Our school was brought to life by Book Week last week. Tuesday was book parade day when staff and students donned costumes to represent their favourite characters. The usual array of Hermione’s, Spidermen and Wally’s roamed the school for the day and took part in our afternoon book parade. We also held a reading afternoon with parents and a book fair that continued into this week.

The highlight of the week was undoubtably the Masked Reader Competition. Members of staff dressed in inflatable costumes and read stories to classes. Students then tried to guess which staff member was in each costume, culminating with a grand reveal early this week. This was one of the best events I have seen conducted in a school. The corridors were full of excitement as students waited to see which costumed character would visit their classroom to read next. We know that students learn best when they are excited by the learning and the Masked Reader made a great contribution to creating a love for reading.

We have a number of initiatives in place to encourage student attendance at school, these include primary and secondary Hands on Learning programs, prizes for the homegroup with the highest attendance rates and a camp for secondary students who achieve in excess of 85% attendance. We know that every school day matters and we strongly encourage all students to attend each day unless unwell.

You may have noticed our new agricultural building taking shape beside the oval. The building is currently on schedule for completion in mid-November. You may notice trench works going on around the school. These are part of required upgrades to our fire hydrant capacity as a requirement of undertaking the new building.

We maintain a clear focus on our school priorities of literacy and continued improvement in explicit instruction and wellbeing. Our Parent Satisfaction Survey is now open and we value your involvement and input. We have parent-teacher interviews scheduled for Week 9. We warmly invite and strongly encourage our parents to attend. Students are also very welcome to attend the interviews with their parents.  Information on how to make a booking will be communicated to parents next  week.

We wish all all of our dads, grandfathers and other significant people in our students lives a great Father's Day on Sunday.