This week we have enjoyed  a whole week of sunshine and opportunities for outdoor play. While the sunshine has brought plenty of heat and humidity, we are grateful that it helps in drying up those areas of Townsville that have been left devastated by flood and mud. It has been wonderful to hear of the generous nature of our community assisting those in need, whether it be by physically getting in with clean up efforts or by donating your time and goods in other ways. It will be a long road ahead for many people in Townsville and they will need all the support they can get.

Thank you to all the parents who turned out for our first P&F Meeting for the year, it was wonderful to have so many of our new parents joining us.We already have such an enthusiastic group of parents who have assisted each other in implementing some wonderful opportunities for us to build our school community so it was great to see new parents adding to this as well. Our key priorities for the P&F this year will be to continue building our sense of community through a number of parent and family activities and also to build learning partnerships between our school and home but also with the wider community as well. The P&F have already booked their first community event, which will be a school disco on Thursday March 28 from 6.00pm - 7.00pm. Our Annual General meeting for the P&F will be our next meeting in March on Tuesday 12 at 7.00pm. All Executive positions will be up for nomination (President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary).

Our Learning and Teaching Advisor, Aleesha Rockemer met with Lou Costanzo from JCU this week to establish a partnership for a Scientist in Schools Project. Lou is one of our parents and she is the Co-Chairperson for our School Board. She is very passionate about engaging students in Science especially through hands on experiences. With our eProjects having such a base in environmental learning, this partnership will be a very positive way to enhance the learning experiences for our students. We thoroughly look forward to her support.

Over the next couple of weeks we will have some disruption to classes with teachers being released for various training they need to do for students with special needs as well as some one-on-one assessments with students in Prep and Year 1. Our Townsville Catholic Education team have developed an assessment in consultation with Speech Pathologists, Guidance Counsellors and Numeracy and Literacy Coaches that provides valuable information for parents and teachers about how individual children are progressing in their learning. It is done at the beginning of the year and at the end of each year. The standardised nature of this assessment provides comparative data we can use to review our school programs as well.

On Monday we will have our very first Assembly for the year with the week after being our Beginning of Year Liturgy. We will be very pleased to have Fr Dave joining us then too.

Looking forward to a fabulous week ahead.

Cheers

Penny