Mrs Ryan's Fortnightly Reflections

Congratulations to the St Mary’s community for reaching the end of Semester One! Another hugely successful term, with so much learning, progress, and achievement experienced by each and every one of us! I hope you enjoy readng the progress and celebration of your child in their reports. I would like to thank our families, parents, and staff for their commitment to our school's success and for trusting us each and every day with your children. I hope you all have a well-deserved rest! 

We are six months into our CESL Magnify journey, learning through the platforms of Ochre: Mathematics, English, Multilit, Science of Learning, and soon to introduce Classroom Mastery. The staff have been celebrating and are well affirmed by exploring your children’s data behind the scenes. Collectively across the school, we have experienced and observed such change in our learning communities, with well-aligned data trends on the upward trajectory. We know the change has been significant, and we are consistently striving to inform our learners about the brain science behind these approaches. This will continue well into our future years. Alongside these programs and directions, we are still very active in seeking our learners' voices and input. Recently, every leader has sat with each class to explore what they enjoy and what they don’t enjoy about school so we can negotiate and accommodate our learners' needs. It is always so humbling to be in the classrooms with our learners, who truly care about the future improvements of their school. 

This week, we farewell Lou Walsh. Lou has been at St Mary’s for just under ten years and has shared her creative talents in art and music in our specialist program! Lou has decided to retire a little earlier than planned, but we are hugely grateful for her service and dedication to our school over the past decade. Lou plans on spending more time with her grandchildren and own children, while keeping busy on her farm! We wish Lou happiness and health on her next adventures

Week one of next term, St Mary’s will officially launch Classroom Mastery. Classroom Mastery is the teaching of explicit routines and expectations in line with our behaviour curriculum. The staff have been prepared with professional learning and examples of what this will look like and be like in all of our learning spaces. The purpose of having known and unified approaches to behaviour is to allow our learners to have predictable, consistent, and safe routines that we can all adhere to with automaticity. Classroom Mastery complements our deep learning and practice of restorative teaching, and St Mary’s is in a well-founded position for this to bring even further success. Following our week one launch and the teaching of these explicit routines and behaviors, St Mary’s will implement more over the remainder of the year. We look forward to celebrating the impact of this learning with you all soon. 

Thank you all again for a fabulous term! The staff feel very supported by our parent and family community, and we are so grateful for how often you are in and around the school. I wish you all a happy, safe, and well-deserved break. 

I look forward to seeing you all when we return on Monday 21st July 2025. 

Take Care & God Bless,  

Jasmine Ryan 

Principal