Principal's Message

At Monday’s assemblies, I often speak to our school community of how proud I feel when I observe our students engaged and active in their learning. At SMDP we are continually striving to create excitement about learning and provide opportunities for our students to become lifelong learners.

What also makes me feel proud is when I see a number of students walking into school with novels tucked under their arms and their eagerness to tell me about what they are reading.

Reading is such a wonderful life skill. Reading informs us, excites us and opens us to the world around us. 

Elise in her role as Co Deputy Principal and Literacy Leader has worked extremely hard to implement a consistent approach to teaching reading throughout the school. Our improving NAPLAN results and feedback from our recent review are evidence of our success. 

“Researched informed strategic planning has underpinned the implementation of consistently applied Foundation to Year 6 instructional approaches in reading, writing, spelling and numeracy.” - Gavin Heally (School Reviewer 2024)

As educators, we understand there are five key elements at the core of every effective reading instruction program: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. All of these elements need to be explicitly taught. 

Some of the key areas we have been focusing on at SMDP:

• Reading rich literature daily
• Providing opportunities for students to develop expand their vocabulary, developing a deeper focus on tier-two and tier-three vocabulary (academic and domain-specific words)
• Opportunities to act out familiar stories 
• Retelling and making connections with stories
• Providing multiple opportunities for students to listen, interact and respond to stories
• Using knowledge of explicit instruction about foundational early literacy skills, such as phonics, phonemic awareness and phonological awareness
• Providing opportunities for students to read self selected good fit books daily and practice reading aloud with appropriate rate, accuracy, and expression. 

In Week 6, we will celebrate Book Week, to continue to promote the joy of reading and the life long skills reading gives us. This year's theme is "Reading is Magic," the theme encapsulates the extraordinary power of books to transport readers to new worlds, ignite imagination, and foster personal growth.

Important Traffic Management

As we begin the second semester parents and guardians need to be reminded of our traffic management at SMDP. We believe we have created a safe and working system to drop and pick up our students by car, however we need all drivers to follow these rules for the safety of our students.

I have included a map below to remind drivers that the school should be approached in the direction of the arrows. 

When entering the school and you are dropping off at our “Drop Off Zone”, no parents should be exiting their car. This is drop off only. Cars that park in this area prevent the flow of traffic. If the car park is full, I suggest parking in either Pearce or Campbell Streets to walk your child/ren safely to school.

Just some final traffic management reminders:

• The left hand side of the car park is STAFF ONLY
• No cars should be parked in our carpark in non allocated parking areas
• No cars should be parked on the opposite side of Bellin Street as this stops traffic flow, especially for our bus service

SMDP is committed to the safety and wellbeing of all our students. It is everyone's responsibility to follow our traffic management rules. 

Thanks,

Dan Ryan

Principal

St Martin de Porres Primary School is committed to creating an environment where the safety, well-being, and participation of all children within our care is paramount. 

2024 - School Closure Days

Listed below are our school closure days for 2024. These are student-free days. Staff use these days to develop their learning further and keep informed with current practices and procedures. 

NOTE: These dates may be subject to change that may be outside of our control.