We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the Country on which we walk, live and learn. 

We recognise their long history on the land upon which our schools are built, and the care they gave to these lands for thousands of years. 

We pay our respect to their cultures and to Elders past, present and emerging, and recognise their continuing connection to the land, air and sea. 

Our last week was forever changing and required our school community to be flexible to ensure we followed the requirements set by our Government. I want to acknowledge and thank our school community for ensuring your families and ours were safe during this sharp lock down. I am proud of every member of our school community who rose to the challenge with us and worked with us to ensure we could achieve a positive outcome.  

During these times it was a pleasure to hear from families that sent positive messages of support to our school community, your kind words helped staff to pull off home learning over a super short period. Mudgeeraba Special School values itself on working productively with all families, while ensuring we follow the advice of the Chief Medical Officer. We acknowledge it was hard and we empathise with the sacrifices you made to support online learning. 

We are pleased to announce following the most recent press conference school resumes as normal tomorrow 9^th of August, 2021. We look forward to seeing all of our excited learners at school, at this stage we will not be holding any school events with community members. Our decision is to postpone any events that were planned for this week and we will communicate next Friday our new dates. We love school events that involve families and partners hence we have made this decision.  

We will have the same procedures in place for this week to ensure we reduce the number of people on our school grounds. Parents we ask that you wait outside the school for our school staff to support your young person into school. As asked by the Government we must wear face masks, this includes students in Year 7 - Year 12, families and school staff. Please send your young person in Years 7 - 12 into school with a mask, if it is a cloth mask please make sure it is clearly labelled.  

While we are navigating this difficult time and the constant change, it is important to seek out the positives, both large and small. Over the coming week I ask you to look for the good and speak the kind words to one another. 

Thank you for your ongoing support of our school community, we appreciate you.

Natasha Markwick

Acting Principal

We want to celebrate our amazing Teachers and Teacher Aides who have enabled the magic to happen on our private YouTube channel. This allowed continuity of learning for our students as families were able to connect to our online platforms and deliver learning at home. Our video crew worked together to overcome challenges with technology to deliver amazing learning experiences to our students. 

Thank you also to families, students and staff for interacting on our Closed Facebook Group - Mudgeeraba Special School Online Learning. It was wonderful to see our community interacting with each other while we couldn't be together to learn.

Last Friday 6th August we held our first MyTime Online. It was a great opportunity to connect with other parents and carers and have a chat. Thanks to everyone who was able to join us!

During week 5 our students will revisit learning episodes from the past 3 weeks of school.  Through explicit and incidental teaching, students have explored our school values in the following was:

Being Honest by:

• Communicating how they are feeling about curriculum tasks and engaging safely in the playground. 

Showing Caring behaviours by:

• Staying with the group and walk on pathways when they travel to and from assemblies and playground areas. 

Demonstrating Respectful behaviours by:

• Personal space, recognising emotions, taking turns and playing by the rules during Health and Physical Education explicit lessons and when engaging in outdoor play with their peers. 

Parents can assist with learning and refining these skills in a home school partnership way by;

• Communicating how they are feeling during the day and playing safely with their siblings at home during weekend activities. 
• Providing one step instructions for your young people to walk alongside you when shopping and crossing roads when out the in the community.
• Labelling your own and your young persons emotions as they present during activities within the home. Families could engage in a family game night, which would enable all the family members to model taking turns and playing by the rules. 

Parents Book Week will be taking place in Week 7.  This year's theme for Book Week is Old Worlds New Worlds Other Worlds.  We will look at creative ways to include parents should any restrictions impact celebrations.  Your classroom teacher may send information to you about Book Week soon should they be undertaking a theme.  We look forward to including fun events during the year where we can at Mudgee and can't wait to see all our students enjoying literacy activities.