T1 W7 Newsletter 2023

From The Principal

ST MICHAEL'S CENTENARY  |  Yesterday we came together to celebrate a significant milestone in the life of our parish church - its centenary anniversary. 

It was an honour and privilege to host the celebration after mass in our hall. 

One hundred years ago, our church was established with a vision to create a spiritual home for our community, a place of worship where we could come together as one family, to celebrate the goodness and mercy and tireless energy of those who have served this community.

Over the years, this vision has been steadfastly upheld, and our church has become a haven for all those seeking Gospel values.

As a Catholic Primary School, we have been blessed to have our church as an integral part of our school community.  Our students have been nurtured in the faith, taught to love and serve one another, and imbued with values that will guide them through life.  As well, our staff have been inspired to lead by example, to be role models for our students, and to instill in them a love of God and a passion for learning.

Our church's centenary anniversary is a momentous occasion; it gives us the opportunity to reflect on the countless blessings that our church has brought to our lives.  It is a time to be grateful for the bishops, the priests, the religious and the parishioners who have worked tirelessly over the years to make our church the welcoming community that it is today. 

As we look to the future, we must continue to build on this strong foundation that was been laid by many before us.  We must remain committed to our faith and to our community.  We must continue to uphold the values that have been instilled in us and pass them on to the next generation; those who are currently enrolled at St Anne's.

Let us give thanks to God for the blessings that have been bestowed upon us and for the gift of our local church.  I pray that St Michael's continues to be a beacon of hope and a source of inspiration for generations to come.

St Michael's Centenary Celebrations

Principal's Messages

TERM ONE THREE WAY INTERVIEWS  |  We will be holding our Term 1 Three Way Interviews which include teacher, parent and child before and after school in weeks 9 and 10.  Bookings are now open through Parent Lounge. The booking window closes Friday 17/03/2023 at 12pm. 

Enrolments For 2024 Now Being Taken

ENROLMENTS FOR 2024  |  Enrolments for Prep are currently being taken for the 2024 school year.  If you have a child due to commence Prep next year born between 1 July 2018 and 30 June 2019, please complete an online enrolment form available from the school website: https://www.sasrok.catholic.edu.au/ 

Interviews will commence in Term Two. 

Student Protection News

Across The Curriculum

NAPLAN is fast approaching for our Year 3 and 5 students. Above is a link that will take you to a range of sample tests that parents can try with their students at home. These tests help to practice the keyboarding skills that our students need to complete the official testing. Below is the timetable of the official NAPLAN test window for our school.

Changes to NAPLAN Reporting: an excerpt from a recent memo from the QCAA:

As part of the National School Reform Agreement, education ministers agreed that a proficiency standard be introduced for literacy and numeracy assessed by NAPLAN. On 10 February 2023, education ministers also agreed to change the reporting of NAPLAN results in response to the online testing transition and the move to earlier NAPLAN testing in March.
The new proficiency standard has four levels of achievement for each year level and replaces the previous 10-band structure and the national minimum standard used across the four domains. The four levels of achievement are:
• Exceeding
• Strong
• Developing
• Needs additional support.
From 2023, the individual student report (ISR) will change. The ISR will be based on the four levels of achievement. It will also continue to show the national average, the range of achievement for the middle 60% of students in each year level, and a dot placement for the student comparing their achievement against these measures.
This new standard and its benchmarks will provide information to parents/carers and teachers about what a student can do against a challenging but reasonable standard of literacy and numeracy expected for students at the time of the tests.
This change to reporting means that a new time series and a resetting of the measurement scale will commence in 2023, allowing the full benefit of the new online adaptive testing to be reflected in student results. Results from 2008–2022 cannot be directly compared with the 2023 results.

If you have any questions once you have received your child's NAPLAN report, please do not hesitate to come and see us. It will be a very different reporting style that what we are used to, however we are hoping it will give us clearer information on the academic development of our students.

Below is a link if you would like to read any further information regarding NAPLAN and your Year 3 or 5 student.

The Good News

From the Assistant Principal: Religious Education

Mrs Erika Milne 

100 Years of St. Michael's Catholic Church

Thank you to the students who volunteered to sing, read and hand out prayer cards on the weekend at St. Michael's Centennial Celebrations. We had so many positive comments from parishioners about how well the students represented our school. Thank you, families, for bringing your children along to Mass. It was a fantastic celebration of 100 years.

Student Engagement and Wellbeing for Learning

CONSISTENT SCHOOL-WIDE EXPECTATIONS

In Term 4, 2022, St Anne’s began a process of review to identify strategic school priorities, revise and develop consistent school-wide expectations and to clearly connect these to our faith.  Through this process of review, this year we introduced our revised school expectations.  You may have noticed these starting to appear throughout our school, as we work to encourage all members of our school community to understand how these expectations bring to life our four school virtues of Respect, Responsibility, Compassion and Kindness. 

The first two weeks of our school year were spent introducing these expectations to our students.  We continue to have a daily focus on explicitly teaching aspects of each of these rules, as we encourage our students to develop the strength of self-regulation.  Self-regulation is a core development strength in children.  The ability to think before you act creates a life with less drama and eradicates the shame felt when repairing damage arising from a lack of self-control.  Self-regulation is addressed in the classroom by introducing our students to co-regulatory experiences, self-regulatory capacities, the identification of difficult and negative emotions, and the management of classroom behaviour.  Through these strategies, students learn to use cortical mediation (top-down regulation) and they learn to reset the baseline levels of their stress response and arousal to strengthen the body’s ability to self-regulate (bottom-up regulation).  By practising class-based strategies regularly, our students are better equipped to self-regulate at moments of uncertainty, stress or confusion. 

To support this, we have introduced the language of Zones of Regulation across our school, to support the development of emotional literacy and the strength of self-regulation in our students.  In the coming weeks we will explore further strategies we are using across our school to support the development of self-regulation and broadening emotional literacy, and ways that you can reinforce this strength at home.

Bianca Morris

Project Officer – Student Engagement and Wellbeing for Learning

Finance News

Term 1 Fees  |  Payment of School fees for Term one are now overdue. If you have not paid in full, and do not have a payment plan in place, please contact our Finance Officer to discuss. 

Sports News

P&F News

Tuckshop Volunteers

The St Anne's Tuckshop is closed until a new convenor is appointed. 

Students Of The Week

Congratulations To Our Students Of The Week  |  Cullen K, Emmity S, Amelia T, Max S, Blake E, Bentley B, Asher H, Ben G, Max M, Nevaeh W, Paige E, Kaly F, Darci K, Amelia S, Chad M, Lizzy S, Samson M, Duston G, Makinley M, Carter R, Barry F, Katelyn B, Bentley H, Year 4G, Preston H, Zahliah C, Charlotte W

Birds Of A Feather

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