Week Nine, Term Three

It’s amazing to think that we only have one week of Term Three left. It feels like we only just kicked off Term Three in the middle of winter and here we are already in the middle of September getting ready to wind up the term.

And what a productive term it has been at St Agnes’, from celebrating our Prep’s 100 days of Prep, Geography Immersion Day, Book Week, Father’s Day, Shark Tank Business pitches, Inform and Empower evening, Hoop Time, SSV Athletics, our PnF Social Night, Bully No-way Day, junior habitat excursions, class liturgies and STEM challenges, our students have had a myriad of wonderful learning experiences to supplement their learning in the classrooms.

As a staff, there has been much to celebrate. From the Connect in the Field day where we hosted over 50 staff members from other schools to share their learning environment so carefully developed at St Agnes’, through to our Maths professional learning sprints, our whole staff professional learning day on neurodivergent learners through to this week hosting Xavier College who were keen to see our learning environments and hear more about our approach to teaching the Science of Learning content to our students across the school.

It has been such a productive and exciting term. I’d love to thank our parent community for their support of the school this term, through preparing Book Week costumes, attending our PnF event or even hanging around after school to purchase a sausage at the BBQ on a Friday, every little bit continues to strengthen our community. Our staff who give our students such a rigorous and purposeful learning experience every day, whether through excursions, sporting events or their work behind the scenes preparing for our students to thrive, I thank them for their efforts this term.

Father’s Day Breakfast

Last Thursday morning, our hall was packed as we came together to celebrate Father’s Day at St Agnes’. Our dedicated volunteers were up bright and early preparing bacon and egg muffins and an assortment of goodies for our dads, grandfathers and special friends to enjoy.

It was fantastic to see our hall once again filled with families, and we were so pleased that so many dads and special people were able to rearrange their mornings to spend this time with their children. There was a wonderful atmosphere throughout the hall as families shared breakfast, caught up with one another and, most importantly, enjoyed some special time together.

These are the moments our children remember, having someone special beside them and welcoming them into their school. The excitement on the children’s faces as they arrived with their dads and special friends was wonderful to see and a great reminder of the importance of these opportunities to bring our community together.

A huge thank you to our wonderful parent volunteers who gave up their time to prepare and serve breakfast and help make the morning such a success. Events like these simply wouldn’t be possible without the generosity and support of our families.

To all of our amazing dads, grandfathers and father figures, thank you for everything you do for our children and for the love, encouragement, patience and support you provide each day. We hope you had a wonderful Father’s Day and enjoyed celebrating with us at St Agnes’.

Xavier College Visits St Agnes’

This week, we were pleased to welcome a team of educators from Xavier College, Kew's, senior campus to St Agnes’ after they sought the opportunity to visit our school as part of their own teaching and learning improvement journey. St Agnes’ had been recommended to the Xavier team by Professor Pamela Snow from La Trobe University, Co-Director of the Science of Language and Reading Lab, as a school to visit to see these approaches being implemented in practice.

The Xavier team came to learn more about our approach to teaching and learning, particularly the emphasis we place on consistent classroom routines and practices that support students to be ready to learn. The visit also provided an opportunity to share the journey St Agnes’ has undertaken over recent times, from the initial implementation of evidence-informed practices through to developing the consistency we now see across classrooms.

Following discussions with our school leaders about this implementation journey, the Xavier team visited classrooms to see our approaches in action. It was great to see the consistency across the school, including calm and purposeful learning environments, explicit teaching, daily review, opportunities for students to respond, and common routines and expectations that maximise learning time and support all students.

Importantly, the visit has also led to an exciting ongoing connection between our two schools. With Xavier College embarking on a similar journey and sharing many of our goals around teaching, learning and continuous improvement, we have agreed to develop a partnership between St Agnes’ and Xavier College moving forward. This will provide opportunities for both schools to share practice, learn from one another and support each other as our approaches continue to develop.

It is a great recognition of the work our staff have undertaken that a school such as this sought out St Agnes’ to support its own implementation journey, particularly following a recommendation from such a respected leader in this field. At the same time, we are excited about what we can learn from Xavier College as this partnership develops, with the ultimate goal of continuing to improve the learning experiences and outcomes of our students.

Writing at St Agnes’

This year, a significant amount of time and effort has gone into further developing our approach to teaching and assessing writing at St Agnes’. Using the Seven Steps to Writing Success as our approach to teaching writing, alongside the Elastik assessment platform, has led to some impressive growth across our school.

Seven Steps to Writing Success is an evidence-informed approach that explicitly teaches students the key skills and techniques used to create engaging, well-structured writing. By breaking writing into manageable components such as planning, strong openings, building tension, effective dialogue and powerful endings, students develop the confidence and skills to become increasingly successful writers.

This term, we have also been fortunate to have Mrs Gorski working in a coaching role during writing lessons in our senior classrooms. Her knowledge and experience with the Seven Steps approach, together with her coaching skills, have helped to further develop the capacity and confidence of our classroom teachers in this important area of the curriculum. This work has strongly complemented the outstanding work of Mrs Baker, who continues to lead teaching and learning across our school and drive consistency and improvement in classroom practice.

The Elastik platform has also been a real game changer for us. We began using Elastik towards the end of last year, and it now allows us to closely track and monitor the writing growth of individual students, classes and cohorts. Importantly, the data also helps our teachers identify specific areas of strength and need, allowing them to plan instruction that is responsive to the learning needs of their students.

Below is a snapshot of the spiderweb graphs we use to monitor whole-class progress. In each image, the smaller ‘web’ represents student achievement earlier in the year, while the larger web represents a more recent writing sample. The difference between the two provides a fantastic visual representation of the growth our students have made across the past eight months.

Given the success of our approach this year, we are already looking ahead to how we can build on this work in 2027. Over the past few weeks, Mrs Baker and Mrs Gorski have been developing a clear and sequential whole-school approach to writing that will further strengthen consistency across year levels and ensure our students continue to develop their skills, knowledge and confidence as writers.

Italian Day

On Thursday, St Agnes’ was transformed into a celebration of all things Italian for our biennial Italian Day. This year’s Italian Day was inspired by renowned author and illustrator Tomie dePaola and his much-loved book Strega Nona.

The day began with our whole-school costume parade and the Ave Maria prayer before students moved into a range of activities based around the story and Italian culture. Students created their own 3D Strega Nona houses, completed art activities and enjoyed opportunities to work alongside students from other year levels.

There was plenty of friendly competition outside as our Year 6 students took responsibility for leading bocce sessions for our younger students, before taking on the staff in a students-versus-teachers bocce challenge. Our teachers were no match for our Year Six students.

Of course, no Italian Day would be complete without some wonderful Italian food. Students enjoyed their special Italian lunch of pizza and gelato. Thank you to our parent volunteers Andria, Lauren, Fluer, Daniel and Amy for coming in and serving lunch for our students. The day finished with the whole school coming together in the hall for Luigi Zucchini’s Marvellous Magic Show, providing plenty of laughs and a fantastic way to finish our celebrations.

A massive thank you to Signora Talarico, our very own Strega Nona, for the enormous amount of work that went into planning, preparing and organising the day. I From the activities and resources to the food and entertainment, there was a huge amount happening behind the scenes to provide our students with such a memorable experience. Grazie Signora.

MS Readathon

Congratulations to all of our students who took part in the MS Readathon this year. An incredible 58 St Agnes’ students participated, demonstrating a wonderful commitment to reading while supporting an important cause.

Even more impressively, our school community has so far raised an outstanding $6,756 to support people and families affected by multiple sclerosis. This amazing effort currently places St Agnes’ as the fourth-highest fundraising school in Australia! We could not be prouder of the generosity and commitment shown by our students and families. An enormous thank you to Mrs Baker for her work coordinating the MS Readathon at St Agnes’ this year and encouraging our students throughout the challenge.

Shark Tank Pitches

This past week saw our senior students pitch their business ideas to their classmates and teachers as part of their Business and Economics Topic unit. It was fantastic to see a term’s worth of hard work come together as students presented their business plans, market research, product designs and marketing strategies.

The advertisements developed during Performing Arts lessons with Mrs Gugliucciello were another great addition and complemented the pitches perfectly. Our judges were impressed by the creativity and variety of products on offer, including squish balls, baked goods and artworks. Most impressive was seeing how well our students worked collaboratively throughout the term, taking an initial idea and using research, feedback and teamwork to develop it into a finished product and business proposal.

The learning will come to life next Monday when our senior students set up their own market stalls for our Year 3 and 4 students. This will give them the opportunity to put their business plans into action and find out just how successful their market research has been.

Well done to all of our senior students for the hard work, creativity and teamwork they have demonstrated throughout the term. A big thank you also to our senior teaching team of Mrs Miller, Mrs Gorski, Mr Otto and Mrs Murdoch for the work they have put into developing such an engaging and meaningful unit of learning for our students.

STEM Club Competition

It has been fantastic to see our STEM Club become such a popular addition to St Agnes’ this year. This term, our students have been developing their design and technology skills by using Tinkercad to create their own digital 3D models, with their designs then able to come to life using our school’s 3D printer.

To build on the students’ enthusiasm, one of our generous parents, Andrew Pitsikalis, has kindly donated a number of prizes for our very own St Agnes’ 3D Printing Competition. Our STEM Club students will spend the coming weeks designing and refining their own original models before selected designs are printed and a winner is announced later in Term Four.

It is wonderful to see our students using technology in such a creative and purposeful way, developing their problem-solving, design and digital skills along the way. A big thank you to Andrew for his generosity and for supporting and encouraging the creativity of our students. We can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Class Liturgies

One of the special traditions we have at St Agnes’ is our class liturgy program, which gives each year level the opportunity to come together with their families to celebrate their faith and share in prayer throughout the year.

It has been wonderful to see so many family members joining us for these celebrations. Our class liturgies provide an important opportunity for our students to take an active role in their faith, leading prayers, readings and reflections and sharing some of the learning they have been doing in Religious Education. These will continue on for some classes in Week 10.

A big thank you to Mrs Gorski, our Religious Education Leader, for her work supporting our teachers and students in preparing these celebrations, and to our classroom teachers for the time and care they put into making each liturgy meaningful for their students.

Choir Assembly Performance

What a treat it was to have our school choir perform at assembly this week! Each week, Mrs Gugliucciello works with our choir during rehearsals, and it was wonderful to see all of their hard work come together in front of our school community.

Our students did such an impressive job and should be very proud of their performance. We’re so fortunate to be able to provide experiences like this for our children at St Agnes’, giving them opportunities to build confidence, showcase their talents and enjoy performing together. A big thank you to Mrs Gugliucciello for the time, energy and enthusiasm she puts into our choir each week.

Raise Our Voice

Last term, our Year Six students took part in the Raise Our Voice competition, a national initiative encouraging young people to write about issues they are passionate about and explain why our Federal Parliament should take notice.

We were incredibly proud to learn this week that our very own Alice has been selected as the winner for the Goldstein electorate! Alice’s speech focused on the importance of increasing play spaces for children, and as the electorate winner, her speech will be read in Federal Parliament by our local MP, Tim Wilson, later this year. Congratulations Alice.

A big thank you also to our Year Six teachers, Mrs Murdoch and Mr Otto, for providing our students with the opportunity to take part in such a meaningful initiative.

Playground Update

After plenty of fundraising, planning and the hard work of so many volunteers within our school community, we are very excited to announce that our new playground is ready for installation. The playground will be installed during the first week of the school holidays, meaning it will be ready and waiting for our students when they return for Term Four. After all the work that has gone into making this project possible, we cannot wait to see our students enjoying the new space.

We will officially open the playground together as a school community on Sunday 18th October as part of our annual Trash and Treasure Market. It will be a wonderful opportunity to celebrate a project that has been made possible through the generosity, fundraising and hard work of our community.

If you have any interest inbooking a stall for the Trash and Treasure Market, please follow the QR code below. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed along the way. We look forward to seeing the playground come to life in Term Four!

After-School Soccer and Golf Programs

Our new after-school soccer and golf programs have been a wonderful addition to the range of opportunities available to our students at St Agnes’.

On Friday afternoons, James’ golf sessions provide a fantastic introduction to the sport in a fun, engaging and high-quality environment. Meanwhile, on Thursday afternoons, Coach Paolo puts many of our students through their paces with his popular soccer program, helping them develop their skills while enjoying plenty of time out on the pitch.

Both programs have been extremely popular with our families and are designed to cater for a wide range of ages, skills and abilities. It’s been great to see so many of our students getting involved, learning new skills and enjoying being active with their friends after school.

As mentioned previously, Brad Crosher has kept our before-school tennis program operating this term. Please get in touch with Brad if you are interested in signing up for Term Four lessons. You can contact Brad via www.bgctennis.com or brad@bgctennis.com

We also have Kelly Sports again running their holiday program over the Term Three break. Paul and his team have an exciting series of events planned for the sessions. Please head over to the Community news page to see more and book your child into the programs for the holidays or Term Four.

Footy Colours Day

The final Friday of term will see the return of our annual Footy Colours Day at St Agnes’. Students are encouraged to wear the colours of their favourite football team and will take part in a range of football and soccer activities throughout the day, led by our Year 6 student leaders.

To finish the term, our wonderful P&F will also be providing a special lunch for students and families from 1:30pm. There is no need to pre-order, just come along at the end of the school day and purchase a hot item of food and a drink as we celebrate another fantastic term together.

A massive thank you once again to our P&F and parent volunteers for the time and effort they continue to put into creating these opportunities for our students and bringing our community together. We look forward to seeing plenty of team colours around the school and finishing the term on a high.

Congratulations Romy

A big congratulations to Romy in Year Four, whose artwork was shortlisted for the 2026 Young People of Bayside Art Exhibition. Romy was very proud to receive her certificate and have her artwork recognised in the 10–13-year-old age group, a fantastic achievement! Well done, Romy. We are very proud of you and your creativity!

Science Week at St Agnes'

While National Science Week officially took place last week, at St Agnes’ we will recognise Science Week in the second week of Term Four to coincide with our whole-school Science units of work. Across the week, students will take part in a range of Science-related activities and hear from guest speakers working in various scientific fields. We look forward to sharing some of the learning taking place across the school during the week.

MACSSIS

MACSISS surveys were sent out on Monday 31st August, the email would have come from an info@sahighett.catholic.edu.au email account.

One of the main goals of the family survey is to identify the strengths and areas for improvement in our School. MACSSIS data benefits everyone within the community and provides valuable community insights on areas that our school can focus on. We believe it is important to encourage families to have a voice and contribute to shaping the ongoing improvement of St Agnes’.

The survey is now available online and needs to be completed by Friday 18 September 2026. If you did not receive it please contact the office and they will send you through the link and your pin code to access.

I know it’s a week early but thank you all so much for a wonderful Term Three. I wish you all a restful, safe and enjoyable break across the holidays. We will see you back at school on Monday, October 5th.

Tom

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