Who can believe we are at the end of term 3. The year has been flying by and it is going to be Christmas before we know it. I don’t know about you but I’m not really ready to hear the sound of jingle bells. 

This week Fiona, Justine and I attended a ministry seminar on the science of learning. They shared how teachers will structure learning to allow new knowledge to go from your working memory and be committed to long term memory. There are a number of factors that support this: 

• Time for revision of prior learning 

• Plenty of time to practice. If this is repeated within 7 days for it had a better chance of being engrained.

• Giving effective feedback 

• Students being ready to learn and avoiding strain on working memory. 

At QPS we have adopted a structured approach to teaching and learning for a number of years. These new changes to the curriculum and approaches to learning don’t come as a surprise to us but instead provide us with a good reminder.

If you had the chance to visit the “ Yr 7-8 Haurora House” on Tuesday you would have been impressed by the different initiatives that students came up with to improve the health and well-being of our community. They have been working hard on this PBL for over 15 weeks and it was pleasing to see everything come together. 

Well history repeated itself yesterday with a wet International Day. Luck would have it that it has rained for the last 5 years. It did not dampen spirits and there was an amazing turnout from our international community. Our students were treated to lovely Kai from all over the world. The senior leaders worked hard to cover most stalls . 

We have a number of school uniform items currently sitting in lost property. Due to  inclement weather these items were not put out for display.  This will happen when we return to school for Term 4. If you have time over the break please pop into school and have a look and claim your child’s items.

These holidays we have contractors coming to school to install our new senior playground. This has been a long time in the making and the culmination of hours of work from Simon Haslett. See the attached photos of the design.

Have a great break!

Matt Leach
Deputy Principal

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