Dear Parents & Caregivers,

School life continues to be busy and rewarding for all of us at St. Joseph’s Kingswood. In my regular classroom visits I am always inspired by the learning that is taking place, and the positive interactions your children are having with the teachers. As a teaching group, we are strongly focussed on developing and improving our practice so that your children have the best possible learning outcomes. We undertake regular professional learning in order to do this.

In recent times, our professional learning has been in the areas of the teaching of Literacy – specifically spelling – and more broadly around the theme of visible learning. Essentially we have been exploring how evidence is used to create innovation in the learning environment. For some time now, we have been focussed on making sure that the children clearly understand the learning intention of our lessons, as well as the success criteria – the things they need to do to learn and be successful. We are now working to build on this, and to ensure that the feedback we provide the children is purposeful and effective. As learners ourselves, we have been engaging in research about what is termed the effect size of aspects of our work. Essentially this means identifying those strategies that teachers and schools use that evidence says have the greatest impact on a child’s success as a learner. As part of our learning, we are also finding out about strategies that have been used in education that have a low, or in some cases negative impact on learning! Of course, we are trying to make sure that none of these strategies form any part of our daily work!

Another aspect of our professional learning that relates closely to the visible learning work we are doing, is in the area of dispositions – or competencies - for learning. We have been focussed on ensuring that, as part of our work with the children, we are providing rich opportunities for them to develop the competencies required to be a successful learner. Skills like these include understanding our identity, managing ourselves, being critical and creative thinkers, collaboration and communication and cultural competency. These ‘learnings’ are interwoven in our curriculum, as well as being explicitly taught through the use of prompts.

The next P&F meeting is at the Cremorne Hotel on Wednesday– all parents are warmly welcomed to join in the conversation about how we can work together to create the best community possible!

The AGM of the School Board will be held next Tuesday March 19^th, at 7.30pm (here at School.) Please come along to hear reports about our progress over the 2018 school year, and to engage in the process of electing new board members for 2019/2020.

Have a great week everyone,

God bless,

Phil