From the Acting Principal

It was fabulous to see the sun come out this week, along with 81 beaming faces in Kindy who shone so brightly for their 100 Days of Kindergarten celebration on Tuesday. Our newest parents clearly enjoyed the opportunity to visit the Kindergarten classrooms and gain a greater understanding of their daughter’s learning. Fittingly, our Head of Junior School, Mrs Kate Brown, used a rainbow analogy to highlight the broader achievements of our youngest Pymble girls at this point in their school journey.

Red represents the courage of each student for letting go of their parent’s hand on that milestone day way back in January and coming to Pymble each day to learn and make new friends.

Orange denotes harmony and their openness to building respectful relationships and sharing ideas, toys and playtime with others.

Yellow is the colour of kindness that sits at their core.

Green represents the environment they are learning to care for, and the gift of a plant for each student to nurture, just as their teachers nurture each girl to grow and flourish.

Blue is for the creativity our Kindy students bring to everything they do.

Indigo symbolises the pride we have for these bright young sparks who show up every day with a passion for learning, while violet reflects their sensitivity and growing ability to express their own feelings and respect the feelings of others.

Thank you to all the parents who came to celebrate their daughter’s achievements and to acknowledge our wonderful Kindergarten teachers for their incredibly important foundational work.

Please enjoy KC and KD singing their special song for the day.

On the other end of the school spectrum, Year 12 students are embracing their final 100 days at Pymble – give or take a few days – and gearing up for two weeks of HSC Trial examinations commencing on Monday. Go well, Class of 2022. We have every confidence in your ability and your preparation. Just remember Dr Hadwen’s golden rule of always reading the question twice before you begin!

Conversations about Research

This week, the Pymble Institute hosted our third annual Research Conference, Conversations about Research, where Pymble staff gave short, informative presentations on research based in our teaching practice, their PhD and Masters projects in progress, and research investigations from a new professional learning opportunity, the Bright Field mentoring program.

Keynote Speaker and College Board member, Dr Kate Highfield opened the event with an excellent discussion on the relevance of early childhood education in the broader edusphere. Five Big Ideas from under Fives: Early Childhood Education and Why We all Need to Know about This highlighted the first 2000 days (or first five years) of a child’s life as the ‘golden zone of possibility’ when synaptic pathways are established as a base for future learning and outcomes in education, health and wellbeing. Interestingly, these five big ideas, summarised below, are throughlines for teaching and learning across K-12 at Pymble as well as influential in the development of our own Early Learning Centre.

Child-led learning and inquiry learning is ideal for young children as it places children’s engagement in the world at the core of their learning. Parents and educators can use the environment around them to provoke all sorts of ‘invitations to learning’ while helping to redirect confusing conclusions or inaccuracies.
Sustained, shared thinking impacts the quality of the child’s learning. This is where adults and children bring ideas together and adults help children to build upon their initial ideas. It’s about following a thought or question from the child and continuing to stimulate their curiosity with further conversation and questions.
Documentation is key to making learning visible for parents. It involves sharing photos, videos, text and artifacts that reflect the student’s activities in their learning and working together to set learning goals.
Importance of whole family collaboration and relationships. In early learning (0-5 years), the law mandates that educators report on student learning and build a constructive relationship with each student and their family, much like our three three-way relationship between students, parents and teachers at Pymble.
Strong theoretical underpinning should inform teaching and learning, as evidence-based learning is the key to a high quality education.

Thank you to all who took the time to attend the conference, and congratulations to our Director – Pymble Institute, Dr Sarah Loch and all our wonderful staff presenters: Ms Mariel Lombard, Ms Alexandra Ibbotson, Mrs Karen Ahearn, Ms Debra Owens, Mr Liam Hume, Mrs Natasha Stanfield, Rev Punam Bent, Mr Ryan Stewart, Mrs Kate Brown and Mrs Victoria Adamovich.

Helping a school in need

As mentioned in last week’s column, Pymble is committed to supporting the Sathya Sai College in Murwillimbah to replenish essential learning supplies after two recent floodings destroyed the school’s facilities, buildings and resources.

To date we have raised more than $6300 for Sathya Sai through proceeds from our Term 2 Ensemble Concert, PAC Week donations and this week’s Spuds for Floods fundraiser. This is a fantastic start, but we want to do more.

At our request, Sathya Sai has sent through a comprehensive list of items required for their Kindergarten classes and Science Room, ranging from iPads, solar system kits and robotics floor mats to stationery, mini whiteboards, paint smocks and textbooks.

Rather than holding a drive and ending up with too many or not enough of the specified items, we are asking our community to donate an amount which will help Sathya Sai purchase exactly what they need. Please, if you can, click here to make a donation.

$20 = two of 30 paint smocks for Kindergarten students.

$50 = two of 25 solar system kits for the Science Room.

$100 = one class set of coloured pencils.

$729 = one of 25 iPads the school hopes to replace.

A huge thank you in advance to all in our Pymble family who will be moved to help Sathya Sai College become fully operational again. I also would like to acknowledge Ms Kate Howie and Mrs Kellie Stapp for going above and beyond to organise and promote the Spuds for Floods fundraiser, the many staff volunteers who didn’t hesitate to put up their hands (and put on a pinny) to dish up hundreds of hot potatoes, and Maddie Lyster, Isabelle Ho and Nina Breckenridge in Year 12 as well as our Years 7 to 12 Community Service leaders for helping to make this such a successful for event. It is heartening to see the love and care from our community to Sathya Sai’s in action.

Speaking of love, we hope you enjoy this video featuring music and lyrics of a famous Beatles song performed by 150 co-curricular music students in isolation during last year’s lockdown. Set to footage of our Secondary School students having fun with the theme following their return to campus, the message from our Pymble girls rings loud and clear – all you need is love.