From the Head of Junior School

Dear Members of the St Gregory’s College Community,

It is hard to believe that we are finishing up Week 5 of the school term! It has been a wonderful past couple of weeks at the College with so much to celebrate. The Workshop at the Parent Forum about PYP (Primary Years Programme) was great to be a part of and witnessing such a positive mindset from our parent community about this direction of the Junior School, our reverence through Ash Wednesday and our time with the Year 12 students leading these liturgies and the Shrove Tuesday pancakes were also a highlight! It has been wonderful to celebrate the success of the IPSSO Teams over the past fortnight with an exceptional first two rounds. It has also been great to host the ‘Meet the Teacher’ afternoons to start a positive relationship with parents and carers of the students in our care.

Parent Forum

It was absolutely wonderful to have strong attendance at the first Parent Forum of the year for the Junior School. Throughout the session, we were able to welcome families to join us to discuss the Junior School and our goal direction and priorities and incorporating a workshop on the PYP (Primary Years Programme) as our Teaching and Learning Framework in the Junior School. I thank Mrs Buckley for leading the forum and for the positive and meaningful session that we all spent together. Mrs Buckley will be communicating with all parents in regards to the main points from this Forum – we look forward as always to actioning these items.

Open Day

Sunday 21 February was a huge day for the College. We were inundated with families coming to visit the College both in the Junior School and Senior School. I want to thank all the families who volunteered last Sunday to help with this event. Your presence on the day was greatly appreciated and we felt extremely supported. 

Our Year 5 and 6 students who acted as Tour Guides on Sunday were absolutely outstanding, I lost count of the times parents came to give me personal feedback on their tour guides and how knowledgeable, passionate and confident they were in leading ‘strangers’ around the College. It makes me extremely proud to hear these comments and I know that the staff were also impressed with these boys and girls.

Now the Choir . . . how amazing were they. To have only had one practice with Mrs Limbrey prior to the day just showed how much these students love to sing. We had so many Kindy students join on the day also, so what an amazing achievement. One of the songs has been posted on Facebook if you did not get a chance to witness this. Great job Choir!

So what is this thing we call the PYP?

This week we had the opportunity to present to the Parent Community again about our vision for the PYP (Primary Years Programme) at St Gregory’s College Junior School. It has been encouraging to share with parents the journey that got us to this point and our plan to implement this framework, and I thank Mrs Ivancic for joining me in this presentation.

The PYP is a fantastic learning framework but at its core it is simply a collection of best practice from across the world based on educational research. The PYP is a framework that stems from the International Baccalaureate and is for Primary School aged students. The International Baccalaureate mission statement ‘aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect ... these programs encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right’. 

Whilst I am very proud of the learning that is currently taking place at St Gregory’s, it is important to acknowledge that nothing we are doing is completely revolutionary … it is simply in line with what many leading schools are attempting to do, make learning meaningful, authentic and targeted. As an Australian School, we are mandated to deliver the Australian Curriculum. This will be done, absolutely, but it will be mapped and designed into the PYP framework that sits in 6 distinct transdisciplinary themes throughout the year.

The students learning will continue to focus on a balance between 'the basics’ and making meaningful connections across the curriculum. We use a variety of teaching methods ranging from direct teaching to a guided inquiry approach. Our choice of method is based on the lesson outcomes and the students learning needs. 

Our ultimate goal is twofold; we want to develop knowledgeable young men and women who have a deep understanding of the world around them, and perhaps more importantly we want to create young men and women who understand themselves as learners. These two goals will equip our students for life outside of school.

We look forward to continuing to develop our teaching and learning approach over the coming years. I will continue to keep the parent community informed about this framework and how we intend to use this as our vehicle for developing the whole learner and how as a school we are making learning more engaging, significant, relevant and challenging for your son or daughter.

Cars at the Junior School

I must say, it has been nice to have some of our parents on site for Pick Up and Drop Off over the past weeks. It does provide a little more community to say ‘hello’ and make that face to face connection with parents and carers. But, one of the points from this week’s Forum that was of concern was parents parking on the street. There is nothing wrong with this, but you do need to be cautious and safe when doing so. 

Two things have led to this concern. The first is parents who are doing u-turns and cutting in front of other parents exiting the College. This is very dangerous and we would not want to see our first accident out the front of the school. The second is parents who are getting their children out of the car on the road-side of their cars. Some parents have commented to me how dangerous this is and how close some calls are. I want to stress, that we do not want to see any child injured due to not getting out on the curbside of their car. Please ensure that if you are to use the northern side of Kieran Geaney Drive to park, then please use the pedestrian crossing. I understand that the walk may be further, but your child’s safety is our main concern here. Thanks for your understanding in this matter.

Events on the Horizon

• Monday 1 March – Staff Development Day/Student Free Day
• Tuesday 2 March – Friday 5 March – JS Book Fair
• Wednesday 3 March – Western Region Swimming Carnival
• Friday 5 March – AFL After School Program starts 3:15pm-4:15pm
• Thursday 25 March – Paul Kelly Cup (AFL)
• Friday 19 March – Harmony Day/National Day of Action Against Bullying Assembly 3-12 (9am)
• Monday 22 March – Day of International Mindedness
• Tuesday 23 March – JS Cross Country 9am (date change), SS 12:30pm

As our St Gregory’s College motto states, ‘You will reap what you sow’.

Mr Joel Weekes

Head of Junior School