Principal's Report

Our collective prayers have been answered! As I indicated via COMPASS earlier this week, after approval from the NSW government and CSNSW, the shutters are up and we are excited to welcome families and visitors back into our school grounds to enhance our 2022 learning and wellbeing partnership from Monday 28 February (masks) and from Monday 7 March (no masks).

As a school committed to building active partnerships with students and families that grow learning achievement and enhance positive well-being, the practical opportunity to share the language and practice of our classroom learning and well-being culture onsite (and no longer virtual!?) is essential and necessary. Hence, the Welcome BBQ (9 March) and Student-Led Conferences (14 - 18 March) are exciting starting points for our positive partnerships.

Our skilful and helpful staff team are ready to re-energise our onsite relationship throughout 2022 as we re-start our Parent Information sessions, School Advisory Council (SAC) and Parents & Friends Association (P&F) along with other new partnership initiatives. Stay informed and up-to-date through the COMPASS App.

Research clearly shows that the best learning is founded on explicit instruction, quality differentiation and fast feedback. At St Joseph’s, our skilful, helpful staff team are trained experts in this mode of instruction. In laymen’s terms, explicit instruction means that the teacher/s deliver a short expert example of the new skill and/or concept, immediately followed by a shared worked example with the class and a subsequent opportunity for individual student or small group work to rehearse and embed the new skill/concept. Quality differentiation refers to the distribution of the students into ‘mini-cohorts’ and work tasks that are ‘pegged’ at their level of challenge that supports students who may be not grasping a skill or concept, to those that need ‘pushing’ beyond the mid-range, and onto that group that are needing to be ‘stretched’ at the high end of the class, sometimes even beyond their grade level. Followed up with fast feedback to the children based on their level of understanding and need.

Now that’s the educational ‘jargon’ done! Of course, there is no need for families to fully understand the nuances of these potentially complex terms and strategies! That is our job! So, consequently be assured that our skilful, helpful team of staff at St Joseph’s are very experienced and that there is ongoing and relentless professional learning and analysis of student data that aspire for all of our children to be ‘future-proofed’ with resilient skills and concepts in literacy, numeracy and positive well-being for life. Our stage-based allocation of teachers and support staff ensures high levels of adult density in every classroom (3 adults every day for literacy and numeracy) that goes far beyond the old traditional notion of one teacher per class. And our external benchmarks against national standards from 2021 reflect and provide evidentiary proof of both the high-quality capacity of our skilful, helpful team of staff as well as the efficacy of stage-based learning. For example, in 2021, 26 out 27 students in Year 2 made PM Reading Benchmark for their age; 100% of Year 3 students met the NAPLAN benchmark for Writing; 90% of Year 5 students achieved the NAPLAN benchmark for Numeracy - a wonderful reflection of the collaborative work done in our classrooms last year. No wonder I can confidently say to our kids - “Let’s take this GOOD school into being a GREAT school!”

Thank you to Father Gleeson for a reverent and reflective beginning to the liturgical season of Lent at our Ash Wednesday service last Wednesday. As an essential part of our faith partnership with Catholic families to grow a deeper understanding of our faith amongst the children, the season of Lent brings us all to pause, reflect and pray in a conscious effort to move closer in our personal relationship with God. While giving up chocolate or ‘fizzy’ drinks and donating to Project Compassion are physical ‘things’ that we can do, the spiritual intention to come closer to our God through prayer is paramount.

I look forward to speaking with you all both publicly and personally in the coming weeks and months and growing our positive learning and well-being partnership!

May God go with you.

Geoff McManus

Principal