Hello and Welcome Back!

It has been fabulous to have the students and staff back on site this week. We have enjoyed seeing so many smiling, happy faces, meeting up with the parents and grandparents, and most importantly having our wonderful school community back together as one.

We are so grateful for the work and support of our parents over the last term. I would like to make special mention of the respectful way in which parents have been dropping off and picking up their children this week, it has been difficult with minimum time to catch up with other families in the playground but hopefully, it will not be too far away when families can once again catch up and have a chat at drop off or pick up time.

The students have done an amazing job settling back into school routines and re-engaging with their friends and teachers.

Our work in Term 4 will focus on three main areas:

Mental Health and Wellbeing

Our highest priority will be wellbeing, particularly the mental health, of every student and member of staff.

Learning and Excellence

Some of our students have thrived in the remote and flexible learning environment, others have maintained their learning progress, and some have fallen behind, despite their best efforts and those of their families and teachers. Our priority will be supporting both those who need it to catch up and those who have progressed to continue to extend their learning.

Transitions

We will make every effort to ensure successful transitions for children moving from kindergarten into Prep, the Grade 6s moving into Year 7.

Our school, working with you, has shown it can be flexible and adaptable in responding to the challenges of coronavirus (COVID-19) and will continue to meet student needs as we look towards the end of the 2020 school year and ahead to 2021.

If parents do have any questions or concerns please contact your child's teacher, Rebecca, or me and we will assist in any way we can.

We want our parents to tell us what they think!

Our school is conducting a survey to find out what parents think about our school. The Parent Opinion Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education and Training that is conducted amongst all parents. It is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of parents’ perceptions of school climate, student behaviour, student engagement, and experiences of remote and flexible learning. Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies. All parents will be invited to participate in this year’s survey. All responses to the survey are anonymous. This year, the Parent Opinion Survey will be open until Friday 13th November.

The survey will be conducted online, only takes 20 minutes to complete, and can be accessed at any convenient time within the fieldwork period on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, or smartphones. The online survey will be available in a range of languages other than English. These include Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Chin (Hakha), Hindi, Japanese, Turkish, Punjabi, and Greek.

Tomorrow the link will be sent to all families via COMPASS, so please keep an eye out for it. If you have any questions regarding the survey please do not hesitate to contact me.

Assembly

We will be having our first assembly for Term 4 on Monday, we will continue to use the virtual platform, Webex for assemblies each week. Please note the slight change to the start time - it will now be 9.10 am.

Meeting link:

https://eduvic.webex.com/eduvic/j.php?MTID=m0347facd9c58b499af18ddbaee53404b

Meeting number: 165 946 5404

Password: SSPS2020

Thank you again to our wonderful school community for enabling such a smooth start to Term 4.

Helen

The Rocket

15th October 2020

Issue 22 · 15 Oct 2020

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