29 Oct 2020
Book Week Fun
Our students enjoyed a wonderful day last Wednesday. It was nice for them to experience (albeit a COVID style!) Book Week and get decked out in their costumes. They all looked amazing! Thank you to Michele McKenzie and Terry Williams for their organisation of the parade, the virtual Book Fair and the virtual author chat. Let’s hope next year we can have our families back to join in the fun. COVID update Later this week I am expecting to hear of some possible further easing of restrictions. Hopefully these may provide us with the opportunity to get our parents on site for Kinder Orientation. Once any changes are known, I will be notifying all of our families.
Semester 2 reports
Our teachers are working on the Semester 2 student reports. These will be more comprehensive than the modified versions our parents received at the end of Semester 1. Reports are anticipated to be sent out in Week 9 of this term.
2021 enrolments and staffing
Thank you to families who have provided their Kindergarten enrolment forms. At this stage we have only 59 kinder students attending in 2021 and a total anticipated enrolment of 489. We will likely be forming 3 kinder classes – however this could increase to 4 if further enrolments are received over coming weeks. Obviously, this impacts on our staffing and budget. We are busily trying to make plans for classes for 2021 – we are anticipating more grade-based classes as opposed to stage-based. As in previous years, we hope to inform our students and parents of class teachers and classes prior to the end of the year. At this stage we have decided upon 3 kindergarten teachers for 2021. They will be Miss Lucy Niccol, Mrs Jane Antrim and Miss Jessica Chapman. These ladies are very excited to be working with our new kinders next year. A reminder to our families that if your child is not intending to return to Lake Albert in 2021, please fill in the slip (later in this newsletter) and return it to me. A final call also to any parents of intending Kindergarten students. It makes it extremely difficult to plan if numbers are not known.
Staff Professional Learning
Last week all Lake Albert staff had the incredible opportunity to work with and learn from Sydney-based Literacy consultant, Jo-Anne Dooner. Jo-Anne works with multiple schools Australia wide. We have partnered with Jo-Anne for the next 2-3 years to draw on her expertise. The learning achievements and academic growth of students in the schools she has/ is working with is phenomenal! Our whole school practices in reading, writing, phonics and spelling will be undergoing massive transformation, heavily based around the ‘science of reading’ – proven research-based strategies to ensure the best learning outcomes for our students. Our families will notice many changes to the way we do things – we will provide lots of information (and hopefully be able to run some information sessions) as these changes are implemented.
Day for Daniel
This Friday our SRC is holding a Red Day to raise money and awareness for the Daniel Morcombe foundation. Please help us support this extremely worthy cause, aimed at keeping our children safe. Students are encouraged to wear something red and bring in a gold coin donation. Our canteen will also be holding a Red Day in conjunction with this.
Kay
