Principal's News

Dear Parents,

Welcome back to a wonderful term of learning at St Mary’s, where we aim to ensure every child is reaching their full potential, both academically and in their areas of strength.

Our focus on ensuring every child achieves excellent growth in literacy and numeracy continues this term.  At St Mary’s, we have a tiered approach to intervention. At a Tier 1 level in the classroom, all students' needs are catered for through differentiated learning across all domains. We strive to ensure every student achieves growth in their learning. 

• Tier 1 - We have the highest of  standards in our  learning and teaching where every child’s learning is differentiated to their current needs across all domains. 
• Tier 2 - We have significant and targeted intervention and extension programs. 
• Tier 3 - We work closely with health professionals and consultants to ensure every student is being assisted in their area of need or vulnerability. This includes paediatricians, psychologists, occupational therapists, behaviour consultants and speech therapists.

We have an extensive leadership team, including leaders who plan with teachers to ensure all data is analysed and targeted to every student, and an extensive adjustment and wellbeing leadership team meeting every week ensuring all students are catered for. We also have a significant number of learning support officers (teacher aides) in every learning community, supporting all students across the school.

We ask all parents to ensure they are working with their child at home, completing maths fluency tasks and vocabulary work each week found on the home learning site. We also ask that you find time to sit with your child and read each night.  If you are unable to read daily with your child, we are here to support you. 

We are currently recruiting volunteers to come in to hear students read or play maths fluency games. If you or someone you know is able to volunteer, please let our office staff know or email leadership@smhastings.catholic.edu.au and we will provide you with training and support.

Please make sure you ring the absentee line on 59791959 every morning your child is absent by 9am. 

Our Inquiry theme for Term 3 is Curiosity, where we invite a love of learning and a desire and passion to learn new things through a lens of discovery, exploration and being inquisitive in all we do.

We warmly welcome Mrs Angela Aldag to our 1/2 community. We hope you enjoy working at our beautiful school.

It is with great sadness that I inform you that Ms Jo Lancaster, who was a staff member at St Mary’s in 2022, has tragically passed away. Jo was our Defence Force Mentor and was much loved by all staff. Our thoughts, prayers and support are with her family and the Mt Pleasant school community where Jo was a graduate teacher this year.

We would love to promote our parents helping at our upcoming fundraising events. 

Please save the date for our Bogan Bingo night on Friday 4th August in the Hastings Town Hall. 

We also have a Bunnings Sausage sizzle on Saturday 22nd July. We require volunteers in the following slots

10am- 11am (1 volunteer required)

12pm- 1pm (1 volunteer required)

2pm- 3pm (2 volunteers required)

3- 4.30pm (1 volunteer required)

Also the chocolate drive ends this Friday so please make sure you have sold all of your box of chocolates and return the money to the office. Thanks so much for supporting our wonderful school.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, concerns or ideas. I am at school and available every day so please email or ring and we can make an appointment.

Yours in Partnership,

Gab Espenschied