Learning and Teaching
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to the St Mary’s School Community. My name is Adelia Muldoon and I am the Leader of Literacy. I am passionate about learning and teaching and strive to ensure every child has the opportunity to learn and be successful.
Thank you to everyone for such a warm welcome and I look forward to becoming more involved within the St Mary’s community.
We have begun the school year exploring relationships. Through our Inquiry curriculum we are investigating, ‘Belonging, Identity and Community’. Learners are sharing their personal stories, identifying communities they belong to and engaging in learning experiences that assist in defining who they are. Our inquiry learning is integrated
throughout the curriculum for learners to be able to make connections and engage in rich and relevant learning.
At the beginning of every school year staff conduct testing and assessment with our learners. Through gathering data staff are able to inform their teaching as well as explicitly targeting learners’ points of need. Ongoing assessments are carried out throughout the year to track progress and development.
Please refer to your child’s community newsletter for further information regarding learning in their classroom.
Learning Conversations
Learning conversations will be held on Friday 17th February. These are a valuable opportunity for families and staff to talk about learners goals, areas of improvement and achievements as well as sharing further insight about your child.
Learning Conversations will be open for booking this afternoon. Please log into your Compass account or use the Compass App to make an appointment with your child’s teacher. A link will appear at the top of your home page under the MSP photo notification.
*You will have the option in the location section to make a ‘Face to Face’ booking or an ‘Online’ booking. If you make the online booking, a link will appear under your dedicated time slot. If using your phone, hold this link and open Zoom to launch the App when it is time for your conversation. Please ensure you have downloaded the Zoom App prior to the conversation.
An example is below.
Engage, Empower, Excite
This year our staff and students' theme will be, 'Engage, Empower, Excite.'
Our theme stems from our staff wanting to engage, empower and excite our students in all elements of school life. Our students also provided our educators with valuable feedback and student's voice also stating that they wanted to be Engaged, Empowered and Excited while learning at school.
Teachers this year will unpack the Inquiry approach to ensure our learning is rich, real and relevant. As a collective staff, we will be composing our two-year Learning and teaching plan with our student's needs, interests and context at the centre.
We will be using data from all individuals to drive our teaching and learning and ensure we are providing pathways of where to next for our students. This data will also be used to provide learning that challenges, engages and excites each individual.
Restorative Teaching, Restorative Practices
Our school has made a very important decision lately and that is to become a Restorative School. Using Restorative Practices isn’t something we take lightly. We’ve been watching what’s been happening in the world of education when it comes to creating a strong school culture, to building effective relationships, to resolving conflict and to improving student behaviour and bullying. The bottom line is that we think there’s a better way.
Restorative Practices is that way. Working restoratively is really all about asking the right questions to students when things go wrong. You see, most approaches have us putting our detective hats on and focusing everything in the past. It really doesn’t get us very far because we never get to the present or the future.
Put simply, we’ll be asking your children questions like:
- What happened?
- How has that made people feel?
- And what action needs to be taken to make that better?
It’s all about teaching responsibility for your actions and knowing that nobody is going to do it for you. Our job is to help them do just that … better and better and better.
There’s a LOT more to Restorative Practices and we’re going to ensure you find out all of it. Our ongoing Partnership with Real Schools is supporting and resourcing us to make this change and you have access to all the resources too. Just head to the Member Login tab at www.realschools.com.au and use the login: stmarysc /password stmarysc to have a look at all that we’re working on at school.
Stay tuned for more information on this exciting development for our school.
Parent Information Evening: Monday 20th March @ 7pm
