Message from Michele Marquet
Dear Junior and Pre-School families,
It was fabulous to see our students in Y3-Y6 engage in their first sports fixtures last Saturday. Most games went ahead as planned, but the weather impacted our cricket teams. Excitement is building for the upcoming Y6 and Y4 camps. Please read the Y3-Y6 News & Reminder section for more information.
Across the school, the teachers have been embedding routines and habits that will help every student make the most of each minute in the classroom for learning. Their first units of inquiry have all started in earnest and the students are showing excellent levels of engagement. It has been a happy and focused start to our academic year.
Last week, Dr Judith Locke spoke to our new Kindergarten and Y1-Y6 families and noted that we all want to raise our children to be ‘fully functioning people who enjoy life in the real world, and whose company and contribution the world enjoys.’
There were many interesting ideas and honest observations made by Judith about how we can best support our children on their journey to becoming independent, resilient people who can, indeed, positively contribute to society and our world.
Dr Locke spoke about how important it is in childhood to allow our children to face challenge and for us as the adults to resist the urge to intervene too quickly. By doing so, we allow our children to develop the vital life skills of knowing how to tackle problems or setbacks, to resolve conflict, to have a proportionate response and the capacity to endure.
One other timely reminder from Judith’s talk was about the five essential skills we need our children to hone in the primary school years:
Resilience – our children’s capacity to bounce back from challenge;
Self-regulation – our children’s capacity to resist doing something that is immediately pleasant to them, for a greater future gain;
Resourcefulness – our children’s capacity to adjust their actions to suit the current situation;
Respect – our children’s capacity to give appropriate regard to others, including, but not limited to, those in authority;
Responsibility – our children’s capacity to show that others have value through their actions and behaviour.
You can find more information, ideas and observations in Judith’s excellent books, The Bonsai Child and The Bonsai Student.
Kind wishes,
Michele Marquet
