Dear families,

As we conclude this school year, it has given me reason to reflect on our school calendar and to celebrate all that we have achieved, all that we have experienced and all that we have accomplished.

Term 1 started with us launching our on-site ‘Mini Woolies’ at Karonga School. This has been a terrific addition to our resources and sets our students up for shopping programs as well as work experience. We additionally featured on Channel 9, with the celebration of our unique road crossing- which stirred a lot of interest in our school provisions and has prompted other schools to do excursions to Karonga School. Harmony Day brought together the school community with families sharing cultural food in the hall alongside the students and school staff. This is a valued annual tradition which brings the community together- allowing us all to be in Harmony around food.

Term 2 brought a film company out to our school to put together a 4-minute video about our school and our values, which remains available on our website - if you want to reference it to family and friends. The relationship with The Kings School continued from Term 2, where Y9 boys commit to ‘service’ days at our school, assisting in classrooms and with music and art therapy. Week 4 of Term 2 saw us featured in the Daily Telegraph when we highlighted the great partnership we have developed with the Epping Club. The club generously supports our significant resource investments on an annual basis. Over the past few years’, they have contributed to the Multi-sport court, sunshades, playground equipment, the Immersive Classroom and the installation of the traffic lights. Our latest resource-partnership has been around the sensory room. We hope to finalise those plans in 2025.

Term 3 showed us opening our doors to families for Education Week in Week 3, and more broadly to the school community for Founders Day. With the Kings boys playing musical instruments, ice-cream machine, photo booth, petting zoo and fire-crew we enjoyed a great few hours together celebrating the village that is Karonga School.

This term, we have celebrated our Y12 school leavers with a Graduation meal at the Epping Club, and annual achievements at our Celebration of Learning. We additionally submitted 3 items for the Epping Music Festival at the Chatswood Concourse, where families came to see Karonga students perform a dance sequence and two signing choir songs. Concluding our school year with a feature on the Today program on Channel 9 sees us go full circle to celebrate our students and the amazing community village which is Karonga School.

We look forward to welcoming the students back to school on Thursday February 6^th 2025.

Warm regards,
Ruth Rogers, Principal

As the 2024 schoolyear draws to close, the students in Room 1 have been reflecting on the achievements and memories they have made this year.

Ria has had a great time participating in music therapy. She is always the first student to greet Bec at the door and help set up for the session.

Shuyang and Anita consistently demonstrated interest in art therapy. Shuyang applied attention to detail, taking time to complete art making. Anita had a close connection with Coco and particularly enjoyed sensory aspects of the therapy.

Undoubtably Oras favourite time of the week was accessing mini- Woolworths. He carefully studied the item catalogue each week and made different purchases each time.

Sidney made significant progress with his personal care independence. He especially enjoyed his weekly session with Kathy an itinerant teacher.

William always looked forward to swimming and buying Oreo’s from mini Woolworths. He loved art therapy, always participating and listening to instructions.

We wish everyone a safe and happy summer holiday and look forward to the 2025 school year.

Megan and Sandya

Welcome to the last week of Term 4, 2024. Room 8 have had an enjoyable year, learning lots of different skills and strengthening the ones they already had.

This term we celebrated loud shirt day recognising children with hearing impairments as we have a range of students with hearing impairments in our class and around the school. We also made loud shirts for ‘sh’ during literacy which happened to be the same week.

We have been exploring community access, traveling on the bus with the purpose of traveling safely in our car seats. We used this training to go on a long bus trip to Shine Shed with room 2.

During lesson times we have been practicing our cutting skills with students using different types of scissors, some even learning how to do it independently.

Have a safe holiday.

Lowenna and Laurie

It’s hard to believe we’re already in the last school week of the year! This final newsletter of 2024 provides a wonderful opportunity to reflect on what has been an eventful and rewarding year for Room 14. While we maintained our daily classroom routines and responsibilities supporting the school, it was the skills our students developed that truly defined this year.

This year has been all about exploring new spaces within our school, including the Immersive Classroom, Library, Mini Woolies, and the Sensory Room. These experiences allowed students to develop new skills and adapt to various environments, making each visit a valuable learning opportunity.

In literacy and numeracy, the students of Room 14 continued to build their skills, focusing on tracing, the letter of the week, numbers, measurement, and shapes.

One of the highlights of the year was the weekly swimming sessions on Wednesday afternoons with Murray, Mr. Wei, and our SLSOs. It has been fantastic to see all students practicing safe behaviours both in and out of the pool while striving to reach their full potential.

We are also proud of everything our Room 14 students have achieved this year. Their hard work, growth, and resilience have made 2024 a fantastic year.

Congratulations to all our students for a fantastic year!

We look forward to another exciting year in 2025.

Until next time,

Kamal and Hyma