Dear Parents and Carers,

Family Week

I hope you are all enjoying Fallow Week – a time to stop, refresh and rejuvenate by spending more time with family and friends without the added commitment of homework! We have Fallow Week in Week 7 of each term as the ‘seventh’ is traditionally observed as the Sabbath or a day of rest.

Reading

This week we were privileged to have Dr. Lorraine Hammond work with our Kinder to Year 2 teachers, along with Susan Chant and myself.  Lorraine is a world renowned expert in the teaching of reading.  She observed our teachers teaching and also demonstrated one of the High Impact Teaching Practices (HITP) - the Daily Review. This will be something that all our teachers will be striving to achieve over the next three years of the Catalyst Program and will support us in the reaching of our two Bold Goals:

• Every student is a competent reader;
• High Impact Teaching Practice is visible in every classroom.

The work we did with Lorraine is heavily research based and is described as The Science of Reading:

‘This body of work is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, nor a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students’. Dr Louisa Moats

Put simply in a visual model:

To resource this approach to the teaching of reading, the SCC approved the purchase of $10 000 in new reading books and students will also have access to decodable readers for home reading. This is through the WUSHKA app. The teachers and classroom support assistants are very excited about this focus on the explicit teaching of reading that we are adopting.

Canteen Manager

I am pleased to announce that Mrs Victoria Town will be our new Canteen Manager. Victoria is a chef by profession and has extensive experience in running an excellent school canteen. She has a keen interest and knowledge in nutrition and food values and believes that healthy, simple food made from fresh ingredients is a big factor in our children’s health, happiness and ability to learn. Victoria is also a parent of our school and is now a welcome member of our staff.  The canteen will resume operating from the beginning of Term 2, on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, recess and lunch. Flexischools will remain the online ordering platform.

Working Bee

The response for helpers at the Working Bee on Sunday March 28^th has been a trickle but I am looking forward to the deluge to come! All the details are further on in the newsletter.

You can let us know directly by clicking on this link

or by returning the slip in the newsletter. Please consider coming along and helping out, even if you can only spare an hour. It’s a great community building event and an opportunity to make the school we are all so proud of, look even better.

School Fees

Term 1 fee payments are now overdue. Thank you to the families who have already settled their accounts. Payment can be made using the Qkr app, Bpay or EFTPOS. As always, if you are experiencing difficulty paying the fees, please do not hesitate to contact Naomi Trussler, Office Manager.

Parent Teacher Interviews

Parent Teacher Interviews are next week. Bookings close tonight at 5pm, so if you haven’t booked a time with your child/ren’s teacher/s, please do so before then. Here is the booking link:

Yours in partnership 

Ursula Jamieson 

Ursula Jamieson
Principal