Learning
Faith/Learning & Teaching/Wellbeing
Message from Wellbeing
Hello families. No doubt you have heard about our ‘Ready to Learn’ time by now. This takes place across the school each morning for roughly 20mins.
We know that students are better placed to learn when:
- They are present and grounded in their mind and body
- They have strong connections with educators and peers
- They can self-regulate
- They experience regular positive emotion
- They have strong social and emotional skills
Ready to Learn focuses on these aspects. We begin with a Greeting - where students hear their name with positive regard and healthy touch is also used (for example, a fist bump or a high five.) Then we move into a Positive Primer, designed for FUN and JOY. We know that students who experience regular positive emotion learn more, remember more and connect more. During Ready to Learn we always touch on our Horizon or Ways of Working so that we are setting clear and fair expectations for our students and creating a climate of trust and safety. There is then time for announcements and an overview of the day to orient students to their learning and prepare them for the day. Finally we teach or practise a strategy for ‘wellbeing for learning.’ This might be something like deep breathing, meditation, journaling, making friends, labelling emotions, positive self talk or supporting a growth mindset.
At St. John’s, we recognise that wellbeing and relationships are crucial for learning. Ready to Learn fosters the development of positive relationships and builds a ‘toolbox’ for wellbeing.
Warm regards,
Ashlee Owen
aowen@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au
Message from Learning & Teaching
Numeracy
Across the school, educators have been investigating what knowledge St. John’s learners have brought with them into this new school year through some observations and assessments. Based on this data collected, learners have had the opportunity to build and develop their skills and understanding of numbers and their properties (known as numeration). This is an essential skill for understanding many of the uses of mathematics in everyday life.
Learners are developing numeration through exploring concepts of counting, naming numbers and place value. Supporting your child at home could involve investigating numbers through materials/pictures, talking and writing symbols. This could occur during everyday experiences, such as counting objects as children set the table, shopping/calculating costs of items and comparing the total number of steps recorded on pedometers across the week.
If you have any further wonderings about the numeracy development or learning and teaching at St. John’s, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.
Kind regards,
Lauren Davis
ldavis@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au
Literacy
Over the past couple of weeks, the children at St John’s have continued to build their reading stamina, through daily ‘Powered Reading’. During this time children independently read a range of texts, reading out loud or engaging in dialogue with the Educator about the text itself or themselves as a reader.
Children in P-2 have engaged in rich Literature through Big books; exploring a range of reading strategies, such as book handling skills, and looking at initial sounds and pictures to help them read a word. Children in the 3-6 are choosing a text for ‘Book Club’, where they’ll engage in dialogue with their peers about the text, using various roles, such as the ‘Connector’ and the ‘Word Wizard’. You can support your child at home by creating space and time for them to immerse themselves in books (they will soon bring home texts from our school library!). If your child is in grades 3-6, you might encourage them to use one of the Book Club roles to discuss a text they’ve read. Children have been exploring the Genre of Socialising by writing letters, emails and notes as a way to communicate a message to an audience. You can support your child at home by encouraging them to think about how they communicate with different people, and how their language varies between informal and formal depending on their audience.
Our Learning and Teaching process involves each hub meeting weekly for data and designing learning. These data hours are led by Learning and Teaching Leaders who hold qualifications being a teaching degree. Leaders are constantly involved with building capacity within this area through external Professional Learning and further study. Our educators each year are also involved in coaching and ongoing external projects to build capacity. This is supported through our co-teaching approach at St John's.
Our data hours occur weekly - we review/sort data against Learning progressions (Australian Curriculum). This determines target groups and learning goals. Our target groups occur all day, every day. Target groups are explicit, planned for and gives opportunities to collect ongoing data.
Warm regards
Daniela De Luca
ddeluca@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au
Community Projects (Shared Inquiry) & Discovery
“A child’s curiosity is an astonishing source of energy.” (Edward Deci, 1995)
For the first two weeks, St. John’s learners have been immersed in lots of different experiences in hopes of evoking curiosity and wonder. They have been encouraged to investigate many different spaces that have been created to offer many possibilities and opportunities to understand and represent thinking. In Hub 2, some learners working in the Language of Light, discovered they could change colours through observing the interplay between different coloured perspex. They wondered why and how some colours change and others do not. Across the school other learners have contributed other wonderings, such as, ‘Do clouds get angry?’, ‘How can I become a fashion designer?’ and ‘How many trees are there in the universe?’ We are looking forward to discovering and finding out more about our interests!
Dr. John Spencer (an American college professor and empowering through play and project expert - who we have been lucky enough to meet) states:
- Play can help spark curiosity and wonder.
- Play can help us think more divergently. We often learn how to make connections between ideas.
- Play can allow people to be more open to new ideas. There is often a relaxed intensity in play that can help lead students into a state of flow.
- Play builds opportunity for social emotional learning.
- Play can help improve empathy, benefitting us on a personal and social level.
- Play can teach us how to collaborate and cooperate with one another.
- Play can increase engagement and contribute to higher achievement.
- Play can develop a positive classroom culture. When we play together, we are able to develop a sense of collective belonging.
Ultimately, play and discovery lead to deeper creative thinking.
To support these explorations, we are calling for anyone who has access to overhead projectors - you know those portable light tables used to project images onto the walls of high school classrooms!? They are an interesting light source for discovery. Please contact the office or Lauren (ldavis@sjfootscray.catholic.edu.au) if you are able to help us.
Warm regards,
Jarryd Bradford, Lauren Davis, Gemma Goodyear
Message from Faith
Faith Celebrations
We have many celebrations to look forward to over the coming weeks. Tomorrow our Year One Hub will lead us in a prayer gathering focused on love, with a special acknowledgement to Lunar New Year. Next week we have our Shrove Tuesday event in our House groups, followed by an Ash Wednesday liturgy, here at St John's, led by Fr Rene.
Thank you to families who have already sent in some food donations for our Shrove Tuesday collection. This year we are 'using up' the extras that we have to help others in need. St John's has a proud history of supporting Way of the West, an organisation that helps people in our local community to access food and other essential items. We will collect any donations on Shrove Tuesday and ensure they are shared with people locally.
#CatholicSocialTeaching #PreferentialOptionforthePoor #Solidarity
Sacraments 2021
We are looking forward to celebrating the Sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Confirmation with our Year 3 and Year 6 children this year. Please see below for the dates and times of each Sacrament. We will also hold Family Faith Evenings prior to each celebration. More details will be shared with families in the coming week.
Reconciliation: Tuesday 30th March, 6pm
Eucharist: Sunday 12th September, 10am
Confirmation: Thursday 10th June, 6pm
All ceremonies will take place at Our Lady's Church, Maidstone
Kind regards,
Aoife Mc Carthy