Dear Parents and Carers,

This week I have spent 3 days in Canberra at various principal meetings. On Wednesday I met with the principals from the Southern Region, the schools in our region are in Cooma, Bombala, Pambula, Bega, Moruya, Broulee and Batehaven. As a group of principals we meet to discuss our schools to share wisdom and innovations, and to celebrate the successes within our communities. The main emphasis is leading our region of Catholic schools within the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn with strength and hope focussing on the learning, engagement and wellbeing of our students and communities.

On Thursday I attended Catholic Leaders Day along with the principals of the 55 other schools in our archdiocese. The focus of this day was the Archdiocesan Catalyst program that we have been implementing over the past 2 years. The bold goals of the program are

1. For every child to be a competent reader

2. For high impact teaching practice to be in every classroom

At St Pat's we are working to achieve those goals through: the revision of our Maths and English agreed practices; the use of InitiaLit, MiniLit, MacqLit; The Writing Revolution; Sound Waves; and the introduction of the Connecting Maths Concepts program. We have 6 teachers completing their first year of coaching through Coglearn on the implementation of high impact teaching practices, with a focus on Daily Review.

Prof Pamela Snow from LaTrobe University spoke about the Science of Learning and the Science of Reading. If you are interested in learning about reading, and how children best learn to read you may want to take a look at Prof Snow's blog.

Today after the principal and system leaders Mass at St Christophers Cathedral, we have had a presentation from the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA). As a school in NSW we teach the NESA curriculum. NESA is the state government education statutory authority with the responsibility for the establishment and monitoring of school standards in the Australian state of New South Wales. Amongst many topics we heard about the new K-2 Mathematics and English curricula that are being fully implemented from 2023. 

On my return next week, I look forward to hearing about the wonderful celebration of Grandparents Day today as well as the important learning about safety through engagement with the Daniel Morecombe Foundation on Day for Daniel.

Thank you to Mr Mannell for his hours of work in producing the DVDs and USBs of our school concert. Ross had never explored providing other that DVDs so he has worked to learn the protocols for saving the concert on a USB in a way that most devices will be able to read it! We appreciate his attributes of lifelong learning! They are finished and will be distributed to students this afternoon. 

Blessings, and see you next week.

Jo