Principal's Message

Principal's Message

Welcome to the start of Week 9 of a ten week term. There are some important actions for you to take on the "School Leaders" page so I ask that you read it carefully. 

I want to thank all families who supported Harmony Day by providing their country's traditional dress for the day. We had a wonderful assembly where all of these sights and colours were on display. The children (rightly) felt so proud of their backgrounds. It is such a great day to celebrate our multiculturalism.  I had one piece of feedback from a parent around the wearing of orange as a default colour - with his view that it is wasteful to have to buy a new orange top each year if you don't have traditional dress. I can see the point of that and will feed that back to our multicultural committee (no promises of change). The fundamental idea of celebrating cultures via traditional dress is something I am passionate and committed to - so we will go into other thought modes to see if we can process the issue of wastage and the environment, which are also important considerations. 

A flag I want to raise is the excursion/invisits that are coming up for Grades Prep, 2 and 3. We have a number of students whose families have not paid for these and the events are coming up this week and next. We don't want any student missing out on excursions or any parents feeling cross because their child missed out...so please pay attention to the request for payments - otherwise, your child will not able to attend. As always, anyone experiencing financial difficulty should contact Colin in the office to come up with a game plan.

Well, NAPLAN is completed for another year and the Grade 3 and 5 students have done themselves proud with how hard they tried on the exam days. I cruised through the levels on the days of the tests and found children doing their best - and I was so proud of them. I want to thank parents for their support over the journey and the staff for being so well-prepared. We have exceptional NAPLAN outcomes over a long period of time and our attention to detail is a guiding force behind students being able to demonstrate their potential. A special thanks to our Learning Specialist Maddy Morrison who is just exceptional in this area. I have included a survey for parents of students in Grades 3 and 5 below. Please click on the link and share what you think about our NAPLAN preparation. We want to get it right for the next group and your feedback is so valuable whilst it is fresh in your minds. 

On Friday 28th March we have our Ride2School morning. Families are encouraged to ride, scoot or skate to school (or at least some of the way if the journey is long). There will be the famous smoothie bikes and music for everyone to enjoy from 8:20am in the forecourt.

Please support the Easter Raffle by (1) contributing chocolates by dropping them off at the front desk and (2) buying raffle tickets when they come home. We have very few fundraisers and this is one where the kids have a bit of fun and get to experience the excitement of the raffle draw on the last day of term. We appreciate your support.

Finally, a number of our wonderful SMPS families have been observing Ramadan. Eid al-Fitr is a celebration to mark the end of Ramadan. This significant event begins on Sunday, March 30th at dusk and wraps up at sundown on Monday, March 31st. Eid Mubarak to all who are celebrating!

NAPLAN Feedback Invitation (Grades 3 and 5 Parents)

If you are anything like me, I get sick of filling out surveys. I walk along the path next to a shop nowadays and they ask for feedback about the quality of the pavement!

Having said that, I seek your assistance in filling out a survey that might help future children and families with NAPLAN preparation. If you are a parent of a child in Grades 3 and/or 5, you will have received this link via Maddy Morrison's Newsfeed last week. If you have already done it - ignore this request. If not, can you please spend 6 minutes doing the survey to help future kids?

Click here to fill out our survey: NAPLAN Parent Feedback Survey

Noel's Musings

I constantly muse about things - I am a muser. 

On the scale of universal time, if we accept one theory that the start of the universe (which I concede is disputed) is translated into one year, the advent of humankind occurred at 11:59pm on December 31. This means, in relative terms, we have only occupied this time space in the cosmos for less than one minute in the year. And, when you consider our own lives, we are a blip of time on the wider spectrum. 

Consider your own lives flying by. It was yesterday that your child was born, right? But no. They were born at least five years ago and that time has flown past without you noticing. 

What are you to do with the speck of time you are alive? What do you want to achieve and are your actions heading you towards that outcome? We will end our lives an unfinished product. It is up to us to see how much of the canvass we fill before we hand the brush over to our children who restart the painting. And so it goes....