Learning & Teaching

Welcome Picnic

Last Thursday's annual Welcome Picnic was a true celebration of community and our children's creativity. This year we began with an open afternoon in our Hubs, where children could share their special place and learnings with families. It was lovely to see so many families walking through the learning spaces, interacting and developing a deeper understanding of how we work at St. John’s. At the Farm, we had a respectful smoking ceremony led by Uncle Daniel, who welcomed us to Wurundjeri Country and cleansed our land and spirit. While at the Farm, families and children had the opportunity to sign our St John’s Farm Treaty, created through the 2024 Engaging with Place sessions, by adding their fingerprints. On Joan’s Yard, we hosted our community art installation, where children and families were encouraged to create artwork using wire, beads, string, and ribbons. Melissa, our Arts educator, will collate these creations into mobiles, which will be displayed in the art room. In the backyard, the Western Bulldogs ran a variety of football games and activities and Thomas, an educator from ABC Music, provided lively music for the night.  A huge thank you to all the families who joined in the festivities and made the evening extra special!

Prep Reading update ~ Introduction to InitiaLit

After building on our knowledge of how children learn to read through research and professional learning linked to the Science of Reading, St. John's has purchased the InitiaLit–F program to support the Junior phonics approach, particularly for use in the Prep Hub this year. InitiaLit–F is a comprehensive, beginning reading and spelling program for all children in their first year of schooling (Foundation/Prep). It includes an explicit and systematic synthetic phonics program, which means the relationship between sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes) are taught explicitly in a predetermined order. The teaching of letter-sound correspondences and opportunities for the application of this knowledge to reading and spelling occur during our whole group mini lessons, as well as our targeted small group sessions. Last week, our Prep team undertook the two day professional development training sessions to further support our understanding around the implementation and what this could mean for our St. John’s context.

Art donations required!

Stay Connected with SIMON Everywhere

This year, we've introduced the SIMON Everywhere app, your convenient gateway to your PAM account. This user-friendly app enables us to directly communicate important updates and notifications with our school community.

We've been actively sharing information about upcoming events and exciting learning experiences on the group chat thread within the app. To ensure you don't miss any important announcements, please enable notifications for the app.

Starting in 2025, we will be transitioning all school communications to the SIMON Everywhere app. We strongly encourage all families to download the app and sign in using your PAM account credentials.

If you have any difficulties or require assistance with your PAM account details, please don't hesitate to contact the office (admin@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au, 9687 3150) or Amy (alittley@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au).