Dear parents and guardians,

Welcome to week 2B.  I would like to thank you for all the help you gave your boys last week to get them settled into online learning; we are also mindful that you might now be working from home with other family members so we truly appreciate your help in what can seem like a balancing act.

This is not a situation we wanted to find ourselves in and we understand how much the boys love the interaction with their classmates, teammates and teachers.  At the end of last week we took the feedback from the mentor sessions run on Thursday and have made some changes to the program this week.

• We will now hold mentor meetings on both Monday and Thursday to keep in closer contact with the boys.
• Years 7-9 will not be given homework, with the exceptions of:
  • Reading a hard-copy text
  • Working towards an upcoming assessment task
  • Completing an offline task (such as a practical task or physical activity)
• There will be a compulsory 45-minute sport session scheduled for the boys this week. You will find the timetable here.

We want the boys to stay active, so on top of the sport session we have made available a range of opportunities for the boys to dive into.  There is yoga, meditation, ‘Ab Lab with Mr Schmidt’, ‘Thrills and Skills with Mr Steel’ and the all-time favourite ‘Cooped Up Callisthenics with Mr Black’.  All the details can be found here so please encourage your boys to try something new or return to something they love.

We are also asking our teachers to work towards approximately one third of their lessons requiring students to complete tasks independently and off-device. Teachers will remain available for questions during this time.  Please monitor your son’s screen time outside the school day: together we can help our boys be active, engaged and less likely to suffer from screen fatigue.

If there is anything we can help you with please do not hesitate to contact your son’s mentor, Head of House or our school psychologists.