Attendance Recording:
As per our instructions from the State and Federal Government our school remains open. This is a challenging time and we do respect the fact that parents will be keeping students away from school. If you are choosing to keep your child/children at home, could you please inform us of the period that they will be absent to ensure you do not continue to receive the absence SMS, especially if it is for a period longer than 1 day of notification. Student absences will be recorded as a ‘Reasonable Cause”
Updated contact details:
We would ask that all families ensure that we have their most up to date contact details, including mobile phone and email.
Physical Education Adjustments:
The following steps are in place for Physical Education classes to assist with social distancing.
- Students will not be required to change for PE classes to reduce the number of students being in close proximity in the change rooms.
- Students will no longer put their bags in the cages at the rear of the gym. On a timetabled PE class, students are to continue moving past the rear of the change rooms and look for their teacher who will be located away from other staff members. Students will put their bags in an area designated by their teacher.
- PE staff will endeavour to provide soap/ soap products where possible for students to use before and after lessons at taps outside the change rooms.
- PE lesson content will be heavily modified to reduce unnecessary physical contact, equipment being used by large numbers of students and students operating in close proximity.
- At break times: The number of students given access to the gym will be strictly limited and equipment used minimised.
- At break times, students will be permitted to sit on the oval (even if they are not participating in Physical activity) to provide a space students can use to socially distance themselves from peers.
Personal hygiene and social distancing:
We continue to look to more ways of providing support in this area, but reply heavily on our students to self-manage where they can by being sensible in the personal hygiene practices and their attitudes to Social Distancing. We would ask that students continue to have their own personal supplies for their own use of soap and hand sanitiser. We will continue to undertake a high level of cleaning throughout the school day and, as product availability increase, items that may be available across the school.
Curriculum provision:
We understand that where parents are choosing to keep students home there is the challenge of continuing education. The school continues to run face to face classes and this does include a broad range of Connect resources that are also available to access on line. This access to on-line resources across the curriculum will increase in the coming week as we are currently working hard on this aspect, but it will take some time as we still have face to face class responsibilities. In some instances teachers already have strong Connect communities for their students and many other means that they are already using. We continue to provide parents with information on how to access Connect. If you do not have on-line access we are arranging for hard copy resources to be made available including the loan of text books and other resources. The Department of Education is creating a series of Connect Classrooms for Years 7 to 10 that will be pre-populated with activities/resources across learning areas and year levels. This is also occurring for Years 11 and 12 with activities/resources across a range of courses. This will support teachers in their selection and resource use.
Our ATAR students are already well engaged with many aspects of on-line learning and are using these tools on a daily basis. We are meeting with the ATAR students today in relation to the continuity of their program and the ways in which this will occur. At this time the School for Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE) are also producing work packages for ATAR courses, which will be available through the Department’s Learning from Home website. We expect that this space will go live today, Monday 23 March. We will provide a further update once we have more specific details including the level of access available to resources and curriculum content, and activities.
Kind regards,
Domenic Camera
PRINCIPAL
