelling this year. After an extensive review process involving six months of research, school visits, and teacher collaboration, we've decided to adopt two new programs: Sounds-Write for our Junior Primary and SSP for our Primary levels. This decision was made with careful consideration to ensure consistency and progression throughout your child's learning journey at Magill. Both programs follow a speech to print approach with similar philosophies that build on each other, providing a seamless transition and a solid foundation for your child's literacy development.

Change is an essential part of growth, and implementing new teaching methods requires time and practice. Therefore, we've designated 2024 as an implementation year. We kindly ask parents to support our teachers as they familiarise themselves with these new approaches and integrate them into their classrooms. 

We recently hosted our second well-attended parent workshop to introduce our new strategies. These sessions were filmed, and are available now on our website. For more comprehensive information and other demonstration videos about our literacy practices, please visit our newly updated literacy page on the website, or click on the link below.

We expect work to start on the new Junior Primary playground at the end of this term. We are all very excited to see the new space take shape with an estimated completion time of October this year. Stay tuned for more information. 

John Iannunzio

Principal