Principal's Message

Professional Learning

On Monday and Tuesday, Eli Simpson, Simon Fleming, Damian Roff, Mitchell Smidt, Camilla Clydsdale and myself attended a workshop run by Dr Lyn Sharratt, Canadian educational researcher. These two days were supported by the Catholic Schools Office, Diocese of Armidale and brought together all leaders from our Catholic schools across the Diocese.

Sharratt worked through five high impact approaches to improve student achievement. These approaches are:

1. Gradual Release of Responsibility: knowing how we learn;

2. Accountable talk: using oral language experiences and social interaction as scaffolds for learning;

3. Differentiated Instruction: adjusting for abilities, talents and preferences;

4. Higher-Order Thinking - using effective questioning to promote critical thinking;

5. Rich Tasks - developing learning tasks that are cognitively demanding.

At O’Connor we have been working on increasing student learning growth in all areas: faith, academic and wellbeing. This professional learning allowed us to explore how we could work collaboratively to build engaging and challenging learning environments for all students.

We want all students to grow in their learning in every classroom every day.

Our move to one hour periods has helped to have more time on learning tasks and allow rich experiences to further the learning every day. Incorporating some type of student performance that checks for student understanding of the learning intentions for the lesson helps build deep understanding of the concepts.

We will further develop our understanding and use of differentiation in every classroom in our staff professional learning day in Term 2. Differentiating the curriculum allows for every student to access the curriculum and to stretch their learning to develop their understanding.

With Dr Lyn Sharrat

With Bernadette Yeo, CSO Armidale

Communication

Communication is vital for students, staff and parents. We have a wide variety of different forms of communication including email, skoolbag, Facebook, parent nights and parent teacher nights. One of my goals, as part of my Professional Learning Plan for 2018, is to enhance communication across the school. I will be working with the School Advisory Council chair Vernon Crew as part of this goal. In order to gather some data I would like you to complete a very brief survey by following this linkhttps://goo.gl/forms/EiagF10mWjDj38zt1

Enrolments for 2019

I have been visiting our feeder schools over the last two weeks and talking to Year 6 about O’Connor. Enrolments for 2019 are now open and I extend an invitation to students seeking enrolment to Year 7 2019 to complete and submit enrolment forms by 9th April.

HSC Minimum Standards information from NESA

Please find attached letters for Year 9 and 10 parents from NESA. Year 10 parents there are no changes to what we have communicated in our letters to you this year and last in regards to minimum standards. For Year 9 parents there is a change and we will have a parent information night (date TBA) to inform you of these changes.

If you have any concerns please contact me 

Regina Menz

Letter for Year 10 Parents 

Letter for Year 9 Parents

Changes to the HSC minimum standard

P and F Wine and Cheese Night

Please join us at the Bowling Club this Friday 23rd February at 6pm to meet parents and staff. Thanks to Leanne Thomas and the P&F for organising this event. I hope to see you there.

What new learning will you undertake this week?

Regina Menz