Dear Craigslea Community,

Our great start to the year has continued over the last fortnight.  Our students are settled into their classrooms and focussed on learning.  It was great to see so many parents and carers join us for our Meet the Teacher evenings this week.  Our teaching teams highly valued the opportunity to meet and talk with their families.  The partnership between home and school is critically important to a student’s successful engagement in school.

Student Leadership Assembly
Our assembly this week was a special one for our school community with our 2025 student leaders being presented with their leadership badges supported by their families.  We have an amazing bunch of leaders who are very keen to make a positive impact in our school.  Our whole year 6 cohort have stepped up to model the way for our students from the first day of school.  I am looking forward to working with them.

Thank you, P&C
This week the school gratefully accepted a $600 000 donation from our P&C to redevelop our current Year 1 playground and create a year 1 and 2 play precinct.  This donation has been made possible through the enormous fundraising efforts of our community over a number of years. We are very appreciative of these efforts and are looking forward to our students enjoying and learning in the new space. The project is due to commence around Easter.

Cross Country Carnival
This year our Cross Country Carnival will take place at the end of this term, Friday 28 March from 9am – 11am.  All students in Prep to year 6 will have the opportunity to participate with our year 4 to 6 students having the opportunity to qualify to go to the District Cross Country Carnival.  This is a whole school event and we would love to have our families join us for the morning. More details will be provided in the next newsletter.

STEM @ Craigslea
This week our specialist STEM lessons commenced for our year 4 – 6 students in our DaVinci STEM Hub.  The hub was a hive of chatter and activity when I visited. It was great to see our students engaged in learning, developing critical and creative thinking skills and having fun.  Take a look at the Learning Spotlight section of our newsletter for more information.

Communication Strategy
Communication between home and school is a critical for positive partnerships with our families. We communicate with our families in multiple ways to help keep them informed of what is happening in our school.  Our fortnightly newsletters are the most important source of information sharing for our school. 

Religious Instruction
I have been approached by the Bridgeman Baptist Community Church to provide Christian religious instruction to our students from Term 2.  Under the Education (General Provisions) Act 2006, schools are to provide Religious Instruction if approached by a faith group seeking to provide RI and students of that faith attend the school.  

RI programs must meet Department of Education guidelines.  RI instructors hold a current Blue Card and participate in mandatory student protection and code of conduct training.

Participation in RI is not compulsory.  Students in year 1 – 6 may participate if a parent has provided consent to this participation.  This consent was given on enrolment.  Lessons will run for 25 minutes per week.  The RI program that will be implemented is God Space.

Students who do not participate in RI will engage in revision of learning activities relating to the curriculum that has already been covered in class.  This will not be free time.

Further information about RI can be found on our school website. This includes the program values and scope and sequence. RI instructors will also attend our P&C Meeting on Monday 17 March to meet the community and answer any RI questions.  

Next week all parents and carers will receive a consent form for Religious Instruction to complete.  This provides families an opportunity to confirm or update their consent for participation in religion.

Inspired by the amazing leadership displayed by students I leave you with:

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams

Yours in Learning,

Melanie Rehm