Faith Life & Learning and Teaching News

FAITH LIFE

YEAR 6 CONFIRMATION

Dates to put into your diary:

Confirmation Family Faith Night: Thursday 9th May, 2024.   6:30-7:30pm

Confirmation Reflection Day for Students: Thursday 16th May 

Confirmation: Wednesday May 22, 6:30pm – 8pm

Please see the Operoo note sent out Friday 22nd March to register your child for Confirmation

 HOLY WEEK PRESENTATIONS

Please join us in the hall next week!

Combined Schools Day 

Sacred Heart and St Margaret Mary’s Primary school will come together on Thursday 28th March as a parish to celebrate St Joseph’s Feast Day.    The students of Years P-2 from St Margaret Mary’s will be visiting Sacred Heart for the day to join in the celebrations.  The Students from Years 3-6 from Sacred Heart will be visiting St Margaret Mary's school.

As the two schools of St Joseph's Parish, we will be coming together to pray and to reflect on the qualities of St Joseph and the influence this special person has on our parish and school identity. 

We will begin the day by coming together for a prayer session to celebrate St Joseph. Afterwards, the students will be with the St Margaret Mary’s students during set classroom activities.  The students will end the day with an icy pole and play before we all depart depart back to our own schools.   

The students travelling to St Margaret Mary's by bus will need to have a permission slip completed through Operoo.  This permission slip will be sent to parents today, Friday 22nd March.

Cath Palmer

Learning and Teaching Leader

Faith Life Leader

cpalmer@shnewport.catholic.edu.au

ENGLISH

SMART Spelling

Last year we started to implement a spelling program, SMART Spelling, to improve student capabilities and differentiate instruction. This approach is an evidence based program by Michelle Hutchinson and was designed to support teachers in the explicit, systematic teaching of spelling. It includes a scope and sequence, beginning from Prep to Year 6. It is being used in our Years 2-6 classes as our Preps and Year Ones are targeting spelling capabilities through the MultiLit program (as outlined in the Term 1 Week 4 newsletter). 

SMART Spelling teaches through patterns and regularity. By following a consistent pattern with the weekly target words, students will be better supported to relieve the possibility of cognitive overload. By doing so, students are not overloaded as they learn and have a better chance of retaining new knowledge. Each week a new set of words is introduced. Teachers choose a range of words (from simple to complex) from a suggested list in the SMART Spelling manual.  Students are then guided to choose from that list, to meet different needs. Teachers use their professional knowledge to give meaningful feedback to students about their spelling in writing, teaching at the point of need.  Spelling rules are taught in the context of words in a way that builds on learning from previous years. Visual displays are important so that students can reference them when needed and each classroom will have a space dedicated to this. This display is from 4K. 

The SMART Spelling process follows the following sequence to teach words to students. It stands for:

Two areas of important knowledge students need to develop to become independent spellers are phonological knowledge and orthographic knowledge. Phonological knowledge is mainly to do with sounds. It involves being able to break words into syllables and individual phonemes (sounds). Orthographic knowledge is mainly to do with letters. It is a visual skill that involves choosing the correct letter(s) that make a sound in a word. 

Students also will focus on morphemic knowledge (how prefixes and suffixes can change a base word) and etymological knowledge (the study of where words come from) when appropriate. 

Students will bring their focus words home each Monday and will have homework activities to complete two to four times a week. Please reach out to myself or your child’s teacher if you have any questions. 

Sue Burke

English Leader

sburke@shnewport.catholic.edu.au