Welcome Back

Welcome back to all of our wonderful students at St John's. We have had a smooth and successful return back to school. Our new Kindergartens have had a fantastic start to the year and are a very welcome addition to our St John's Community. 

Spelling Mastery

As many of you would know, we have implemented and embedded Sounds~Write (Systematic Synthetic Phonics Program) across our school for the past 5 years in K-2. Sounds~Write is a phonics program and its purpose is to provide classroom professionals with a comprehensive system with which to teach reading, spelling and writing.

To complement Sounds~Write and to continue a consistent approach to teaching Spelling, we will be implementing a spelling program across Years 3-6 called Spelling Mastery. Spelling Mastery is a differentiated spelling program and it uses an explicit, teacher directed method of teaching called Direct Instruction. Spelling Mastery helps students to understand the relationship between sounds, word parts and spelling patterns and encourages them to become proficient writers.

Through Spelling Mastery, students learn to spell in three ways:

• Phonemic approach - helps beginning spellers learn the relationships between spoken sounds and written letters and then apply them to spelling
• Morphemic approach - exposes advanced spellers to prefixes, bases, and suffixes
• Whole-word approach - gives spellers at all levels the meaning and root of a word and shows how the word's spelling is influenced.

Rocket Maths

Last year, we started to implement Rocket Maths in a number of year groups. This week Year 2 and Year 5 have already started implementing Rocket Maths in their classrooms. 

Rocket Maths is a 10 minute a day learning program that supplements Maths Daily 3. Students learn using printable worksheets and verbal partner practice and it teaches students addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. Specifically, the program teaches maths facts–the basic building blocks of all maths.

Inclusion

We were disappointed that we needed to cancel our transition afternoons. However, we have been astounded at how well each of the students at St John's have transitioned back to school. If you have any concerns about your child, their needs or their transition back to school, please contact myself or Rebecca Neiberding (Inclusion Teacher) at rebecca.neiberding@cg.catholic.edu.au  

This year, our Inclusion team is made up of the following people:

• Rebekah Brown - Inclusion Coordinator
• Rebecca Neiberding - Inclusion Teacher
• Inclusion Assistants - Tiffeney Ronneberg, Jack Biilmann, Kelly Levi, Rheannan Vergano, Carlee Tonkin, Laura Monaghan, Kate Symonds, Elizabeth Millband, Tracey Gardner, Olivia Etzrodt and Hannah Ubrihien. 
• Student Welfare Officer - Student McDonald
• School Counsellor - Nik-nur Shuhaimi

Rebekah Brown

Assistant Principal and Inclusion Coordinator