Dear St John's families,

Today we held our school Walkathon to help raise funds for school improvements to our playground and outdoor facilities. Rebekah Brown writes more about the event in her section below. I would simply like to thank all of the students and families for their amazing support and a fabulous result! Thank you for asking family and friends to sponsor your child and thank you to the members of our Community Council who cooked and distributed sausages and juice poppers to students as a show of their appreciation. It's wonderful to be holding such fun evewnts together again.

Congratulations to Emily Anderson who delivered her Rostrum Grand Final speech on Monday evening. It was a very entertaining speech with the topic 'Not My Style'. SHe talked about getting old and we all laughed. Emily won the Randall Falkiner Trophy for Research. She also had a beautiful group of peers present to support her. Well done Emily!

Community Council News

At our Community Council meeting on Wednesday evening we discussed a number of exciting projects coming up that can involve our families.

Firstly, we discussed the School Fete we look forward to holding early in 2023. Our fete conveners have been working behind the scenes in the the early planning phase. We're looking to have those stalls and experiences that we have all grown to love such as barbecues, cake stalls, face painting, rides, etc as well as experiences that are new and different. We're really looking forward to the event and next term you will hear about how you might be able to join in on the day.

We also discussed ways to support parent engagement in school. One way is to look at building the capacity to hold meetings both in person and virtually so that more parents and carers have the opportunity to participate in Community Council Meetings and other parent information evenings. We hope to have this capacity available in the new year.

Thank you to our Community Council, who are enthusiastic and generous in their support for the school and the families in our community.

NAPLAN Results

Years 3 and 5 parents will have received their child's NAPLAN results earlier this week. The National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy is a series of tests of basic skills that are administered nationally.

All students are required to participate in NAPLAN unless their parents withdraw them. The assessments are mostly completed online through multiple choice and short answer questions (except writing which involves producing a narrative response to a picture). The assessments cover basic skills in English and Mathematics but not all of the curriculum. There is much more to learn than what is assessed in NAPLAN. Students with complex needs can receive some support to access and participate in the assessments.

At the same time that parents receive their child's individual data, we receive data about all of the students (including those who are now in Year 7 but attended our school in Year 5). The data we receive allows us to look at patterns of knowledge and skills among our students, the growth of students between their experiences of NAPLAN (e.g. between Year 3 and 5) and the needs of groups such as that of boys, girls, students with English as an Additional Dialect (EAL/D) and students with complex needs. It adds an additional layer of data to our own, helping us to build a bigger picture of the achievements of each of our students and plan for their continued growth in literacy and numeracy.

If parents and carers have any questions about their child's results, please do contact your child's teacher to talk these through. They would be more than happy to assist.

Thank you all for a wonderful week. We finished on a high. Have a restful weekend in this increasingly beautiful spring weather.

Matthew Garton

Principal