What a week of wild weather we are having! As I write this article (Thursday) the sun is shining and the wind is at a reasonable kite flying strength, but we made the decision to cancel sport as the rain and wind forecast is at category 1 cyclone strength for today.

It is always a difficult decision to cancel sport the day or so before based on forecasts, but many schools have buses, relief teachers and other arrangements made that are hard to wind back the Friday morning. We also have to think about the safety of our students and visiting staff members and this Friday certainly appears to be very unsafe.

We have been visited by a number of different schools and teachers recently who have been observing our teachers’ practice, our tiered system of support (learning intervention), discussing our curriculum documentation and implementation and having conversations of how we have improved our overall literacy. It has been fantastic for us to continue to reflect on what we are doing and sharing those processes, as it allows us to further deepen our own knowledge and continue to implement the most rigorous, evidence based teaching and learning possible. We have more schools and teachers visiting us in the  future as we continue to celebrate and continue our literacy improvement journey.

As stated above, we are always looking to improve our students’ literacy. Part of this will be some new information for parents that will be delivered soon. This will be through the newsletter, home reading folders and our social media channels- keep an eye out for it!

It was exciting to see how our students embraced the book week dress up day last Thursday. I was most encouraged by the number of students and families who were able to talk about the character they were and from which book they were from. Our art work from the draw, talk and write competition looks amazing and there certainly were a lot of students able to talk passionately about their favourite book character.

And lastly, I would like share that over the coming weeks you will receive some work samples from your child and our teachers will be contacting you to give a brief update on your child’s learning progress. This applies to all students apart from those on Learning Plans where ongoing conversations are in place. The communication may be in person, phone, email, etc. Please remember that our teachers are always willing to discuss your child’s learning. We do ask however, that you make an appointment to do so if you want to have a thorough conversation, as before and after school our teachers have a lot of work to do and their own professional learning on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

https://youtu.be/9MhOzwFIeFo

https://youtu.be/6Z6FfkaZmK4