Welcome back everyone,

It's wonderful to be back at school with the students smiling faces. We do keep in mind our Canberra colleagues who are still in Remote Learning.

Communication continues to be a priority for me, my desire to find the most effective ways to inform our parents is always front and centre. I am also conscious of our Parish Community who enjoy reading the newsletter. With these two factors in mind, we will trial a fortnightly newsletter for this term. To compliment this approach, we will send a message on SchoolZine with a table of events every second Friday. In summary:

Reflection for the Week

You may have seen a post on our FaceBook page alluding our community to a friend we had at school on Thursday. Although, we welcome new enrolments, unfortunately the very calm Labrador was unable to be enrolled. I was delighted to watch the interaction between the dog and one of our students, he watched carefully as the dog wagged his tail and gestured towards him, the anticipation of wanting to pat him was almost tangible.  One of the staff nearby noticed and said "Go ahead you can pat him". His face lit up like a Christmas tree. I just love everyday at Trinity.

Focus on Learning

Vocab, vocab, vocab..... Teachers in Kindergarten to Year 2 have implemented the  Initial Lit program with great success. Our next step will be to move this learning into our Senior classes. The focus for reading in years three to six moves from a phonics approach to a strong vocabulary approach. Students explore, expand, investigate and manipulate vocabulary in its many genres, learning areas and domains. Students move from word, to sentence, to paragraph levels of text. How can you help at home? Discuss words, new words that give deeper meaning, further accuracy. The question, how are you, is quickly responded with, good thanks, which ultimately tells you very little. So how are you..... tired, worried, surprised, emotional, determined, inspired....... see what words you can explore with your children this week.   

Processes Procedures and Information

On Tuesday the staff gathered for a day of Professional Learning (PL) with Mr Lachlan Ellis, Child Protection Manager at Catholic Education Manuka. The PL outlined compliance matters for staff regarding privacy laws, social media, record keeping, setting a precedent and ownership of information. Lachlan pointed out the importance of staff adhering to these regulations, even though as teachers we  naturally want to go above and beyond. The disclaimer on our email is a helpful example. This disclaimer enables staff to work within CE parameters and communicates what you can expect from staff. Thank you in anticipation for your support in understanding our heightened awareness to such matters.  

On the 19/20/21 October, a registration panel from CE will complete a compliance registration for Trinity. Unfortunately with COVID, the panel can't come to Trinity and see our teachers in action. If parents would like to speak to the panel, you are very welcome. Please let me know via email and I will arrange this for you.  

Please note that COVID restrictions continue to have a significant impact on what we can and can't do at school. In Week Five of this term our School Musical “Wizard of Oz” was scheduled to go ahead. The decision to postpone the School Musical until 2022 has been made. A note regarding the Musical is attached to the newsletter.

Please make sure that you send your child/ren to school with their hat. The students have been reminded this week that its a hat term - no hat, no play. This will also align with wearing sunscreen, which Trinity will provide. Trinity is a sun safe school and as such we need to wear sun safe hats and be applying sunscreen throughout the day.

Please continue to read messages on SchoolZine as this will remain the avenue we communicate changes.

Yours in knowing, loving and serving

Caz Perryman

Leader Team Trinity