Across Oliver's Desk 

Dear Parents & Guardians, 

COVID UPDATE 

Following last weekend’s announcements, it is now recommended but not mandatory that children in primary school wear masks.  Parents and carers of students learning onsite are asked to discuss this with their child/ren.  The decision of whether to wear a mask at school or not will be left to each family.  It is important that the children feel comfortable with the choice made and staff here will always ensure that they remain supportive and have each child’s emotional wellbeing at the forefront of everything they do.  At this stage, the rules around staff not having to wear a mask when directly teaching students, has not changed, but they can wear one if they choose.   All other staff must always wear masks whilst at school, unless eating or drinking.  Thank you for your continued support and understanding during this lockdown period.  I know many of you are struggling to see the end in sight, however we continue to work together to ensure that all students are learning, and our families are safe. I would also like to thank those members of our community, who continue to complete random acts of kindness which can often seem to go unnoticed, but DO mean a great deal.  Thank you for what you do as it is keeping everyone’s spirits up.

WEDNESDAYS ANNOUNCEMENT 

We will not have any definitive idea of what plans the Government has for schools until next week.  However, I would like to say that we do need our students to keep engaging with our remote learning.  Our teacher judgement results half year, combined with the NAPLAN results demonstrate that what we have done through remote learning has worked.  Of course it will never be better than face to face teaching but it is the best we can offer for our children to keep learning. 

NAPLAN

This week the school was given its 2021 NAPLAN results. The results are again outstanding and demonstrate why we are regarded as a high performing school.  I would like to thank all of our staff for the wonderful combined effort they do to get results like we received this week.  As I said above we are always striving to make sure we are supporting the emotional wellbeing of every student but schools run well when children work towards their goals and are given constant feedback on the next point of improvement.  Schools need to be about learning, which we of course are, that is why I believe we continue to do well with NAPLAN testing. Congratulations to all our students who will receive all their individual results through the mail soon.  We are very proud of all of you.

PREP TRANSITION

At the moment we are assuming that we will not be able to go ahead with our first transition activity in week 2 of term 4.  We did manage to get most things in last year and I’m sure we will find away again this year.  We will let parents know of our new plans ASAP. 

MELISSA ERICKSON & JESS LOWE

At the end of this week we say goodbye to our much loved Prep teacher Mel as she goes off on maternity leave.  We welcome Jess Lowe who has had a wonderful hand over and worked with Mel and the Prep students over the last month.  Jess has fitted in like she has been here all year. 

We look forward to all the wonderful news from Mel when her first child arrives. We will keep you informed!

PRODUCTION

Unfortunately we will have to postpone production until next year which is such a shame. We will run with the same production next year but we will have to re-do the audition process because some of the characters were given to grade sixes. I know this will be devastating news for a lot of students but we simply will not have the time to run rehearsals and organise the millions of things that go with production considering we were meant to be performing next week.

This week has been a pretty tough week for everyone, please make sure you look after yourself this week and thank you again for all your support! I will definitely escape to my book this week!