Principal Talk with Mrs. Lowe
Term 3 Key Dates
| Friday 6 August |
St Mary's Mini Olympics - Green and Gold Mufti day |
| Wednesday 11 August |
Year 5 Art Focus Day |
| Friday 13/20/27 August |
The School Explorers - Sessions 2pm - 3pm |
| Tuesday 17 August |
Year 4 Art Focus Day |
| Wednesday 18 August |
Special Tuckshop $5 Meal Deal lunch |
| Monday 23 August |
CogLearn Staff Professional Learning |
| Tuesday 24 August |
Year 1 Art Focus Day |
| Tuesday 31 August |
Year 6 Art Focus Day |
| Friday 3 September |
Father's Day Stall |
| Saturday 4 September |
St Mary's P&F Garden Expo and Plant Fair - Postponed |
| Monday 6 September |
Parent Workshop with Sharyn Lynch 3.15pm - 4.45pm |
| Wednesday 8 September |
St Mary's Feast Day - Students wear BLUE |
| Friday 17 September |
Grandparents and Special Friends Day - Postponed Stage One Showcase of Learning Last day of Term 3 |
St Mary's Mini Olympics
Tomorrow we will hold a part-day Mini-Olympics for our students. This will involve an opening ceremony, lighting of the flame, a class march and rotating sports activities. The students may wear mufti green and/or gold and/or white clothing or their sports uniform. Our Mini-Olympics afternoon will be a fun way to mark the closing of the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Games.
On another note, it has been wonderful to watch the success of our ex-student Emily Chalker playing for the Hockeyroos. Emily, who celebrated her 250th game and 29th birthday whilst in Toyko, scored some amazing goals and finished as the top goal-scorer for the team.
Teaching and Learning
Our focus at St Mary's continues to be on embedding evidence-based pedagogy to improve student outcomes. Education research and theorist Barak Rosenshine laid out six “instructional functions“ which were determined from many studies, over many years. They were:
- Review, checking previous day’s work (and reteaching if necessary)
- Presenting new content/skills.
- Initial student practise (and checking for understanding)
- Feedback and correctives (and re-teaching if necessary)
- Student independent practise.
- Weekly and monthly reviews.
Rosenshine's work underpins many of the High Impact Teaching Practices we are implementing at St Mary's. Our InitiaLit, MacqLit, MiniLit, Spelling Mastery and Connecting Math Concepts programs all work on review, explicit teaching and practise. The staff are seeing many improvements in student knowledge retention and understanding and the students are reporting a boost in their confidence and improved results.
