A very warm welcome back to all of our children, parents and carers for Term 3. I hope you all were able to spend some quality time with your family during this break. It was really lovely to see so many smiling faces on Tuesday as the children walked into the school grounds.

As we near the end of a disrupted and challenging term, what has been wonderful to see is the continued learning and engagement of the students. I feel there is still a lot to be grateful for, with the continuing improvement of the COVID-19 in our state which has resulted in many more opportunities for the children to participate in over the course of the term.

Over the week, the children have been engaging in a variety of activities to support their mental, physical and emotional wellness. It has been wonderful to see the children actively participating in a range of the different activities offered, including daily fitness, led by our fantastic Year 6 leaders; daily meditation; wearing pyjamas to school; dancing up a storm with our lunchtime disco and completing some movement and breathing exercises led by guest speakers, Marion McRae and Jess Koontz. I have also been very impressed with some of the entries into our Healthy Lunchbox competition! Let’s hope the rain stays away for our Staff vs Students netball game on Friday afternoon…Go Tommy More Staff!!

Next Week is Wellness Week! We will be having a focus on wellness with lots of activities organised to support the mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of our staff and students.

It has been wonderful to see the parents’ smiling faces as they have been allowed to enter the school again. Although parents are not yet allowed to enter the classrooms during pick-up and drop-off, or help out in classrooms, it has been great to take another step closer to resuming normal times. Parent meetings that are to be face-to face, need to be by appointment only at this stage. Assemblies will recommence on
Fridays.

I hope you all had a wonderful Long Weekend, celebrating WA Day with your families. It is an important day to celebrate all Western Australians, recognising our Aboriginal history, early European settlers and the many from all over the world who have made, and continue to make, WA their home.

As always, there is a lot happening in all of our classes across the school. The Year 6 students are finalising their ‘Genius’ projects, ready to be presented, the Year 3 students are learning about the Aboriginal culture and are creating some fantastic Aboriginal boomerangs with traditional symbols on them. I listened to the Year 2s perform a song in Music, with the children either playing different instruments or singing and the Kindy students are learning about different textures in Art by completing crayon rubbings.

As we began this week with all students returned to school, it has been fantastic to see the excellent learning that is taking place in the classrooms. Over the week, I have had the chance to spend time in many classrooms and witnessing the way the children are engaged in developing their understanding and skills. It has been wonderful to see the way the staff have put such a strong emphasis on allowing our students to take ownership over their learning, where they know what they are learning (the learning intention), why they are learning what they are and what our students need to demonstrate in their learning (success criteria). This provides each student with the opportunity to show what they are learning in many different ways, as activities can be tailored to suit different learning needs and activities.

Following a review of the modes of a delivery being offered by Catholic Education WA, it has been decided that as of Monday 18th May, we will return to our normal modes of instruction. This has mostly been happening in our classrooms over the past week anyway, given we have been back to over a daily attendance of 95%. Although there will be a return to the usual face-to-face teaching, we will still continue to utilise the online apps of Teams (Years 3 – 6) and SeeSaw (Kindy – Year 2) to assist learning and communicate with parents. Further information about this will come from CEWA soon.

It was great to see so many students back at school this week. At around 90% attendance, it makes it very easy for the teachers to get back on with their job of educating our students and ensuring they are accessing the best education possible. Of course, for the children still learning at home, the teachers are ensuring the remote learning packages are easy to understand and complete, whilst still extending each child’s learning. Our smaller class numbers have also assisted, ensuring our teaching staff can personally tailor the learning to each child and quickly pick up where we left off last term.