Principal's Report

Dear Parents, Carers and Community Members,

Learning and Teaching

As we move beyond the halfway point of Term 1, it continues to be wonderful to see calm classrooms, happy students and high-quality learning and teaching across St Joseph’s. Visitors regularly comment on the positive learning environments in our school, where students are engaged, respectful and focused on their learning.

As part of the Armidale Catholic Schools system, learning and teaching pedagogy is guided by the work of educational researcher Dr Lyn Sharratt, who highlights the importance of students clearly understanding and articulating their learning through five key questions:

• What am I learning and why?
• How am I going with the learning?
• How do I know?
• How can I improve?
• Where can I go for help?

When students can answer these questions, they develop greater ownership of their learning and are better able to reflect on their progress and set goals for improvement. We encourage parents to engage in these learning conversations with your children at home.

Survey Feedback

An important message from last year’s Survey My School feedback was the value our families and staff place on strong communication and partnership between home and school. Research consistently shows that when schools, parents and students work together, student engagement, wellbeing and academic achievement all improve. In response to this feedback, we continue to strengthen opportunities for parents and students to discuss learning progress with teachers.

Two important ways we will do this are through student-led conversations about learning and parent-teacher learning meetings. Student-led conversations allow students to explain what they are learning, share examples of their work and reflect on their progress using the language of the five learning questions. Parent-teacher meetings then provide an opportunity for teachers and parents to discuss student progress, identify next steps and work together to support each child’s learning.

Throughout the year we will provide several opportunities for these conversations to occur:

These opportunities ensure that students, teachers and families work together as partners in learning, supporting every young person to grow in confidence and achieve their personal best.

May God bless you and your family.

Casey Chard

Principal