St Bernadette's Primary School

NEWSLETTER | TERM 4 | WEEK 2 I 18 October 2024

Good afternoon, everyone.

I hope this newsletter finds you all well. With just seven weeks to the end of term we are all ‘in full swing’ organising and running events on the school calendar, planning for 2025 and preparing for end of term reporting.

Staff time and energy is particularly focused on supporting your children’s learning and helping each student to finish the year off well.

Parents are asked to please be mindful of the pressure on teacher time for the next number of weeks and to keep requests for meetings to a minimum. A short, succinct email (via the office) detailing your question or concern is the best way of communicating with teachers at this point in time. Anything that cannot be sorted out with a short reply email, will result in a phone call, or if necessary, a face-to-face meeting. Many thanks for your cooperation and understanding, it is very much appreciated.

Night of the Notables

This week I attended two evenings along with staff, families and students involved in our ‘Night of the Notables’ finale presentations and wow, what a celebration of learning! This program involves selected students engaging in an in-depth study of one notable person. Comprehensive research and application of thinking and communication skills are applied to an independent learning project.

On Monday and Tuesday evening students showcased the product of their personal study and presented themselves in character, as their Notable, displayed the Learning Centre they had created and engaging with the audience.

The night highlighted all the hard work that students had carried out and they are to be highly commended on their dedication, commitment and excellent participation in this creative and challenging learning project. A very special thank you to Mr Hilton and Miss Ryan for their time and expertise in preparing students for this special opportunity.

Year 6 Graduation Assembly

This morning our Year Sixes presented their final assembly here at St Bernie’s and the presentation gave all of us an opportunity to celebrate the journey of all our graduating students. We, as a staff, have loved walking along side this year group and we have shared many laughs and learning opportunities. With only a term to go before we say goodbye, we look forward to working with parents and students to make it the best term it can be.

Classes for 2025

Each year at this time, leadership and staff engage in the very time-consuming task of finalising class lists for 2025.

While this process isn’t necessary in a single stream school i.e. children go through their whole eight years of primary school with the same cohort; in a double stream school, we have the opportunity ‘to tweak’ the composition of classes from year to year in an attempt to ensure that we are doing our very best to meet a child’s specific needs.

Please know that all staff approach this task in a pastoral and professional manner with the child’s very best interests at the heart of each decision made. Over time, teachers have collected much information and have made numerous observations about each child that helps to support them to make the very best decisions possible.

Many factors are taken into consideration when deciding which class list a child will belong to, including, but not limited to:

class size
gender
friendships
behaviour
social/emotional
academic
EAL/ESL
special needs/ disabilities
support programs
medical needs
student-student separations
student-student pairings
teacher- student separations
teacher- student pairings
history
parent requests
teacher judgement

We are confident in our ability to place children in a particular class because:

The expectation of each and every teacher across our school is very high in regard to providing for your child’s physical, spiritual, emotional, social and learning needs.
We work hard to align our teaching practice, and this is an ongoing and sustained effort.
We work closely as a whole school team and as cluster teams to support children and their learning.
We communicate well regarding children’s needs - especially across partner year levels
Each teacher we employ brings something special to a child's experience over time. All staff here at St Bernadette’s are dedicated and hardworking and they genuinely want the very best for each child.
We believe that with teacher support, children gain valuable life lessons from working through conflict situations, friendship challenges and dealing with different personality types.

While we spend time creating class lists for the next year, there is an underlying belief that in the final analysis, each child will be well catered for, no matter which teacher, or what the makeup of the class and much time, care, discussion and discernment go into the process.

You can also be assured that we work very hard to ensure that the classroom environment, the quality of the learning tasks and our attention to building respectful and fruitful relationships continue to be aligned, and the best they can be.

Parent Requests

From time to time, a parent will request that their child be in a particular class. When it comes to a parent request for their child to be in a particular teacher’s class, or for their child to be separated from another child, it is important to understand that the reason/s presented form part of the overall picture for that year group. While requests are always taken into consideration, it may not necessarily result in a change being made, as there are many variables involved in the process of creating new classes.

Finally, I hope everyone has an amazing weekend and is refreshed and ready to go in Week 3. Look forward to seeing everyone out the front on Monday morning.

Geordie

Calling All Defence Families

As we prepare for our upcoming Remembrance Day service on Monday 11th November, we would love to involve members of our Defence families who would like to play a small part in this important occasion. If you are interested, please get in touch with Mrs Cosgrove via email as soon as possible. Since the service is student-led, coordinating multiple volunteers can be difficult if left to the weeks leading up to the day, so early communication is greatly appreciated. Your involvement would be a meaningful contribution to our school’s tribute to those who have served.

Thank you for your support!

Year 2R are our Dynamo Dot winners for excellent behaviour in their specialist classes! Great work 2R!