PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE
Matthew O'Brien, Principal
Dear Parents, Guardians, Staff, Students and the wider St. Joseph’s Primary School Community,
Student Leaders 2024
Congratulations to our new student leaders for 2024. At last Friday’s assembly they received their badges from their 2023 Foundation buddy and then made a speech to the entire school community introducing themselves and making some suggestions as to how we can all work together to make 2024 a great year for everyone.
Roisin Handsford, Rhianna Gibbons, Logan Jones, Vivienne Smedts, Indi Smedts
Molly McNeil, Ava Gleeson Templeton, Sibella Evans
Absent: Billy Main, Archie Harle
2024 School Improvement Foci
This year we continue to focus on improving academic and wellbeing outcomes for all children.
To achieve these aims we are undertaking two specific improvement strategies:
- School Wide Positive Behaviour Support
- Structured Literacy
School-wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) is a framework that brings together school communities to develop positive, safe, supportive learning cultures.
SWPBS assists schools to improve social, emotional, behavioural and academic outcomes for children and young people.
When SWPBS is implemented well, teachers and students have more time to focus on relationships and classroom instruction. Students and staff benefit from:
- increased respectful and positive behaviour
- increased time focused on instruction
- improved social-emotional wellbeing
- positive and respectful relationships among students and staff
- increased adoption of evidence-based instructional practices
- a predictable learning environment with improved perceptions of safety and increased attendance.
Maryanne Evans and Liz Noonan will lead this initiative.
Structure Literacy is an approach to literacy instruction that applies a systematic, cumulative, explicit and diagnostic methodology to the teaching of phonology, orthography, morphology and etymology, syntax and semantics. In this project we are partnering with LaTrobe University and Catholic Education Office Ballarat (see below for more information).
Marlie Boyd in collaboration with our Year Level Learning Leaders will lead this initiative.