Dear St John the Apostle families,

Welcome back to Term 2. Welcome to our new students and their families. 

Congratulations to all of our students as they ran the Cross Country today. They were a perfect example of our focus this week to 'give our best effort'. Thank you to Rebekah Brown who coordinated the entire event and the many parents who assisted.

On Monday we undertook another full day of Professional Learning as part of Catholic Education's Catalyst program. One of the sessions was centred around High Impact Teaching Strategies. These are teaching strategies that have been shown through research to have a significant impact on student learning.

What has memory got to do with learning?

High Impact Teaching Strategies are based on a number of sources of research. One significant area is called Cognitive Load Theory (CLT).

CLT is simply the understanding that:

• in our learning environment there are limitless amounts of information for us to access and learn from, i.e. everything we see, hear, taste, touch, smell, etc.
• our amazing body and brain notices, collects and filters this into our working memory, a temporary holding space for processing the information - sorting it, connecting it to ideas, relating it to previous knowledge, etc.
• the problem is that our working memory is not limitless. In fact it can hold only 5-7 items in there at once as it processes them.
• learning happens when the information we take into our working memory is organised into larger concepts, understandings and complex skills and then moved into our long term memory. The long term memory is limitless.
• the real skill is to be able to retrieve these facts, concepts, understandings and skills when we need them and in some cases develop 'automaticy'.

How do I drive a car?

Have you ever driven home from work and wondered 'How did I get home? I don't remember that drive?' Well that is because driving is an automatic skill for you and the path from work to home is also an automatic path.

When you first learnt to drive you were consciously thinking of all the little things you had to do, e.g. check mirrors, change gears, operate pedals, remember road rules, etc. These were all separate aspects being processed in your working memory.

The more you practised, the more you started to develop patterns and order to your behaviours. You didn't have to remember separate steps, just one pattern of steps. You also developed a greater awareness about typical driver behaviours on the road, and the paths to get to familiar venues, enabling you to predict your journey and anticipate what you will need to do.

Driving became automatic. Some of the journeys you undertook became automatic too. Especially those you took on a daily basis. You probably still recall journeys from years ago that you no longer take.

Why are we talking about driving cars?

The same theory of learning can be applied to everything we do at school, from reading, to sport skills, to music and maths. This understanding about learning helps us to shape highly effective teaching & learning experiences for our students. We ask questions such as:

• How many new ideas can we teach at one time to not overload a student's working memory?
• What knowledge and skills do the students already have with which to connect the new ideas and experiences to, enabling them to move it to their long term memory?
• What strategies can we use to help students practise recalling the information and skills they learn to help it become embedded in their long term memory and automatic?

The more we unpack the research, the more we realise that our genetics play a smaller role in our learning than we realise. It's the envionment, the opportunities and the learning we experience that has the greater impact on achieving our potential. It's also the belief we have in ourselves and the persistence and resilience we show in the face of challenging learning that also plays a major role.

Teachers keep learning too

Teachers study for at least four years to learn what they need to begin their professional journey including child development, health & well-being and the knowledge, skills and effective teaching strategies in each curriculum area.

Teachers then continue learning about new and updated research about how children learn and look to apply it in their classrooms. They want to know that what they are doing will have some impact.

Our teachers are undertaking a tremendous journey this year in learning about Cognitive Load Theory and other important research on learning. We're very fortunate to have such an engaged, positive and collaborative group of teachers to undertake this journey as we fine tune and re-shape some of the practices at our school to have the greatest impact on the learning of our students.

Term Learning Overviews

Our teachers have provided an overview of the learning students will cover in each year level this term. You can find them on our school website in the 'Teaching & Learning' section as well as using the 'Term Learning Overviews' tile on our SZapp. They have been redesigned to be succinct and brief and cover all of the necessary information.

The future of Catholic Education in Canberra

You may have read about the current process being undertaken to examine the continued viability of St Bede's Primary School in Red Hill as a result of the long term impact of changes to the funding of Catholic Schools.

I would like to assure everyone that St Bede's Primary School are in a unigue position due to a combination of the number and sizes of their classes and their demographic and location. This is the reason that the process is being undertaken. We are not in the same situation.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the St Bede's community who must undertake this difficult process together. They are well supported by our Catholic Education Office and surrounding Catholic school communities.

As we head into our enrolment period for 2022, Catholic Education continues to go from strength to strength in providing a high quality education for students and families while maintaining low and affordable fees.

Principal