Assistant Principal

Learning at StMM’s - Making Reading Irresistible

As we know reading is a skill for life. When kids like reading, they do more of it and this boosts their reading skills and school success. At StMM’s fostering our student’s reading skills, stamina and love of reading is a key focus each and every day.

Having conversations when reading with children helps them develop higher level thinking and language skills. While reading books aloud, ask your child questions and talk about the content of the story together.

When your child builds their critical thinking skills, they will be able to analyse, critique and evaluate information that they read or hear. 

For example, when reading together, ask:

• What do you think will happen next?
• What do you think about a particular character?
• Why do you think the story ended the way it did?
• Can you think of a different ending for the story?
• How does that make you feel?
• Can you retell or summarise the text in your own words?
• Why do you think the author chose to include a particular event in the story?
• Using the pictures can you create your own story?

Attendance  - Every day counts

School attendance plays a critical role in enhancing the lives of children and young people. Every day of attendance adds to a student’s opportunity to learn, develop and experience success in education. There is no safe number of days for missing school. If a student misses as little as four days each term they will have missed over a year of learning by the end of their schooling.

Over the term, our student attendance has declined, resulting in our whole school attendance for the year being 74.2%. 

Our aim is to have all students in every grade achieve 100% attendance. To encourage and support regular attendance at school, at the end of each term students who have 100% attendance will receive an award                                                                                         at our end of term assembly. 

Technology tips for parents

The eSafety commission runs free webinars for parents and carers of school-aged children about online safety and cyberbullying. These webinars and information sessions are a good way for parents to learn about the risks and dangers of being online and explore strategies to keep their kids safe. Please contact the school if you have any questions or require clarification.

Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to another great week at St Margaret Mary’s.

God Bless

Rochelle

Rochelle Borg

Assistant Principal