Ash Wednesday

This morning we enjoyed a beautiful staff prayer on the theme of Ash Wednesday followed by a whole school liturgy marking the commencement of Lent. I asked the children to please consider rather than ‘giving something up’ perhaps do something regularly to support a friend or family member and that Lent is about thinking of our lives and asking for God’s help in making ourselves better people.

Pupil Free Day 

Thankyou to our parents for supporting the school and enabling the staff to enjoy a fabulous session with Lorraine Hammond on our Pupil Free Day on Monday. All teachers and curriculum ESO’s were involved in this Professional Development which focussed on well researched best practices in Literacy.  Here is a little about our presenter.

Dr Lorraine Hammond is a researcher and teacher from Edith Cowan University in Perth, WA. She has a particular interest in preventing literacy based learning difficulties. Lorraine lectures in Direct Instruction and Learning Difficulties and is currently conducting research on Explicit Instruction. She is part of the Kimberley Schools Project and works in remote schools in far north WA providing professional learning and coaching to 19 schools.

Monday was incredibly helpful to us and will further our ‘whole school approach’ to the teaching of literacy.

In a similar way, we are working with an expert in Mathematics education this year as well. I am delighted, as an ex-numeracy consultant, that we are able to explore further ways of ensuring all our students are powerful mathematicians, are able choosers and users of mathematics and develop a sense of joy in the elegance of all that is Mathematics.

Building Work Update

You would be aware that another slab was successfully poured last week which means that we have a floor on the first level. We can now install the roof (probably being delivered this Friday, so be aware of traffic management). We have almost completed moving into our new shed, so demolition of the old shed will happen next week, allowing us to commence the Nature Play project in Week 7.

At the moment we are exploring continuing on with our building works and complete the entire classroom project once this current work is completed in July. That is, 5 more classrooms at ground level, 2 more upstairs with breakout spaces and undercover outdoor learning spaces. There will be considerable cost savings in this. I will keep you posted and the next Newsletter will provide the plan for the next stage.

I am so appreciative of your support of the project. It is exciting to see the development proceeding at pace and I can’t wait to see the children’s faces as they enter their new learning space.

God Bless