When reflecting on this term and how quickly it has gone, how much wonderful learning has taken place and how ready we all are for a break, it has only just occurred to me that this was our first full term this year.!

In Term 1, most of the children were beginning At Home Learning in Week 8 or 9. We remained this way until Week 6 of Term 2, giving us 5 weeks of school in face-to-face mode.

After 10 weeks of hard work this term, , we are all tired, and rightly so. It is now time to take the next couple of weeks of school holidays to unwind, relax, reconnect and regenerate, ready for our final term for 2020.

Term 4 – School-wide focus

Our School Improvement Plan (SIP) for this and the next two years has a focus on improving the writing skills of our students. We started at the beginning of this year, narrowing the focus to look at spelling.  We have adapted our programs, embedded explicit teaching of spelling rules and the application of these into our daily routines, used a variety of strategies to assist the students learn and apply these rules, as well as having fun along the way.

From next term, our focus shifts to explicitly teaching how to write super sentences, structure texts for a variety of audiences and self and partner edit. While most of us take it for granted, these are skills that our students will need and use for the rest of their lives, so it is important to take things slowly. We look forward to sharing some of this amazing work with you through our newsletters next term!

More play in the day!

Understanding the vital importance of play in a young person’s life, we have decided to trial a change to our lunch and recess times to allow for this to occur at BOTH breaks in the day.

Lunch in Term 4 will be from 11:15am to 11:55am. At the beginning of this time, the students will have time to eat their lunch, then spend the rest of the break running, creating, gardening and playing as they always do. It is a bit shorter than it has been, but this will allow the following break to function in exactly the same way.

Recess will be from 1:25pm to 2:05pm. At the beginning of this break, the children will have something to eat and then be able to go back out on the playground, on the equipment and use all creative play spaces again.

We feel that this will greatly benefit our students, socially and academically. We will seek your valuable feedback at some point in Term 4 to assist with our planning for 2021 and beyond.

Year 6 End of Year celebrations

Unfortunately, due to COVID, we are unable to hold our usual end of year functions and celebrations. Ms McGann spoke with Year 6 recently, and while they are disappointed, are happy to help OLV reimagine these events so that a new version of them can occur. Again, whilst it is unfortunate, it has been wonderful to see them engage with the change and be actively involved in the solution, one in which we can still have families be a part of this important and special time for our Year 6 students and their families.

Crossing the Road

Whilst on bus duty last week, I had a flashback to a video game I played occasionally as a child – Frogger. Those old enough will understand this reference and will be able to relate it to attempting to cross Sandgate Road of an afternoon.

Sandgate Road is a very busy road, with the majority of the traffic disregarding the 40km/h speed limit around schools.

Please, please, PLEASE don’t cross through the traffic. The lights are the safest way to cross any road, but particularly such a busy road. Please collect your child/ren from the school side of Sandgate Road and use the lights to walk back to your car, if it is parked across the road.

Lovell Parade has also become a much busier street in the afternoons and last week a child ran across the road in front of an oncoming car. Luckily, nothing happened, but we can not allow this to happen. Please collect your child/ren from the school side of Lovell Parade and walk them across the road when it is safe to do so.