Learning

Literacy

Kalbarr Project

Did you see us in the Star Weekly this week?? We are excited to announce our school’s involvement in the Kalbarr Project, in partnership with the Books’n’Boots foundation:

“Books n Boots Inc. was established in 2015 in response to the growing demand for books in First Nations rural and remote communities and schools. We saw this as a vital element in helping close the literacy gap for First Nations children. National studies have shown that a child who is assisted by parents at home in reading, and read to, not only begin learning earlier but have a more thorough understanding of the elements of literature”.

The Kalbarr project aims to link primary schools in the Maribyrnong City Council with remote and regional First Nations’ communities across Australia in an effort to foster relationships between schools, build inter-cultural understandings and raise awareness about the health and literacy gaps for our First Nations peoples. 

With the support of Books n Boots, our school will organise a book drive in May and July; these books will be delivered to a school in regional and remote First Nations’ Communities. It is hoped that the connection between schools will continue once the project concludes.

Thank you to our Project Committee, leaders from our 5-6 Hub: Adut, Manoj, Medhansh, Zoe-Lee, Evan, Athena, Vanessa, Isabella, Ellana and Aarav for volunteering your time to take part in this project. They will work alongside me (Dani) and Dayaal (Project organiser) to fulfil the initiatives of this project. We will be enlisting the support of parents for the Book Drive (more info to come!).

Pictured in photo: John Harding (CEO of Books’n’Boots), Dayaal and Catherine Cumming (Member for Parliament and advocate for the Project).

Literacy Design

Educators met in their Hubs last week to design learning for Literacy. Here is what children in each Hub is working on over the next couple of weeks:

Prep Hub

Children are continuing to work on their phonemic awareness through Target teaching, where they will engage in learning experiences that support them to: build awareness of graphemes (letters) and their corresponding phonemes (sounds) and blending known phonemes (sounds) together to help them read a word. E.g. p-a-t = “pat”. 

As readers, they will engage with the text ‘The Monster’s Party’ where they will build comprehension strategies: making predictions, making connections to the text, and retelling the story. 

As Authors, children have been exploring the genre of socialising i.e. communicating with another. We can communicate via letters, emails, phone exchanges or notes. Children will be writing a letter to an audience of their choice. 

You can support your child’s learning at home by discussing how we communicate with others through letters, emails or texts, and how our language might change depending on the message and our intended audience. Our avid authors are excited to send their books home this week!

One Hub

Children will continue to work towards achieving their individual goals for reading, through Target teaching. These might include: exploring word solving strategies, answering questions about a text they have read, making connections to texts, and exploring long and short vowel sounds as well as digraphs and trigraphs. 

As readers, children will continue to explore the rich text ‘Little Birds day’. Children have explored the text as a whole, and will now be zooming in on the sentence level, exploring sentence structure and unpacking vocabulary. 

As Authors, children are exploring the genre of socialising. They are writing letters to Rita, thanking her for sharing her life as a past student at St John’s. 

You can support your child’s learning at home by asking them questions, such as: “when we write a letter to someone, how is our message different from when we speak to them in person?”, “what do we include in a letter”, “why might we write to people, and how?” (i.e. text messages, emails, letters, notes).

Two Hub

Children will continue to work on their reading goals through Target teaching, these include: refining strategies for reading unknown words and using the reciprocal reading strategies to build reading comprehension: predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising.

As Authors, children have been exploring the genre of socialising through writing letters, connected to their Community Project. They will be writing letters to someone who they believe should be nominated for ‘Australian of the year’, thanking them for their contribution to Australia. 

You can support your child’s learning at home by talking to them about different ways we socialise with others i.e. through text messages, emails, letters, notes, and how our language might differ, depending upon our audience. 

3-4 Hub

As Authors, children will be working towards publishing their writing. Educators are currently working with them one-on-one through conferences, where they engage in dialogue and feedback with children about their writing, their purpose and audience and how they are enacting their message. Children will have the opportunity to engage in workshops to support them in their chosen mode of publishing e.g. visually, written, video. 

As readers, children are currently working on reading responses, making their thinking visible in various ways, including character portraits.  

You can support your child’s learning at home by asking them about their writing goal: “what is your purpose for your writing piece and who is your audience?”, “what will you be working towards achieving in your writing?”, “how will you know if you have achieved this?”

5-6 Hub

As Authors, children are reflecting on themselves as a writer by engaging in writing conferences with their Educators to co-construct a goal for them to work towards. Children will be invited to publish their writing and share this with an authentic audience. 

As readers, children are continuing to work towards their reading goals connected to the Progression of Reading Development. Children use a range of thinking routines during their Target teaching. These routines are used as a tool to support them to make their thinking visible. An example of a routine that some children have been exploring is the “what makes you say that?” thinking routine:

You can support your child’s learning at home using this thinking tool to drive a discussion with your child. The beauty of this and other thinking tools is that we can use them in a range of scenarios / situations, to help guide our thinking. You might use it whilst watching the news, talking about current issues in our world or even when discussing the book they are reading at home. 

If you have any further questions about how you can support your child’s reading at home, or any other Literacy-related questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Daniela De Luca

Literacy Coach

ddeluca@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

Numeracy

During this past fortnight, our Mathematicians from the One Hub supported by Lien, Melissa and Nicki, have been learning about the concept of Addition. The children have been engaging in experiences of part-part-whole where a strong foundation of partitioning is built (e.g. 8 can be made up of 8 and 0, 7 and 1, 6 and 2 etc) to apply this to addition (and subtraction) problems. They have also learned new strategies for solving problems efficiently and continued to build their mental computation skills. Simultaneously, the children have been experimenting with creating their own self reflections on how they have been feeling while engaging in these mathematical activities (posted via the Seesaw app). They have been using the Emoji Graphing tool which offers a picture scale from feelings of Success to feelings of Challenge. Some examples of children’s reflections can be found below:

Evelyn T:

Hamish:

Thien:

As you can see, children from the One Hub are becoming more aware of what is happening in their brains while they are figuring out or learning new skills. It is important to have this emotional awareness so children can transfer this into new situations to be better equipped to show resilience and persist with challenges.

It is key for leaders and educators to find strong links between Learning Areas (in this case Addition found within the Mathematics curriculum) and the Capabilities (in this case Metacognition - found within the Critical and Creative Capability Curriculum) to ensure each area can be lived out how it is intended and reach its full potential. As ‘Researchers’ and ‘Creators’, leaders and educators at St. John’s will continue to experiment, reflect and refine this exciting work.

You can continue to support your child at home by asking how they are feeling before, during and after they complete a tricky task. If you would like further support, ideas or to share feedback of your experiences, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Lauren Davis

Co-Deputy Principal/Numeracy Leader

ldavis@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au 

Wellbeing

Transition Program 

On Wednesday the 30th of March, the Secondary Transition Information Evening took place in the 5/6 Hub. We thank the parents and children in Grades 4 & 5  who attended.  If you missed the evening and would like some information regarding St. John’s Secondary Transition Program, please email Karen at kdodemaide@sjfootscray.catholc.edu.au

Harmony Week 

Last week we celebrated Harmony Week at St. John’s.  It was a wonderful opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions and activities around respectful relationships and celebrating diversity. We enjoyed some storytelling, activities and a playtime dance party during both recess breaks in Joan’s Yard. It was wonderful to see everyone enjoying themselves and celebrating with inclusivity and harmony. Living and learning together in Harmony is something that we will all continue to work hard to promote in our school community every day.

Managing Big Feelings Replay & Resources

We have recorded the webinar for you!

In case you missed the live webinar, or you would like to watch it again, here is the link to the replay:

Karen Dodemaide

Co-Deputy Principal and Wellbeing Leader 

kdodemaide@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

Community Projects

As we come to the end of our first Community Project, ‘Who Calls Footscray Home?’ Our educators have begun capturing the children’s reflections, and are preserving traces of their insights and new thinking.  To reflect on the project, our children in the One and Two Hubs engaged in an excursion to the Footscray Community Arts Centre, where they shared their reflections about the rich diversity of Footscray and its changing cultural influences. 

The Prep children have continued to explore the cultural heritages of their families and the celebrations that they engage in to preserve their traditions and sense of identity. Our children in the Three-Four Hub captured their reflections through the Language of Collage, as they represented the different cultural landscapes of the community, and the role that the council has in building and strengthening Footscray. The Five-Six children engaged in a debate using personally-significant and current social-political issues, as they adopted a political standpoint and represented a current government party. Some of the issues they debated included the Queensland Floods, the war in Ukraine and the Hotel detention of refugees.

Learning Diversity

In August each year, schools across Australia are required to complete the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD.) The NCCD counts the number of students who receive additional adjustments or support at school due to disability and helps governments plan for the needs of students with disability. Our St. John’s NCCD Team, submits our student data based on evidence and rigorous moderation. Please see the below flyer for additional information.

Faith

Project Compassion

Our social justice leaders for this term also launched St John’s Project Compassion collection at our Ash Wednesday liturgy. This year, the focus is “for all our future generations”, with all donations going towards providing supplies for farming, shelter and schools in disadvantaged communities such as Mozambique, India and Remote Australia. 

Pictured are our leaders participating in a Webinar hosted by CARITAS, as they prepared to launch the project. 

We invite families to make small coin donations where possible. These may include change leftover from lunch orders, spare change you might have lying around the house, or coins you wish to donate. 

• Social Justice team: Joshua, William and Hien

Sacrament of Reconciliation

On Friday the 23rd of March, our children participated in their first confession through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. On behalf of St John’s, we wish to congratulate each child for how wonderfully they represented our school and their families. A special shout out to Audrey McNamara-King, Isla Fowlie and Willow Hayes who each read beautifully on the night. 

Holy Week

For the remainder of the term, we will be commencing our Holy Week celebrations through the following prayer gatherings: 

• Prep Hub, Friday 1st April, 2:30pm 
• One Hub, Monday 4th April, 8:55am
• Two Hub, Tuesday 5th April, 8:55am
• Three/Four Hub, Wednesday 6th April, 8:55am
• Five/Six Hub, Thursday 7th April, 8:55am

We invite families to stick around after morning drop off (or in the case of Prep's to pop in before pick up) and come along to our Holy Week prayer gatherings each morning. 

Stations of the Cross

As we begin our week 11 prayer gatherings, a Stations of the Cross photo installation will be on display in our school hall. We welcome all families to come in and have a look at our children’s interpretations of the key events leading to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Mitch Hayes

(Faith/REL Leader)

mitch.hayes@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au

Sport

The Maribrynong Primary Schools Division Swimming carnival was held on Wednesday 16th March at Oak Park Aquatic Centre. Competing for St John's in this event were three of our year 5/6 children. Congratulations to Vanessa, Jimmy and Noah for qualifying for this event and competing in a very high standard of competition. The next stage of competition is Regionals and we wish Jimmy Bua all the best as he has qualified for this event placing first in freestyle and breaststroke.

Regards,

Andrew Sharpe

Physical Education

asharpe@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au