Sharing the good news 
Throughout the last week, it has been wonderful to greet the students who were able to resume their education in the classroom. Kindergarten, Prep and Year 1 children were full of energy, and used the days to reacquaint themselves with formal schooling. Students from Years 11 and 12, including boarders, were simply relieved to enjoy instant feedback from their teachers and colleague students in these important years of their formal study. 

I do thank our community for working with us through the past months – particularly staff and students who enjoyed many worthwhile learning and teaching experiences, and perhaps some that were not so worthwhile.

We invite all parents and guardians of the College community to complete a short survey regarding their personal experience with online learning this term. The survey is anonymous and should take less than a minute to complete. Please click on the following link to complete the survey:

ONLINE LEARNING SURVEY FOR PARENTS AND GUARDIANS

As per Mr Wiles' article, if any parents would like to provide a short video testimonial regarding their online learning experience, please contact me by emailing bianca.coleborn@concordia.qld.edu.au or telephone 4688 2700 during school hours.

Mrs Bianca Coleborn
Director of Marketing & Enrolments

Make sure you take a look at the following new items in the Junior College section of LOVE CLC this week:

• Makerspace Mondays: Make leaf people with Mrs Blackwell
• Teach Me Something Tuesdays: Draw a manga style eye with Mr Trappett
• Where in the World Wednesdays: Egypt with Mrs El Attar
• Think outside the Box Thursdays: I am not a snowman...
• Fry-day Fitness: Mr Fry is joined by some friends this week - see the below video!
• Online Learning Materials: Try this Maths Trick!

As always, we would love to see more photos of our students participating in these activities. Please send us your photo to marketing@concordia.qld.edu.au.

Mrs Bianca Coleborn
Director of Marketing & Enrolments

Change in Online Learning in Week 5 for Years 2-6
As you are aware, the Queensland Government has announced that Years 2 to 6 students will return to face to face learning at school starting Monday 25 May. To prepare for this, there will be some changes to the online learning program for these classes in Week 5. Prep and Year 1 will continue their face to face classroom learning next week.

To enable our teachers to have time to prepare for this change in learning, our online program will finish at the close of Wednesday 20 May. Thursday and Friday learning may involve activities such as Reading Eggs, Maths Seeds and completing activities that may have been unfinished, however, please also take a couple of days for your child/ren to rest up ready to return to classroom learning. 

Our LOVE CLC platform also has lots of fun activities if you are looking for something extra.

Health and Safety of Staff and Students
As we transition back into classroom learning, the health and safety of our staff and students is paramount. Mr Adrian Wiles, Head of College, will provide further details in his communication with parents. Our main request at this point will be for all parents to remain in their cars. If you must get out, please ensure you are maintaining the required 1.5m from others.

It was like the first day of school all over again this week as we welcomed our Prep and Year 1 students back to Warwick Street Campus. The youngest students of our community received super star treatment from our staff as they arrived in the Drive Through, greeted by a sea of colourful balloons, familiar smiling faces and, of course, a large amount of hand sanitiser! 

For those parents who have been through the Drive Through each morning and afternoon this week, we thank you for your patience and support with our drop off and pick up arrangements. The week has ended with this process running like clockwork. 

We have also been fortunate to be able to chat briefly to our Years 2 to 6 students at drop off and pick up time which has been a morale booster for us all. Even though we have not been far from our students in the last four weeks due to the wonders of technology, face to face communication is something we all are longing for. 

The arrival of some of our student body gives us the hope that life on campus may soon return to the vibrant and fun atmosphere that we love at WSC and we look forward to welcoming the rest of our community back on Monday 25 May!

It has been so refreshing to finally have Stephen Street Campus coming back to life with our Years 11 and 12 students back on campus and in boarding. It is interesting to hear student feedback around their online learning experience and for me to be able to explore which aspects of this style of learning must remain as part of our standard teaching practice. 

Having resources available in Teams in advance, has been extremely beneficial for the students and is a practice that we must continue. We are looking forward to the return of our Years 7-10 from 25 May. 

For students returning we have made some minor changes including:

• Students may wear their sports uniform to and from school if they have PE during the day.
• Students are to bring their water bottles to school. We do have a water bottle refilling station.
• All students, on arrival to school, must come via the hand sanitising station in front of the CSI building.

An easing of the border restrictions, as they applied to our interstate students, provided me with the perfect opportunity to do a “Boarder Border” bus run to meet one of our boarding families from NSW at the border in Goondiwindi (that sentence alone requires a boarder check…). As chance would have it, one of the Defence personnel on the checkpoint was a Concordia Old Scholar!

Lastly, I would like to direct attention to this COVID-19 specific resource that has been provided by the eSafety Commissioner’s Office. I encourage you to take some time to browse through the range of resources. We are all spending a lot more time online and in front of screens and “connected” virtually and it is worth having a conversation in families to explore how that is going.

I hope that you have a great weekend. 

Mr Jason Smith
Director of Campus