From the 

Assistant 

Principal

THIS WEEK I'M GRATEFUL FOR...

The end of 2020! I know that this has been such a challenging year for everyone and at this stage I am so grateful that we are all going to be able to spend time with friends and family over the holidays.

END OF THE YEAR

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone in our community for how connected you have all been during this year. It has been a momentous year, with all of its ups and downs and curve balls that it has thrown us. However, throughout all of this, you have all shown your amazing dedication to your children and partnering with us to support their learning. Thank you for your support of our staff, for your support of each other, and above all the support you have provided your children. Have an amazing break and please remember the importance of ‘switching off’, whatever that looks like for you. We all have different ways to wind down and recharge and this is even more important than it has been before. Look after yourselves and we look forward to seeing you all recharged and ready for a great year of learning in 2021!

STUDENT REPORTS

You will all be receiving your child’s report this the afternoon (Thursday the 17th of December). We just want to remind you that these reports will be quite a bit shorter than you might otherwise be used to. The focus for this term has been Literacy, Mathematics, and Wellbeing, and we have wanted our teachers to really focus on making sure that they are putting all their energy into supporting your children to reconnect and to get on top of any learning needs that your child may have. It is always a great idea to discuss your child’s report with them and to take the opportunity to discuss their learning and how proud you are of all their achievements this year.

2021 TIMETABLE CHANGES

For next year we are going to be making a slight change to the timetable and we just want to make sure you are aware of these changes. Basically lunch will be about an hour earlier which will allow for us to have a longer uninterrupted block of learning in the morning while the students are more energetic. The recess break will then be in the afternoon. Please see the timetable below along with the explanation for why we are making these changes.

Rationale:

Professional Learning

As you may know the staff have been undertaking a lot of professional learning in literacy over this last year. This has been an amazing opportunity for us, as a staff, to really start developing some consistent approaches to great teaching in reading and writing. One thing that consistently came out was the importance of having a solid literacy block in the mornings, and our teachers have been finding that they do not have as much time as they feel they need to really hone in on your children’s learning. This change will allow them to implement all the models that we have been learning really well.

Uninterrupted Block of Learning

The uninterrupted block of learning at the start of the day is going to be so valuable for the students. Please understand that this is no way means that the children will be sitting for that time. The way we plan our teaching and learning involves a lot of movement and hands on activities. Over this morning block the children will be moving around all the time, they will be engaged in a wide variety of activities and it will be a very rich learning experience for them.

Feedback From Parents

During flexible and remote learning we found that a lot of parents were finding their children were getting exhausted towards the end of the day, and that they were able to get in most of the productive learning in the morning sessions. This matches what we see in the classroom, and front loading the day will really help us make sure the children are engaged in a lot of the complex learning while they are fresh and have energy.

Heat During Play

As it is starting to get hotter we have been noticing a lot of the children are hot and bothered out in the yard during lunch time. By moving the longer break earlier in the day we are making sure that the kids are out and playing while it is a bit cooler, and then they can go out for a shorter time in the afternoon when the heat is a bit higher.

Food

We have also been finding that a lot of our students are either eating their lunch during recess, and therefore having no food at lunch, or that they are not hungry enough to finish their lunch because of the snack they had at recess. Having the lunch break first will mean that all our students will be able to eat a healthy meal that is so important for their learning and play. We know that this might mean that their snack for the afternoon break will take some adjusting to get used to, but we will all get used to it very fast. Please rest assured that the students will still have fruit break in the morning as they currently do as well.

A REMINDER OF SUPPORTS OVER THE HOLIDAY SEASON

As we come toward the holiday season we know that this time can be quite a difficult time for some families. We just wanted to make sure that we reminding our families of some of the support resources that are available for if they need them.