Term 3, Week 3 - 27th July, 2023
From the Principal
Dear families,
Happy Catholic Education week!
We have had a wonderful week celebrating faith, hope, and love at our school. Students have participated in Liturgy, NAIDOC activities with the kindy, tree planting, and today we are looking forward to making connections with St Mary's Goondiwindi at Friendship Day. Tomorrow our staff will travel to Toowoomba for the annual Bishop's Inservice Day.
2023 NAPLAN Results
Whole school NAPLAN data has been released to schools and parents and it is incredibly pleasing to see how our students performed in their cohorts.
The data collected from NAPLAN 2023 provides leadership and teaching staff at St Maria Goretti important baseline information to better understand the strengths and opportunities for growth of our students and to evaluate school programs to ensure they are best meeting our students’ needs.
As a school:
- In Writing & Numeracy, 100% of our Year 3 students are at or above the national minimum standard
- In Reading & Numeracy, 100% of our Year 5 students are at or above the national minimum standard
- 100% of students in Year 3 and Year 5 achieved a result in the 'Strong' proficiency level for Numeracy
- It has been identified that Spelling and Grammar & Punctuation are the areas we need to strengthen as a whole school, on average
How to read the results?
The NAPLAN proficiency standards include 4 proficiency levels for each assessment area at each year level:
- Exceeding: the student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing.
- Strong: the student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.
- Developing: the student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing.
- Needs additional support: the student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.
Each of the standards represents increasingly challenging skills and understandings as students move through the years of schooling.
When interpreting your child’s results, please keep in mind that children change and develop rapidly, and a single test cannot possibly assess all their abilities. A variety of factors can affect how well your child does on any test, including their motivation, attention, mood, physical wellbeing, and opportunities for learning.
The consistency of a whole-school implementation of the Reading Improvement Strategy (RIS) and the INSPIRE Maths strategy has supported our positive results in Reading and Numeracy this year. Congratulations to our Year 3 and Year 5 students.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to speak to your child’s teacher.
Upcoming Term 3 dates
28th July - Pupil Free Day - Bishop's Inservice Day
1st August - Pathway to Prep Opening Morning
8th August - Mary MacKillop Day
9th August - Goondiwindi Eisteddfod
16th August - Goondiwindi Cricket Trials
16th August - PEN Meeting
Yours in education,
Casey Robinson
Principal
"God is good and has brought lights and help when all was very dark" (Mary MacKillop 1899)
Storytelling through symbols
Mr Russell & Connor
Connor McPherson (Year 5) tells a story through his scratch art by using First Nations symbols.
'Greg the kangaroo'
There was a kangaroo named Greg. He woke up on a sunny morning and he was met by three people holding spears. He was hit by one in the shoulder, but he quickly jumped away. Greg lost the people in the shrubs where he found some berries. He ate the berries and went to the waterhole to drink some water. Then he ate some witchetty grubs and he slept the entire night away.
'Patty the Platypus'
One morning Patty woke up and his parents told him that he had to move away. He set off on a journey and met some people who treated him very well. Sadly, he had to leave these people. Patty eventually found his home and looked up at the stars and saw his family and his ancestors and the moon shining bright next to them. Then Patty had some ants for dinner and went to sleep.
2023 Non-Government Schools Census collection notice
Students of the Week - Week 3
Claire (Prep), Connor (Year 5), Pippa (Year 4)
Sight Word Certificates
Super Reader Awards
Parent Engagement Network
Our next PEN meeting is the 16th of AUGUST, 3:30pm in the school library.
Please contact Casey, Melissa or Corinne to add an item to the agenda.
All parents are very welcome to attend the PEN meeting as a rewarding way to get involved with the school community and keep up to date with school events, policies and projects.
Notices
Our Lady of the Southern Cross Parish - Mass Times
Sunday 30th July - 9am Lay Lead Liturgy
Sunday 6th August - 9am Lay Lead Liturgy
Saturday 12th August - 5:30pm Mass
Sunday 20th August - 9am Lay Lead Liturgy
Sunday 27th August - 9am Lay Lead Liturgy