K-2 Reading Night (Tuesday 2 April)

On Tuesday 2 April (Week 10), the Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 teachers will run a Parent Reading Session from 4-5pm. 

During this session, we will discuss the main assessment we use to assess your child’s reading development. This assessment is called DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills). We will discuss how DIBELS helps us to identify skills that need to be developed for a child to successfully read. For those parents who come to the session we will provide their child’s results in a parent report. We will discuss the report in detail and give you strategies to easily and quickly support your child in these areas at home. Unfortunately, if you do not attend we will be unable to give you this report as it requires explanation. This session will take place in the hall with all parents/carers that attend from Kindergarten to Year 2. 

For the second part of the session, each parent/carer will move to their child’s classroom. During this session, the year level teachers will discuss specific reading strategies for their year level. There will also be an opportunity for you to practise these strategies with your child and gain support from your child’s classroom teacher. 

Please bring your child with you. For the first part of the session, we will look after the students in their classrooms. You will then meet them for the second session in their classroom. 

We highly recommend that parents/carers attend this session. Your child’s reading success in the lower primary years are instrumental to their ongoing success as they grow older. Classroom teachers will also individually call parents to request they attend this session if they think it will be especially beneficial to your child.

We know that a number of parents have already attended this session last year. However, the skills that your child’s current teachers will work with you and your child on are different from last year and are age appropriate.

Please RSVP using this form: https://stjohnflorey.schoolzineplus.com/form/77

We look forward to seeing you there. 

Protocols for excellent parenting and improving relationships of all kinds

Our School Counsellor, Cameron Day wanted to share the below podcast. He believes it is invaluable to parents. 

In this episode, Dr. Andrew Huberman's guest is Dr. Becky Kennedy, PhD, a clinical psychologist, bestselling author, and founder of Good Inside, an education platform for parents and parents-to-be. They discuss actionable protocols for raising resilient, emotionally healthy kids and effective alternatives to typical forms of reward and punishment that instead teach children valuable skills and strengthen the parent-child bond. These protocols are also applicable to other types of relationships: professional, romantic, friendships, siblings, etc.

They explain how to respond to emotional outbursts, rudeness, entitlement, and how to repair fractured relationships, build self-confidence, and improve interpersonal connections with empathy, while also maintaining healthy boundaries.

They also discuss how to effectively communicate with children and/or adults with ADHD, anxiety, learning challenges, or with “deeply feeling” individuals.

The conversation is broadly applicable to all types of social interactions and bonds. By the end of the episode, you will have learned simple yet powerful tools to build healthy relationships with kids, teens, adults and oneself.

Cross Country

Our Cross Country carnival will take place on the last day of term from 11.25am-1.25pm (Friday, 12 April). Please see below the course and also the distance each year group will run on the day. If you are able to help on the day, please email me at rebekah.brown@cg.catholic.edu.au 

• Kindergarten (1 x inner loop 500m)
• Turning 7 in 2024(Year 1 and 7yrs from Yr 2– 1 inner loop 500m)
• Turning 8 in 2024 (Year 2) (1km – 1 outer loop)
• Turning 9 in 2024 (Year 3) (1.5km – 1 inner loop and 1 outer loop)
• Turning 10 in 2024 (Year 4) (2km – 2 outer loop)
• Turning 11 in 2024 (Year 5) (3km – 3 outer loop)
• Turning 12 in 2024 (Year 6) (3km – 3 outer loop)

Rebekah Brown