Welcome back to all of you and hoping that you had a chance to have a break and enjoy precious family time together. Kelly and I returned from Europe last week (Paris, Tuscany and Rome) after 2 ½ weeks together and it was sensational. Kelly’s parents were so generous in looking after out 3 youngest children and they reported that they were wonderfully behaved! As parents you might understand a little surprise at this but wow.. what an opportunity for us to experience these amazing cities together. It was Kelly’s first time to Europe so we made up for this by visiting every church and place of significance. Suffice to say these moments will be cherished.

Meanwhile, back at St Pius X, things are moving at a good pace. We have demolished the Acton Ave house and have the preliminary plans for the Nature Play space which will occupy the area.  I am working with our student Eco leaders and in fact, all children, to gain input as to what this space could become. As far as the larger building project goes, we are completing finance loans and processes with the aim of building in early 2019. 

2018 Primary Mathematics Challenge
Congratulations to our classes, small groups and individual students who have been working on the 2018 Primary Mathematics Challenge. We have six entries that are being forwarded for State wide judging this Saturday. These include Nikolas Radic from Reception, a small group from the other Reception classes, Year 1M, Year 2G/L, Year 4 FS and Year 5 BT. They have all undertaken some marvellous Mathematics investigations and I look forward to hearing how they go in the State judging. Next Newsletter I will give more detail about their entries.

Class Placements
It’s that time of the year when our focus starts to move towards 2019 class structures and the first Newsletter of Term 4 offers the opportunity for parents to inform me about any thoughts that you have in relation to your child’s placement in 2019. As has been stated in previous years, this is not an opportunity to ‘pick a teacher’ but rather to provide us with some further insights into your child’s learning dispositions, friendship groups, talents and skills etc that you wish us to be aware of. Of course, teachers already have much of this information and you would be aware that placing multiple children across two and sometimes three classes needs a great deal of consideration. As has been stated clearly in the past, information from parents should not be considered as a guarantee of a particular placement. There are many factors that teachers weigh up including friendships, a balance of gifts, talents, learning and emotional needs across the classes. Sometimes, we can just see that a particular child will just ‘click’ and be inspired by a particular teacher. So, in summary, we will absolutely respect any information that you would wish to provide in relation to your child’s class in 2019. This will be added to all of the other information in order to discern the best learning environment for your child in our judgement.