Welcome back to school for another year everyone and a VERY special welcome to our brand new families and little learners who are joining their formal learning journey for the very first time.

The beginning of the year is an exciting one for our learning as we look down the barrel of a big year full of learning opportunities and potential.

Over the next two weeks your children will be finding out what they will be learning about over the term as teachers build the contexts for their different units of teaching and learning. This is an exciting time for our learners but it can also be overwhelming. When school starts back parents are keen to hear all about what their child has been doing and what they have been learning about and at times disappointed if their child cannot share much information with them.

At the beginning of the school year, I suggest parents keep their questions simple but targeted. So instead of saying ‘What did you do today at school?’, perhaps narrow that down to ‘what writing did you do today?’ or ‘what was your favourite thing you read today?’ or ‘what was the favourite part of your maths lesson today?’.

Your child may tell you that they are doing lots of ‘tests’ over the next two weeks. Teachers will be collecting some diagnostic information at the start of the year in order to:

- help them understand the support your child may need in their learning and

- choose the most appropriate class groups they can place your child in to target their learning needs from the beginning of the year.

At Dayboro, we like to call these diagnostic tests ‘Show Me’s’ with our learners to reassure them that what we are doing is just showing the teacher what they already know to help the teacher know what next to teach them.At Dayboro we also love to discuss and plan our learning goals with our students. It gives them small and continuous targets for their learning throughout the term.As the term goes on your child will have some learning goals so this is another thing you could ask them about their learning down the track. One way you can support your child around the area of goal setting is by talking about and helping set other goals your child might have this year in other areas of their life such as sports.

Something very important to remember at the beginning of the year when you and your child are getting to know their new teacher is to keep communication open. If you or your child are worried about anything open up those lines of communication straight away so issues can be resolved quickly. Most of the time, there is no need to worry anyway.

I look forward to sharing information with you about the wonderful teaching and learning at Dayboro State School over this year.

Dee Mathiesen

Head of Curriculum