Welcome to this edition of our LPS Newsletter.  What an amazing feeling it is to finally have some consistent days of sunshine!  I know the staff and students are very much enjoying being able to access our amazing school grounds and enjoy the fresh air and warmer days after some very challenging wet, rainy days and weeks!

It is such a busy time of the year.  We are already approaching the half-way mark of the term.  There is a lot of excitement in the school this week as our Grade 3-6 students head out on school camps.  Thank you to all those who have put in and are putting in, extra time over the next few days, for planning, organisation and supervision of these events.  Our staff have gone above and beyond to provide timetables that are jam-packed full of amazing experiences that I am sure will create many memories for our students.  We look forward to hearing all about their adventures when they return.

Well done to our Swimming Team who represented our school with pride earlier this week at the Division 1 Interschool Swimming Carnival.  We came 6^th which is a wonderful effort! Our P-6 students have also been busy in the last couple of weeks completing online PAT testing in English and Maths.  PAT testing provides our school with relevant data to track student growth in these learning areas.   

Please ensure that you remain connected to our school’s channels of communication in this busy time in the lead up to the end of year.  There will be many class-based and whole school events that will be scheduled to celebrate the growth and achievement of our students and to celebrate the year.

The School Leadership Team and Staff are already into the phase of planning staffing, our school structures and class groups for 2023.  Other than with the Prep cohort, composite classes will exist across our school next year.  Composite classes give our school the most flexibility in creating class groups where students are placed with other students that they learn well with.  We have a school-based curriculum pacing guide that maps out “A” and “B” years, ensuring that students do not have content repeated from one year to the next.  We also have a school-based systematic approach to teaching Literacy and Numeracy that involves running common assessment tasks at the beginning of each unit to find out what students know, understand, and can do, in any area to identify where to next for each student. This tells us far more about their learning needs than their grade level does.  Careful tracking of student learning data whilst using a composite based class model has shown significant growth in student outcomes.  Please be assured that considerable hours are put into creating class groups to ensure student abilities are spread across classes, students’ emotional and social wellbeing is considered as are existing friendship groups. 

Whole school, class and individual transition support processes will be implemented between now and the end of the year to support student transitions and preparing for change.  It can also be helpful for families to support preparing your child/children for change and  I read an interesting article during the week that highlighted the importance of:

• Letting the child lead the conversation so as not to overwhelm the child with too much information. It is also important to normalise their feelings of challenge towards change and reassure them their feelings are normal.
• As adults sometimes it’s also about shifting our mindset when we are supporting our children through change, change doesn’t always have to be seen as a scary time, change can definitely also be exciting!

Thank you for supporting our teachers in the Industrial Action that took place during the week.  We understand that this may have provided some logistical challenges for families but we really appreciate your support.