Dear Parents,

Welcome back to a wonderful term of learning at St. Joseph’s where we aim to ensure every child is reaching their full potential both academically and in their areas of strength.

Our focus on ensuring every child achieves excellent growth in literacy and numeracy continues this term. Staff have been highlighting the many ways we extend every child in their learning ensuring students are progressing along very detailed learning continuums with students setting personal learning goals and staff ensuring students are providing multiple sources of evidence when assessing student work.

Student growth across the school in the first Semester was excellent across many areas. Thank you for attending the student conferences where a comprehensive slide show was shared on every student.

In particular we highlight the following successes in growth across Semester 1.

St Joseph’s Year 1 students were well above state average growth points in Math
St Joseph’s Year 2 students were above state average growth points in Math and Reading
St Joseph’s Year 3 students were above state average growth points in Reading and Spelling
St Joseph’s Year 4 and 5 students were above state average growth points in Spelling
St Joseph’s Year 6 students were above state average growth points in Maths and Spelling with many students working on a Year 7 level in Maths.
Most students in Years 4, 5 and 6 have attained excellent retention of their Mathematical fluency skills ( times tables)
Foundation students are achieving excellent results in the Initalit literacy program.

Whilst reflecting on upcoming review documentation and evidence it is great to celebrate all that we do to ensure every student is shining and flourishing in our care.

Please read the Operoo sent home today outlining the significant amount of support we offer in our wonderful school. I have included some snippets from this communication below.

At St Joseph’s we have a response to intervention tiered approach. At a Tier 1 level in the classroom all students' needs are catered for through differentiated learning across all domains. We strive to ensure every student achieves growth in their learning.

Tier 1- St Joseph’s has high standard learning and teaching where every child’s learning is differentiated to their current needs across all domains.

Tier 2- St Joseph’s has significant and targeted intervention and extension programs across all year levels as outlined in the Operoo.

Tier 3 - St Joseph’s works closely with health professionals and consultants to ensure every student is being assisted in their area of need or vulnerability. This includes paediatricians, psychologists, Occupational therapists, Behaviour consultants and Speech therapists.

We have an extensive leadership team including leaders who plan with teachers to ensure all data is analyzed and targeted to every student, an adjustment and wellbeing leadership team meeting every week ensuring all students are catered for. We also have a significant number of learning support officers (teacher aides) in every learning community supporting not just students with special needs but all students across the school.

We are here to work in partnership with you to ensure you child reaches their full potential academically, spiritually, physically, mentally and socially and emotionally.

We ask all parents to ensure you are working with your child at home completing maths fluency tasks and vocabulary work each week found on the home learning site. We also ask that you find time to sit with your child and read each night. Parents that sit and discuss the reading content making connections between text and life and ensuring comprehension through discussion and questioning will enhance their child’s literacy skills expediently. This is pertinent across all year levels. Please do not think that just because your child is fluent in their reading they are being effective at reading alone. By sharing the story together you can enhance word knowledge, oral language skills and general knowledge.

If you are unable to read daily with your child we are here to support you. We are currently recruiting volunteers to come in and hear students read or play math fluency games. If you or someone you know is able to volunteer please let our office staff know or email leadersoflearning@sjcribpoint.catholic.edu.au and we will provide you with training and support.

Please make sure if your child is away you ring the absentee line on 59839374 every morning your child is absent by 9am. Attendance was significantly down last semester with some students having more than 25 days ( 5 weeks) off school. This will impact on your child’s growth and we urge you to ensure unless your child is ill they attend school every day.

Our inquiry theme for Term 3 is Creativity where we incite a love of learning, a desire and passion to learn new things through a lens of discovery, exploration and being inquisitive in all that we do.

We warmly welcome our reviewer Ms Kylie Graham to our school community this week and next and look forward to celebrating all of the wonderful things we are doing in our school along with setting goals for future improvements.

Our Year 6 students are preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation and will attend their retreat day this Friday at Immaculate Conception Church in Hastings. We wish all of our Confirmation candidates all the best and we hope you are all filled with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit as you shine in your daily lives.

We will be having a free dress day this Friday to raise money for schools in Lismore who have been deeply affected by the floods. Students need to bring a gold coin donation.

Finally, just a reminder that we have school photos this Thursday 14th July. Please make sure your child is in their full winter school uniform.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, concerns or ideas. I am at school and available every day so please email or ring and we can make an appointment.

Yours in Partnership,

Gab Espenschied

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