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Matthew O'Brien, Principal
Dear Parents, Guardians, Staff, Students and the wider St. Joseph’s Primary School Community,
Project Compassion - Lent
Structured Literacy
Over the last week the Grattan Institute has published a report into Literacy acquisition in Australian schools.
The report recommends,
“…all schools should use the ‘structured literacy’ approach right through school, which includes a focus on phonics in the early years.
Students should learn to sound out the letters of each word, and teachers should read aloud rich literature to their class. Once students have mastered decoding new words, they still need explicit teaching to build up their background knowledge and vocabulary, so they can comprehend what they read – the ultimate goal of reading.”
This Thursday during our school closure the staff will be continuing their learning about these exact strategies as we partner with the DOBCEL staff in the Structured Literacy program. This professional development dovetails with our school having embraced the Little Learners Love Literacy program in the junior school. It is reassuring that the research we have done into the best ways to support our staff to continually improve their knowledge and skills has been identified by the Grattan Institute as the most effective method that is research and evidence based.
This initiative is a key priority for us in our School Improvement Plan for 2024 and beyond as we continue to build upon the excellent results that our students currently achieve. Our staff will undertake two full days of professional development supported by 10 online modules to be completed during the year.
House Fire
The Collins family whose house burnt down last week are a part of our school community as their eldest daughter Harper began Foundation this year. Jordan and Tegan also have Finn at home and are expecting their 3rd child in the next few weeks. Our community has offered support and will ask for your help as specific needs become known.
e-Scooter Laws
I draw your attention to the e-Scooter Laws for Victoria which among other things state that e- Scooters can only be ridden legally by people over 16 years of age.
This being the case no children will be able to ride an e-Scooter to school.
See the full suite of laws from the Victorian Police website.
Reconciliation Parent and Student information evening
Congratulations to the children who will commence the Reconciliation Sacramental Program at the Parent and Student information evening tonight at 7pm, Tuesday 20th February.
Regards
Matthew O'Brien, Principal
Happy Birthday to children celebrating their birthday this week.
Hadley Boyle, Logan Hunter, Olivia McCarthy, Luca McSween, Sean Du, Hannah Smith, Jimmy Kermond, Diyana Bulegoda and Jackson Snell.
On Wednesday all of the Year Six students were lucky enough to go to the Warrnambool Surf club for a team building day organised by the Year six teachers and Mr O’Brien.
The first guest speaker was Ben the Bandit who informed us that in life in order to be happy you have to take safe risks and to take risks you have to have courage. His life wasn’t as simple as others. He faced struggle and had learned how to work around them and inspired us to do the same.
Our second guest speaker was Ben Walsh. He handed out pieces of paper to each table team and we were to write about all the things about our school we are grateful for. He also helped us make a Year 6 moto.
All of the Year Sixers were having such an enjoyable time, that we didn’t want it to end!
Just after lunch we split into classroom groups and began our team building activities. E1 and E3 started on the obstacle course where we had to cross over the “Radioactive River” organised by Mr. O’Brien. It was a great activity that forced us to work as a team. It also showed that you couldn’t just have one voice leading the team as sometimes other ideas put together can be so beneficial.
The other activity was a cup stack. We used a rubber band, with string wrapped around it, so that you could pull it in and out. You would then with your group attempt to get the plastic cups from one area to the other. When doing this you had to really communicate and use a lot of motivation.
After we finished off the Team building activities we all went back inside and sat in a massive circle and each got handed a lemonade icy pole. We were all so happy in the moment we started an Aussie Chant in pride at how amazing our Year 6 level is. Then at the most perfect time we got an announcement from all the teachers that we were getting our Year 6 T-shirts. The school leaders were asked to go up the front and hand the T-shirts out to everyone. We all were so excited as we slid on the tops. We all jumped up and each class one by one did a fashion parade around the circle and encouraged each and every one to go. After we settled down and got packed up ready to go and we went and had a massive Year 6 photo just out front of the surf club. Then we headed back on the bus on our way back to St Joseph’s.
Thank you so much to all involved, that made us Year Sixes have an incredible day that was so beneficial. We will definitely use these team building skills in the future.
By Sibella Evans, Ava Gleeson, Indi Smedts – year 6 students
The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships
Learning materials have been designed for teachers to use in the curriculum in primary and secondary schools to develop students’ social, emotional and positive relationship skills. Efforts to promote social and emotional skills and positive gender norms in children and young people have been shown to improve health related outcomes and wellbeing.
As well as teaching academic skills, it is part of the core business of schools to promote student resilience, wellbeing and positive social attitudes. One way that schools can achieve this is through the teaching of evidence based programs that explicitly foster personal and social capabilities.
Explicit efforts to provide Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) opportunities is recognised as a key part of this work.
SEL is the process through which children and young people build and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to:
- Understand and manage emotions
- Set and achieve positive goals
- Feel and express empathy
- Establish and maintain positive relationships
- Make responsible decisions
- Develop resilience to deal with change
- Create positive gender norms
- Contribute to social cohesion.
Social and emotional skills help students develop the resilience to deal with change, challenge and unpredictability.
Social and emotional skills are also the foundation of positive relationships, including positive gender relationships, and contribute to social cohesion.
Efforts to promote personal and social capabilities and build resilience can be fostered through a whole school approach. A key component of a whole school approach is the promotion of positive teacher-student relationships. Positive relationships are significantly associated with increased ‘school connectedness’ and with cognitive, emotional and behavioural engagement.
The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) learning materials cover eight
topics of Social and Emotional Learning across all levels of primary and secondary education.
These topics will be shared with you over the coming weeks so you can partner with us in supporting your child in their learning.
Maryanne Evans and Liz Noonan
NEW Parent Borrowers
Are you keen to borrow some of the amazing resources that we have available in our LRC? Please fill in the registration link and we will provide you with a barcode to scan when you pop into the Library. Mondays and Fridays are the best time to borrow books, or pop in with your children after school one afternoon! They will be able to teach you how to use the system. Please look at these books for you to benefit from.
School Fee notices were emailed out to fee payers on Monday 19th February. If you did not receive one please check your spam folder and contact the office if necessary.
9:05am, Tuesday 27th February, 2024
We will be holding a Classroom Helpers information session for all parents and carers in Foundation, Year one and Year Two who would like to help with literacy activities in their child’s classroom.
If you would like to be involved in the helping in the classroom please register your interest and attendance/apology on the linked form.
Please note: All school volunteers must hold a current Working With Children Check. These can be obtained free of charge at https://www.workingwithchildren.vic.gov.au/
The session will focus on child safety and how to support children in developing reading skills using the latest research based approaches.
School Canteen Support
Term 1 Roster
There are lots of gaps on our Term 1 Canteen Roster. Can you help? Training provided.