Peace be With You: Consider the deep peace of Christ.  The shalom of God in Hebrew means more than freedom from anxiety.  Shalom is the fullness of God's blessings, joy and satisfaction, a life without need.  To have the peace of Christ is to have it all.  Nothing interrupts this abundance.  Let  us prayer for this peace of Christ in our daily lives as we consider the strength of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and beyond. 

Dear Families,

This week has seen, once again, great events celebrated in our community.  On Tuesday night our PYP coordinators shared with parents elements of the Primary Years Program offered at Holy Trinity.  This was a very informative and useful night for all present- parents were given opportunity to ask questions about the IB framework and also gained more insight into the learning opportunities and strategies offered at Holy Trinity from the ELC through to Year 6.  More about this evening will be shared with you in next week's newsletter.  We will also be offering another PYP night next term, focussing on the inquiry approach, that I encourage you to attend. Yesterday we also joined together for our Athletics Carnival . Thank you to all families who were able to come and help out during the day, and to Michael Feerick and our Sports Committee who organised such a great event for our students. 

This term we are going to repeat the process we began last year with Semester 1 reporting and interviews.  In many of past surveys, parents have commented that our written reports do not have the information they would like to see in a school report. (Please note: This is a system report that we are mandated to complete.) This frustration is also shared by our staff, as we would like to be able to write a more specific report on our Primary Years Program. Thus our reports will include the two units of inquiry taught throughout Semester One.  To give our teachers time to thoroughly assess our students in these units we will again have parent teacher interviews before the written 1/2 yearly report goes home in Week 10. The interviews and/or three-way conferences (Year 3-6) will take place in Week 8; booking for these interviews will be as for the Term 1 Parent Partnership Meetings, with the online booking service through our new school App commencing soon.

A couple of important reminders:

• As we are at the end of Week 4, all students should now be in full winter uniform.  We are seeing a variety of combinations-  please ensure your child/ren are coming to school in winter uniforms.  There are also many jumpers and other items of school clothing in our lost property, located outside my office.  Many of these were found after the Athletics Carnival.
• Concerns have been raised again about the safety of children being dropped off and picked up after school.  I know many families access the school from the back of the presbytery or shops.  Can I please ask that children and families do not walk through the presbytery area, especially with the steps there, when coming to drop or pick up children at Holy Trinity school.  Please use the path around the church, rather than cutting through the presbytery house. 

And finally a thought for the week: 

“Arriving at one goal is the starting point for another”  John Dewey

With every best wish for a holy and peace-filled long weekend with your beautiful families,

Philippa