Last newsletter, I wrote about how highly we value our involvement in local community events. A wonderful example of this occurred last Friday, when our Prep classes were all involved in the First 5 Forever initiative hosted by the Dalby Library, at the Under 6 Community Day. This was a great opportunity for children from local kindergartens, early learning centres and schools to come together in a celebratory event at the Dalby Events Centre. We were also admirably supported by a terrific group of Year 9 students who assisted in facilitating activities throughout the morning. I thank these older students for being fully engaged in this and being wonderful ambassadors for our College.

The community events continue tomorrow with our involvement in the Dalby Eisteddfod Verse Speaking category, held right here on site at OLSCC, in our Multipurpose Centre. All year levels from Prep to Year 4 will be involved in this section. A reminder of details previously sent is included here:

When? Friday 11 August

Where? OLSCC Multipurpose Centre

Who? All students Prep-Yr 4

Time? The section begins at 9:00am, with P-2 in the first category, followed by Year 3 then Year 4. Each performance will take between 5-7 minutes.

What do students wear? The P-2 students are in the “creative” section and will wear clothes to match their performance piece (see below). The Year 3 and 4 students will wear their formal school uniform as they perform in the traditional section.

Cost? The Eisteddfod committee have waived any admission fees for this performance since it is taking place on our College premises.

Communication with your child’s teacher in the Early Years

There are a variety of platforms used to communicate to and from school, including phonecalls, emails, newsletters and parent portal. In the Early Years, we are lucky enough to have an extra, super convenient communication method through the use of Class Dojo. This instant messaging system, similar to text, means it is quick and easy to send of a short message.

Whilst these all work to ensure we can maintain high levels of communication between home and school, it is important to note some parameters that need to be considered.

• All Early Years teachers are unable to check messages during the school day, from 8:30am-3:10pm. This is because they are fully engaged in welcoming students into the classroom, then teaching face to face, covering playground duties at lunch, afternoon tea, before and after school. On top of this, they are often juggling the all important tasks of locating missing hats, assisting to refill waterbottles, finding the tuckshop box that has gone astray, getting a lost jumper to it’s rightful owner, soothing a scraped knee…..the list goes on, as you can imagine!
• As such, any important messages that need to be acted on THAT DAY must go through the College office via a phone call, eg, changes to pickup routines including buses, appointment scheduling etc. The teacher will quite likely not see a dojo message or email about this until after all children have left the school grounds. In addition, your child comes across many different staff during the day, including on playground duty and after school duties, and any concerns or queries by those other than the class teacher will be directed to the Office Administration staff for clarification. If a dojo has gone to the teacher with a change in pickup arrangements, the office staff are therefore unable to assist with queries.
• Our office is currently fully staffed, and these magnificent ladies will ensure your message gets to where it needs to be in a timely manner.
• Any request for a teacher to respond to your message should include a 24 hour turnaround period as a minimum. Teachers are not always able to respond directly the same day, as they are often running extra-curricular activities such as athletics training, Optiminds team practice, choir rehearsals, team meetings etc after school.
• All communication, including phonecalls, dojo and emails, should occur between the hours of 7:00am – 5:30pm as a matter of courtesy.
• Since you are reading this newsletter, you will get this message! Please ensure others also get all the important information by encouraging families to regularly read the newsletter. I love it when I hear one parent assist another by saying ‘It’s in the latest newsletter.’ Thanks for doing that!

Mrs Katrina Walton

Assistant Principal Early Years