This Week's Updates
Dear Families,
I hope that you survived the weekend in lockdown.
Within our St James community we have many diverse, home and family circumstances that we cater for during lockdown and Remote Learning. In order to cater for the variety of circumstances we have developed Remote Learning Guidelines for the staff to follow.
These guidelines are designed to create a balance which enables all students to access learning from home despite the variety of family situations listed here which I am aware of. No doubt there are others:
- both parents considered essential services workers and cannot work from home so students attend on site at St James with adult to student assistance ratio approximately 1:8
- both parents working from home providing very limited, if any assistance to their children because of the nature of their work
- parent/s working from home with some time to devote to assisting their child/ren to learn
- one parent at home who is able to devote most of the day to assist their child/ren with learning
- families who commence the learning the evening prior because their work situation makes it difficult to assist their children during the daytime
- families who get up very early in the morning and commence learning at 7am because their work situation makes it difficult to assist their children during normal school hours
- enthusiastic parents yet unmotivated students
The guidelines are also designed to meet the variety of learning styles our students possess together with their wellbeing needs while at home such as:
- whole group class explanations and check ins with approx 25 students online at once.
- small focus group sessions with approx 3 - 7 students online at once (these are usually targeted at specific students’ needs). Class teachers can usually cover their whole class via 5 or 6 of these focus groups
- whole class live teaching sessions with approx 25 students online at once. These do not hit the mark with every student’s learning
- pre recordings which are usually accessed via the slides to help explain concepts
- LSOs or Intervention teachers taking small groups
The guidelines state that the staff are required to attend to the following which makes them unavailable for contact by their class:
- attend school for onsite supervision of students who are on site
- attend online curriculum, staff and planning meetings. We try to schedule these when specialist lessons are on
- timetables parent meetings (eg: PSGs and wellbeing meetings)
These guidelines have been designed around expectations for periods for a maximum of five days and periods for longer than five days. There is much time spent on preparation and this often calls on the generosity of staff, including part time staff, who have prepared for face to face teaching and need to adapt or, in some cases, start preparations again - often the night before. This has been the case in the sudden nature of announcements, where some staff do not have the resources at home to make videos etc to meet Remote Learning expectations. We have deliberately designed these guidelines to increase student and teacher interactions as the length of the Remote Learning period extends.
Our feedback from all parties found success in many modes of learning. We aim to target rich learning for all, and with this comes many challenges in the mode of delivery because one size does not fit all.
I thank all families for their support, patience and understanding while we continue to cater for the variety of situations our 342 students are presented with.
Let’s hope that we are all back on deck at 51 Centre Rd on Friday!
You are invited to order some wine
During Lockdown...
Creativity is flowing for some during Lockdown! One of our students, Mitchell has recently written a new song for his band, 'Bug Empire'. It is quite fitting during these tricky times. Here is the link to it on YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ci9xnTIwHzc
Here's a chance for a giggle: Check out the Staff Famous Faces, which will be emailed to your child's account. See if you can name everyone! A prize awaits for the winner.
P&F NEWS
The P&F are hopeful and working towards possibly holding some events this term. Here are the details!
Great news- GLOW DISCO planned for Wednesday 1st September!!
Though many events have been unable to be held these last 18 months we have everything crossed that this much anticipated event can go ahead!
Our Grade 4 champions of Tash Dumais, Renee Pettit, Rachel Shannon and Simone Whitfield have been working hard to try and make this special GLOW DISCO happen on Wednesday 1st September at the Coghlan Centre at St John's Parish. A new DJ and special UV lights means this will be a disco with a difference!. See the attached flyer for the exciting details!
Given the unpredictable circumstances we are at this stage asking all students to sign up via trybooking and buying a ticket according to their year level. See the link- https://www.trybooking.com/BTLVL Please do this by Thursday 26th of August so we can ascertain numbers, We will then have a better idea of current restrictions and whether we need to hold two sessions or three sessions, We can then announce the exact times for each session and which year levels will attend each session. Children will attend with their year level, with younger year levels in the earlier session and older year levels in the last session.
Please sign up as soon as possible. We do not want any child to miss out so are hoping we can all work together to cater for all.
We also will need many volunteers to assist in supervision, signing up, cleaning and directing traffic, but as above given we do not yet know the session times, we are just asking you to sign up at this link: volunteersignup.org/8YXPY
Once we know the session times we will email those of you have signed up to ask you to re sign up with your preferred time/task. It is a all a bit more complicated than usual but the best we can do in these difficult times!
MUM's NIGHT OUT!
A HUGE thanks to our Grade 4 Champions for all their work coordinating this! The P&F are still planning to hold the Mum's Night Out, hoping that lockdown will be lifted by then!
Attached is the flyer but here are the details with a trybooking link to book your place. (Please note the link sent out last week had a minor error but this one works!)
WHEN- FRIDAY 27th AUGUST @ 7:30-11pm
WHERE- The KAFNU SPACE @ SAGE HOTEL, RINGWOOD
DRESS- An excuse to get out of your PJ's/trackies!
COST- $15 includes a drink on arrival and nibbles
BOOKING LINK- https://www.trybooking.com/BTKEA
Due to restrictions places are limited so please book as soon as possible! In the event that this is postponed or cancelled refunds are very quick and easy for you to organise through trybooking and are returned straight back to your account.
A VERY big thanks to Rachel Hamilton-Smith and Kate Ryan (our Grade 6 Champions) for organising this and being very flexible in difficult circumstances! It should be a great night to catch up with friends and those in our community we haven't got to see that much over the last 18mths!
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Dates to Note........
August
Saturday 14 Last Auskick session
Sunday 15 Feast of the Assumption
Sunday 22 Level 2 Mass: 6:00pm or 9:45 am TBC
September
Wednesday 1 School Disco
Thursday 2 School Closure Day
Tuesday 7 Reflection Day for Reconciliation students TBC
7:00 Parent Evening re: Reconciliation TBC
Sunday 12 Level 3 Mass- 6:00pm or 9:45am TBC
Tuesday 14 Learning Conferences
Wednesday 15 Learning Conferences