Term 2 Week 7

We celebrate the Birthday of the Church with a return to the Church, we are excited to announce our first ‘Music concert’, our students are ‘out and about’ once more and we continue to unpack The Stella Learner through our Capabilities work. This is Week 7 of Term 2.

THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CHURCH:

The great feast of Pentecost occurred last Sunday and as a school we celebrated this significant feast by finally gathering together back in the Church for the first time in over 12 months. It was a delight to have students back in full voice in this sacred space – for many the first time they have been in the Church. During this celebration, we are told of the “coming of the Holy Spirit” to the disciples of Jesus. The Holy Spirit gives the disciples courage and new talents to be able to carry out their mission of spreading Jesus’ message and carrying on his vision for a world of peace and unity. I once heard it best described through the use of the analogy of an asthma puffer for the Holy Spirit. The puffer gives it’s ‘patient’ the extra “boost” of air required when they need it – when they feel short of breath or are having difficulty breathing. In the same way the Holy Spirit can give us an extra “boost” when we feel scared or lonely or afraid – as is what happened on the day of Pentecost.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING AND FORMATION DAY:

Last Friday we held our first Professional Learning and Formation day for the year. We are entitled, after permission from our School Board to hold 5 such days each year. Generally, we try our best to ‘tie’ them in to times that suit families – hence the ‘long, long weekend’. It is certainly not a ‘day off’ for our teachers, in fact I am sure that if you asked them, they would say they work as hard on these days as any other during the year! We appreciate that this can cause inconvenience and difficulty for families, but I would also stress that these days allow for very rich and focussed learning for our staff. You can read more about what we did on Friday in Ella’s report and I thank her forher  ongoing leadership in our Learning and Well-Being area.

MUSIC PERFORMANCE:

As you would no doubt be aware, we have recently continued to enhance a strong focus on the Performing Arts here at Stella Maris. Every second year, we hold an annual concert which show cases the dance and drama talents of our students.

In consultation with Victoria Traeger, we have decided to showcase the musical talents of our school in the ‘off year’ of the concert. This will provide us with an opportunity for parents to see their child perform on stage on a more regular occurrence.

Our Music concert will take place at the Westminster College Theatre on Thursday  August the 11^th. Further details about this concert will be provided to families early next week. Please place this important date in your diary.

REPORTS:

We take our responsibility of ‘reporting’ to parents and families very seriously. Sending home official reports twice a year is one of a number of ways in which we provide you with important information about your child’s progress and learning. Our teachers are currently completing the Progress Reports for this semester. In most cases it takes upwards of 80 or so hours to complete these reports. Teachers put a lot of time, energy, thought and discussion into completing these reports. To ensure that you receive the most accurate information about your child’s progress in the first two terms of the year, we will once again be sending home the reports at the beginning of Term 3. This timeframe allows our teachers an extra few weeks to assess, evaluate and complete thorough and accurate reports. Following the reports, you are encouraged to organise a time to meet with the teacher should you wish to discuss any aspect of the report further.

READ ON…

I encourage you to read on through the rest of this weeks newsletter – there are some important updates and information about the goings on in our great school from various staff members.

Thanks as always,

James

Classroom Pulse Check In 

As a school and sector, we recognise that your child’s relationships, identity, belonging and learning are essential to their happiness and success at school. We are committed to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of all students, in order for them to thrive.

One of the many tools that we use to support the health and wellbeing of our students is the Classroom Pulse Check In, which is completed by all students in week 5-6 of each term. This Check In is in the form of a brief survey, which has been developed to ascertain how students are currently feeling about their experience in school. It provides us with an immediate snapshot of how they are feeling, which assists us in supporting any social, emotional, or learning needs that they may have. Furthermore, it is tailored to allow your child’s class teacher to check in and provide immediate feedback to support them.

A sample of the Classroom Pulse check in can be found at the following link: https://www.cesa.catholic.edu.au/news/wellbeing-initiative

Pupil Free Day

Our Pupil Free Day on June 10^th was a great opportunity for staff to gather for professional learning in the area of literacy. The day began with a presentation by Marney Yeates (Speech Pathologist) focusing on literacy best practice across R-6. This presentation highlighted some of the significant changes to early years literacy practices over the last couple of years and ways that we can continue to build on this in years 3-6. We focused on explicit instruction, spelling rules and teaching techniques and we were very fortunate to have Marney share her great expertise with us.  

Following this, we spent some time unpacking ‘The Writing Revolution’, a new writing resource that we will be using at Stella. This approach is aimed at improving students’ writing skills by developing their foundational skills in writing complete and interesting sentences, paragraphs and multi-paragraph texts. This approach is explicit and gives students the opportunity to develop their writing skills within the content of what they are learning about, across all subject areas. We look forward to continuing to unpack this resource through ongoing professional learning opportunities.

Assessment

At Stella Maris, assessment is an essential element of our teaching and learning programs. We see assessment as the process of identifying, gathering and interpreting information about student achievement for a number of purposes. These include assisting students with their learning, evaluating and improving teaching and learning programs​ and providing information on student learning and progress in relation to the achievement standard​s. Teachers expertly gather all sorts of data in order to get to know students, what their needs are and the best ways to ensure progress with their learning. To ensure consistency across R-6, we have developed an assessment schedule, which identifies the key, research based assessments that we use to measure student growth over time in literacy and numeracy. Some of these assessments include DIBELS screening (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) for literacy and Booker pre and post tests for numeracy.

These types of assessments along with the ongoing observations, conversations and connections etc that teachers make- all contribute to teachers knowing your children extremely well- which is something we pride ourselves on at Stella Maris.

Excursions

It has been great to see our students having opportunities once again for excursions after a slow start to the year due to COVID. Our year 3 classes recently went to Adelaide Oval and our Year 5/6 classes attended the World Environment Day event at the Botanic Gardens. There have also been a number of sporting carnivals that students have enjoyed. These events would not be possible without the organisation and hard work of teachers, along with our wonderful parent volunteers. Thank you for helping us to make these events possible for our students. We look forward to seeing further opportunities for excursions and incursions as the year progresses.

We deeply value the home-school connections that we have within our Stella Maris community, which helps to support the needs of students. As always, I invite you to contact me at any time if you have any concerns related to your child’s learning and/or wellbeing.

Kind Regards

Ella Kirkham

Assistant Principal (Learning & Wellbeing)

ella.kirkham@smps.catholic.edu.au

Welcome to this fortnight’s newsletter component of “The Stella Capabilities.” I will continue providing an insight into the aim of our 7 capabilities and how our students will demonstrate progressive development in each of these areas throughout their learning journey here at Stella Maris. Today’s focus capabilities are:

• Critical and Creative Thinkers
• Ecologically Aware
• Collaborative and Self-Aware
• Responsible Digital Citizens
• Inspired by Faith
• Globally Minded
• Literate and Numerate

Through the teaching programs offered at Stella Maris, students develop their critical and creative thinking capabilities through varied learning experiences. Students are given opportunities that allow them to imagine a range of different possibilities, consider alternatives and create innovative solutions. The range of behaviours and skills we are seeking and developing in our Critical and Creative Thinkers learners are:

• Using learned skills and strategies to solve problems.
  • Using creative thinking skills to seek solutions and generate creative ideas.

At Stella Maris, we are very aware of the importance of being environmentally friendly. The encouragement of bringing ‘nude foods’ (wrapper free) items in our lunch boxes and the use of compost bins to help our environment, are just a few examples. The ‘Ecologically Aware’ capability encourages our students to be continually attentive to the importance of being an environmental ambassador. It draws attention to the ‘bigger picture’ of environmental conservation and encourages behaviours of empathy and consideration towards others by protecting our shared planet. A behaviour and skill we are seeking and developing in an Ecologically Aware learner is:

• A demonstration of respect for our environment and using our resources responsibly. 

Once again, the criteria for the ‘Critical and Creative Thinkers’ and ‘Ecologically Aware’ capabilities are clearly defined. Each capability and their elaborations are clearly displayed in each classroom, allowing students a visual reminder of what skills and experiences they need to focus on during lesson time, to grow and develop further in each of the capabilities.  Our teacher’s quality teaching and learning programmes contain the content that will provide students with a multitude of opportunities to demonstrate their ability to apply these skills confidently and effectively in their learning.

Next week, we will explore the last components that make up our 7 “Stella Capabilities.” These final elaborations will bring together the work that is occurring to ensure the development of the whole child, here at Stella Maris.

Kindest regards,

Louise Perry

Capabilities Leader