Principal Report
Friday 26th March 2021
Dear Parents and Carers,
This week we have had changes and challenges. The rain was a change that created an immediate challenge for our whole school community. The children were disappointed about our school sports being postponed, as were our teaching staff. However, our backup date next Wednesday promises to be a glorious day. It will be a true celebration of endeavour on the student’s last day of school. The sports captains will be assisting the school community during their 1st official engagement as sport captains.
Families are invited to have two guests at the school sports. A note will come home today with the COVID declaration that must be filled out and brought along. Parents will not be allowed to mingle with their children but are asked to bring a foldout chair that can be positioned on the edge of the oval. A QR code station will be set up at the edge of the car park and all attendees will need to sign in.
SOUNDS-WRITE
The junior teachers have been facing challenges and change during this term studying a phonetics sequence system the “Sounds Wright” program.
The 6-week course called “Sounds-Write” is a quality first phonics programme. Its purpose is to provide classroom professionals with a comprehensive system with which to teach reading, spelling and writing. It has been introduced in the junior school with promising results. Sounds-Write is an evidence-based program that presents an instructional method that works because it is a highly structured, cumulative, sequential, explicit and a code-oriented programme for teaching all children to read and spell. Code-oriented means the rules and spelling structure (the code) of literature is taught alongside the sounds that letters make.
The teacher’s dedication has enabled them to implement the content and strategy into their classrooms with immediate success.
LENT and the EASTER JOURNEY
Next week we will come to the end of our 2021 Lenten journey. The Children will engage in “The Stations of the Cross” as a play on Tuesday afternoon. The Grade 5/6’s will lead the whole school in this Easter tradition. I am endeavouring to film the occasion and put it up on the website. Please watch this space.
If you have been inspired to collect coins the Caritas money boxes are due back next week.
GRADE 6 INITIATIVES
This week the Grade 6 children visited, Maryvale Crescent Kindergarten, Mid-Valley Child care centre (the Kinder room) and Good Start Learning centre on commercial Road. To complete a rich assessment task to show how they have learnt the importance of rules and regulations. The study at their level has been focused on the democratic system in Australia. Their challenge was to act out our vision and mission statements which expect students to “contribute to a flourishing world’ and to realise their own excellence in the world. We are putting their experiences on our Facebook page and I invite you to like, share and follow their journey.
I wish you all a restful weekend,
God Bless,
Anne-Marie Robb