I trust the children have settled back into school and that routines have moved back to normal as we start the beginning of term 2 with much to keep us focused and challenged.

As the students settle back into those routines, the teachers have a number of significant focus points that we will be attending to throughout the term. 

The staff met for a full day at the beginning of the term in their particular teams, each grade has representation on each team to review the focus of the school in literacy, numeracy and religious education.  This enabled each team to review the data in all three Key Learning Areas that was used to share with you, your child’s goals at the end of last term.  This data is also used to inform the teachers about class, grade and whole school needs in literacy, numeracy and religious education.  From the above meetings, teachers were able to reflect about their classroom practice and plan together to respond as a school to the needs of the children that went beyond the individual.  The meetings were also an opportunity to review our professional learning plan for the term to ensure that it clearly reflected the focused needs established through the meetings.  These meetings are largely problem solving activities where staff process the data to establish issues with matters of practice, identify the helping and hindering factors and then brainstorm or generate possibilities to solve the matter.  The meetings also allow for reflection to evaluate the progress of other matters already in action.

Teachers will also be involved in a number of day sessions this term where they will focus on the teaching of reading and comprehension  There will also be significant time devoted to assisting teachers in aligning the marking criteria for persuasive and imaginative writing to the syllabus and their classroom practice.

Teaching is not just a matter of planning lessons from the NSW Syllabus documents and turning up to deliver them.  There is significant work that happens well beforehand and it is this aspect that makes a teacher’s work incredibly complex and time consuming.  I wish to acknowledge how hard the teachers work for the children at St Paul’s.  I also acknowledge that without your support, as the first and primary educator of your child, our work would become even more challenging.  Thank you for supporting our teachers, which indirectly, also supports your child and every child.

Go gently,

Michael Reardon
Principal