Week 4 Newsletter

‘YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD’

Light of the world, holy God,
You have poured into our hearts,
The Spirit of Jesus your Son,
May his light shine out in us,
And fill us with the warmth of his love,
So that we may be a shining light of love.
Amen.

When we listened to this Gospel reading at our Beginning Year School Mass, we were told to shine our light to the world and to not hide our light. Fr Darius spoke to us further about this reading, by explaining to our students that our light is our talents. It is important that we use our talents to make the school a better place. He also explained that hiding your talents or not using them isn’t what Jesus calls us to do in the Gospel. We are called to be proud and show these talents to the world.

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Thank you all for supporting your children over their first weeks of school. Great to see everyone has settled so nicely back into school routines and showing such enthusiasm for learning.  Our Prep students, in particular, have transitioned to school life really well and their smiling faces each day is a joy to see.  It certainly has been a great start to the year.

Last week Meg Newell, Amanda Rowe and I, were fortunate enough to attend professional development in Cairns. Our school and many others in the Diocese have partnered with Lynn Sharratt, Educational Consultant, Researcher, Author focused on supporting schools to increase students' achievement. By emphasizing collaborative processes, Lyn Sharratt’s detailed design demonstrates how shared knowledge, equity and expertise can make every classroom more impactful and every teacher more empowered.

As a result, we are targeting these areas in our (SAIP) School Annual Improvement Plan to accomplish in 2020:

 Teaching and Learning

• Improve our overall school achievement in Numeracy standards
• Deepen staff capacity to delivery high impact teaching strategies in all Learning Areas
• Continue to embed Visible Learning practices , especially through providing feedback
• Data analysis to inform instruction for all students

Mission and Identity

• Develop our Catholic Identity by deepening our understanding of St Joseph and what this means for us as a school.
• Improve Wellbeing practices and Student Behavior Support across the school
• Streamline school wide communication processes and protocols

God Bless,

Megan

SCHOOL DROP OFF ZONE – Kiss’n Go

A reminder to all of our community, that this zone is set up to maximise traffic flow and safety for students, parents, visitors and staff who use the area. Please note and action the following points as necessary while using the zone:

• Display your family name sign prominently as you use the pick up zone (please let us know if you need a sign made)
• Drive with great care at a slow speed
• Move to the end of the drop off zone to pick up or drop off wherever possible
• Complete a lap of the car park if instructed by teacher on duty (if your children are not there)
• Students alight and enter cars from the footpath side only
• Encourage students to have bags with them rather than going between cars to use the boot
• Parents stay in the car to maximise timing
• Ensure extended family members know the process

PB4L (Positive Behaviour for Learning)

Each Monday all classes gather in the flexible learning space to have a brief 10 minute assembly to introduce the expected behaviours we are focussing on explicitly teaching for the week. Classes then return to their classrooms to participate in the weekly ‘Friendology’ lesson.

So far this term we have covered:

• Being an attentive listener. When it is time to pay attention the teacher signals for the class to Stop, Look and Listen.
• Transitioning in and out of the classroom. How to line up responsibly and move from place to place around the school in a respectful way.

The underlying principle of the Positive Behaviour for Learning approach is the recognition and reward of positive actions by students, as compared to the reactive focus on purely negative behaviours. To be clear, this does not mean negative student behaviour will not be dealt with appropriately, it means that there is a very clear drive to recognize and promote all the good things our students are doing.

Since the beginning of the term we have focussed on unpacking what Minor and Major behaviours are and the processes that we follow to help students learn from their behaviour mistakes. Receiving a yellow slip or a pink slip is not a threat or a punishment but is a reflective learning process from which students can learn to use/implement more appropriate strategies to solve problems.

Minor / Major Behaviour Consequences Flow charts are clearly displayed in all classrooms and around the school. A detailed letter explaining our PB4L approach and the consequence process for inappropriate behaviour will be emailed out to all families before the end of the week.

Spelling Mastery Program: 

Students at St Joseph’s Parish School learn to spell using a systematic synthetic phonics approach. This year, students in Years 3-6 students will continue to learn to spell using Spelling Mastery which is a differentiated spelling program. The program uses an explicit, teacher-directed method of teaching called Direct Instruction. Spelling Mastery is an effective, research-proven spelling program that teaches students the strategies they need to become successful, life-long spellers. 

Spelling Mastery helps students to understand the relationship between sounds, word parts and spelling patterns and encourages them to become proficient writers. Through the Spelling Mastery resource, students learn to spell in three ways: 

1. Students learn words using a phonemic approach. This sound-symbol method teaches students predictable spellings for different sounds. 
2. Students learn using a whole-word approach. This whole-word method teaches students common, irregularly spelled words. For example, words like friend, answer and people, whose spellings can’t be figured out. 
3. Students learn rules about how to put different word parts together. These word parts are all called morphographs. Once they have learned to spell a few morphographs, students can mix them up to spell many words. They also learn the rules of putting morphographs together.

Religious Life of the School 

Christian Meditation

Many of us when we pray we like to speak…… but we don’t like to listen. I was raised with prayer being spoken, sometimes with the rosary or other standard prayers, as the main method of being spiritual and being in God’s grace. Prayer simply means to be with God and sometimes to speak with him. Does this have to be vocal? While I think these prayers are wonderful,  necessary and are explicitly taught in the religious curriculum to our students. However, are they enough to nourish our soul? Sometimes, if we don’t stop and pay attention we run the risk of speaking a prayer without being conscious of the words spoken. This means that we are running the risk of saying prayers without actually praying.

Christian meditation is not just speaking to God but allowing us to speak with God. This implies that we also listen, not just speak. Which raises the question of how is it possible to listen to God? God speaks to us all the time through scripture, when we attend mass in the Holy Church, God also speaks to us in the everyday events of our lives. Every day at school I am blessed to see the face of Jesus in every child and staff member at our school. It is in these moments that we need to listen. To take more time in our busy lives to meditate.  Meditation is simply reflecting on God’s word with the help of the Holy Spirit. It involves opening your mind and heart and your will to the presence of God. It is not about looking for visions or extraordinary insights. Anyone can do it. Just stop…. Take a minute or two to close your eyes and recall the presence of God that lives within us. Let everything go from your day… all those thoughts and worries and let our spirit rest in God. Start small, just a minute or two to be mindful of God’s presence in our lives and invite the Holy Spirit into that moment, reflect on God’s will, resolve to move forward with his presence and be thankful. 

Lent

Coming up next week is Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. We will be having a liturgy in the Flexible Learning Area at 1:40pm for Ash Wednesday. We would love it if you could join us for this liturgy. 

What is Shrove Tuesday?

Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent. It’s a day of penitence,to clean the soul and the last chance to feast before Lent begins.  Lent is a time of abstinence, of giving things up. So Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to indulge yourself and use up any foods that weren’t allowed during Lent. Traditionally, Christians would not eat certain foods during Lent such as meat and fish, fats, eggs and milky foods.  So on the day before Lent Christians would feast on the foods that wouldn’t last the forty days of Lent. 

Curriculum News

Parent Volunteer introduction session  

Thank you to those parent who gave up there time to go through the parent induction session. If you are interested in volunteering at School, in any capacity, you will be required to undertake a short induction session. I am happy to run additional sessions if there is a need. Please just register your interest at the office. 

May St. Joseph smile on you, 

Meg Newell