Term 2 Week 6

Congratulations to our Year 3 students who received the Sacrament of Reconciliation last week at St Christopher’s church. Fr Peter celebrated with us along with Fr George and Fr Micheal. It was a very reverent celebration with children well prepared. Thank you to the Yr3/4 teachers, Ms McKay, Ms Selena Mrs Anne and Mrs Clare for preparing and organising the children. Thanks you to Mrs Barone for organising the evening. Thank you also to Mrs Grace, Mrs Michelle and Ms Walsh for volunteering their time to support the staff and children on the night.

This week I sent information home via the school app detailing a three series webinar opportunity for parents. We have continued to partner with  Martin and Carley McGuaren from ‘Inform And Empower”. Martin works with the staff and students on presenting information on cyber safety while Carley, a psychologist, has worked with families on ‘Healthy Families.’ Carley is presenting a series of 3 webinars (June, August, November). The first webinar was Thursday 1st June addressing, ‘Managing Anxiety and Other Big Feelings for Tweens.’ The following information includes the recording of this webinar for your viewing and resources.

The two other webinars will be offered in August and November. The next two webinars focus on:

• Reduce chaos and increase calm (August)
• Tackling tricky conversations  (November)

I urge parents to take advantage of these webinars as you will be sure to gain valuable information and benefits from the series as we all navigate ‘parenting’. I will share the links for August and September webinars as we get closer to the date. 

A closure day was held on Monday with the staff engaging in personal learning with Helen Butler. Helen has been working with our school for three years now as we continue to develop our processes and capacity around Evidence Based Learning. We have been focusing on feedback to teachers on their set goals and ways to continue with their good work. This has been invaluable in overall  improvement and impact for learning. On Monday Helen continued with this theme to further explore teacher to student, student to student and student to teacher feedback. We continue to provide opportunity and time for staff to observe each other and observe staff recognised as expert practitioners. 

Parent Teacher Learning Conversations will be held online on Wednesday 21st June. Children will be dismissed from school at 12.15pm in order for the teachers to be available for these conversations with parents. Previously we have had families come to school for a face to face meeting where they meet with teachers in Cooinda. Teachers have been positioned in Cooinda where families then had easy access to teachers at their allocated time, particularly if a family has more than one meeting to attend. It is also warm and safe for all participants throughout the evening. The building and renovation works prohibit us from using Cooinda as it is set up with classrooms and so these meetings will be online. Information regarding the Parent Teacher Conversations and an opportunity to sign up for a time to meet with your child’s classroom teacher online can be found in the ‘Learning Matters’ page of this newsletter.

Cathy Steere