Dear St John the Apostle families,

Today we travelled to our Parish church to celebrate our Opening Mass with all classes from K-6. We announced our theme 'Filled with the Spirit' to the school community. We sang and prayed together. We met our new Parish Priest Fr Tru, who blessed the leadership badges of our Year 6 students. These badges will be presented to Year 6 next Thursday morning at school. It was a very special day. Thank you to everyone who helped to organise the Mass.

Parent Information Night

We're looking forward to our Parent Information Night this Tuesday evening, 13 February. Teachers have prepared a presentation for parents about the teaching & learning in their year levels this school year. They will run a session at 5.30 in the classrooms, then a repeat session at 6.00 for those who need to visit more than one classroom. Teachers will have packs to hand out. Parents who share care of children will have more than one pack available. 

Thank you to our Community Council who are operating a barbecue that evening. Plese feel free to take advantage of it and chat to a few other families. We understand that it is a school night so we will pack up at 7.00pm.

Homework

We've been talking about Homework on staff, looking at the most recent research about how effective homework is in supporting student achievement and discussing the need to have consistency across our school.

This term we are going to start with just reading for homework. Reading has been the backbone of homework for decades and decades. Helping every child become a competent reader is the goal of both our Catholic Education system and our school. We want to first 'get reading right' when it comes to homework. So that is our focus and later in the year we will build from this.

Each year level will introduce ways of:

• supporting students to find and select the right books. For younger students they will have structured readers that support their developing decoding skills and for older, more fluent readers, they will have access to borrow many books from school. Of course, some stuents will have books they read at home or borrow from the local library.
• keeping a reading log. Adult readers often have piles of books they plan to get through or keep lists of books they've read. It's a great sense of achievement and excellent for remembering great books they enjoyed. The Chief Minister's Reading Challenge begins shortly and every child will be encouraged to participate and record their reading.
• responding to books. Students will be asked to reflect briefly on a book they have just read with increasing sophistication through each year level. It will help them build connections with the text and develop comprehension skills. They will look at vocabulary, style, plot and literary devices that authors use in their craft.
• read with a purpose. In older years the students may be asked to read and reflect on a short text that is related to a topic they are learning about in history, science, geography, religious education, etc. It helps them apply what has been taught in previous lessons or prepare for coming lessons.

What does this mean for me as a parent?

Families have busy lives and some nights are busier than others. Parents are simply asked to help find a small space each night where each child spends a little time reading. If it is something that doesn't already happen in your house then set a timer for ten minutes and say "we're all going to read for ten minutes". Younger students can read to you. Older students can read quietly on their own and sometimes read aloud to you so you can find out about what they are reading. You can also read to your children. It doesn't have to be long at all. Habits are not achieved in one night but built over time in small increments. A few short minutes of reading time in the house is achievable every night before moving on to whatever else needs to happen. It's much easier if it is linked to another set routine, e.g. after dinner we sit or after baths or just before bed we all sit for five minutes. Building a quick routine will become very natural to do.

Our Teacher-Librarian, Emma Alcock, will expose children to many authors and titles. She is passionate about helping find that series of books that hooks a child into reading. Please ask your child about what they borrowed from the library. Show interest, model being a reader by talking about what you are reading or recently read.

Our role is to help each child learn to read and then read to learn. Parents just need to help their child value reading. Reading is a powerful tool for getting along in our world. Let's help them become powerful readers together.

Acknowledging students

Acknowledging students' positive achievements and efforts is one of five important components of our Positive Behaviour for Learning policy and an important way of telling students they are doing well. At the end of last year, and the beginning of this, we reviewed how we acknowledge students and made a few changes. We've sat together as a staff to share experiences, listened to feedback from parents and talked to our students. We've made a few changes that families will notice very soon.

Firstly, we want to continue to acknowledge the achievements of students in Spelling Mastery and Maths Mastery. We spend half of every day on English and Mathematics. It is when we use most of our High Impact Teaching Practices. It is very effective and a lot of work for teachers and students. It's important to value the efforts of students in these areas of school. To help more students to be acknowledged we have changed the way we identify students for these awards in a way that enables more students to be recognised. These awards will be given out every second Thursday morning assembly, beginning in Week 4.

In addition we have changed our Brag Tag system to enable students to be acknowledged for their continuous positive effort and behaviour at school. Brag tags are handed out for many different positive behaviours, particularly those listed on our positive behaviour posters and our focus each week. Rather than submitting their brag tag of twenty stickers to the office and waiting weeks for the end of term brag tag celebration, students will be able to receive an immediate recognition of their achievement.

Every brag tag that is completed with twenty stickers and then submitted to the front office will allow them to receive a coloured wrist band that signifies their achievement and a little token item for them to enjoy. Specific colours of wrist bands are set  to 20, 40, 60, 80, etc. It will be about cumulative acknowledgement over time so that every student can see their progress. Our Year 6 students have been particularly involved in the naming of these wrist bands and identifying the tokens that will be given.

Twice each term we will hand out Brag Tag Certificates at our Thursday morning assembly to those students who have recently submitted another 20 brag tag stickers. 

It would also be lovely to acknowledge student achievements outside of our school as well. If your child is involved in a pursuit outside of school that they have competed or participated in, and have achieved well, you are welcome to send that through to our Front Office and we are happy to post this in our school Newsletter.

Our systems for acknowledging student achievement will continue to be reviewed over the year. If you have any feedback you are welcome to send that through to me directly and we will include it as part of our review processes.

Thank you for working together to make St John's a great place to learn for your child and for those to come.

God Bless,

Matthew Garton

Principal