What an exciting couple of weeks it has been in the Early Years! Last week we held our second annual OLSCC Under 8’s week celebrations. Our Prep-Year 2 students were offered a smorgasboard of activities every lunch time, including footy, netball, dance, art and paper plane building. The week culminated in a wonderful festival of fun on Friday, facilitated by Praxis classes from the Senior Years. It was a terrific experience for our oldest and youngest alike, with cross sector input that builds relationships throughout the College. We are grateful to leaders in our College community who stepped up to facilitate the lunchtime activities, including the Confraternity Rugby League team, the QISSN netball team and House Leaders and members. We also took part in National Simultaneous Storytime during the week, sharing in the reading of the book “Family Tree” by Josh Pyke. The goal was to have 1 000 000 people engaging in the same book at the same time all around the nation – and we were happy to play our part from Dalby!

As this newsletter goes to print, we have every class in the Early Years competing in the Dalby Eisteddfod. As you can imagine, this is no easy feat! Months of planning, song selection, practice, costume decisions, more practice, communication with parents and finally, the day has arrived! We are grateful to our Music teacher Mrs Jackie Sullivan for her enthusiasm and skill to pull this together, and to Mrs Libby Baxter for accompanying our classes on piano for performance day. The fun continues next week, as we welcome the Streetscience team to the College. They will be presenting their signature science shows to a variety of classes across the day on Monday.

Within the classroom, students have been busily focusing on learning. Teachers have been facilitating classroom assessment to give feedback to the students and set goals for the next steps in learning. They are currently gathering data to provide information via report cards that will come out at the end of this semester. These reports are a point in time guide to give an indication of how a student is travelling in the classroom as they seek to meet achievement standards in a range of subjects. The report also seeks to keep parents informed on how the student’s attitude and application to learning are going, particularly with reference to the College learning dispositions.

Each fortnight at Early Years assembly, we reflect on the learning dispositions and highlight one in particular to focus on. This fortnight, we are focusing on being persistent, and sticking at things even when it gets challenging. We have identified tools to help us embrace those challenges as we work our way out of the Learning Pit to achieve success. Take some time to ask your child how persistent they have been this week!

Katrina Walton

Assistant Principal Early Years