Principal's Log
Principal's Log
Parent attitudes to reading and learning play a significant part in the level of success young people experience as they move through school. Reading to children in their early years and fostering a love of reading and learning in the home adds significantly to children’s learning capacity. As children grow older, ensuring there is time for effective home learning to occur on a daily basis and engaging in conversation around what is being learnt, builds positive conditions for effective learning. In 2009, an OECD study found that children had performed better when parents had read to them in their first year of school and when parents were strongly engaged in their children’s lives once they were 15 years of age, including where parents talked about life and discussed learning. Ensuring that young people take responsibility for their learning and build capacity to persist when learning is challenging are important life skills. Important opportunities for growth are lost where adults ‘chew’ the learning for children or, for older students, where there is limited time for calm, independent reflection and connection building at the end of a day.
It was great to see the large number of Middle and Senior College students that volunteered to assist on Open Day. It was a very successful community day with both new and current families taking the time to talk with staff and students across Kindergarten to Year 12. People enjoyed learning as they interacted with various activities, appreciated the food provided by our Friends of Pacific and the Hospitality students out of our newly refurbished Coral Café and were entertained by performances from our music ensembles and the cast of Side Show. Thank you to our students, staff and parents for making the day such a success and a particular thank you to our Director of Staff, Ms Margaret Gunn for her oversight.
Congratulations to our Dance students who represented the College very well at last week’s Sunshine Coast Dance Eisteddfod. Students across Years 4-12 performed well with the senior items achieving particularly high results. It is exciting to see this area of the College continuing to evolve and we thank Mrs Laura Bonner for her leadership of our Dance program and Miss Ceilidh Peers for her assistance.
We also wish our Da Vinci Challenge and Junior Opti-MINDS teams all the best as they prepare for upcoming competitions. Both of these events provide wonderful opportunities for young people to extend their thinking capacity. We thank Mrs Jo Belchamber, Mrs Lu Pollard, Mrs Holly Humphries and Mrs Sue Zweck for their leadership of these important opportunities.
Voting for the Mayor’s Telstra Technology Challenge has now commenced and we encourage our community to learn more about our ‘Grass Dudes’ and ‘Imood’ teams at: https://www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/techawards. To vote for our teams, visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LHPD9PL.
Students across Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have completed NAPLAN testing this week. The test provides a snapshot of children’s learning and is one piece of data that the College uses to plan for ongoing improvement of individual and cohort learning. We thank Mrs Sue Zweck and Mrs Rae Hall for their oversight of the testing process and all our teachers for the way they support young people’s learning.
We wish our Side Show cast and crew all the best over the coming week as they make final preparations for their performances on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th May. Tickets are still available and we encourage families to bring friends and take advantage of this opportunity to see a high quality musical production on the Sunshine Coast.
May God equip us to build quality into who we are and all we do for the betterment of others.
Dr Bronwyn Dolling, Principal