Principal's News

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to our 2022 Academic year! 

We have had nine school days, and I can already say that I am very proud of how our students have settled in and are learning.

Our school year for our staff started with some great Professional Learning. We have worked together to adopt a 2022 school theme that has helped us shape our initial weeks in the classroom. When meeting with the whole school in the mornings, we have been revising our Three Rules for Living and how this fits within our 2022 theme of: 

"At St Joseph's Wee Waa, we are proud to live with Respect, Dignity and Gratitude".

As a principal, I am looking forward to working with the staff, students and families to make our year's theme a reality. Further information regarding this will be communicated regularly within the school's newsletter.

As a staff, we worked alongside our Leader of Pedagogy, Miss Vinson to deepen our understanding of Reading Comprehension and help utilise new strategies to enhance our students understanding of texts. Mrs Hatton, our Assistant Principal, led our staff in professional learning around the concept of Productive Learners. This stemmed from our work alongside the Catholic Schools Office Armidale last year when we introduced our diocesan-wide Living Well Learning Well framework.

These approaches and new professional learning are designed to help us have a refined laser-like focus on increasing every student's level of literacy and numeracy and helping them be better-engaged learners and great citizens of our world. What this looks like in the classroom will be communicated through our regular newsletter and social media posts.

At St Joseph's Wee Waa, we have a number of new staff in our classrooms as Leaders of Learning and as Learning Support members. I have included a list of our current staff for you to see who we have as part of our team in 2022. Since our last newsletter in 2021, we have also welcomed on board a new Aboriginal Education Assistant, Miss Caitlin Smith. Miss Smith is working mainly in the infants' classrooms, supporting learning and assisting with the development of our indigenous students.

We have been very blessed to receive a large number of new literacy resources this year, including several new guided readers for the classroom, decodable readers for our infant's levels, and quality literature from renowned authors. Our library and resource areas are bulging with these great resources. These have been provided to us from the Catholic Schools Office Armidale. As well as new library resources, we have had new devices and ICT tools provided to us. In particular, teaching staff all received a new laptop. In addition, all of our screens in our school will receive a Vivi, a screen sharing device that helps share a student's screen with the wider class. For further information, please see the attached article regarding this rollout.

https://www.armidaleexpress.com.au/story/7620464/155-million-delivery-for-our-regions-catholic-schools/ 

As a school, we have also purchased a new set of Chromebooks for our Stage 3 students. All students in Stage 2 & 3 have a touch screen Chromebook each, and in Stage 1, they have enough devices for one between two students. I thank Miss Phelps for all of her work securing these devices and providing our students with the best tools to help them in their learning.

Save the Date - Parent Information Evening & Welcome BBQ

Please pencil in the 8 March for our Parent Information Evening. This is a chance for you to meet your child's classroom teachers and learn a bit more about the processes utilised in the classroom. In addition, you will have an opportunity to ask your child's teachers questions and get to know the staff who work with your children. This part of the evening will start at 5 pm for Kinder and Stage 2, while Stage 1 and Stage 3 will begin at 5.30 pm.

Our fantastic P & F association will be holding a free BBQ dinner after our Parent Information Evening at 6 pm. It is an excellent opportunity to meet new families and catch up with others you have not seen for a while. You can bring your children, and they can play with their friends while you can all enjoy a free BBQ dinner.

I will communicate with all families the COVID processes that we need to follow in gathering outside of school hours, closer to this date.

P & F AGM

Please also mark the school's Parents & Friends AGM in your calendar, which will be held on Tuesday 22 February at 6.00 pm. This meeting is important, and we would like to have as many families as possible represented there at this meeting. We want to start our P&F off with a bang in 2022.

Swimming Carnival

A special well done to all our students who competed in our 2022 Swimming Carnival. It was a wonderful day, and everyone tried their very best. There were records that fell, person bests gained, and a new sense of accomplishment for some children, competing in strokes and distances they had not done in the past. In today's newsletter, you will find the results of our swimming carnival, plus a list of students who have been invited to represent our school at the Diocese of Armidale Swimming Carnival.

Great job, everyone, and congratulations to St Joseph's House, who won the House Swimming Shield for 2022. 

Leadership Assembly & Welcome Certificates

We will be holding a special assembly on Monday 28 February at 2.40 pm. Our new school leaders and nominated Junior Joey's will receive their badges there. Plus, we will be handing out special Welcome certificates to new students at St Joseph's Wee Waa.

This event will be live-streamed and held out in our COLA area. If there are any changes to COVID restrictions that allow parents to view this in person, I will communicate that with you all. We will wait to see if there are any changes in the coming days.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

God Bless

Alistair Stewart

Principal