St Francis of Assisi School Newsletter Term 1 Week 10 3.04.2024

Dear Parents,

Behind the Curtain - Article No.1

At the Launch night at the beginning of the year I promised as a principal to offer as much transparency as possible. That teaching, learning and the curriculum were no longer ‘secret teacher business’ – but everyone’s business.

My hope is that by discussing the ins and outs of what we are working on as a staff it will allow continued respectful dialogue between teachers, parents and leadership. I can't tell you how important this is - that we work as a team for each child in our school - not in opposition. 

The 'Behind the Curtain' article each term will take you inside what's happening behind the walls of the classroom, as our staff work as hard as any staff I've been involved in to create a culture of high expectations for our students. 

Culture

If you’ve been to an assembly or community prayer recently you would have seen a distinct effort by our staff to ensure the children are quiet, reverent and engaged when in the MPF for these events. This involves practising walking in quietly, exiting quietly and positioning students where they are not tempted to talk to each other. This sometimes means separating students from others who they may be tempted to talk to, seating students in close proximity to a teacher or adult or asking some of our Year 6 leaders to sit with our younger students to assist.

It's meant for our younger students instead of one long line, they sit in two small lines to allow us a smaller area for our students to sit inside. 

Some of this may sound archaic. Over the top.  But it allows our children up the front to shine, to be heard, and to have opportunities to develop their oral language by talking on the microphone without distractions. It allows our students to listen and hear what their peers are saying - to be entertained, inspired and moved. If you were in the room for the Stations of the Cross last week delivered by our Year Six's you were all those things. 

This development of a culture of high expectations extends to recently teaching our students explicitly how to thank guest presenters, how to accept certificates or gifts, and for our Year Six students how to greet adults on school tours. This is achived through modelling and explicit instruction to make it clear what we want to see, and what are the cultural norms and expectations. 

All of this helps to develop a key aspect in a child’s education – a sense of school pride.

Teaching and Learning

The biggest part of my role as Principal is being the leader of learning at the school. Principals are of course teachers, so understanding contemporary practice in education is key to my role. Ensuring consistency across our site is of vital importance to our students’ growth.

We want our learners to make at minimum a year’s growth in all aspects of their education – we know that consistency of practice across our site will allow that to occur.

Our teachers meet once a week in a group staff meeting that predominantly is centred around professional development. They also meet fortnightly in their professional learning teams. 

Essentially this time is a time where we aim to be better. To teach better. To work more collaboratively. 

This term alone we have:

• Met to ensure consistency in developing our Personalised Plans for Learning – Our plans we have for the 1 in 4 of our learners who require adjustments to the curriculum to support a disability.
• Attended professional development around Mathematics Instruction specifically on how we can use a set lesson structure to ensure our students retain what has previously been taught. 
• Met to discuss contemporary research in teaching and learning – looking at how children learn best and how we can best teach to allow that to occur.
• Had professional development from KESAB in regard to waste management at our school.

Next term we will:

• Receive whole staff professional development to retrain our staff in PLD – Our phonics and spelling program from Year 1-6, allowing us to have consistency across the school in this space.
• Spend time in our Professional Learning Teams moderating and levelling writing samples.
• Receive professional development in Explicit Direct Instruction – a teaching pedagogy (style) that has shown to be most effective in helping students transfer knowledge from their working memory to their long-term memory.

What else is happening?

I've been stuck in my office more than I ever will in my time here. Next term I'll be able to be inside the classrooms more and engaging in the teaching and learning process.

This term for me has been a lot of meetings, a lot of learnings and a lot of things on the go. Here are just a few of them.

Exciting community partnership to be announced at the beginning of Term 2.

Deliberate increased presence on Facebook/Instagram to help communicate with our own parent community, the wider community in the Eastern Suburbs and also begin to connect with our old scholars.

Year Six Service groups established and working within our school to give ‘back’ to our community. School leadership is involved in leading these groups once a week.

SFOA Playgroup has been incredibly well attended with most sessions being attended by 15 families per week and up to 25 children.

School Band, Festival Choir and SFOA Singing Groups established as extra curricula offerings for our students.

School Basketball teams ongoing, School Soccer and Netball teams being established. Swim team in action this Thursday.

Many new students have joined our school since January, with school tours being well attended and enrolments strong for 2025 and beyond.

SFOA is growing again.

Scott March

Principal