28-Oct-2020
Dear Families,
Thank you for helping our students to transition successfully back into our school setting over the last few weeks. On the whole, students have shown great resilience and have launched into their learning with great enthusiasm.
It remains normal for children to feel afraid or overwhelmed during these uncertain times and some stress and anxiety is to be expected. In an effort to further support our students and families the attached PDF – FREE counselling for school aged children – is provided as an option you may wish to explore.
This is one of many options available to our families. If you would like more information on other support services that we have access to, please give James or Luke a call at school and we’ll be more than happy to help. Having our students, families and staff feeling happy and healthy is a key to helping finish 2020 strongly and establishing a platform for a successful 2021.
This Friday 30 October is a student free day as we continue to enhance our staff’s knowledge and understanding of the Science of Reading. Facilitators- Cathy Harrison and Hannah Power- have been engaged to narrow our focus on the teaching of Reading skills to students. Central to this is developing strong phonological awareness (rhyme, syllable identification and alliteration), phonemic awareness (the ability to segment or blend sounds)and the importance of oral language. This continues a journey that we have been on for the past 12 months and across the school we have seen some great growth in our students’ reading data.
The final part of our day will be examining our school’s 2021 Annual Implementation Plan. The key priorities of this plan will be:
- Learning catch-up and extension
- Happy, active and healthy kids
- Connected schools
Next year we will be running 21 classes. There will be 5 Foundation classes and a need to create some new, temporary, learning spaces using our current buildings so that we can keep our class sizes as low as possible. There will also be 4 x Year 1, 4 x Year 2, 2 x Year 3, 2 x Year 4 and 4 x Year 5/6 classes running, meaning that the average class size throughout the school will be a tick over 21 students per class.
Shortly we will have finalised our staffing roster for 2021 and be able to share the classroom planning model. We remain hopeful (though not confident) that we will be able to access some relocatable buildings to help ease the impact and cost of having to reconfigure some of our spaces.
With the weather seemingly on the improve and an abundance of students riding and scooting to school (which is fabulous to see), it is timely to remind our community of a few protective measures that can be taken to ensure our students remain safe.
Riding to School- from the Department Guidelines
Children under the age of 12 may ride on footpaths, as can a supervising adult. They are required to give way to pedestrians and to wheel their bicycles over pedestrian and children’s crossings.
Children aged 12 years or older are required by law to ride on the road.
Road safety authorities recommend that children under the age of 9 are supervised by an adult when riding on the road. Depending on their cycling skills and experience, some children over this age may still require supervision.
Helmets
Parents and students should be reminded that the law requires that all cyclists wear an approved bicycle helmet.
Approved helmets have the Australian Standards Mark TM (AS/NZS 2063) and will be marked as suitable for cycling.
School will be open as usual on Monday before the Melbourne Cup public holiday.
Take care and stay safe
James Whitla
