Principal's Panorama

Welcome to the end of Week Eight,  the last two weeks have been a whirlwind! 

From AFL Sporting opportunities to celebrating our Skilled Helpful Adults (Teacher Aide Week) and everything in between!

The St Mary of the Angels Annual Book Week Parade did not disappoint last Wednesday, I am sure you have already seen our photos on Facebook.. but can I just say how proud I am to be a member of a school where every single young person...and every single Skilled Helpful Adult were dressed up! 

We had coloured sheep, farmers, shearers, mad hatters, chinese dragon masters, Cruella de Vil and her dalmations, a ballerina hippo, Dobby, Harry..and JESUS!  

Wednesday this week, our small school winning heat team travelled to the Brain Olympia finals in Gunnedah. 

Brain Olympia offers our students the chance to participate in a variety of academic challenges against their peers from other schools. The challenges include tackling a range of general knowledge and mathematical problems, engaging in public speaking, and performing a drama presentation on a chosen topic. Although we were not in the top three, a huge congratulations to our team of seven students from Stage Two and Three who tried their best against the competition from the rest of the Diocese!

Thank you to Mrs Grills and all the parents who volunteered to transport our teams to Gunnedah on Wednesday; your support is greatly appreciated. 

Mental Health First Aide and Pillowcase Project! Thank you Landcare and Red Cross Australia.

The Pillowcase Project completed today with Stage Two and Stage Three was a fun and engaging way to educate our young people about the importance of disaster preparedness in a fun and constructive way. 

The workshops were possible through the collaboration with Beth Rosser from Landcare and the support of Mandy and Reg Potter from Red Cross Australia.

Our young people learnt the importance of being prepared, how to cope and to respond to emergencies.  Our young people learnt strategies to prepare their mind for the thoughts and feelings that may arise before, during and after an emergency and learnt what they can pack in an emergency kit.

Each of our young people decorated their own pillowcase, and received an activity book and emergency card to start their own personalised emergency kit and preparedness plan. 

Speaking of preparedness and community, after having already completed the Mental Health First Aid training and Suicide Aware training myself this year I was very eager when the opportunity presented itself for two of our educators, Mrs Libby Lockwood and Mrs Bernadette Phelps to attend the Mental Health First Aid Training in Guyra last week.  

Living in a rural community where the schools are at the coal-face of social, emotional and wellbeing networks it is highly valuable that we have a number of our staff who receive training so that they can not only support our young people, but also our community.

Thank you Beth for enabling St Mary of the Angels to engage with not only the Mental Health First Aid workshops but also the Pillowcase Project, a wonderful resource in our rural community!

As Term Three draws to a close we look into our 2024 AIP (Annual Improvement Plan) achievements to date and plan our ongoing Term Four drivers in readiness for going forward into 2025. 

At St Mary of the Angels Guyra, we celebrate the success we are having in supporting our young people to be literate and numerate for a hope-filled future. 

At the Term Three Principal's Meeting, it was wonderful to see the NAPLAN results from across New South Wales that indicate the great work that is happening in our schools. Our Year 3 reading results are incredibly strong showing how many students are reading at the strong or exceeding level.  

Do you know how important it is for our young people to be reading?  At the recent Law Symposium Murat Didaz, Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, said that if students have not met their benchmark by the end of Year 3, only 1 in 5 will by the end of Year 9! Staggering!  

Parent/Carer Learning Walk and Talks:  

We have been really blown away by the impact that our Parent Learning Walks and Talks have been having for our Parent and Carer community! As a step up from our 'OPEN CLASSROOMS' that we introduced in 2022, we have commenced rounds of Learning Walks and Talks where we demonstrate/share key learnings from our Clarity Learning and Non-negotiables with our key stakeholders.. you, so that we can show you how we drive improvement in the teaching and learning at St Mary of the Angels, Guyra. To ensure every single one of our young people realises a literate and numerate hope filled future.

Every single one of the four rounds has seen parents and carers provide great feedback on what they have seen and what they would love to see next, we look forward to the next round in Term 4.  

Please read a testimonial below, from one of our participants:

"Amazing learning walk. So glad I came. It's evident that both you (Zoe Nugent) and Libby (Lockwood) have great experience in the Clarity framework and are dedicated to implementing something that will drive our kids forward! I'm so impressed. And really grateful my kids are at St Marys (St Mary of the Angels Guyra).. How wonderful to see quality education as a school's core business. The staff were excellent, and you can see it's a genuine implementation that is consistently being used to drive the learning." 

One of the questions raised was about some ideas regarding information about homework, I have compiled a number of articles (and research links) for some light reading, as I gather more I shall add them to the 'spreadsheet' for you to peruse. If you have the time.. see HERE.  

Uniforms - Term 3 is Winter Uniform

We are currently experiencing four seasons in one day. Please ensure your child's jumpers & jackets are named. As a rule the Summer Uniforms are not worn until Term 4. 

Our young people can fold their long sleeves up if they get hot during the day.  The children can also wear shorts with their uniform, if they wish, however I would still pack their tracksuit pants to cover the change in temperature during the day. You all know how fickle the weather here is in Guyra.

Polding

As I write this I eagerly await to hear how our three Polding Athletes from St Mary of the Angels and those from the rest of our Diocese fare today!

I am sure you will be updated as the day goes on, best of luck..however, you are already winners in our eyes! Our young people are VERY blessed to have access to such a wider variety of sports in our school and it is brilliant to see so many of our young people engaging at the 'next level'.

Until next time!

Zoe