St Anthony's School

Message from the Principal

St Anthony’s Parish and St Anthony’s School hold the care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people as central and fundamental responsibilities of the Church. St Anthony’s is fully compliant with all policies in relation to Child Safety. These documents ensure compliance with the Victorian Government Child Safety Standards which took effect on 1 January 2017 and reflect our Parishes’ ongoing commitment to ensuring that all children are safe, happy and empowered.

Term 3 is nearly complete

Dear parents, carers and friends,

This will be our last official newsletter for Term 3. We count down the days to production next Friday 13th September and then all children finish Term 3 nice and early on Wednesday 18th September at 2.30pm. We appreciate your support as this enables us to meet together with our SMAG cluster (St Mary's, St Anthony's & St Gerard's) for a collaborative conference together. This SMAG partnership is a unique one. We have a shared moral purpose and we work hard to ensure that the relationship between the 3 schools is strong. This is because we believe that through working together in partnership, it does lead to improved student outcomes. 

 This conference is our own, designed by the three schools and led by the middle leaders and teachers of our three schools. Our educators have designed learning workshops that will provide professional learning to all educators. To give you a little taste of what we will be exploring, some of the workshops include,

  • Prayer Spaces in Schools
  • Sensory Processing in the school environment
  • A journey through coaching culture
  • Community Partnerships for student and family wellbeing - Playgroups in schools
  • Art therapy and Mindfulness
  • Numeracy Differentiation for learners of all levels
  • Using Provocations in the design for Learning
  • Community Partnerships for Learning
  • Religious Education Resources – Explore and analyse a variety of resources that could be used in the teaching of Religious Education
  • Grammar in Context - Sharing good practice
  • Once Upon a time we found PBL! (Positive Behaviour for Learning)
  • Family Engagement in Learning - Digital solutions - Using Class DOJO and Seesaw as family engagement tools
  • Using Provocations and the Pedagogy of Encounter in the Design for Learning
  • Architecture of the Brain - How experiences influence development of the brain from the earliest years
  • Student Voice and Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships at St Anthony’s
  • Family Engagment in Learning - What works. Unpacking the invitation. SPOTLIGHT: Bait and Hook
  • Adjustments in Action
  • Leading Languages in Learning
  • Design for Learning – Using the Teacher Dialogue Tool Part A To Plan a unit on Advent within an Inquiry Model
  • Elements of Family Engagement - Relationships

 

Our educators have met frequently, shared ideas and worked hard to ensure that everyone comes away from these 2 full days with purposeful learning to drive school improvement. I am so proud of the way that our staff have enabled this conference to come together and the way in which all educators have planned on top of already hectic teaching and learning schedules to provide this type of learning to their colleagues. 

 

I'd like to  share with you some of the data from NAPLAN which was released this week.  Naplan results were delivered this week and they will be arriving home to parents today. 

From a brief, early analysis of the data, we are very excited to share that our reading outcomes in year 5 is the highest its been in 5 years! We also celebrate our spelling outcomes in year 5 which is at par with the state. Our year 3 data have showed improved outcomes to 2018 in writing and spelling while we have maintained outcomes in numeracy.  Congratulations to all our students!

 

I thank you all - parents, carers and friends for your ongoing support throughout Term 3. I thank my leadership team for supporting me through a long and difficult recovery. I thank our educators and support staff for their professionalism and constant care of your children and I thank the children. They are at the heart of all we do! They have hearts of gold and to see them up on that stage next week will surely make all of our hearts well and truly full.

 

Go gently in your holidays and we look forward to seeing everyone bouncing through the gates on Monday October 7th (but first bouncing into our Production next Friday!). 

 

God Bless,

Patrika