Principal's Update - 1st August

Welcome

Dear Families,

The new term has commenced smoothly, with children quickly settling back into their new spaces and adapting well to their routines. Despite the extreme cold weather we've been experiencing, everyone has shown resilience and maintained a positive attitude. Meanwhile, the building project is nearing completion, promising to provide even better facilities for our community in the near future.

Student Led Conferences

Student Led Conferences begin next week. You can access this through your PAM login and selecting parent Teacher Interviews. Below is some information around Student Led Conferences at St Columba’s;

Student-led conversations at St Columba's School are an opportunity for students to meet with their parents/guardians and classroom teachers to discuss their learning journey. These conversations are designed to:

• Empower students to take ownership of their learning.
• Foster a reflective mindset in students.
• Celebrate achievements and progress.
• Set and discuss future learning goals and targets.
• Strengthen the partnership between students, parents, and teachers.

The structure of the conversation typically includes and introduction, an outlining of goals and targets, celebration of achievements and identification of next goals alongside a reflection on the current year. This process will take different forms in different year levels to reflect students current capacity.

For Parents:

1. Understand the Process:

• Familiarise yourself with the structure and purpose of the student-led conversations.
• Prepare to listen actively and supportively.

• Review any materials sent home prior to the conversation (eg. SeeSaw).
• Think about questions or topics you might want to discuss with your child.

Parent Helper Induction

Our parent/classroom helper’s induction course is for anyone interested in volunteering within the school. This is a great opportunity if you have the capacity to support student learning and see the day to day running of the school. For anyone interested please complete the documents in the links below . Helper's must hold a valid Working with Childrens Check and present it on signing in when onsite.

The Code of Conduct and the Application will need to be printed, signed and returned to the office.

Sovereign Hill Excursion Drop Off Details

For the upcoming Sovereign Hill Excursion, we request that parents drop students off from 8:20 am onwards at the venue. This is necessary due to the difficulty and expense of hiring a bus, compounded by the local bus runs' schedules. To accommodate early drop-offs, Shaun will be available to supervise students at Sovereign Hill, ensuring their safety and engagement until the excursion officially begins. For those dropping off at school, Bambi will provide supervision, ensuring all students are well taken care, assisting families. 

School Disco

It is with great excitement that we announce our upcoming School Disco on Friday 9th August, orgnaised by our amazing St Columba’s Social Committee. This event will once again be held at the Russell Square Hall, with our Prep to Year 2 Session kicking off at 4:15 pm - 6:00 pm and our Senior Disco commencing at 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. 

Entry tickets are available on QuickCliq at $10 each. Our theme this year is the Olympics. Students are encouraged to bring along a named water bottle please.

If you are available to assist at the Disco please complete the attached form or via the SZApp.

Bunnings BBQ

A huge thank you to our amazing team of volunteers led by Serena & Louise for their hard work in organising the Bunnings BBQ in freezing conditions. The temperature at 8 am was -2 degrees with a feels like of -5!

Thank you to all the volunteers and supporters who braved the conditions to support the school. We raised around $1500 which will go into our playground refurbishment.

Book Fair

Thank you to those who supported our recent Scholastic Book Fair. We made a grand total of $4429 which is a fantastic effort. Thank you Liv, Kylie and Sally for their help and also to Maree for the use of the Art space.

Insight SRC Surveys

Insight SRC is conducting this survey on behalf of your child’s school and the Diocese of Ballarat Catholic Education Limited. It is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of parents' perceptions of their children’s experience of school.  The results will benefit everyone within the school by providing valuable information about the ways in which the school can use staff, student and parent input to plan programs and activities to improve your child's experience at school.

Families will been randomly selected to participate in this survey.  Although we strongly encourage you to participate, your participation is voluntary. It is important to remember, however, that the success of this important project is dependent on parents’ involvement.

The online survey can be accessed from Friday 2nd August to Friday 9 August 2024.  You may complete the survey at your convenience during this time. 

Recent Staff Professional Learning

Calm, Safe and Dignified

The school has been engaged in a number of professional development opportunities over the last week and a half. On Monday and at our staff meeting Tuesday night we unpacked the current research related to student behaviour in schools. Australia as a nation ranks 68-71 (depending on the study) out of 78 nations in the OECD for classroom behaviour. When we drill down into this data and start looking at a local level, the behaviour identified is what is typically referred to as low level, inattentive, disruptive behaviour. This includes things like calling out in class, being late to line, not having materials ready for a lesson. Small, high frequency behaviours that interrupt the flow of lessons and the learning of students. A number fo the studies show students who fall into these categories can be up to two years behind their peers in learning outcomes at the end of their schooling journey.

As a school we have unpacked a number of the principles, tools and techniques that go into creating a positive learning environment and how we can build routines around these to make them habitual for our students. Over the coming weeks you may start hearing your child talking about ‘routines’ as part of their day, and this is where we are focussing our work on creating calm, safe and dignified learning environments for all.

Instructional Coaching

A number of staff were also involved in an intensive training program from Steplab looking at coaching practices and how we can use them to improve teacher practice, and student outcomes. Steplab are a leading UK based company who now work around the world in the space of educational coaching providing targetted support for teacher’s looking to improve their practice.

Digital Technologies

Over the holidays both Melissa Wood and Shaun Mohr completed their Apple Learning Coach qualifications, they are now both qualified Apple Teacher’s and Apple Coach’s. This work is part of our ongoing deployment of digital learning within the School. This week we also hosted Coby Reynold’s our Digital Technology consultant that we have been working with over the last 18 months. Coby took staff through a number of tools that can be used to support digital integration into the learning environment including; creating digital mathematics tasks combining hands on materials and technology, developing green screen and stop motion animations. Coby then worked with staff looking at the use of Pages (apple’s version of Word) and how we can produce digital ebooks using this before staff completed their next level of qualifications in become accredited apple teachers. 

Structured Literacy

You would likely have heard the recent notice from the State Government around the changes to literacy instruction in State Schools over the next 3 years. These changes align with what we are already working on at St Columba’s and it is wonderful to see government bodies recognising the scientific evidence being produced in this space. St Columba’s continues its rollout of Structured Literacy (of which Synthetic Phonics is 1 element of the many needed to become literate) and DOBCEL are continuing and growing a strong relationship with Latrobe University to support this implementation.

Sustainability Fundraiser

Place orders online by the 25th of August using the code STCOL  

Orders will be delivered to the office on Monday 26th August with 30% of all orders coming back to the school. https://theboocollective.com.au/

Book Week 2024

With our 2024 Children's Book Week theme; ‘Reading is Magic’, we're celebrating reading stories and their amazing power to transport minds. We are encouraging kids to be curious about the wonders in our world. It is a positive and affirming message for our young people. The magic of reading also lies in its power of enticement; a good story provokes conversations. Talking about the stories with others connects the reader with other readers. Wrapped around all of this are the "tricks" and skills of our amazing writers and illustrators, as they use all their powers of language and illustration to engage the reader in this world they are building.

To celebrate Book Week, we encourage all of our young readers to participate in our annual Book Week Dress Up Parade on Friday 23rd of August at 9:00 am. The venue for this event is weather permitting. We celebrate this week each year to encourage students to be avid readers and enjoy the adventures and learning we gain from reading. Children are already planning how to bring their favourite book characters to life by choosing costumes ready for the big parade.

Right to Disconnect

Upcoming changes to legislation have emphasised the importance of the right to disconnect, underscoring the need for employees to have uninterrupted personal time outside of work hours. In light of these changes, and in line with our already existing policy around this, our school is committed to supporting this initiative for the well-being of our staff and parents. While we understand that emails/SeeSaw may be sent at any time, we ask for your support in scheduling messages to be sent within standard working hours, and refraining from sending them outside of these hours whenever possible. This practice ensures that everyone can maintain a healthy work-life balance and respond to communications within the designated 48-hour response time during working days.

Important Dates