Dear St John the Apostle families,

Welcome to our new students this term. Welcome to Marley (Year 4), Isabelle (Year 1), Sam (Year 3), James and Koby (Year 5), April and Sophie (Kindergarten). We have a few more new students starting soon as well. Welcome to all of your families. Thank you for choosing to be part of our school.

I often liken the life of a school to chapters in a good book. Welcome to this chapter in our school story. We hope that we are a wonderful chapter in your own story!

Welcome also to Ms Lauren Hudson and Miss Tamika Norris who have joined our teaching team. Lauren is an additional teacher in Year 4. Tamika is a third teacher in each of the Year 6 classes. We have an enthusiastic staff who work incredibly hard for all of our students. There's an exciting buzz across our school at the moment and we hope to see this continue as we try to keep school as normal as possible for our students. 

What are we all learning about this term?

Each teacher will shortly provide parents with a Term Overview that outlines the learning that will occur in their class this term. I am very excited by many of the inquiry topics underway. You can see your child's Term Overview at the following link: Term Learning Overviews, Term 3, 2020

Often when we begin a unit of work we try to see what understandings, knowledge and skills students bring to a topic. It helps the teacher to see what they need to teach or what they already know. It also helps the teacher to know what misunderstandings students have; what they need to 'unlearn' before learning something new.

This week Year 3 were given a blank piece of paper and asked to draw a map of Australia, labelling it with the areas and places they think they know. It was a great insight into the students' understandings and generated fantastic conversation as they tested their knowledge out on each other.

Year 4 students were asked to act out a story about being a convict to show what they already know about this part of history. Some of them sneakily asked me what I knew and I happily told them until one student laughed and said "You'e not supposed to tell them."

It's always exciting to start a unit of work by sharing ideas in fun ways, generating questions and making connections between experiences and ideas. We have a great term planned!

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data of School Students with a Disability (NCCD)

The NCCD happens every year in August as part of the annual census. This year this will take place on 7 August. Put simply, it is a process used to capture the number of students with a disability in a school who require adjustments to access and participate in learning, the year level they are in and the extent of the adjustments. It does not capture names or other personal details about students.

The process involves reviewing students' needs and their personal plans. We currently have 99 students on personal plans at St John the Apostle.

The depersonalised data from the NCCD is used by the Australian Government to allocate financial loading to support school in providing the adjustments needed for the identified students.

For more information about the NCCD please read the following fact sheet. Alternatively, you can visit the NCCD website. If you would like to know more information please feel free to contact your child's teacher, Ms Rebekah Brown (AP/Inclusion Teacher) or myself.

Road Map to Return

As you can imagine, our intentions to return to usual practice at school have been significantly slowed. Catholic Education for Canberra and Goulburn have developed a 'Road Map to Return' and while we were anticipating that we would be in Stage 3 we have slowed to a revised Stage 2 status until this latest increase in cases has decreased again. Schools continue to be safe and operations are in line with AHPPC Health guidelines.

You can read more about Catholic Education's response and plans at their website

https://cg.catholic.edu.au/covid-19-information-and-updates/

I wish everybody a wonderful weekend. Stay healthy.

God Bless,

Matthew Garton, Principal