A message from Emily

Dear parents and carers,

On Tuesday evening we celebrated the beginning of a new school year with our school 'Welcome Picnic'. We trust that families had an opportunity to meet other families and build connections. It is always a celebration coming together and enjoying time as a community. I would like to thank the staff who were involved in the success of the evening including Uncle Daniel who led our smoking ceremony and Thom from ABC Music group for his beautiful music.  

Prep 2025 Enrolments

It has come to that time of the year were we begin our process for 2025 Prep enrolments. Thank you to the families who have already completed an application form for their child who is due to start next year. If you do have a child that is due to start school next year please complete the online application form on our school website. Siblings of exisiting families are always offered a place for Prep but we can only do this if we know your intentions. It is really important that you complete the application by the end of this term. This allows us to plan for interviews and how many places we can offer to new families. School tours filling up fast so we encourage to book in online for a spot - Book a Tour.

Roof Maintenance

Unfortunately we have realised that the roof of our school building requires significant repairs. We have sourced a number of quotes for this work and it will be of significant cost and will likely take two weeks to complete if all goes to plan. Once we have locked in dates for this I will let the community know of the impact that this will have on all of us. We are aiming to have this done during the school holidays to minimise the impact on learning and families. 

School Advisory Council

The SAC met last week and part of our agenda was in response to increasing parent engagement in the life of the school. An action from this meeting is putting a short survey out to the community to inform this planning. This survey will be shared in our next newsletter and we encourage families to check it out and see if their are opportunities that you believe would be of value to our community. We also discussed the recent statistics around the number of children in Australia who have low reading ability and it was recommended that I share something with our community in relation to this. Please see below.  

Teaching Reading at St John's

Recently the media has had coverage about the reading ability of students in Australia that is a cause of concern, so I thought I would take this opportunity to give an overview of what we do at St John's. There has been a lot of talk about whole language vs the science of reading and this can often cause confusion for parents about what schools should or could be doing. Both approaches to teaching literacy skills have been around for a long time and there has been a strong push towards whole language approaches in the past which has now been rightly questioned in research and evidence. There is also a lot being said about the science of reading and science of learning. This is not a program but instead named components that research and evidence-based practices have highlighted as being critical to the success in learning to read. This aligns with what MACS is launching this week as their 'Vision for Instruction'. I will share more around this in our next newsletter. Like everything we do at St John's, we look for high-quality, evidence-based practices that will best impact learning outcomes. For literacy we consider a child's phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and oral language ability to drive our teaching and intervention. Over time, our NAPLAN results for Reading as a school have been consistent, and while there is always room for growth, they have been overall positive. If you have any questions around what we do at St John's, I strongly encourage you to reach out to any of our Learning and Teaching leaders who would be more than happy to talk to you about this. See the Learning and Teaching page for more.

NAPLAN 2024

NAPLAN is fast approaching. The children in Year 3 and Year 5 will be completing these assessments on the following days:

• Wednesday 13 March : Year 3 and 5 Writing Assessment
• Thursday 14 March: Year 5 Reading and Language Conventions Assessment
• Friday 15 March: Year 3 Reading and Language Conventions Assessment
• Monday 18 March: Year 3 and 5 Numeracy Assessment
• 19 - 21 March: Catch up Assessments for children absent on any of the days listed above.

Please reach out to your child's educator if you have any questions. We strongly recommend that you treat this like any other day as over preparing or talking about this can cause unnecessary anxiety. We want children to feel good about who they are as a learner and this captures a snapshot of who they are as a reader, writer and mathematician. If you wish to have your child withdrawn from NAPLAN please email Karen or Amy asap.

It is with sadness that I share with the community that earlier this year we received some difficult news that Robert Brennan, Principal of Caroline Chisholm Catholic College, was undergoing treatment after receiving a cancer diagnosis during the break. Unfortunately, the treatment has not been as successful as we all hoped and prayed for, and the decision has been made that Rob will be moved into palliative care. We ask that you keep Rob and his family in your thoughts and prayers during this time. 

Laura Ruddick has been appointed Acting Principal for the remainder of the year and I have reached out on behalf of the St John's community to offer any support they need.

Warm wishes

Emily