It was absolutely wonderful to hear the buzz in the grounds on Tuesday morning with our students finally returning to campus. The smiles and excited chatter were certainly ‘music to the ears’ for all of us to hear. I am a very proud principal of my students and staff in the way they have conducted themselves over the last 10 weeks or so. Our online, at home learning program has been successful in ensuring students have remained connected and engaged with their teachers, each other and most importantly their learning. I would once again like to thank families for assisting students with their learning at home.

As we return to school, we are very conscious of the impact that the time away has had on many and we will be spending time facilitating the re-connection of relationships and continue to monitor wellbeing. Given what we have been through it is normal to expect a full range of emotions. As mentioned, we have seen the excitement and happiness in our students to be back, but we also know many will be a little nervous or anxious as people manage things in different ways.  To support all of our students we will be having extended Home Group every morning this week to enable everyone to settle and reconnect. On Tuesday morning we held a full school Live Assembly via Teams and Jasmine (our wonderful school Social Worker) reminded students about the amazing support team here at Kings Meadows and encouraged all students to access them as needed via Grade Teams, who also provide wonderful support to all and are a great strength of our school culture.

 Jasmine – Social Worker

Anita – Psychologist

Paul - Chaplain

Danni - Nurse

We are very mindful to provide opportunities for students to catch up, revisit learning as needed and ensure student learning is not disadvantaged as a result of recent circumstances. Students will be able to access extra support and interventions within their classes and at alternative times throughout the week for the remainder of the term. We encourage all students to embrace these extra opportunities to access support. Families will receive a report on progress in student learning by the end of July.

We will also be asking our students to engage in some reflective activities in these extended Home Group times to enable them to think more deeply about what they have learnt about themselves as “ learners” and have some real student agency over maintaining these positive aspects into their learning as we move forward. Many students in their feedback surveys indicated they have already learnt and liked many things from our change of learning style, and we are very keen to harness these with our students.

As we have continued to communicate to our families regularly schools are safe places to be and the Public Health Department has maintained this all along. The closure of schools was to reduce the movement of people in our community. Our hygiene protocols will remain vigilant with hand washing and sanitisation procedures very clear.  We will be socially distancing where we can such as moving into locker bays and the canteen. Classes will run as normal with some modifications in HPE and Dance for example as per the guidelines we are given and regularly updated on.

Families are asked not to send unwell children to school and this along with hygiene and physical distancing measures is obviously having an impact as only on the weekend I read an article that indicated our cases of Influenza as a nation this year in May was 208 compared to over 30,000 the same time last year.

If you need to speak to a staff member, please call via the front office (6343 1000) or via email. We are keeping to strict protocols of only essential people on site at this point in time and we thank you for your cooperation with this.

Thank you once again to everyone in our community for working together to support all our students and families during this time, our partnerships have never been stronger. I know the Department of Education are asking for good news stories and feedback about schools and sites that have managed the pandemic well so if you feel that you and your family have been well supported I know the team here would appreciate that acknowledgement.  You can share your story via: www.education.tas.gov.au/our-learnings. Thank you to those who have sent messages and emails to the school or myself, they have been greatly appreciated.

We look forward a very busy next month as we head to the end of term and well done again everyone for the outstanding efforts during our lockdown period.

Warm regards

Maree Pinnington

Principal