Dear Families,

How wonderful it was to welcome so many grandparents and parents into the school on Friday. One Green gave us a beautiful liturgy and I know there was more than one person with a tear in their eye as children recounted things they “saw when you weren’t watching”. The weather meant that we had to hold our special lunch indoors, which also gave parents and grandparents a chance to see children’s classrooms. We look forward to opening our classrooms again in Week 6 for Learning Journeys.

Many of you may have been aware that Mr Mackenzie’s wife was expecting twins. I am pleased to let you know that they both arrived into the world safe and sound. We wish Mr and Mrs Mackenzie well and hope they manage to get some rest over the next few weeks.

Yesterday, kindergarten students celebrated 100 days of kindergarten. This milestone was marked with children and staff in kinder dressing as Centenarians. Our latest cohort of students have settled in so well, it is hard to believe that they have only been here for 100 days! We look forward to the next 1250 days they will spend here at St Thomas Aquinas.

We also welcomed Toni Hatten-Roberts once again to work with teachers. This is our third year of working with Toni. Teachers have moved their teaching style from a predominately Inquiry focus to a more Teacher Directed focus with Inquiry occurring once the children are competent in basic skills and knowledge. Toni was pleased with the teacher’s progress and worked with everyone to give us the next step for our journey.

Today, a film crew from Catholic Education were in the school to record the school’s journey with Catalyst. Parents, students, teachers and leadership spoke about the changes they had noticed over the last three years, including improvement in students learning. I look forward to sharing the final version with you once it is available.

Parents and Carer’s of students in Years 3 and 5 would have received their child’s NAPLAN results last week. While these results are just a snapshot over a few days, they do help us to monitor student progress and give us an opportunity to compare our performance with that of similar aged children across Australia. Early results look very positive, particularly in Spelling and Reading which affirms the school’s decision to implement the Initialit and Spelling Mastery programs. These results also provide some food for thought as we move forward.

Take care and God bless