21 August 2020

An interesting thing that I saw this week, that may surprise people, is that there are now 21 different languages spoken at home by Richmond families.  These range from Swedish to Korean and from Arabic to Portuguese with everything in between. It’s lovely to have this diversity and helps children to understand and appreciate different perspectives.

Today I have been looking at report data from semester one. Having no grades to look at, my focus was on affective domains:  showing self-respect and care; making positive choices; being enthusiastic about learning; participating responsibly, and setting and working towards goals.  It was encouraging to see how well students are doing in these areas.

Although this has been a year of adversity in many ways, it has also been a year where children have visibly developed more independence and responsibility.  Children as young as five or six years old, who at the start of the year allowed their parent to carry in and unpack their bag, lock their bike up for them and prepare them for class, are now organising themselves, remembering their lock code, thinking about what they need for class and being calm and ready to start work on the bell.  These are important early skills. As we all know, it isn’t what we do for them, it is what we teach them to do for themselves that will make them successful in life.

This week many students have created some amazing recycled sculptures. The best ones will represent Richmond at the Deep Blue competition for science week, and I’ll put some photos on Facebook. Some of them were very ingenious and clever. Thanks to everyone for supporting this project and sending your children to school laden with recyclables. They have been amazed to consider what ends up in landfill and in our oceans, and though the activity was fun, the underlying narrative about the environment was clear.

Many families have now secured their place in kindergarten for 2021. If you haven’t yet heard from us, your application could be incomplete. If you have not yet returned part B forms, please do so as soon as possible. There has been a lot of demand for specific days which have been allocated on a first-return first-served basis.

Our student numbers continue to grow rapidly, and I have enrolled ten new local intake children for ‘immediate starts’ just in the last two weeks. Classrooms are becoming very full and this is set to continue into 2021.  Thanks for understanding that the local intake policy has to be rigorously applied, and an intent to move into our zone isn’t enough to enrol. If you are leaving at the end of this year, I’d really appreciate you letting me know as soon as you can so that I can predict accurate numbers.

As the weather keeps breaking and there are days when we have increased numbers of cars on adjoining roads, we all really appreciate everyone being vigilant and safe. I have today reminded our older cyclists to push their bike or ride at slow walking speed around pedestrians.

Enjoy the weekend everyone, as we officially hit the half way point of term.

Lisa Dentith

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