Principal's Page

Dear Parents and Friends,

Happy Mother’s Day

I extend a very happy Mother’s Day to all of our mothers, grandmothers and those who play a motherly role in our community. Our students are extremely fortunate to have such strong and caring mothers and grandmothers in their lives. As we celebrate mothers, we reflect on the profound example of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She stands as a timeless role model, gentle in spirit, yet unwavering in strength and courage. Mary's deep faith, her quiet leadership, and her enduring commitment to guiding the early disciples, even in the face of great danger, continue to inspire us today. There is much we can learn from Mary: her resilience, her compassion, and her steadfast belief in God’s purpose.

Thank you to all of our mothers, grandmothers and motherly figures who were able to attend our Mother’s day celebrations today. 

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

“Let us recall with gratitude and affection all mothers, those who are still with us and those who have gone to Heaven. Let us entrust them to Mary, the mother of Jesus.” Pope Francis 14 May 2023.

Thank you so very much to Mr Rob Cooley for the incredible time and effort he has dedicated over the past several weeks in organising our Mother’s Day Stall and Mother’s Day Raffle. Rob also took the lead in coordinating all the volunteer dads who helped set up and serve at our Mother’s Day Breakfast.

Thank you, Rob, and thank you to all the volunteers who gave their time to help make Mother’s Day so special for everyone.  

2025 Annual Improvement Plan 

Goal: Through quality assessment, students will be challenged in their learning, to ensure continual growth and achievement.

• Our Staff Development Day, held on Monday 28 April focused on extending staff knowledge of Multiplicative Thinking and Assessment in Mathematics. Staff deepened their knowledge of the trajectory of multiplicative thinking and vocabulary from Kindergarten - Year 6 within the NSW Revised Mathematics Syllabus and developed Worked Examples to make visible to students successful learning across multiple levels of achievement. 

   

• Our focus on the High Impact Teaching Strategy, Worked Examples, continues this term. You may recall this was a school focus in Writing in Term 1. 

So What Is a Worked Example and Why is this a High Impact Teaching Strategy?

• Worked Examples help reduce cognitive load for students and focus attention on the successful thinking that needs to occur to learn

• Worked examples make complex problem solving more accessible to students through broken down steps.  

• Worked examples (0.39 effect size) and Success criteria (0.88 effect size) have the potential to accelerate student learning. 

• The best worked examples demonstrate what success looks like to students and how they can achieve success.

Some of the Worked Examples staff used during this professional learning:

• Learning Walks were conducted by members of the Leadership Team during the week. Learning Walks are a structured observation strategy to enhance teaching and learning. The focus of our Learning Walks was to monitor the effectiveness of recent professional learning on the use of Worked Examples and Learning Walls. Random students were also asked the five questions:

   - What are you learning?

  - How are you going?

  - How do you know?

  - How can you improve?

  - Where do you go for help?

It was inspiring to observe quality teaching that impacts on student learning, strong student engagement and their ability to articulate what they are learning, why that learning is important and how they are going with it.

Regular School Attendance

The CEDoW’s update of the Attendance Policy, acknowledges the school’s responsibility in partnership with families, to encourage and support students’ consistent attendance at school. As such, stringent monitoring of student attendance is occurring so that we can track attendance at a whole school level and individual level. 

Attendance Levels

New attendance levels have been established to address students’ attendance patterns: 

• Regular Attendance: 90% - 100%

• Targeted Intervention: 71% - 89%

• Intensive Intervention: 70% and below

We have developed specific processes for each of these levels and will contact parents in various ways to support students’ consistent attendance. These include:

• Daily absence notifications

• Weekly reminders for unexplained absences

• Telephone calls to:

  - understand the student’s situation;

  - discuss learning and support needs;

  - set a timeframe for attendance improvement;

  - discuss unsatisfactory explanations for absences.

• Emails and letters

Many of these processes will be new and we ask for your understanding and cooperation as we work together to address any attendance concerns.

I encourage parents to read the Attendance Communication and Monitoring Fact Sheet (above) and do not hesitate to contact myself or the school office for any support in addressing your child’s attendance concerns. 

Tell Them From Me - Parent Survey 

In the coming weeks we will be inviting students, teachers and parents to provide feedback on their experience of our school using an online survey. The surveys are an important part of our whole school evaluation and planning process.

We would like to invite you to complete the Tell Them From Me (TTFM) Partners in Learning survey. As we value the role of parents and carers within our school community we would greatly appreciate your feedback. The information you provide will be used to maintain our commitment to working together in partnership to further improve student learning and wellbeing at St Joseph's.

The survey is anonymous and will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. Parents will be sent the link via Compass next week.

Recent Staff Professional Learning

Research tells us that the quality of the teacher is the greatest in-school influence on student achievement. Therefore high quality professional learning for teachers must be a priority to ensure improved teacher practice that leads to improved student learning growth. Professional learning undertaken by our staff over the past fortnight includes:

2 May 2025 - School Cyclic Inquiry - Self Review Report (half day)

Mrs Duffin, Mr Walker, Mr Aguilera, Mrs Clarkson, Miss Boyd-Skinner, Mrs Grose

7 May 2025 - Religious Education Standing Committee (half day)

Mrs Duffin

8 May 2025 - Governance and Management Meeting

Mrs Duffin

School Uniform Term 2

From this Monday, 12 May (Week 3, Term 2), all students are required to wear Winter Uniform. Thank you for your time in preparing students with this change of uniform. We have been reminding students this week about wearing this uniform with pride including the following:

• Jewellery - Chains with religious symbols may be worn under the uniform. One pair of small earrings (studs or sleepers) in the ear lobe may be worn.

• Students are required to wear black leather polishable school shoes.
• Sports shoes should be supportive, predominantly white sport shoes with white laces.

School Assemblies

School assemblies are held fortnightly (even weeks) at 2pm in the school hall. Our next school assembly will be held tomorrow, Friday 9 May at 2pm. Our school choir will be singing for us and Merit Awards, PB4L Awards and Principal Awards will be presented.  

All are welcome!

Kaylene Duffin

Principal, 

St Joseph's Catholic Primary School

Principal Awards

Our Principal awards are presented to students fortnightly on the even week.  

The following students received their Principal Awards tomorrow's assembly Friday 9 May  2025 (Week 2).

How does my child receive a Principal's Award?

Class teachers nominate students for Blue Merit Awards which are presented at the weekly assembly.  When five Blue Merit Awards have been received, students send them to the school office to be recorded and are then eligible for a Principal’s Award. When students attain their 4th Principal Award, they are awarded a Principal’s Medallion at an assembly. End of Term awards can be included as part of the 5 awards.  Please see the "School Handbook" for a full list of eligible awards.

Acknowledgement to Country

St Joseph's Bulli acknowledges and pays respect to the Dharawal people past, present and emerging the traditional custodians of the land on which our school is built