Dear families,
We have reached week 3 of term 4 already! A significant number of things have happened already this term, and with only 6 weeks remaining of the school year, things are about to get quite hectic!
Last Friday’s Sports day was once again a huge success. The day progressed seamlessly, and all of the children had a great time. It was so lovely to see so many families and visitors at our school ,enjoying the spectacle. Congratulations to the Gold team for their win of the Athletics Shield, and the Red team for winning the Spirit Cup. All teams were led admirably by our wonderful year 6 students, who demonstrated leadership and initiative. Sincere thanks to James Goldy and James Daley for their excellent organisation of the event, Sarah McCabe and her team of P&F volunteers for coordinating and providing the food and refreshments, Sarah Ryan for overseeing the WHS requirements of the day, and for recruiting her family to assist in so many ways with the set up and pack up! Thanks, too to our dedicated teaching and school staff for their support of the event.
This week, we have also had Catholic Schools Athletics carnival-at the time of writing the students were gearing up in anticipation of the event and we look forward to hearing about their efforts. School swimming will also soon commence for students in Reception-year 3, and older classes will have Aquatics opportunities as well. Add to that our annual tennis tournament, and it is a busy term in school sports!
Over the past few days, our teachers have been working together with our learning partners, Playberry Laser in a cycle of observation and feedback on the delivery of our evidence informed teaching pedagogy. It takes courage to be open to having someone else watch you teach and I am very grateful to our teaching and ESO staff for the openness to participate, and to strive for improvement. This is of great direct benefit to your children in their learning! While this was happening, I have been attending national meetings of APPA and ACPPA. One of our presenters was Dr Jenny Donovan from AERO-the Australian Education Research Organisation-and she was extolling the imperative for schools to be engaged in evidence informed practice and Explicit Direct Instruction. In addition to these observation cycles, staff from one of our neighbouring Catholic schools have been visiting and observing best practice in the teaching of mathematics. At St Francis, we are strongly committed to these practises! Sincere thanks to our learning improvement team of Sarah Battistella, Corinne McKenzie, Cheryl Milde, Angela DeNadai and Nives Kresevic for their hard work and dedication.
Over the next few weeks, students will be working hard to complete term four learning goals, and getting ready for our end of year concert and school picnic, which is scheduled for Friday December 6! Olivia Bozzon is working very hard to prepare each year level’s performance and it is a significant piece of work that is ongoing throughout the term. All children are expected to attend this event, so please make sure you have the date in your diaries. Further information will be sent in due course.
Our 2025 Receptions have been visiting regularly on Fridays as part of our long transition to school program. They have begun to get to know our mid-year classes as well, as they will all join together for 2025! This is an excellent program and I would like to thank the whole reception team, and particularly Leonie Fitzgerald for her fantastic coordination of the program over many ‘iterations.’ The children will ‘graduate’ at the end of week 7.
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