Dear Parents and Carers,

Term 1 has been another tremendous term of learning at St Mary’s. The programs that we are implementing, InitiaLit, Spelling Mastery and Connecting Maths concepts, have ensured that Hight Impact Teaching Practices are a common occurrence in our classrooms. We are also investigating the Reading Mastery program and have begun using the Writing Revolution as a pedagogy to construct writing lessons.

It was wonderful to receive feedback last week from our Catholic Education, Canberra & Goulburn Performance & Improvement Leader on how far St Mary’s has come over the term. Most importantly, over the last 7 weeks we have discovered significant growth in our student results and look forward this trend continuing into the future.

St Mary’s successful implementation of High Impact Teaching Practices was also on display last Wednesday afternoon when Mrs Taylor, Mrs Nielsen and Mrs Harland presented a Webinar to the rest of CECG system. The trio were invited by the CECG Teaching and Learning Team to share the positive outcomes St Mary’s has experienced so far with the implementation of the approach. The CECG Team believe the success we have had will assist other schools in the system with implementing High Impact Teaching Practices.

Over the last few weeks I have had some inquiries as to the advertised teaching position for terms 2, 3 and 4 in the Year 5/6 Hope class. At this point in time I am not able to announce any recruitment of staff, however I can inform you there has been very positive steps taken to ensure this position is filled before the end of the term. I will have further information on this vacancy in the not too distant future.

Kind Regards,

Phil Nielsen