09 Aug 2024
Principal's message
Hello all and welcome to our Term 3 Week 3 newsletter.
Proud to belong. Public Education Week 2024
Public Education Week is a state-wide annual event, held by the NSW Department of Education from 5-9 August 2024 (Term 3, Week 3), to celebrate NSW public education. Public Education Week celebrates the achievements of local schools, their students, teachers and the value of public education to communities across NSW. We had a great day on Wednesday at our annual open day. Visitors were treated to a brilliant performance by the dance group followed with families visiting classrooms and participating in the various lessons happening in the morning. Following a morning tea parents and carers were able to the learn from consultant occupational therapist Natasha Sansoni as she spoke about ‘In The Zone for Learning’. The ITZ tools, strategies and information are designed to assist you to support your students to be calm yet alert and ready to learn with individualised learning tools in a supportive environments that is vibrant, safe, relevant, motivating, engaging and academically rigorous. More information on ITZ can be found here: https://clarkerd-s.schools.nsw.gov.au/inthe-zone-for-learning.html
It was a really lovely morning and we were thrilled to host so many of our families. If you didn’t get a chance to come and see us this year we really hope you can join us for our annual Book Week Parade that is set for Tuesday 20 August 2024.
Pītau-Allenvale School New Zealand
Following on from the Special Education Principal’s and Leaders Conference that our whole team of teachers and SLSOs attended on staff development day, the team from Pītau-Allenvale Specialist school from Christchurch in New Zealand asked if they could visit to speak about the various programs on offer at The Hills and use the opportunity to grow and learn from each other. Pītau-Allenvale School provides specialist education for students aged 5–21. The school operates across 5 sites and asked to visit The Hills School to consider how we integrate literacy into the individualised structures of learning for our students. The visiting staff were able to meet with teachers, visit some classes and then speak with teachers and leaders about the work we do. It was a great opportunity to share our practice with colleagues from across the sea.
Mini-Expo 2024
Last weekend we held our first post-school mini-expo at The Hills School bringing together 14 post-school option service providers to share their various programs available to our students when they finally take the big step of leaving school. The event was well attended by parents and the positive feedback certainly evident of the impact the information sharing will have on pathways for our students. If you didn’t get the chance to come along, please feel free to reach out to Brigette and she’ll be happy to share some of the content.
Many thanks to Andrew Petersen, Support Teacher Transition, senior school staff and our Community Support Officer Brigette for making this such a valuable opportunity for parents.
Principal
Mark Gosbell