Principal's Message
Dear Parents/Carers,
It has been great to be able to have parents again involved on the school grounds. With the easing of COVID restrictions, we are still promoting with students, good hygiene habits and undertaking day cleaning of surfaces around the school. Parents are asked to monitor children and if they appear unwell please undertake a RAT. The Department will make RATS available to families. We have some staff stock at present that parents can access. When the main allocation arrives, we will organise to get these home to families.
Mrs Foster and Room 9 did a wonderful job running the ANZAC assembly. Thank you to those parents and community members who were available to remain and share it with the students. We were able to share our school history links with this event during the assembly. If you are interested, we have further information on display in our reception area.
Assemblies will recommence with Room 1 in week 5. Honour certificates will be presented. The structure and content of assemblies may be modified if necessary if a class is affected due to COVID absences. School communities are now able to attend assemblies again.
We have a ‘Walk to School’ Day planned for Friday 20 May. We encourage families to walk, scooter or ride part, or all, of the way to school and call into the Undercover area to register for our raffle and have a snack before heading to class.
P&C Day is acknowledged each year and for 2022 it falls on Friday 20 May. Our school community is very fortunate to have such a supportive association who undertake a great deal of fundraising to assist initiatives in our school. They also run our canteen, uniform ordering, as well as providing assistance with: Grounds, Sustainability and Grants initiatives.
At our recent staff meeting we looked at Reports for Semester one. Detailed information for Literacy and Numeracy as well as a concluding comment, will form the basis of the Report for each year level. For our other learning areas rather than just a grade for achievement /effort staff will provide a general comment to give parents an idea of what was covered during the semester.
A great deal of work goes into assigning grades with the use of moderation and shared assessment tasks between staff as well as class testing and observation. Some students will have modified reports based on their needs.
Staff are available to meet with parents at any time of the year. Please arrange a time that suits, directly with the teacher.
NAPLAN 2022. Our students in Year 3 and 5 will undertake NAPLAN testing across Writing, Language Conventions, Reading and Numeracy during week 3 with catch ups undertaken in week 4.
NAPLAN is a nationwide measure to assist parents, staff, education departments and authorities look at Literacy and Numeracy skill development across Australia.
This assessment is only one aspect of how each school assesses and monitors students. Results don’t measure overall school quality but are viewed alongside school and teacher assessments undertaken throughout the year.
The assessments allow parents to see how their child is progressing against national measures from Year 3 to Year 9. A report is generated for parents and staff to look at strengths and areas for improvement. It complements the judgements of staff and provides the opportunity to set goals.
The computer format is tailored to better suit individual abilities. Questions types and range of difficulty are generated according to the responses that the students give as they work through the test. The tailored testing approach means that a wider range of student abilities can be tested compared to the paper approach where students answer all the same questions.
The writing topic will be online for Years 5, 7 and 9 as on paper for Year 3.
Information for parents on the online format can be obtained by visiting the public demonstration site on the NAP website. Some past NAPLAN papers are also available.
nap.edu.au/online-assessment/public-demonstration-site
Grounds works. Our Adventure Playground is certainly taking shape. It is running a little behind due to material shortages, but we are less than a month away from completion. The steel and wood platforms are currently being put in.
A local Aboriginal artist, Jayde will shortly be working with the school to design a wall mural depicting the six seasons. Funds from our Colour Run last year have gone towards paying for this initiative promoted by our Inclusivity committee and the school Reconciliation Action Plan.
Some funding from the P&C and school has been allocated to two games that will be painted onto the bitumen surface. We hope to have this completed in June.
With the increase in popularity of basketball and netball, the school has contracted a company to put in place an additional set of posts for our court area. The work for this will commence in June.
Recently the premier announced the launch of the 2022 Premier’s Reading Challenge. The theme is, ‘Reading can take you anywhere.’
Students from Kindergarten to Year 10 can participate by registering via the website where they can choose their own avatar and log all the books they read over the course of the challenge. There will also be a state-wide marketing campaign to promote the initiative for families of students.
Can Fundraiser. The Fremantle Rotary Club will hold its annual 'Give a Damn, Give a Can' collection throughout the month of May. Through this project, the club collects canned food and other non-perishable food items to give to local community groups. While the donation recipients change slightly from year to year based on need, St. Pat's is the main recipient.
Rotary collects the donated items in baskets placed at neighbourhood schools and businesses. All donations are sincerely appreciated, as they provide immediate benefit to people in need in our community.
Remember, this project runs from the beginning of May through to Friday May 27. If you are able to give, please place your donation inside the basket that has been placed in the Reception area. Your help makes a difference!
From time to time, we hear about some of the amazing achievements that current and former students achieve. I would like to congratulate Millie from Year 6 who has been awarded state champion at the recent State Gymnastics Championships competition for pairs synchronised trampolining and then followed this up with a second in the double mini trampoline. A fantastic effort Millie. Well done!
Welcome to our Student Teachers from Notre Dame who have recently been allocated across the school for their in school Pracs.
Glenn Rondoni
Principal