Dear Parents and Community,

What a start to the term, it has been busy and exciting with many projects coming to life. I want to thank families for working with our teachers closely to set goals, not only academic but the social goals that ensure we set our students up to be successful as they transition through school and post school. 

The feedback from the surveys has been valuable and we thank you for answering. We are still waiting on a few classes and will share what we will continue doing and add to our ways of working. It has been lovely to hear the positive feedback from so many of our families, our school community has valued hearing what they are currently doing that bring joy to families and students.  

This week we started our targeted music program being led by Shaun Hayes and Lachlan Munn, it has been such a pleasure working closely with both teachers to purchase $8,000 worth of musical instruments, including switch adaptive. We can’t wait to share more about this program over the coming weeks, as we settle back into a targeted music program outside of classroom delivery at Mudgeeraba Special School. 

I want to thank two staff members who have taken on Work Place Health and Safety at our school. Rhea Scott and Karen Hodgson has taken on the training and have been working hard in the back ground to make sure we make our school community as safe as we can. We have had to slow up some of our programs like candle making to ensure we have the right risk assessments in place and make sure each learning environment mitigates as much risk as we can. We thank our school community for your patience during this time. It has been great working closely with the HAS and work place health and safety committee. Please remember, safety is everyone’s business. If you have any concerns or would like to raise an issue please contact the office or myself directly. 

We have decided to embark on aligning our curriculum with the new Australian Curriculum which has been driven by our teaching team. We have talented teachers who are keen to plan and deliver targeted teaching. The work of Talk 4 Writing and Age Appropriate Pedagogies which drives our teaching has definitely inspired our teachers to continue leading the way with curriculum. I want to personally thank the teaching team for being the driving force behind this work and wanted the best for students at Mudgeeraba Special School. 

The new building is coming along so nicely, I am hoping in the next newsletter I can share some more details. We are still aiming to be in by the start of the year with the outside work projected for June. I can’t thank the team who are working on this project with us enough, they really work closely with us to ensure we meet the needs of our school community. We meet for half a day a fortnight to talk everything building. It is going to be amazing space for our students and staff. 

I can’t wait to see you all at concert, it is going to be an amazing night. Please don’t forget to work closely with your teachers around tickets, photos and the finer details of hand over on the night. When it gets closer we will share some more details as we are working on something exciting before the main show to support you between dropping your students off and the show starting.  

Sadly, COVID is hitting our school community at the tail end of this week. Please make sure you stay home if you are unwell and we will ensure we follow good hygiene practices at school. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me. Stay safe! 

Kind regards
Natasha Markwick
Acting Principal

We are very pleased to welcome Lyndall Gravis to the school as an Industry Liaison Officer.  Working together with Southport Special School, Coomera Special School and Currumbin Special School, Lyndall will help to strengthen our links with community business and organisations.  She will help to ensure that the work we are doing is aligned to the needs of the community, and create pathways for our students to engage in vocational and recreational programs aligned with their individual goals and interests.  Welcome Lyndall, we look forward to working with you.