St Francis of Assisi School Newsletter Term 2 Week 1 7.5.2024

Dear Parents,

Term 2 is upon us, and you’ll see us right back into the swing of it in classrooms. As my previous newsletter indicated I am in the classrooms far more this term, trying to engage in the teaching and learning process as much as possible. As a teacher it’s my passion and it’s been great to see the level of engagement in the classroom as we begin the term.

Catholic Education Week

Next week we celebrate Catholic Education Week which is a great opportunity for us to launch some initiatives and celebrate what a beautiful community we have here at Newton.

I will be announcing some exciting community partnerships and initiatives we have been working on behind the scenes here over the past term next week. Stay tuned.

You’ll also see some various activities involving the children and the wider community through our social media next week so please feel free to engage, and chat to the children about the various Catholic Education Week activities.

Explicit Teaching – What is it and why is it in the news?

You may have seen through the Advertiser and various other media outlets, articles over the past two weeks around behaviour management and ‘discipline’ being explicitly taught in schools. The media articles were deliberately inflammatory and alluded to school’s ‘bringing back’ explicit models of teaching around behaviour. They were written to create likes, comments – anything to get clicks and purchases. That’s how the media works.

The articles centred around a teaching method you have heard already through previous newsletter articles – Explicit Teaching. When you hear the term Explicit teaching, it’s a complicated term that refers to a specific teaching style. It generally alludes to a teacher instructing in a way that provides clear expectations to the students about what is expected of them. This is achieved through a teacher modelling expectations or learning objectives, allowing students many opportunities to practise and then slowly allowing the student to achieve the required learning or behaviour independently.

Often this is used in the teaching of English and Mathematics. Take writing as an example. A method of explicit teaching may look like a teacher modelling a sentence or a paragraph on the board, allowing students to practice that paragraph in small groups of with a teacher, and then moving to independently complete the work.

When we are using an explicit model to practise behaviour expectations it might look like – a teacher modelling how to walk between classes, watching and guiding students as they practise and then expecting this to occur each time their class walks through the school.

This is what the media articles were referring to – but where they got it wrong is that we are not reverting to an old model – we are refining a model that’s existed all the way through Australia’s educational history. We can’t expect students to know routines and expectations unless we teach it to them – explicitly with clear direction and modelling. We have various routines to ensure children in listen in class, are kind to one another and are respectful to their teachers – all of which are explicitly taught to our students.

Later this term staff will receive further training in this model of teaching, and as always, I will try to educate and inform our families of this training as we move forward through this.

It’s not secret teacher business.

Kiss and Drop

Just a reminder that we try to open the gates in the afternoon around the 2:45pm mark to ensure the flow of traffic into the kiss and drop space flows. It’s an efficient process and if I’m going to be honest – it’s an absolute luxury for families.

Many of our Catholic partners in this area have their Kiss and Drop Zones on main roads or tight back streets, where the traffic banks up and the line-up can take between 15 minutes and half an hour at peak times. It’s done with flowing traffic, impatient parents and done extremely close to busy roads.

Ours is managed by our staff, is done in the safety of our school grounds and at the absolute worst families are in line for 5 minutes. It’s a wonderfully efficient system.

If we haven’t opened the gate by 2:45pm there may be another issue we are working with, or we might have a sport lesson on the courts, or a young person who has left the classroom and we want to keep the gate shut for the time being. Sometimes it needs to wait until 3pm, but the flow on effect to families may only be 2-3 minutes difference.

Please be patient.

God Bless,

Scott