Dear parents and friends,

This week, our Parish school community celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of Mary with a whole school mass. On this holy day of obligation, we honour that Mary was taken, body and soul, to enjoy eternal life. In celebrating this feast, the Church recalls how Mary’s life on earth ended - an apparent perfect ending to a perfectly lived life of grace and so in honouring her passing, we also honour her living.

Father Paul reminded us of Mary’s absolute love for God by responding YES without fear or hesitation. Father Paul challenged each of us to think: How do I say YES to God?

One lens we use to consider this question with our staff and students is to understand that by living out our values, we are in fact saying YES to God. Being a school full of people of compassion who are quick to care and support others in need, being people of hope who encourage others when needed, being people who are just who stand up for others when they can’t stand up for themselves and being people of integrity who do the right thing, even when noone is looking. We often use Jesus as the exemplar to these values, but today was the perfect reminder that like Christ, Mary is an excellent role model who can teach us how to say YES to God.

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A reminder that tomorrow, 18 August, is a Pupil Free day. Staff are learning offsite and as such the school will be closed.

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Thank you for your continued support,

Kaylene Duffin
Principal

2023 ANNUAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN Update

Goal 1 

Improve students’ relationship with Jesus through the values of compassion, justice, hope and integrity.

• Tomorrow, our entire school staff will gather at our Staff Spirituality day to delve into the question, "What is our mission as Catholic educators?" Together, staff will examine the guiding principles found in the Wollongong Diocese documents "Lighting the Way 23+" and "Bearers of Christ’s Love," as well as our School Mission and Vision statement: "Learning to Learn, Live and Love." These resources collectively empower us to provide holistic education, fostering both academic growth and spiritual development in all our students. Additionally, the staff will explore Holy Cross' prayer culture and explore the practice of Christian Meditation.

Goal 2 

By the end of 2023, all students will have increased their confidence and engagement in Mathematics so that all students achieve growth.

• Teachers of Years 3-6 have been participating in professional development of a mathematics teaching pedagogy called Targeted Teaching. At its heart, targeted teaching is based on the collection and use of evidence of each student’s learning to identify how best to advance each student. Targeted teaching requires teachers to identify learning needs and adapt their teaching in response. Before teachers teach each new topic, they need to understand what each student can already do and is ready to learn. As they teach, teachers must check how each student is going and provide tailored feedback or more support to address obstacles or misconceptions and help each student stay on the right track. At present our teachers are focussing on Place Value, in particular the Place Value Aspects of  Counting and Making and Representing 

• Mrs McMentee, Miss Facci, Mrs Hennock, Mrs N Baker, Mrs Jennett and Mrs Duffin spent the day together in the library using the Backward by Design model of planning to develop pre and post assessments aligned to the revised K-2 Mathematics Syllabus.