Learning is in full swing across the Early Years as we speed on into Term 4. Please keep your eye on the many important dates we have coming up this term. The College calendar on SZapp App should be your first port of call to check dates for important College events.

Several essential notes will have gone home over the last two weeks for each class in the Early Years. All classes have sent information regarding the content that will be covered for each Key Learning Area for every class in the Early Years. If you have not seen this come home, please ask your child or follow up with their teacher. Year 3 students have been participating in swimming lessons for the last 2 weeks, and students in Prep-Year 2 will participate in weekly water awareness and water safety lessons in Weeks 3-6. Again, information has been sent home regarding timetables for these lessons. Our Early Years Choir have several exciting community events coming up this term and Mrs Garside sent a note home to all choir members yesterday with important dates.

We will continue to look at more of our College Learning Dispositions through our newsletter items this term. One of our key dispositions, or learner qualities, is optimism. Optimism involves learning to think positively about the future – even when things go wrong. It’s about looking objectively at a situation and making a conscious decision to focus on the good. Students need to recognise, and often, need to be explicitly taught, that self-talk assists in developing optimism and that thoughts which are negative can be overridden with positive thoughts. Renowned author, Martin Seligman, presents these ideas in his excellent book “The Optimistic Child”. He focuses on life skills that transform helplessness into mastery and bolster self-esteem. According to Seligman, learning the skills of optimism not only reduces the risk of depression but boosts school performance and improves physical health. The world of an optimistic child is a world full of more possibilities. This fabulous book is filled with practical advice and written in clear, helpful language and best of all, is on the shelf of our very own College library and parents are welcome to borrow it! Do yourself (and your child) a favour and take a closer look at this excellent text.

Over the last two days, several of our classes have had the opportunity to work with our Toowoomba Catholic Schools reading coach, Mrs Cath Kimmorley. We have been fortunate to have Cath visit our school and work with a number of classes over the last two terms and we will be continuing this across our College into the future. It has been so exciting to watch the engagement of our students during these sessions!

Katrina Walton

Assistant Principal Early Years