Dear Parents & Guardians
Hopefully, your children have started to settle into school. I have been really amazed at how well they have coped with the challenge of having so many children in one space, however, I also think that this speaks volumes of our staff’s capacity to support our children.
It looks like our new building will be ready next week. Please remember that we have an early close on Tuesday (February 21). School will finish at 11.30am to allow time for the staff to move furniture and set up. I’m really looking forward to being able to show our community our wonderful new building.
Next week, we have our first mass at school this year for Ash Wednesday. We are trying to work out the logistics to see how we fit all the children in one space and we will need to use the new building to do this. I am hopeful that parents and guardians will be able to join us as they missed out last year due to COVID restrictions. I will let you all know early next week if this is possible.
EXTREME HEAT DAYS, SCHOOL HATS AND SUNSCREEN (and UNIFORM!)
It looks like we are in a for run of hot weather, starting tomorrow. Given the forecast for tomorrow, it is very likely that we will keep the children inside for playtime to avoid over exposure to the sun.
With the hot weather, it is vital that all children come to school with a hat. Children will not be able to play outside without having a hat on.
Children without a hat will need to play under the shade sail and with the number of children coming to school without a hat, this is beginning to resemble St Kilda beach on a really hot day! It is not ideal for so many children to be in one space, so we need all our parents and guardians to make sure their children have a hat at school.
There are a lot of hats (and other items of uniform) in the lost property basket in the office – you might want to search in their if your child has lost theirs. This is also a good indication that parents and guardians must make sure that every piece of uniform is labelled with their child’s name as otherwise it is nearly impossible for us to know who it belongs too.
The children should be wearing a St Lawrence of Brindisi school hat. If they forget on the odd day, we will not be correcting them, but if there are children who are consistently not wearing the school hat, we will be discussing this with their parents and guardians unless there is a specific reason for this. They should also have a St Lawrence of Brindisi school bag rather than a general generic bag.
We would also request that you send your child to school with roll-on sunscreen. It is not really suitable for staff to be applying sunscreen to children and sunscreen that children can put on themselves makes things simpler. Also, please make sure that you send your child to school with a full drink bottle.
We are trying to clarify with the Department of Education if St Lawrence of Brindisi is still a designated bushfire school as we currently do not appear on any of their lists. Once we have clarity on this, we will communicate this to parents and guardians, but until such time, we will continue to act on the previous advice that we are a designated bush fire school. This means that if are told to do so in the event of a day being classified catastrophic, we are required to close for the day.
Auslan & TCL
Welcome to another fabulous year of learning in 2023. St Lawrence of Brindisi is proud to be a part of a (TCL) Teachers as Co-Learners program whilst learning and teaching Auslan. Auslan is a language used to communicate with deaf people.
We are encouraging our students and teachers to actively participate in 15-minute lessons each day and use Auslan to communicate with each other and with teachers throughout the day.
The students have proven that they enjoy learning the language as they are seen communicating with our Language Assistant, Zoe, who is profoundly deaf. This year, we look forward to learning more of the language and incorporating Auslan in our songs and prayers.
Please encourage your child to share with you what they know about Auslan and you too can be on the learning journey with us!
Happy signing everyone!
Natalie Bruzzese
TCL Leader
NAPLAN 2023
The annual NAPLAN assessment takes place much earlier this year. Our Grade 3 and 5 students will be completing their NAPLAN assessment in March this year. I have provided an information sheet with this newsletter. If you have any questions about the NAPLAN assessment, please come and talk to Caroline or I.
PARKING
Hopefully, the kiss n’ go (student drop off and collection) should be ready next week! We will send out communication to parents and guardians regarding this early next week but this should make the parking around the school easier (and safer!!)
OPEROO
The Operoo app is one of our major ways of communicating with parents and guardians. If you do not yet have this set up on your phone, it is critical that you install this as soon as possible. If you are having trouble with this, please contact the school office for assistance.
STAFFING UPDATE
Sadly, at the end of last week, Claire McClelland, one of our amazing Administration Officers indicated her decision to resign from St Lawrence of Brindisi for personal reasons. Many of you will have had positive interactions with Claire in the office. Claire did a sterling job in the office (setting up the admin in a new school is a big task) and we are grateful for her efforts and sad to see her leave our community. We wish her all the best for the future. We now begin the process of finding a worthy replacement for Claire.
STUDENTS ARRIVING EARLY OR COLLECTED LATE
A reminder for parents and guardians that no children should be dropped off at school before 8.30am. We cannot provide supervision for these students before this time as we cannot guarantee that staff will be on-site before this time. Also, children must be collected from school no later than 3.30pm.
In the event of an emergency, we try to support our families and make sure the children are looked after but this should not be a regular occurrence. If dropping off your children or collecting them from school is an issue, please come and talk to us. It is useful to remember that parents and guardians to have to the option of KellyClub and the children love going and love the KellyClub staff.
Bearing that in mind, it is also important that children arrive on time for school and no later than 8.50am. Coming in late for school regularly is really unsettling for a child and also for the rest of the children in their class.
TERM OVERVIEWS
Attached to this bulletin are the Term Overviews from each of our Learning Communities: Exploration (Prep), Discovery (Grade 1-2), Curiosity (Grade 3-4), Challenge (Grade 5-6) and our specialist learning community (Visual Arts and Science).
These will hopefully provide parents and guardians with an idea of what their children will be learning this term and some ways in which you can help your child at home. If you need further information, please make time to talk to your child’s teacher.
TOYS
A reminder from our Exploration Team. If any parents or guardians have access to toys in good condition, particularly toy cars, the Exploration teachers would be very grateful for any donations.
God bless,
Bill Hill
PRINCIPAL