Week 9 - Term 4

Dear families,

We have come to the end of an extraordinary year! I want to sincerely thank each and every family for your engagement and support of our school community throughout 2022. While it was another covid-interrupted year, we have still achieved great things-in learning, and in building on our wonderful community. As we depart the school this year, there are very evident signs of our impeding building project. I am delighted to announce to you all that Horizon Building have won the tender to undertake the project. Horizon have been overseeing the early works component of the project and so the transition to the new build should be seamless. I am very excited for what 2023 holds in store!

Our staffing profile for 2023 will be:

Reception – Leonie Fitzgerald

Reception - Renee Cross

Reception – Diem Savy

Reception – Tania Palmato

Year 1 – Rebecca Pawson

Year 1 – Gia Perin

Year 1 – Nikki Dytman

Year 2 – Marisa Brown

Year 2 – Cheryl Milde

Year 2 – Beck Dametto 0.6/Jo Harslett 0.4

Year 3 – Maddie Day

Year 3 – Mark Bowman

Year 3 – Chantal Driver

Year 4 – Maria Silvestri

Year 4 – James Goldy 0.6/Christie Lee Hansberry ansberryH 0.4

Year 4 – Ros Stevens

Year 5 – Fiona MacDonald

Year 5 – Corinne McKenzie

Year 6 – Emma Gill

Year 6 –Mary-Louise Stoddart

PE – James Goldy

Arts – Olivia Bozzon

Italian – Connie Lopresti

Science – Sue Beaufoy

Literacy leader – Sarah Battistella

MDU/Library – Andrea Edwards

We warmly welcome Maddie Day, Fiona MacDonald, Jo Harslett and Rebecca Pawson to our staff for 2023. Karen Brandwood and Libby Thomas will be taking some leave next year, while Ellie Ventrice will be returning to her position in DECD. We also bid farewell to Elena Redkin our OSHC Director. We wish Karen, Libby, Elena and Ellie every happiness.

Below is the transcript from my address at the Thanksgiving Mass on Tuesday. I wish all families a happy and holy Christmas and I look forward to seeing everyone in 2023.

What a lovely way to end our school year together. My thanks to Mrs DeNadai and all who were involved in bringing the celebration together. It has been a year of change and growth, as well as another year of ‘unprecedented events.’ We have much to be grateful for, here at St Francis-a beautiful school, wonderful staff and students, and a supportive parish community. There is a very strong sense of being a family who grows together, in Faith, Peace and Wisdom and I am very grateful for having been blessed with the opportunity to be principal. 2023 will bring exciting new possibilities as we watch our brand new buildings emerge. I know right now things are messy and a bit uncomfortable, but I do know that it will all be worth it in the end.

I would like to say a special and sincere thankyou to all of our staff – teachers, ESOs, admin staff, finance and maintenance staff-for their fantastic work all year to create fantastic learning opportunities for all of you. We are very lucky to have such a dedicated team of people working here at St Francis.

With the end of the school year comes a time of farewell for some students, families and staff. I would first like to acknowledge and congratulate our year 6 students. Tonight, we will have  the opportunity to celebrate their graduation together, with a Liturgy and a dinner. I want to sincerely thank Mrs Stoddart, Mrs Thomas and Mrs DeNadai for their organisation of all aspects of the evening – I am very much looking forward to it. We wish all our year 6 students every future happiness and success.

This year, there are a number of our staff who will be taking some leave in 2023. We are sad to see them go, but we wish them every happiness in 2023 and look forward to their return in 2024. Farewell to Mrs Brandwood and Mrs Thomas.

We also say goodbye today to Miss Ventrice-Miss Ellie as she is known Miss Ellie will return to her substantive position in 2023 and we are sad to see her go. She has been a wonderful year 5 teaching partner for Mrs McKenzie and a great person to have on our staff. We wish her every future happiness.

Today, we also farewell Mrs Redkin – Elena, our OSHC Director. Elena has done a wonderful job of creating our fantastic OSHC service for many years and we are very grateful for everything she has done. We wish Elena and her family every happiness into the future.

We also farewell Mrs Valente today, who is retiring to enjoy some time with her family. We thank her for many years of service to St Francis and wish her every happiness.

In 2023 we will have some new staff join our community. We welcome Miss Day, Mrs Harslett, Mrs MacDonald and Mrs Pawson to our school community and look forward to getting to know them next year.

In closing, I would like to thank Fr Michael for being with us today. It is always great to have you share mass with us and your faith, wisdom and guidance are an inspiration to us all. I would also like to sincerely thank the Christ the King parish for supporting our school in so many ways this year, and for those families and  parishioners who have joined in our celebration today.

Dear Families,

Thankyou

As we come to the end of the year, I take this opportunity to thank you as parents for your generous partnership with the school and the many contributions you make to the life of our community.  A special thankyou to Nicole Kreis who helped our staff with lunch orders each Friday throughout the year.

I wish each family a happy and peace filled Christmas, and pray that you experience God’s gifts of hope and love.  With many blessings for Christmas and the New Year.

Transition afternoon 2023 Classes

Last Monday the students were placed in their classes for 2023 and spent part of the afternoon with their new teacher. The focus for all classes was beginning our Being Connected program which will continue in the first 2 weeks of the new school year.

The process for student placement began for staff many weeks ago. These groupings take a considerable amount of time to finalise and this process includes consideration of student learning, friendships, staff thoughts and priorities and other information gathered throughout the year.

Reports

Monday saw the distribution of End of Year Reports.

These reports are a summary of your child’s 2022 academic year. As you share the report with your child, I encourage you to reflect together on their time at St Francis this year. What have been the positives? What is your child proud of? What have been some of their learning achievements? What have been the special blessings or moments that you have been able to celebrate or share with others?

Christmas Hampers

A big Thank you to all families who generously donated to the Christmas Hamper Appeal. The Year 6 students collected and collated the items ready for Vinnies to distribute to families in need.

Whole School Thanksgiving and End of Year Mass

On Tuesday we celebrated our End of Year Mass. This was a wonderful opportunity to give thanks for the year we have shared and to farewell our graduands. 

We wish the graduating students every success and blessing as they journey towards a new phase in their life.

Christmas Wishes

The school year is drawing to a close; it has been a busy time and a time for growth and change.  As we prepare for the coming of the Christ child, I wish you a safe and happy Christmas.

May Peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through!  ~Author Unknown

Results and Reflections

What a year 2022 has been for Literacy at St Francis School! It has been my absolute pleasure to work with our dedicated staff to make some big changes to the Literacy lessons here at school. From Reception, all the way to Year 6, there has been significant change in pedagogy and in the structure of what we teach.

We started 2022 with Professional Learning about why it is important for us to change the way we teach reading and spelling, based in Science. Once our teachers were shown the evidence, it was all systems go! We tested all students from the beginning of the year using a suite of assessments, called DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills). This gave us some baseline data so that we knew where the gaps in our students’ learning was, and we implemented programs and processes to address the gaps and the needs.

As well as implementing Phonological Awareness activities each morning in each class, throughout the year, we also began implementing a structured phonology lesson. Each day, classes use whiteboards and sit as a class to learn and practice new spelling rules and concepts, as well as reading words using the rules and concepts. Along with this, we have our co-educators working with students that need more support and extra practice in a variety of literacy skills. We are now teaching following the science and using the Tiers of Intervention so that all students are given the opportunity to learn.

Along with using the first 2 Tiers of Intervention, we also began using the Playberry Program as our Tier 3 Intervention. This program is structured similarly to the Tier 1, whole class teaching, but is delivered in a slower, more structured way for students who need it. During the year we had 22 Year 1-3 students access the Playberry intervention.

After such an intense shift of practice, we were thrilled with the results we saw in the students in all year levels. I am happy and proud to share with you some of the results from our DIBELS testing.  In the following graphs, the ‘red’ shows students with significant risk of needing intervention with reading and spelling, ‘yellow’ shows students with some risk. ‘Green’ shows students who have minimum risk of needing literacy intervention and the ‘blue’ shows students who have negligible risk.

As you can see, we have made significant gains in the amount of blue in our graphs, as well as reducing the students at the greatest risk – the red and yellow in the graph. It is with great certainty that we can tell you who the students are that are in the ‘red’ and we can tell you what the plan is in terms of the intervention they need and will receive!

As well as using DIBELS data, we also use a South Australian normed spelling test to track the growth of our students. We are very proud of the results that our students have achieved in the Spelling – seeing so much growth this year with our new way of teaching.

Although we have seen tremendous growth this year, it is important to remember that we are still in the beginning stages of the implementation of our literacy strategy. Watch this space!

Once again, I have to say that it has been a wonderful year leading the change and working with our highly skilled and dedicated staff. Unfortunately, I will not be returning as Literacy Coordinator next year. I will still be in the classroom on Thursdays and Fridays, but I have a growing business (in education) that needs my attention on the other days of the week. I am leaving the role in VERY capable hands and I know that St Francis will continue to use the Science to inform practise in literacy teaching. Sarah Battistella will be taking the role of Literacy Coordinator as well as continuing in her leadership of the Tier 3 Playberry Program.

As we come to the end of 2022 I would like to thank each and every students who have participated in any of our school sporting teams, represented our school at the various sports carnivals, represents our district at SAPSASA level or who have excelled at club level in their chosen sports. It is wonderful to be part of such an active, enthusiastic and motivated community.

I would like the give a massive shout out to all our parents and caregivers who have taken on a volunteering role either as a coach, team manager, covid marshal, team steward, scorer or simply just lent a hand. Without your dedication, commitment and generosity our students simply wouldn’t have the opportunities that they do.

As we pack away another year, I hope you have all enjoyed your achievements and are excited as I am to begin a new year in 2023 and we look forward to providing as many opportunities as we can for the students.

Excellence in Cheer

Congratulations to Chelsie Chittleborough from Year 5 who recently travelled to Queensland to participate in nationals championships with Visual Energy Studio's. Chelsie’s team came first in lyrical out of 20 teams and forth in star force for Cheer. An amazing achievement, well done Chelsie.