Principal News 

WEEK 4 - TERM 1

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Dear Families & Friends,

As we look to close out our third full week of school, we continue to be affirmed by the incredibly positive and calm manner in which we have settled into the new school year. We again thank our families and staff for their investment in establishing clear routines for the students to ensure they are ready to embrace their learning for the day ahead. From the smooth drop-off and pick-up routines, to digesting and adapting seamlessly to key communication pieces or changes, we could not be more satisfied with the response from our community. 

After a difficult and disjointed two year period for our schools, our staff have been firmly focused on providing a consistent, safe and predictable framework for the students to best access their learning during optimal times. This term, we have actively sought the aligned key academic disciplines of literacy and numeracy across the school to ensure a consistent approach and delivery time is established i.e. Literacy is taught at the same time across the school where practical from P- 6 and we maximise every available opportunity. Our aim is to target these specific learning blocks and utilise additional human resources when the students are more receptive and better able to retain (cognitive load) essential information e.g. generally the morning sessions. In time, through embedding these consistent patterns, building their stamina and learning habits, we are confident our students, staff and families will note an improved rhythm and flow across the school, P-6. 

This week, it has been fabulous to see Mr Brown work across all grades supporting the staff with the delivery of the Respectful Relationships Program. The ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Respectful Relationships program will be taught weekly and will promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours. It teaches our children how to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence.  With strong links to the Personal and Social Capabilities of the Victorian Curriculum, this program enables the students to understand themselves and others, and manage their relationships, lives, work and learning more effectively. The capability involves students learning to recognise and regulate emotions, develop empathy for others and understand relationships, establish and build a framework for positive relationships, work effectively in teams and develop leadership skills, and handle challenging situations constructively. 

Great job Mr Brown, the students and staff have loved having you in their classrooms driving this whole school approach to wellbeing. These small steps in the right direction will see big gains over time with regards to the wellbeing of our students. As previously stated, over the coming months, staff will also be introduced to the Berry Street Model as this will underpin our approach at Sacred Heart in moving forward.  

Catching Best Practice in Action

What a delight to drop in on Miss Rafferty’s Literacy class during this week; focusing on sentence structure and punctuation. Her delivery model and interactions (questioning and prompting techniques) were first class, and I was particularly impressed by the explicit manner in which the learning content was delivered i.e. best practice. 

The students were explicitly taught (direct instruction) the correct structure of a sentence and then provided with worked examples, as this approach reduces a learner's cognitive load, so skill acquisition can become easier. Miss Rafferty clearly explained each step (scaffolding) and then her students used the worked examples during independent and group practice to review and embed new knowledge. Her language was precise, clear and was supported by visual samples for the students to reference. 

It was most affirming to note later in the day this sentence structure knowledge was integrated/referenced in her RE lesson i.e. reinforcing the skill. Along with our curriculum and level leaders across the school, Miss Rafferty will be working with Mrs Pennington (Literacy Leader) in supporting staff and refining these approaches across our school in the coming months.

Nice work Miss Prosser (2nd year)and Miss Healey (graduate)for the impressive presentation and organisation of your rooms. Catching my eye this week were the VERY clear visual timetables for their students. These daily timetables across our classrooms are an key ingredient and reference for the students as they know what is happening throughout day and provides important predictability (order and safety) from the moment the students enter the classroom. 

It was also most affirming to see the learning intention (WALT) and purpose (TIB reason) for the lesson on boards throughout the school. This best practice provides a visual focus for the students and clearly articulates the intention for the lesson or activity. 

Maths 3-6 

This week, it was fantastic to observe our 3-6's so actively engaged in their Maths classes. These dynamic teams split their classes for some sessions to better enable the teachers to specifically target the needs of their students (point of need) for certain curriculum content covered across these varying levels. Please note the students are regularly assessed using the 'Essential Assessment' resource and will move across levels throughout the year (fluid groups). 

Ms Kehoe, our Maths Intervention and Enrichment Leader, is currently working across these levels during these sessions as an additional teacher, and this enables the groups to split even further. It’s been terrific to acknowledge how responsive the students and staff have been to this delivery model coordinated by Mr Blake. 

Prep Life

Does it get any better than this from our most junior students, the Preps? My goodness, this gorgeous morning prayer ritual certainly sets the tone and lifts the spirits for the day ahead. Thanks Miss Maloney and Preps for inviting me into this precious space and lifting my spirits. We are hopeful in the coming weeks our families will be able to join the children during these special times as we look to share a little bit of their school life when restrictions gently ease.    

It's hard to believe our Preps have only just begun their journey at Sacred Heart. From their  faultless 'drop-offs,' to actively engaging in pairs while playing Maths games; we can see why Mrs Maloney bounces into work and is always smiling. 

Yr.3-6 Clubs

Thanks Ms Mackay for running our first club activity for the school year on Wednesday. The children loved the opportunity to do some stretching, breathing and relaxing exercises as a gentle break from the playground. 

In the coming days our Running, Art, Gardening and Wellbeing Club will commence as an alternative activity for our students. We are most grateful to the teachers for so generously offering up their break times and early mornings for our students' wellbeing. 

Open Days 2022 - 15th & 16th March

Spread the Good Word

We strongly encourage our families to share the good word and happenings about our beautiful school community within their networks.  Open Days will be held on March 15th & 16th and if families would like a tour outside of these two sessions, please contact the office on 9598 9322 and we would love to show you around our amazing school. 

• Tuesday 15th 9:30am - 12:30pm
• Wednesday 16th 12:30pm - 3:30pm

Must Read Pages

• Class News P-6. 

Thank you once again to our leaders across the school for preparing these wonderful reports celebrating the happenings within their levels. 

Student Mobile Phone and Smart Devices Usage Policy

We ask all families to please be familiar with the following policy endorsed by MACS and Sacred Heart. Staff have noted an increase in the number of students wearing smart watches since returning to school this year. 

Swimming Carnival

This Monday we wish our Swimming Team every success as they represent Sacred Heart at the Dendy Swimming Carnival. Mr Thiessens has done a brilliant job coordinating this program and generously offering up his time for trials and early morning training sessions. Good luck students/swimmers! 

Staffing News

Lifelong Learners - Staffing News

Leading by example and reflected in our School Vision, “…learners who view education as a lifelong journey”, we wish two of our impressive members of the leadership team every success as they juggle a full time teaching load and undertake their Masters. Miss Rafferty is in her final year of a Masters in Leadership and Mr Blake has just commenced his studies in a masters in Student Wellbeing.

We are also excited to announce Mrs Stroud, our reading intervention teacher has commenced her training in MSL (Multisensory Structured Language) this week. MSL aims to use two or more of the senses, auditory (hearing), visual (seeing) and kinaesthetic (movement), when teaching literacy to form stronger neural pathways in the brain. 

We extend our sincere thanks to Mrs Biffin for covering a number of classes across our school in recent weeks and in the coming months for staff leave entitlements. Her manner with the students, adaptability and approach to teaching and learning practice is exemplary and such a great fit for our team. We are most fortunate to have her in our community working across our classes. 

Assembly Time - Friday Morning 9am

Bit by bit we are slowly getting there, pulling all the pieces together before our families are able to join in various school gatherings. We commend the students for their collective manner as we presented a slightly revised framework for the weekly assembly last Friday. We congratulate all students who received their special class award, and thank our senior leaders for adapting without fault to this new format. Let’s hope our families are able to attend soon and enjoy this weekly celebration. 

School Opening Liturgy

Although celebrated last week, we once again acknowledge Mr Blake (REL) and the student Religious Education Leaders and Social Justice Leaders for leading the school with a beautiful opening whole-school liturgy. This student-led approach has certainly set the standard for the year as our senior students will lead various activities, events and gatherings in 2022. A special mention to Kate H for leading the ‘entire’ school with a solo singing performance - wow!

Congratulations to 'all' our Yr.6 leaders who received their special badges for their final year of primary school. It should come as no surprise they have already set such a positive standard in these early weeks. 

Parent Teacher Interviews

Thank you families for your most affirming feedback in relation to recent parent teacher interviews held in the classrooms this week. These intimate exchanges and partnerships early in the school year provide the perfect forum to share insightful information (personal and academic) about the child.  

Key Dates & Changes

Please note the following key dates for Term 1&2 have now been confirmed:

• 19th March - Kids Movie Night
• 2nd April - P&F Cocktail Evening 
• 8th April - Easter Raffle
• 24th April - Working Bee
• 6th May - Mother's Day Assembly
• 27th May - Kid's Disco
• 10th June - Grandparent's Day Assembly

We sincerely thank Nat and Lisa for being so accommodating and acknowledging the challenges in delivering these important community building events in the current climate. A notable change to events in moving forward where children are present at onsite school events, will be a strictly ‘no alcohol consumption’ policy. This aligns with the Child Safety Code of Conduct across all Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools. We thank you for your understanding with this student safety policy. 

Little Gems

Capturing a few special moments across the week. 

• Icy poles and quiet reading session under the tree to close out the day in Prep
• A nice touch in 3/4LF with a Wow Work trophy outside the room to showcase some star work. 
• Our Yr.6 students do so many helpful jobs throughout the day, and these can never be taken for granted. 
• Mrs Pennington and I are loving having the students drop by our offices to showcase their work. Keep it coming students!

And finally...

Whilst our best intentions were to cut back on the newsletter content this week, we simply had too much we needed to share and celebrate about the amazing happenings at our school, Sacred Heart.

Enjoy and have a great weekend,

Simon Collis

Principal