Seesaw Schedule

We are excited to share our learning with you!

Please keep an eye out for a learning post on Seesaw during the following weeks:

7/3 - By the end of Week 7/8

21/3 - By the end of Week 9

28/3 - By the end of Week 10

Community Projects

“Documentation captures a movement of thinking…”

Our children have been busy exploring and interacting with provocations that have been carefully designed to spark interest, motivation and curiosity about our context of Footscray. Their wonderings, theories and new discoveries are documented on the Community Project Wall, which is featured in each of our Hubs across the school. The Community Project wall is an essential part of the project, as it provides an opportunity for the children, educators and the wider school community to gain an insight into how the children’s learning journey is unfolding. It offers possibilities for educators and children to revisit theories and ideas that have been shared, and to build and collaborate on each other’s thinking!

Our Five- Six children were lucky enough to meet Sajeeda from the Asylum Seeker Refugee centre in Footscray. Saaj shared her story and experiences of being an asylum seeker and surviving the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The children heard about her passion for social justice, and her role as an advocate for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. It was a privilege to hear about her strength, commitment and compassion for helping others!

Discovery

We have been busy learning about being effective Discoverers. Here are some of the recent ideas that we have explored:

Prep: Discovers use their imagination when investigating ideas, like discussing the significance of celebrations in a community.

One/Two Hub: “Makers” use different processes to design and test their creations.

Three/Four Hub: Effective Discoverers learn from their mistakes and iterate processes when embarking on new projects.

Five/Six Hub: Effective Discoverers consider their target audience and appropriate platforms when launching projects.

Numeracy

The last couple of weeks have seen educators and children working on developing their maths understandings, while also focusing on developing their metacognitive awareness and strategies for understanding their thinking processes.

Our learners from the Prep Hub have been introduced to this through this prompt:

The Prep children have been matching number numbers, making numbers in different ways and telling stories about numbers. Patrick and Jordan have encouraged children to reflect on these learning experiences by showing a thumbs up for easy, a thumbs down for hard and a thumbs to the side if children felt it was challenging but achievable.

The Prep children have responded in different ways using these signs. Their next step is to develop the language to support these gestures. You can support your child at home by asking how they are feeling while completing a tricky task.

If you would like further support, ideas or to share feedback of your experiences, please reach out.

Lauren Davis

Co-Deputy Principal/Numeracy Leader

ldavis@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

Literacy

Educators have met in their Hubs this week to design learning for Literacy for our children. They have unpacked various sources of data, using questions such as:

What does the data show?
What can children do / what are their strengths?
What do their next steps of learning look like / what is their goal?
What strategies will support this learning?
How will we measure success/growth?

Here is what each Hub is working on over the next few weeks:

Prep Hub

Through Target teaching children will be working on building their phonemic awareness (letters and their corresponding sounds) and then work towards being able to put these sounds together to help them read a word (segmenting and blending). As readers, children will also be exploring ‘Turtle and Snail are Friends’ as a rich literature text. They will be exploring the reading strategies of retelling and making connections. As Authors, children will continue to explore ‘bookmaking’. They have completed their books about their families and will now be making another book about themselves.

You can support your child’s learning at home by discussing the book they created (shared with you on seesaw) and how they went about creating this.

One Hub

Through target teaching, children will continue to work on their reading goals; including building their phonemic awareness, and reading strategies such as retelling and answering questions about a text. As readers, children will be exploring the rich literature text ‘Little Birds Day’, and make connections between this text and their community project. As Authors, children will continue exploring ‘bookmaking’. Through their targets children will be practising letter formation and spelling words using their phonemic awareness.

You can support your child’s learning at home by viewing their seesaw post with them and asking them how they feel about working towards their writing goal and what their next steps are.

Two Hub

Children will be working towards achieving their reading goals through target teaching. Some children have started to explore reciprocal reading as a strategy for building their reading comprehension. The goal of this strategy is for children to independently discuss a text using the four reading roles of predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising. As readers, children will explore the rich literature text ‘The day the crayons came home’. Children will then use this story, in which postcards are written from crayons to their ‘owner’, as writers as a model for exploring the genre of socialising.

You can support your child’s learning at home by discussing their writing goal (as per their seesaw post) and asking questions like “did you achieve your goal?” “how do you know?” “what will you work on next?”

3-4 Hub

As readers, children will continue to build their comprehension skills through reading target groups, working on goals connected to their PRD levels (Progression of Reading Development). Children have been listening to and engaging in a whole class shared text “Polly and Buster”, and soon will commence working in small groups as a ‘Book Club’ to discuss this text using the book club roles. As Authors, children have been exploring writing goals connected to a grammar or spelling progression, based on their needs.

You can support your child’s learning at home by discussing their writing goal (as per their seesaw post) and asking questions like “did you achieve your goal?” “how do you know?” “what will you work on next?”

5-6 Hub

As readers, children have been supported in developing the skills to engage in Book Clubs, through Educator feedback and a fishbowl approach (where they view a group enacting a Book Club then label what worked well). They will continue to engage in Book clubs with less Educator support, engaging in discussions with their peers using the book club roles. As writers, children will be working towards transferring the goal they have worked towards through a text they are working on independently. Children will begin to explore the text “Ziba came on a boat” as writers, to unpack how Liz Lofthouse (Author) has impacted the reader through their word choice. You can support your child’s learning at home by discussing their writing goal (as per their seesaw post) and asking questions like “did you achieve your goal?” “how do you know?” “what will you work on next?”

If you have any further questions about how you can support your child’s reading at home, or any other Literacy-related questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Daniela De Luca

Literacy Leader

ddeluca@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

Wellbeing

Berry Street Education Model

At St. John’s we employ the Berry Street Education Model to support students to become Ready to Learn. Ready to Learn is a daily routine that is practised in the Learning Hubs to support students to maximise their capability to focus and learn which in turn, leads to better learning outcomes for all students. The routine takes place in a Welcome Circle comprising greetings, a recognition of our values and expectations, daily announcements, a positive primer in the form of fun, social interactions and some explicit teaching of concepts that incorporate our Ways of Working (WOW). This week some new staff members commenced their training in the Berry Street Education Model with staff from Christ the King Primary School in Braybrook.

Supporting students to understand how emotions impact us all and how they affect our capacity to focus and learn is an important step towards learning self-regulation and strategies to support de-escalation during our day. The Berry Street Education Model also enables children and staff to identify emotions through recognition of how the body responds in moments of escalation.

It promotes strategies that support the establishment of consistent and predictable routines including incorporating Pattern Movement Actions such as Brain Breaks. At St. John’s, our staff will be learning about Interoception which is the ability to tune in to the internal, sensory systems of the body that notice, identify and respond to the physical and emotional changes in the body. This learning will enable all staff to support the children to manage their big feelings in appropriate ways.

Karen Dodemaide

Co-Deputy Principal and Wellbeing Leader

kdodemaide@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

Learning Diversity

In the coming weeks St. John’s will hold Program (Parent) Support Group Meetings (PSGs) for some students who receive adjustments to their learning. This is a formalised process to ensure educators and families have space and time together in supporting students to flourish. The purpose of these meetings is to:

Identify student strengths and needs
Prioritise areas for growth and progress
Review and evaluate adjustments and goals
Establish future goals and actions
Celebrate success!

If this relates to your child, you will have received email communication about booking a PSG meeting.

Ashlee Owen

Learning Diversity

aowen@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

Faith

Prayer & ASH Wednesday/ Mural blessing reflection

On behalf of St John’s, I’d like to warmly welcome our community into this year’s Lenten Season. Our school ushered in the Lenten season with a very special Shrove Tuesday pancake celebration, generously provided by our staff, and prepared by our Community Leaders William, Joshua and Hien (pictured).

Ash Wednesday Liturgy

Our children have begun to explore the symbol, ritual and tradition embedded within Lent, particularly with our Ash Wednesday Liturgy, hosted by Father Rene in our school hall. Our children participated emphatically, especially through song and responding to Father Rene’s homily, which called us to come together to not only love our neighbours, however be kind to ourselves as well. Our hubs further explore how our Lenten season calls us to live out the life of Jesus, through kindness, prayer and Almsgiving.

Project Compassion

Our social justice leaders for this term also launched St John’s Project Compassion collection at our Ash Wednesday liturgy. This year, the focus is “for all our future generations”, with all donations going towards providing supplies for farming, shelter and schools in disadvantaged communities such as Mozambique, India and Remote Australia.

Pictured are our leaders participating in a Webinar hosted by CARITAS, as they prepared to launch the project.

We invite families to make small coin donations where possible. These may include change leftover from lunch orders, spare change you might have lying around the house, or coins you wish to donate.

Social Justice team: Joshua, William and Hien

Prayer gatherings

As part of our Lenten celebration, each hub will be hosting a prayer gathering on these dates:

Three/four: Friday 4th March 2:45pm (in our school hall)
Five/Six: Friday 18th March 2:30pm
Prep: Friday 1st April 2:30pm
One, Two and Three/Four: Week 11 (dates to come)

These will all be held outside (weather permitting) otherwise in our hall. Families are of course welcome to come along.

Mitch Hayes

(Faith/REL Leader)

mitch.hayes@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

How does our garden grow?

Farm news