Dear Parents,

Thank you to all who could make it along to this morning’s Father's Day breakfast. The children love seeing their family here and are so proud to show off their work, especially to their dads. I hope you all had a lovely morning and I wish all the dads a fantastic Father’s Day on Sunday.

In the last few weeks, Kinder, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4 have all been on excursions. The feedback from the organisations where the students participated in various activities was amazing. The way they participated, encouraged and looked after each other and the respect they demonstrated for the excursion leaders is a credit to you as parents and to our school community. We should be and are proud of our children.

7 Steps - Writing

A few weeks ago the vast majority of the teaching staff participated in professional development aimed to arm the teachers with strategies to motivate and engage all students in the creative writing process. This professional development, called ‘7 Steps’, has been implemented by the teachers upon their return.

“Sizzling Starts”, “Tightening Tension”, “Ban the Boring” and “Show Don’t Tell” may be some new phrases your children may be coming home with. These are all part of a systematic way Holy Cross will be working towards continuing to improve students’ creativity and writing skills through the use of the Seven Steps to Successful Writing program. At Holy Cross teachers have been involved in professional development around the Seven Steps for a continued and consistent language approach around writing acquisition. 

So what are the Seven Steps to Successful Writing?

Think of them as the building blocks to great writing. Isolating writing skills into individual steps ensures students don’t get ‘bogged down’ with writing the whole piece. They gain confidence in each building block, and then they pull it all together to become creative and engaging writers.

Seven steps is seven Writing crafts that are needed to create engaging written texts across all texts types. The steps are:

Craft One - Planning for Success

Craft Two - Sizzling Starts

Craft Three - Tightening Tension

Craft Four - Dynamic Dialogue

Craft Five - Show, Don’t Tell

Craft Six - Ban the Boring

Craft Seven - Exciting Endings

During student’s writing lessons, they will explore, create and critique these writing crafts and use them to create a variety of written texts. These crafts will work with the school’s consistent approach to teaching Spelling using the Sound Waves Spelling Program.

Below is a Sizzling start created by Mia in Year 2:

Splish, splash, splosh! “What’s that sound?” muttered Lucy. She looked through the dimly lit window of the washing machine. There she saw green glowing sock fish! What? Was it true? She opened the washing machine door and jumped inside.
 

Literacy and Numeracy Week

With only a few weeks until our Book Parade and Literacy and Numeracy Week celebrations, it’s time to think about what we can come dressed as, representing some of our favourite book characters. Parents, grandparents and friends are warmly invited to all of our Literacy and Numeracy Week celebrations highlighted in the attached flyer. The children will compete next week in their classes to find spelling champions who will then compete in the finals during Week 8.

Staff Development – Pupil Free Day - Friday 27 September

A reminder that the last day of the school term, Friday 27 September, will be a staff development day and a pupil free day. The staff will begin the day at 7.30am and spend the second half of the day off-site.

Parents and Friends Meeting

The next P&F meeting will take place in the school library on Wednesday 4 September at 7:00pm. Come along and hear what is going on in our school community, have your say on fundraising and community building issues and activities.

2020 Fete Update