Dear Sacred Heart Community

On Monday our Premier Mr Andrews outlined his timeline for schools to resume onsite education through a transitional process. Yesterday, his plan for this transitional process leading to our school reopening for all students, was confirmed by Catholic Education Melbourne (CEM). The key points of our students transition back to school, and that all parents need to be aware of at this moment are.

Monday 25th May: Pupil Free day (ie. no onsite or offsite learning) Teachers will be preparing for our students returning to school

Tuesday 26th May: All students in Years Prep, One and Two return to school

All staff return to school unless under clearly specified circumstances

Monday 8th June: Queen's Birthday public holiday

Tuesday 9th June: All students in Years Three, Four, Five and Six return to school

Please note, in the two weeks between Tuesday 26th May and Tuesday 9th June, those students from Years Three to Year Six who have been attending school during this period of "school closure", will still be able to continue to do so. The teachers of our Year Three/Four and Year Five/Six classes will continue the "distance education" programs, as well as facilitating the learning for their students at school.

As you can imagine there are a number of new protocols and procedures that we will need to put into place, to ensure that our school community, its students, parents and guardians and staff, are safe, and that we adhere to the regulations stipulated by our governments. The school leadership team met via Zoom on Tuesday and we meet as a staff again via Zoom on Wednesday evening. We are in the process of formalising these procedures and will forward these onto all families next week. Some of the issues we need to address are:

safe distancing for our students both within and outside the classroom

safe hygiene practices for our students

protocols for parents entering the school grounds and building

I would like to reinforce again, that the challenges of "remote learning" have been lessened by the response of our students and their parents and guardians. Our staff are sincerely grateful. However as the picture below shows of some of our happy students upon hearing the news that school is to resume in the near future, we are also looking forward to "reopening" our school, and having your vibrant, enthusiastic and passionate children, our students back into the classroom. Our school has been a very quiet place.

Teddy Bear's Picnic

Last Thursday our Year Prep and Year One/Two teachers, Bethany, Alexandra and Ann organised a teddy bear's picnic for their students. As you can see from the images below, our students who were at school on this day brought their own bears and joined in online to be with their fellow classmates.

Breakfast and Learning

The images below anecdotally prove that boys can eat and learn at the same time! Stefanie sent these two photos through this morning of her boys Connor in Year One, and Liam in Year Three eating their toast with honey and doing school activities.

Semester One Student Reports

With the need to implement "distance education" for approximately 90% of our students this term, delivery and content of the prescribed curriculum has had to be compromised. It is the prescribed curriculum that forms the basis of our biannual student's reports. At present, the staff are looking at developing a report that is an accurate reflection of our student's progress in this first semester. Catholic Education Melbourne has detailed components of our reports that must be contained in this semesters report, but also given schools the scope to adapt our reports due to the changed circumstances of this term. In the coming weeks, Belinda our Learning and Teaching Coordinator and myself, will be able to give you more detail about this semesters student reports.

Yours sincerely

Mark Tierney

Principal

Sacred Heart's Maker Space

Displayed below is some of the beautiful work created by our students working through distance education, and involving themselves in the activities on the school's Maker Space site. You can see some very colourful images created by our very talented Year Prep student Frankie, and our Year Six student Huy's construction of a space ship. Don't be surprised if you come across some of Frankie's work hanging in the National Gallery in years to come, or if Huy pops up on Hamish Blake's television show "Lego Masters" next year.

Some families may notice our former student Dylan Epifano pictured in Parade's advertisement above.