Principal's Report

Dear Parents,

Happy Mother's Day

Our Mother's Day events are in full swing at the moment, with the stall today and our Mother's Day breakfast taking place tomorrow. 

We hope that the Mums attending the lunch tomorrow have a great time; this lunch has become a key event on the social calendar in recent years.   I'm assuming that we'll see a few more dads doing the pick up tomorrow.    As always, thank you to the P & F group who have organised these three separate events.  I hope that all the mums in our community have a lovely day on Sunday, however you are celebrating.                                                                                

Explicit Teaching  

We strive to ensure that we are up to date with best teaching practice at St Finbar’s.  One of our current foci for staff development is developing a better understanding of explicit instruction. 

Explicit instruction breaks down what students need to learn into smaller learning outcomes and models each step.  Explicit instruction has been proven to be an efficient strategy for helping students learn because it suits how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves information.  Studies suggest that explicit instruction has a positive impact on student achievement in mathematics, reading, spelling, problem solving and science.   

The steps involved are: 

• Review of previous learning (what we refer to as our Daily Review)
• Presentation of new learning. The teacher refers to the Learning Intentions and Success Criteria for the lesson, and presents new material in small steps.  This is sometimes referred to as the  “I do” phase of the lesson.
• Guided practice  Students have the opportunity to put the new learning into practice under close supervision by the teacher.  This may be referred to as the  “We do” phase
• Corrections and feedback. Teachers decide whether they need to review or reteach content
• Independent practice  Students have the opportunity to put their new learning into practice. This may be referred to as the  “You do” phase. 

Explicit instruction has always happened at St Finbar's in some form, we're now striving to ensure consistency of language and practice across all year levels. 

School Counsellor 

You may be aware that we have a  school counsellor at St Finbar's. Rochel works through CatholicCare and she comes to us every Thursday.  If you are interested in finding out more about this service, please send myself or Peggy McDonald an email and we will discuss the process for making a referral to Rochel. 

School Choir

We currently have a collaboration happening between our St Finbar's choir and the choir at Classic Residences Aged Care home. It was a delight to attend their practice session today in readiness for their concert next week for all the residents.  We've had strong relationships with a few aged care homes for many years now, but this is our first choir collaboration. Thanks to Mrs Williams for organising this. 

Michelle Hill,

Principal