All Of Us Are Lifetime Learners

Like our students, educators are learning all of the time in the hope that we improve our teaching practices and pedagogy, to ensure that all of our students are given every opportunity to achieve their educational goals. Last week, Mrs Davey attended the IST Conference in Armidale. Recently Mrs Flanagan has undertaken a two day workshop to familiarise herself with the Initialit program that will commence in Year 1-2 in Term 2. Also, Mrs Harrison and myself have been taking part in a READ 3 workshop, where we plan to introduce to some students in Years 1 and 2 from Week 11. Next week, Mrs Flanagan and Mrs Healey will be taking part in a K-2 Mathematics and English Syllabus Introduction Course.

Also during the last two weeks all of the teachers including myself have visited St Joseph's Primary, West Tamworth to talk to teachers as well as observing how they are implementing their literacy block and mathematics program. Even though St Joseph's has been one of the many schools in the diocese that I have previously taught at, it was fantastic to view their learning spaces as well as having the opportunity to collaborate with other professionals. I have to admit that they were jealous of what we offer our students with our various music programs. Even though, here at St Patrick's we are different in a lot of ways compared to St Joseph's, all of our teachers have taken on a lot of ideas and practices that they can now incorporate in their classroom. Hopefully, in the very near future the staff members from St Joseph's will be able to visit St Patrick's to view how we implement various programs in our learning environment.

O'Connor Yr 6 Visit

Some of our Year 6 students went to O'Connor today had a very enjoyable day at the Agricultural Farm, Science Labs Design & Tech Labs and PE. Thank you O'Connor for hosting our Yr 6 students and it was great to catch up with three ex students of St Patrick's. Also a number of our Year 5 and 6 students went to the Walcha Central Taster Day as well. We hope these students enjoyed their first taste of high school.

Parent Teacher Interview

Thank you for attending your parent teacher interviews it is a wonderful opportunity for the teachers & parents to discuss goals for the children's learning.

Easter Raffle

P & F Easter Egg Raffle. The tickets and money are due MONDAY 4TH APRIL

ready for the raffle to be drawn on WEDNESDAY 6TH APRIL

Thank you to all the families who have already sent in Easter Eggs.

Premier's Reading Challenge

Exciting news this year St Patrick's students will be participating in the Premier's Reading Challenge. We encourage all students to participate.

Mrs Healey will send home your child's username and password. You & your child will then need to login, fill out the child's details, so they are able to log their books online.

Many of the PRC books are in our school library, we will be encouraging children to borrow these books during library time. We are also setting up all students on "SORA" - an app that is designed around the modern student reading experience. It empowers students to discover and enjoy ebooks and audiobooks from their school, for both leisure and class-assigned reading. It also has the PRC books available. We hope to have this finalised for students next week!

CENTACARE

Miss Camille White, our school counsellor, has begun working with students. Miss White is employed by Centacare and is based at our school 1 day a fortnight. Miss White will be working one on one with students who have a referral by the school & parents, she will also be working with small groups and part of our staff in classrooms.

NAPLAN 2022 Dates

Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will take part in this year’s National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) on the following dates:

NAPLAN 2022 online test window: 10–22 May

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is held in May each year for Year 3 and Year 5 students. NAPLAN tests assess student knowledge and skills in Writing, Reading, Conventions of Language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and Numeracy. The results of the tests provide information for students, parents, teachers and principals and can be used to improve student achievement.

Online Naplan Practise Assessment

On Monday, our Year 3 and 5 students will be completing the Omnibus Practise NAPLAN Assessment. This task included various problems associated with numeracy, spelling, grammar and reading comprehension. The focus of this assessment is to give the user an understanding of what the various NAPLAN Assessments (Writing, Reading, Language Conventions and Numeracy) will look like as well as using the various tools, like moving images, inserting text and using online rulers that they would need to use to solve different problems.

On Tuesday, the Year 5 students will take part in a Practise NAPLAN Writing task, where they will be required to write a designated test by typing. The Year 3 students do not need to complete this assessment, as they will be handwriting their written compositions in the Year 3 Writing Assessment in May.

There are various websites that allow all Years 3 and 5 students to practise for the upcoming Online NAPLAN Assessments beginning in May. A really good site is the ACARA website (address listed below).

https://www.nap.edu.au/online-assessment/public-demonstration-site

This is not the whole assessment but it gives you an idea on what certain types of tasks our Year 3 and 5 students could be asked to do:

School Assembly

We will be having our next school assembly tomorrow, 25th March at 11.30am in the library. Parents who are double vaccinated are welcome to attend. Hopefully we will see you then.

Jelly Bean Cup