Dear Parents and Caregivers,

I hope the beginning of the 2020 school year has been smooth sailing for you and your family! The children and staff have all settled in well, and have been actively engaged in our Wellbeing Week activities. These lessons have all been built around developing safe and respectful class structures and expectations, establishing sound peer relationships and engaging the students in activities centered around some dispositions - or ‘competencies’ for learning. These dispositions are those skills that our children will need to productively participate in the learning process, and ultimately be prepared for the worlds they are inheriting! These dispositions for learning are characterised around the Acronym GROWERS which stands for Gritty, Reflective, Optimistic, Wondrous, Engaged, Risk takers, Self aware.

I hope that you hear and see evidence of your children exhibiting these dispositions in their learning as the year progresses!

Another important aspect of the work we have been doing at the beginning of the year is learning about and expressing Gratitude. Gratitude is our emotion that relates to our ability to feel and express thankfulness and appreciation. There is strong research that in dictates that developing the capacity to show and exhibit gratitude can significantly improve our well-being. Some of the benefits of gratitude include:

• Improved physical, emotional and social wellbeing
• Greater optimism and happiness,
• Improved feelings of connection in times of loss or crises
• Increased self-esteem
• Heightened energy levels
• Strengthened heart, immune system, and decreased blood pressure
• Improved emotional and academic intelligence
• Expanded capacity for forgiveness
• Decreased stress, anxiety, depression and headaches
• Improved self-care and greater likelihood to exercise
• Heightened spirituality -- ability to see something bigger than ourselves

This year, our school is committed to showing gratitude wherever we can! I hope that you will hear a lot about gratitude from your children throughout the year.

The final and very important work we have been doing these past two weeks is diagnostic data collection. This information will assist us to target our teaching to each child’s needs, moving forward.

At the beginning of every school year, our community welcomes many new faces! This year, we welcome:

Last Friday’s Beginning of the Year Mass was a great way to start our year, and it allowed us to formally install our student leaders for 2020. We congratulate the following students who are undertaking leader roles this year:

I trust that all families enjoyed our open classrooms and Welcome Gathering last Friday night. Thanks to the P&F for serving drinks from the Bar, and all who purchased - funds have been donated to SA Bushfire Appeal.

We will be hosting regular “Learning Walks” this year – the first of which is on Thursday 20 February. These dedicated times have been put aside for students to showcase the learning they have been doing in their classes with their family/special people. 

My sincere thanks to Chris Greene from Cybersafe Families for hosting a parent session on Thursday 31^st January. There were only a few families in attendance, however those who did attend thought the session to be very worthwhile. We will be hosting a session like this for parents and for students each year from now on, and hopefully we can get many more families coming along to hear this really relevant and important information.

Have a great week everyone,

God bless,

Phil