After weeks of learning at home, students across Canberra are digging out their school bags and lunchboxes and heading back to the classroom.
From the start of this week children in preschool, kindergarten, year 1, year 2 and year 6 will be filling the classrooms in primary schools, while year 9 and 10 students will join year 11 and 12 students on campus.
Ellie Sky, 4, and her brother Zach Sky, 6, were feeling very excited to go back to preschool and year 1 at Macquarie Primary School.
“I’m looking forward to playing outside and making craft in school,” Ellie said.
“I really want to see my friends.”
Zach said he was happy to spend less time on the computer and have some more challenging work to do at school.
“I’m looking forward to having some fresh air with my mate and the maths will be harder,” he said.
Their mother, Lauren Johnston, said it would be a shock to the system when her two children go back to school, leaving her two-year-old daughter the only one at home.
“The house will be much quieter. My youngest daughter will miss having her siblings around, absolutely.”
Ms Johnston has been talking to the children about the changes they can expect at school to mitigate the risks of an outbreak.
ACT schools have been advised to avoid different year groups mingling during the school day so that if there is a confirmed case of COVID-19, the exposure will be limited to part of the school community.
Evatt Primary School principal Michael Hatswell said his school was using colour coding to divide the year groups into four cohorts.
“We have put our four colours on the Evatt eagle, those being green, yellow, blue and red, to just help identify the learning environments and basically the zones for the kids to go in and out of the school.”
Each colour has been allocated a different entrance, classrooms, toilets and a roster of playground spaces to use, so that they don’t come in contact with each other during the day.
The specialist teachers who usually work across different year levels have been allocated one cohort to teach, while the principal and deputy will try not to go between groups.
