St Patrick’s Primary School

FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Dear Parents and Carers,

Flying Start

Two weeks into the term and we are already seeing what the restful holiday has meant for all our St Pat’s students. It is great to see students in all classes demonstrating what it means to be present, centred and ready to learn each day. Our daily 5 minute assembly at 8.55 is a time when we acknowledge students for how they are speaking and acting as St Patrick’s students each day. We are also referencing our new St Pat’s Kids Journal that was trialled last year and is being used across the grades this year. The teachers have all commented about students in their class showing good manners and behaviours for learning and engagement in class and at school. I have had a steady flow of visitors sharing great learning.

Horse Riding Champions

Congratulations to Sienna Jessop and Isabella Clifton-Collins on their great achievements at the Berry Interschool Competition in the Christmas holiday.

Sienna and Andolin Park Titanium (Ty) Year 3 Overall Champion

Isabella and Ironbark Grove Blue Moon (Becky) Year 1 Reserve Champion overall

Volunteers in school

All parents and carers who would like to volunteer in our school need to complete a VOLUNTEER INDUCTION session. Next week we will host two volunteer induction sessions for parents and carers of approximately 1hour in duration.

Monday 15^th at 9.30am

Thursday 18^th at 2.15pm

Please register your interest in attending in an induction session by emailing office.bega@cg.catholic.edu.au with your name and time you are attending.

Staffing – New faces

We welcome Mrs Kim Stafford to a part time position for Term 1 in the classroom support assistant team at St Patrick’s.

We welcome Mrs Erin Taylor our CatholicCare Counsellor.

Hello St Pat’s community,

My name is Erin Taylor, I am your new School Counsellor. I will be at St Pat’s Tuesday fortnight and Wednesday between 8.30am and 4.30pm.

I am available to speak with your children about any problems they may be having. I also welcome contact from parents. Please feel welcome to call me at the school if you would like to discuss how I can best support your child.

A bit about me: I have completed honours and masters in psychology, and have been working with young people at headspace in Bega for nearly two and a half years. I live in Wolumla with my husband and three border collies.

I am very excited about being part of the St Pat’s community, and being available to help your children be the best they can.

As part of the professional learning into practice this year St Patrick’s, and the schools in our archdiocese will be focusing on several HITP’s - High Impact Teaching Practices. There are many authors and lists in this field. Our archdiocese is centring our planning on Rosenshine’s 10 Principles of Instruction. These principals are clear and succinct and most teachers, most of the time use these principles in their pedagogy. We are going to be refining our skills and use of these practices in our school.

At home when you are supporting your children with learning new things you can employ these principles and strategies too. Over coming weeks I will give a short summary of each of the 10 HITP’s.

Principle 1. Daily Review Daily review is a process for activating prior learning in readiness to build on it during the lesson. You set a question or task that makes all of students think about ideas they've encountered before, related to today's lesson, so that they can start to make new links; to continue to build their understanding.

Blessings