David's Message

Dear Sunshine Heights Parents and Carers,

As some of you might have noticed, I've arrived back; definitely a bit jetlagged but really excited to get into an amazing term 2 with our students, staff and families. 

I've thought a lot over the past few weeks about our community. Being so far away and experiencing time with my own family during an especially challenging time gave me a lot of opportunity to reflect, and to appreciate our strengths. This was especially the case when I received the email notification that our school had been awarded almost $500 000 for new toilets. This has been the culmination of failed grant applications, our parents advocating for this with politicians at the state and federal level, and a huge amount of work in the background by our School Council. The care and commitment I see in our community and the high expectations that each of you has for your child's education is incredible. I will be honest, the process around gaining this funding has been exhausting and at times, highly frustrating. However, we have achieved something amazing; now we need to ensure we work towards a new oval to take the next step in developing athletic and sporting superstars.

If you were to ask me what I care about for your child, I want every child to be highly literate and numerate, and to have a love of the Arts, Languages, STEM and Sports. I want them to love coming to school and to feel deeply connected to our staff and each other. I want them to celebrate each other's cultures and know their identities are ready to be known, shown and grown. But this isn't enough; above all, I went them to know that our community will champion the right of every child here to have an exceptional school that is both unique and world class. I feel we're really taking some great leaps towards this. 

Term 2 is a check in term in many ways. Staff undertake some key assessments to find where we can make improvements to the progress of our students. As you may know, we altered our Reading Assessments last year to an evidence-based approach, using the York Assessment for Reading Comprehension. This demonstrated that our students across the school need a greater focus on Fluency (the skill of reading aloud with accuracy, pace and appropriate intonation and expression). We have a great classroom strategy we do with all students called paired fluency, which is having a positive effect for all student. Some great ways to support you child at home with this is to read aloud from a familiar story book, to ask your child to read one page aloud before beginning silent reading at home, or to alternate reading pages between yourself and you child so that you can enjoy a shared story together. 

In the next few weeks we will come together for our Mothers and Special Persons Breakfast; we can't wait to serve the coffees and enjoy some fun activities with our families, and to celebrate the roles of mums, mother figures, grandmas and aunties, and the special people who take the role of parents in our kids' lives. Don't forget to mark Friday 10th May from 8:30am in your diary, and we'll see you all in the Specialist Hub!

Best wishes, 

David