What a great Science Week we are having. Monday was full of experiments, creations, learning and excitement. Our visit from JollyBops was lots of fun and activities and experiences through the week have definitely highlighted Science at St Michael's. We look forward to continuing to springboard from this to keep science active in everyday classrooms. 

Annual Survey

Thank you to all the parents who completed our Annual Survey over the last fortnight. It has now closed for the year. We had over 1/3 of families complete the survey, which will provide a decent cross section of feedback, opinion and thoughts for us to consider when planning for 2021. Students in Year 3-6 also completed a student survey and staff have completed their own also. All of this information assists with forward planning. 

ACT Election 

With the ACT Election fast approaching (October 17), there are more and more current MLAs and candidates at shopping centres and events, introducing themselves and discussing their Party stand on varying issues. I would ask, regardless of the political views, to ask questions relating specifically to funding and support for Catholic Schools within the ACT. 

Staffing Updates

In full transparency to keep you all informed, recruitment for the Principal's position (to begin at the start of 2021) began on Friday with an advertising campaign. I will keep you informed of any updates moving forward. 

I would also like to let the community know that Yvette Whalan, who many of you know, is planning to return to school next year. Yvette will be returning for one day a week to assist with reading support across the school. She will also be doing casual work wherever possible. It will be great to have Yvette back on deck, who has been on leave for the last year. 

We are currently in the middle of recruitment for full-time teaching positions (both permanent and temporary positions to begin in 2021) and will let you know the outcome of these as soon as confirmed. We do have some temporary full-time teachers currently working at St Michael's who have applied. 

We are also currently recruiting for a replacement for Damien Webb on 1/2W for Monday-Wednesday for Term 4 only. Again, I will keep you informed and up to date with developments. 

Phonics Approach  

Over the past two years, we have shifted our focus, particularly in the infant grades, to the importance of explicitly teaching phonics. We predominantly do this through our SoundsWrite program every day.

Over the years throughout Education, there has been much debate over the whole language vs phonics approach. You may have read or heard information about 'Phonics' just recently. You can source relevant evidence and research to back either argument, however, the science of reading and the science of how a child learns, is becoming more evident and will continue in the coming year/s. Reading is not a natural process, but a process that needs to be taught and learnt. For us at St Michael's, we have started to see results of using a systematic phonics approach.

Early phonics knowledge is the key to starting to decode written words. Children can use phonics knowledge to “sound out” words. Phonics is the ability to map sounds onto letters (sound-letter knowledge). Phonics knowledge allows children to understand the link between sounds (phonemes) and letter patterns (graphemes).
Phonics is essential for children to become successful readers and spellers/writers in the early years of schooling and beyond.

You will often hear/read, especially in research, regarding early reading, phonological awareness discussed with phonics. This is the awareness of speech sounds, syllables, and rhymes. Phonemic awareness is the phoneme (“speech sound”) part of this skill, and involves children blending, segmenting, and playing with sounds to make new words, where Phonics is the mapping of speech sounds (phonemes) to letter patterns (graphemes).

Whilst this is not something for you to necessarily remember, but more so that you are informed in the current educational climate and to understand why we have a Phonics Program at St Michael's to support student reading development. This is a school wide focus with all teachers and some of our Classroom Support Assistants trained in SoundsWrite. This ensures consistency of approach while children move through the grades and ensures supports and extensions are considered based on student needs.

High Impact Teaching Practices

Over the last fortnight, staff have met to start to reflect on our Mathematics teaching. Focus was on High Impact Teaching Practices and included critical discussions around what is working well in this space and what we can further improve on. We discussed the importance of goal setting with students, the way lessons are structured, the explicit teaching that takes place, provided working examples, how we foster collaboration, how we review learning already taken place, how we question, provide feedback and differentiate our teaching to cater for all abilities. 

This will be an ongoing discussion and reflection moving forward into next year. It is important for us as Educators to be consistently reflecting and analysing our practice to ensure we are being the best versions of ourselves that we can be to further support and challenge student learning. 

Enjoy the week ahead. 

Kind regards, 

Pat Ellis

Principal