Term 4, Week 5 - 3rd November, 2022

From the Principal

Dear families,

Welcome to Week 5's newsletter! 

Thank you goes out to our families for their support at our Cent Sale. I also want to shout out to the many businesses from local or surrounding areas that donated. Whether you volunteered your time, or a prize for the night, we are very appreciative of your generosity.

Berry Street Model Traning Day 3 &4

Last week, Mr Zahner, Mrs Smith 2 and I went to Toowoomba to participate in the final two days of the Berry Street Education Model (BSEM).  During the course, we covered the three domains below: 

Engagement - Motivating students with strategies that increase their willingness to learn.

Stamina - Creating a culture of academic persistence by nurturing resilience, emotional intelligence and a growth mindset.

Character - Harnessing a values and character strengths approach to instil students’ self-knowledge for future pathways.

We endeavour to implement various strategies across our school to enable teachers and staff to increase engagement of students with complex, unmet learning needs and to successfully improve all students’ self-regulation, relationships, wellbeing, growth and academic achievement.

One of the first strategies we will be implementing will be a whole school understanding of what it means to be 'Ready to Learn'. Each classroom will implement a Ready to Learn scale - a standard system used by students in classrooms to identify difficult emotions and stress, both collectively as a whole class and individually. 

Something we have already started implementing in each classroom are our 'Morning circles' - a daily routine that includes rhythmic activities, healthy touch, positive affirmations, intention setting and gratitude reflections.

The Learning Pit

The learning pit explains the reality that when you learn something new, you may make a mistake, you may fail, and it may be difficult, but it doesn't mean you can't learn it. It just means you are in the learning pit and need to try again in a different way until you can get out of the learning pit.

Introducing the learning pit - Whole school lesson

We started the lesson by asking the students to get in pairs and replicate an origami lotus flower without any instructional help. This task was chosen to intentionally frustrate our learners.

As students began working, we took note of what they were saying/thinking/feeling in response to the challenge. After some time, we heard things such as "this is really hard", "I give up", "I don't know how to do this." This phase is when students are 'going into the pit', where students struggle the most and quite often quit the activity.

Next, we demonstrated how to create the lotus flower using step by step instructions. Upon completion of the lotus flower, students felt a sense of success and achievement. We discussed how we feel when we achieve something after working hard at it. 

Afterwards, we identified the stairs/steps that we went through to get ourselves out of the pit. These included; asking questions, working as a team, persisting and not giving up.

We will be revisiting the learning pit regularly as a school and diving deeper into the concept of the learning pit in our classrooms with the aim to create more persistent learners. You can find our whole school learning pit hanging up in our staffroom. I encourage you to ask your children about what they have learned about the learning pit.

Staffing 2023

After a successful application for additional staffing in 2023, I am very excited to announce that we will be moving to three classrooms! We have almost doubled in enrolments since 2020, so it is very exciting to announce that we are catering for our growing school.

Beginning next year, our new classroom arrangements will be as follows:

This change will allow us to ensure that we are achieving the following at St Maria Goretti:

• Increase the appeal of the school to prospective families looking to enrol their child at a Catholic school
• Recruitment and retention of teachers
• Allows teachers to plan for age-appropriate pedagogies
• Will result in social and emotional benefits for our students
  
• Ability to prepare our Year 6 students to be ‘high school ready’
• Teachers will be able to support individual student needs more effectively
• 3 classrooms will help continue our positive enrolment trend moving into the future

Please see Miss Spencer's welcome letter, below. Miss Tilbury will be sending out a letter to the 2/3/4 class shortly.

Welcome, Miss Spencer, to P/1!

We are delighted to welcome Miss Madison Spencer to our team in 2023. Miss Spencer will be teaching P/1 in 2023. Miss Spencer will be visiting our school on Thursday the 17th of November to meet the students. Parents are more than welcome to come and say hello after school.

I am sure our school community will help make Miss Spencer feel very welcome. 

School Camp Parent Info Session

I request that all parents attending school camp to please come for a meeting after school on Thursday the 17th, 3:15pm in the P-2 classroom to discuss the ins and outs of camp. This is an important session to attend so that you are aware of your role and responsibilities when attending school camp.

Next week, I will be away in Toowoomba at the Toowoomba Catholic Schools Leadership Forum. In my absence, Mrs Twidale and Mr Zahner will be deputising. Please direct any matters of urgency to them.

Yours in education,

Casey Robinson

Principal

“May God bless you and keep you strong and help you in your anxieties.” (Mary MacKillop, 1900)

Library News

Life in the Library during Term 4 is fast and furious with a focus on as much free choice reading as possible. Please support this important reading practice at home.

Year 3 - 6 students have been giving their book talks as a way to share what they have been reading with their classmates. They are always enthusiastic about their book and able to answer questions from the floor!

We are making progress with locating information to answer our questions about Antarctica and each year level will be sharing their learning with the class in Week 7.

Prep - 2 classes are working on finding the best book for their free choice reading and are learning to  recognise fiction books from non-fiction books.

Student Borrowing - Browse and Borrow Sessions and Summer Reading

Week 6 is the last class browse and borrow time with all student loans due by the end of Week 7. Returning students with no outstanding loans are invited to borrow books for the Summer break on Monday or Tuesday of Week 9. 

To date, staff and students from Prep to Year 6 have borrowed a total of 3,132 Fiction and Non-Fiction books this year! Our students are certainly huge library users. Well done everyone but remember to make time to read the books while they are in your home.

Happy Reading this week

Anne Anderson

Teacher Librarian

Students of the Week - Week 5

Sight Word Certificates

The 5 C's Awards

Mathletics Certificates

Parent Partnership Forum

PPF News

A huge thank you to everyone who helped with the organising and running of our very successful Cent Sale. While final figures are still a work in progress, we did raise over $8000 towards our playground upgrade!

Notices

Our Lady of the Southern Cross Parish - Mass Times

Sunday 6th November - 9am Lay Lead Liturgy

Saturday 12th November - 5:30pm Mass

Sunday 20th November - 9am Lay Lead Liturgy

Sunday 27th November - 9am Mass