What an amazing start to Term 3! First, welcome to all our wonderful new learners and their families. In Primary School, there are 57 children joining us this term, from Nursery through to Year 6.

At Nexus we pride ourselves on being a learning-focused community. The four elements of the Nexus Way (Relationships, Inclusion, Mindsets and Innovation) guide our whole approach to teaching and learning, and it is so powerful to view our work through these four lenses. These last two weeks all four elements have been in evidence.

The strength in relationships was shown as we welcomed new families. New parents, you should be very proud of how your children have shown such confidence and been risk-takers as they have joined Nexus and existing parents you should be equally proud at how your children have been so supportive and caring towards the new members of the Nexus family. Last Wednesday we held a Welcome Evening for new parents where we gave everyone an overview of the school's operations and an introduction to the Nexus Way. Thank you to all those that joined us.

Meanwhile during this week and this weekend, our teachers have been very innovative. They have been working with international experts to further develop their pedagogies and explore how to further enhance the use of our open learning environments.

On Thursday and Friday inclusion was brought to the fore as every Primary School learner was involved in one of our four Sport Days. All learners have been learning the fundamental skills of athletics events in their Health and Physical Education lessons. The Sports Days were an opportunity for all learners to put those skills into practice and 'have a go'. The focus of the days were on everyone participating in a fun and encouraging environment, and working together with learners in their house. It also gave our older learners the chance to excel in their chosen disciplines. Those athletes that recorded exceptional performances will go on to represent ACSIS in the Season 3 athletics tournament. A full report is on the 'Sports' Page. To provide a balance to these sports events, alongside them we have held high engery drama workshops for all our Primary School learners, allowing them all the opportunity to explore music, movement, dance and drama. Wow what a week!

For me the most powerful example of open and creative mindsets over the last two weeks was the Year 5 Science Fair. After a unit of inquiry exploring a range of scienctific concepts around the states of matter and chemical and physical changes the learners had the opportunity to design an experiment of their choosing, deciding a question, making a hypothesis, carrying out their test, drawing conclusions and using wider research to generalise there findings.

As new start a new semester, may I take this opportunity to remind all our families that there are some key communication tools we use in school, such as our Facebook Page, the Nexus Hub App and the Parent Zone. Please make sure you've connected to these. Further details can be found under 'Important Notices' Page.

Also, on Friday, 1 February 2019 the Primary School will be CLOSED to allow for the Primary School Learning Conferences to take place. See 'Upcoming Events' Page for further details.

With best regards.

Paul.