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Dear Parents and Carers,
This week we have begun some exciting Teaching and Learning initiatives in the school!
Spelling Mastery
Our Years 3 to 6 students are participating in a 20 minute ‘Spelling Mastery’ lesson 4 times a week. The students are streamed into groups based on their spelling skills. The program is based on extensive research and teaches students dependable spelling skills by blending phonemic, whole-word and morphemic approaches. It provides straightforward lessons to help efficiently and effectively teach spelling skills students need to become proficient writers. A big thank you goes to Tiffany Reedy for her work in setting up the program including resources and groupings and also to the teachers for their zest for learning and enthusiasm to adopt new practices to meet the needs of our students.
The Writing Revolution
We also have several of our staff members completing a pilot project in the school and undertaking training in ‘The Writing Revolution’ (TWR) which scaffolds the teaching of writing in all grade levels by adopting consistent techniques and prioritises feedback as a part of the writing process. We look forward to hearing how this writing model can enhance our writing lessons across the school in the coming weeks. A big thank you to our teachers and Coordinator Lauren MacDonald who are starting their day at 7:30 am as the training is run live from the USA.
COVID Update
We have had some Covid exposures in the school in the last week as you would have seen in my Daily reporting. The school continues to prioritise the health and wellbeing of our students and have the following measures in place to reduce exposure risks.
- RAT testing 2 times a week for all staff and students. We welcome the ACT government extension of this program for another 4 weeks. If you run out of RAT tests or are unsure if they have worked, please consider getting a PCR test.
- Any student who presents symptoms at school will be isolated from the cohort and parents will be immediately rung. Please do not send your child to school if they have any COVID related symptoms. If you are worried or want to chat further, please contact your classroom teacher.
- Extra daily cleaning of high touch points in school and antibacterial wipes for student desks and equipment.
- Students use provided hand sanitiser to sanitise their hands multiple times a day.
- Teachers are maximising all avenues to ensure their classrooms are ventilated and consider conducting lessons outdoors where possible.
- Students are immediately cohorted in their Year groups as soon as they arrive at school. They remain in these cohorts for the remainder of the day including during break times.
- Students have dedicated entry and exit points in the school to minimise bottlenecks and use the most direct outdoor route when moving around the school.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me directly if you are concerned in any way.
Meet and Greet Interviews
Next week on Monday and Tuesday, we will have Meet and Greet interviews via MS Teams. You can book a time through the Compass Parent Portal and select the Conferences tab. Your child/ren’s teacher should show up here with their available time slots. A scaffold to support this meeting was sent home via Compass yesterday, and we would appreciate you taking the time to complete this prior to the interview. These can be returned via email or in a paper copy. Classroom teachers will provide a meeting link in the coming days.
Thank you, for your continued support.
Blessings and best wishes
Sean Rutledge
Principal
In this Sunday’s gospel, the radical teaching that was begun in last week’s gospel as the beatitudes and woes is continued. We are challenged to be forgiving, compassionate and generous in the same way that God expresses abundant love. As with the blessings and curses of the Beatitudes passage from last week, this teaching continues the challenge to act against cultural and social expectations.
Jesus tells his disciples to love their enemies and to do good to those who hate them. His instruction is contrary to the ‘normal’ way of doing things – and that’s exactly the message Jesus wanted to convey! Rather than a spiteful, vengeful God who keeps score and punishes wrongdoing, Jesus presents a compelling image of a God of unbounded compassion and abundant generosity.
In this passage we find one version of the Golden Rule that appears repeatedly throughout the gospels (as well as most other religious traditions): ‘Treat others as you would like them to treat you.’ It is followed up with a comment that it takes no effort to treat well people whom you like – anybody can do that. The challenge is to treat people you don’t like as you would like to be treated yourself. In a society that had very strict rules about the way to treat different people and clearly established boundaries between different groups, this was a tough ask by Jesus. Bear in mind also that there was an occupying army in the country and Jesus was encouraging the people to treat even their enemies, the Romans, with love, compassion, and forgiveness. This was a radical and challenging teaching!
Regarding how this Gospel reflects in our own lives, as a family, identify the people in your life who irritate you or even treat you badly. How can you put into practice the call to ‘love your enemies’ and ‘do good to those who hate you’? Identify practical strategies you can employ in the next week or so and make a commitment to try at least one practical strategy to turn a situation around.
CLASS MASSES:
Even though our Covid restrictions have meant we can’t gather as a school, next week we will begin our class masses with Fr. James (and Fr Josh in Terms 2-4). We begin with 4N on Wednesday at 12:15. The children and Mr O’Brien have prepared the Mass and will bring home the Mass booklet so you can talk about the celebration with your children. Hopefully in Term 2 we will be able to invite the community to Mass to share in the Eucharistic celebration.
Have a great week!
Sharee
Our Annual Improvement Plan (AIP) sets out the goals and targets we aim to achieve in relation to Teaching and Learning each year. This is effectively a chunk of our 3-year strategic plan. Our Strategic Plan will end this year and a process to form our new plan will begin towards the end of 2022. The following Slides are visual graphics of the key ideas and targets from our 2022 AIP.
This week we want to introduce to you our term 1 plan for strengthening student performance in mathematics. This goal will be addressed through 2 main areas:
High Impact Teaching Practices- which looks at effective teaching practices that assist students to learn, understand and retain information.
Direct Instruction- which is based around clear explanations, activities that are completed with the teacher before students feel confident in taking on learning experience independently.
We hope that by building understanding through quality teaching and the use of numeracy resources we can allow students to engage in tasks in whatever strategy they learn best.
We are also excited to welcome Dr Lorraine Hammond this term as she works with teachers to improve our direct instruction and make us even better at what we do.
Could families please not pay fees payments etc through Compass. Please use other payment methods such as BPAY, Direct Debit, EFTPOS and QKR. Thank you
Rosie Todd
Finance Officer
St Francis of Assisi Primary School
Phone: 6292 4500