Last Sunday’s Gospel…

Last Sunday’s Gospel…

Jesus appeared to the apostles in a closed room. It was one of a number of appearances he made. He didn’t look quite the same though and could do some things that our human bodies can’t do such as appearing in a locked room. Jesus was definitely a physical being though because he could talk and eat and Thomas put his hands into Jesus’ wounds. So his body also showed the wounds even though it wasn’t his old broken body. Jesus had a glorified body, not a resurrected body. It is another proof that Jesus did in fact die because of his broken body and truly conquered death by returning in a slightly different form. That’s also why he wasn’t recognised straight away.

Staff Development Day

The staff had a busy day working on how learning content and skills progress from Kindergarten to Year 6 in the new Mathematics Syllabus. They also engaged in tasks to examine the components of an effective maths lesson. The teaching of Mathematics is one of the areas we are concentrating on this year in our Annual Improvement Plan. This is supported by another area – the use of data to measure student learning gains and analyse teacher impact on that learning. Teachers are implementing various assessment activities and meeting as a Professional Learning Team (PLT) to be guided through a process including the examination of the strengths and constraints of the data gathered, triangulating it against other data sources to determine accuracy and using this data, along with the syllabus, to plan what students need to either consolidate or extend in their learning. This is done during the PPT time – when your children have a different teacher each week.

Behaviour Goals

The third area we are working on this year is behaviour. We have revised and simplified the correction sequence so all students and staff can understand it easily. The staff member present at the time of the behaviour infringement also follows up on it with support from leadership as required. This is so the students know they are expected to maintain acceptable levels of behaviour no matter which staff member is responsible for them at the time. Our recording of incidents has improved so we are able to see patterns and adjust accordingly – for example, all the new equipment is in response to students not having enough to do on the playground.

Verbal Behaviour Assistance from Parents

We particularly need your help in one area – verbal infringements. We have a disturbing number of students making nasty racial comments to each other, including the ‘n’ word, and too many students have the ‘f’ word as part of their everyday vocabulary. Students often tell us they are allowed to use these terms at home. Now I’m not suggesting it is the fault of parents! Often unfortunately, students learn these words because they hear them at school and don’t know what they mean. I also appreciate that parents have the right to allow what they believe to be acceptable in their own home. I am asking though that you reinforce with your children that words related to race, or swear words are not ok at school ever, even if the words aren’t ‘rude words’. Calling people ‘rice cookers’ is not ok! A good way of explaining it is that in primary schools everything needs to be ‘G’ rated including our language. And please discourage your children from retaliating. Get them to tell a teacher, or you tell us, and we will deal with it. Retaliating just means they get into an argument where each is trying to say something more horrible that the last thing and everyone is exposed to more language they don’t need to hear. It then feels ‘normal’ to hears such things at school. I believe that especially at a Catholic School, this is completely unacceptable.

Uniforms

Terms 2 and 3 are time for winter uniforms. The first two weeks of term two are flexible in case of warm weather so either full summer or full winter uniform is acceptable. Please don’t mix them up. The students are looking much smarter with the effort everyone is putting into uniforms so keep up the great work.

Newsletter Frequency

We are going to trial fortnightly newsletters in Term 2 in even weeks – the same week as assemblies. We will still send out timely notifications if we need to via Compass. Receiving it less often may help more people read it. Video newsletters will continue in the even weeks too – thank you for the feedback about this so far. It has been positive. I am very open to comments for improvements as well!

Excursions

We have a number of excursions early in Term 2. All parents who would like to help in any way in the school need to have completed the Parent Induction Course to do so. You only need to do it once and we keep a record of it at the office in case you can’t remember. Most of our Kindergarten parents have completed it because we ran it as part of induction. I am aware that we had wonderful parent helpers at our two carnivals who had not done the induction but we had a great number of things to organise at the beginning of the year so kept going without it. Moving forward, we need to comply with these requirements. They are part of the Child Protection procedures that all schools in our diocese need to follow. The course only takes about 20 minutes. I am going to run two on Tuesday 30^th April – after the holidays. One at 3pm and one at 6pm. Both will be in the library. Courses will always be run as part of Kinder Orientation and then a couple of times a year so everyone has the chance to participate. Please come along so you can help in the classrooms or carnivals or excursions or Gala Days!

 Video Format

Thank you for the positive feedback. We anticipate producing another one next week when we have a little more news!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGtQVvG1Bkw

God Bless, 

Ms Michelle Rolfe, Mr Lindsay Burns and Ms Emilia Ahern

Principal and Acting Assistant Principals