David's Message

Dear Sunny Heights Community,

What a term it's been! The weather has been a bit colder and wetter than I'd have liked, but the plants seemed to have loved it in the Nugal-nganjin Garden. As the term rolled on, we experienced some amazing excursions to the Botanic Gardens, the opera, the Arts centre and more. We were also really lucky to have some incursions with STEM, a great evening at Twilight School, and have been loving our successes at Interschool Sports. As a staff team we have made a commitment to creating as many great opportunities for our students as we can, to ensure we develop their oral language, their background knowledge and their vocabulary, as we link these experiences to our literacy focus. 

You might have seen our Gratitude Wall growing in the Prep to 2 corridor. It has been breathtaking to see these little snippets and moments of joy developing during the term, and it has given me a great opportunity to reflect on all the things that are great about our community. I am very grateful to have a staff team who go the extra mile for our kids and parents, and I know this is something the parents I chat to regularly think too. I'm also very grateful that our students love to take risks with their learning, show empathy for each other and celebrate our diversity. This makes our school a special place indeed. Finally, I am incredibly grateful to you as our parent community. This term I have watched as you volunteered time, read with your children, weeded and planted and installed irrigation, visited us for Twilight School and kept us all smiling in the yard. You have fed our students through breakfast club and shared many ideas for how we can keep growing in the future. We love having you as co-owners of our school and our community!

In the coming term we have a few staff who will be taking long service leave, including Miss Thomai (who will be replaced by the amazing Miss Gail) and Mrs Wolf (replced by her usual counterpart, Mrs Vella). We know how important it is after the long periods of lockdown to connect with family and enjoy time together, so we wish them both a very special time and look forward to their safe return. We will also be welcoming some new faces to our Educational Support Team - keep an eye out for an announcement about this in the coming weeks. We have added a page to this newsletter where we are sharing some information about our staff so you get to know us a little better!

You might have noticed we've had a number of student absences due to colds, flu and of course, our old friend COVID. We were very much expecting this, and it has been good to see students wearing masks if they need to. We continue to keep our air purifiers running in the classroom and ensuring a well ventilated environment. If you do have worries about any time your child has missed, please make sure you share this with your child's teacher when we meet next term for parent teacher interviews (Week 2). We will hold the parent teacher interviews on Tuesday 18th July, and this day will finish early at 1pm, to allow students and their parents to meet with teachers from 1:30pm. As ever, Big Childcare is available for a half day's care - please chat to Rosa and the team if you need to access this care. 

We also have a curriculum day on Thursday the 13th July - this means that students will not be on site, unless they are booked in to Big Childcare. The office will not be open on this day as our learning is taking place off site. 

Have a very safe and happy holiday, we can't wait to see you all in term 3 where we have big plans for our Book Week, Science Week and more.

Best wishes,

David and the Sunny Heights Team