Principal's
Message
BE INVOLVED, BE CONNECTED
WELCOME BACK
On behalf of our school, I want to say a big thank you to all our students, parents and carers for your continued resilience and support throughout this year.
All students in Prep to Year 6 return to on-site schooling on Monday 12 October, we are excited to have all our students back and can’t wait to see their smiling faces.
We will continue to have in place strong measures to protect the health and safety of students, staff, families and the community. This includes restricting parent access to school grounds, separate entry and exist gates for students at the beginning and end of the day, separate play areas, and continued emphasis on hand hygiene and physical distancing where possible. We remind parents that you need to take particular attention when congregating at the school gate, wear your mask and maintain physical distancing.
Term 4 Priorities
Priority 1 – Wellbeing and Equity
The wellbeing, and particularly the mental health, of every student and member of staff is the highest priority. This means encouraging and sustaining motivation for learning, re-engaging students, and supporting the social and emotional learning of children.
Priority 2 – Learning and Excellence
Some students have been better able to progress in their learning in the remote and flexible learning environment, others have maintained their rate of progress, and some have, despite their best efforts and those of their families and teachers, not progressed in their learning.
I know remote and flexible learning has not always been easy, our school will support any student who has fallen behind to catch up. Natalie Brass our literacy intervention specialist is taking small groups of students, that have been identified by teachers for catch up lessons.
Literacy and numeracy across the curriculum remain a focus, we will be adapting our teaching and learning program in Term 4 to be responsive to student needs.
We know some families are worried that their child may have to repeat a year due to the disruptions of coronavirus (COVID-19). There is little evidence to support the benefits of repeating a year to catch up. Instead, we will use teaching strategies that draw on the best evidence available to help students meet their learning needs. Parents and carers can be confident that the best option for almost every child is to stay with their peer group.
Priority 3 – Transitions
Term 4 is a critical period, particularly for the children moving from kindergarten into Prep, from Grade 6 into Year 7. Students in other year levels will also prepare for a change of teachers and new classmates. A key focus of Term 4 will be to make every effort to ensure each of these end-of-year and beginning-of-year transitions occurs as successfully as possible.
CURRICULUM DAY- NOVEMBER 2ND
We have a curriculum day on Monday 2nd November, our teachers are participating and presenting (virtually) at the Smart Tech Inspiring Great Conference 2020. We are also videoing messages from some of our students to be used at this event. TheirCare will be operating a full day program for parents requiring supervision for their children.