19-Feb-2021
Dear Families
A huge thank you to our school community for your support and understanding during this ‘Circuit Breaker’.
As quickly as we were forced into learning from home, we have bounced straight back into regular learning structures and routines back at school. Our students have recommenced where they left off and barely missed a beat. I am extremely grateful to our dedicated staff who suspended time with family, friends and loved ones over the weekend to ensure our students had the opportunity to continue to learn at the start of this week.
For our schools to react so quickly, set up the learning activities, manage the device allocation (which is another issue all on its own), manage the onsite learning provision, negotiate with staff about the work from home situation and make sure the vulnerable and ‘at risk’ students were supported this coming week is an outstanding effort.
If, or when, another snap lockdown is called, we will most likely be moving to a model more akin to the one we had operating during 2020 – Teachers running lessons via WebEx and learning tasks posted on SEESAW. Our staff have been very active in planning for this eventuality and I am confident that we will be ready to roll this out at short notice if need be. We will continue to communicate these changes in a timely manner and work closely with you to make sure that any 2021 Remote and Flexible learning is effective and that our expectations and processes are clear and understood.
There will no doubt be further challenges throughout this year, and we will continue to focus together on our priorities for 2021:
- student wellbeing, enabling every student to be happy, healthy and active
- learning catch up and extension activities, through effective assessment and differentiation of student learning
- engaging with families and the communities
Progress reports.
Available below are the goals and areas of focus our students and teachers are working towards achieving over the first 6-7 weeks of school. These statements are included so that you have a clear line of sight of our learning intentions at each year level. The start of the year always includes a strong focus on students’ personal and social capabilities and establishing strong routines for learning key Literacy and Numeracy skills.
Child Safety Policy
Our Child Safety Policy is a document that outlines the importance of creating and maintaining a child safe environment. Among other things it details students’ rights and responsibilities and the standards we hold ourselves to as teachers and educators.
Tip of the Week
This week our Student ‘Resilience Project’ manuals arrived. After the disruption of this week, it was great to be able to use these throughout the school. The Resilience Project (RP) has 3 key components that combined, help to build and sustain resilience. The first of these components is GRATITUDE. By paying attention to the things we have right now, and not concerning ourselves with at we do not have – we become more grateful.
The following daily questions have been developed by the RP team to help families practise Gratitude. They can be a terrific way to start positive conversations with family members as you share a meal, preparing for school or work, when you get home – pretty much any time that works best for you.
- What were three things that went well for you today?
- Who is someone you feel very grateful for today and why?
- What is something you are looking forward to tomorrow?
The more we ask these questions and think about our answers, the more we are developing our own resilience through being grateful.
There are some activities included in the link below for all ages that we hope you find useful
https://theresilienceproject.com.au/at-home/learning/gratitude/
Take care and stay safe
James Whitla