Dear Families,

The term seems to be racing away from us already, it’s hard to believe we are in Week 3 already. Today we welcomed back Toni Hatten-Roberts from COGLearn for her final visit for this year. Toni once again worked with a group of teachers and the leadership team to support us in implementing a low variation curriculum and an explicit instructional approach and also to continue developing our coaching model. Last week Mrs Myles and Mr Collins attended training with Josh Goodrich and Ollie Lovell from Steplab to develop their skills as instructional coaches. We will be using the Steplab platform next year to support and track instructional coaching across the school.

After trialling Chinese language online, we have decided to go back to face-to-face lessons and so have employed a Mandarin Language teacher for 2024. Ms (Sally) Zhenyu Wang has been teaching in Melbourne most recently and will join the staff at St Thomas Aquinas from 2024 in an ongoing capacity. Unfortunately, Mrs Louise Osborne-Goldsborough will no longer be able to take up her position at St Thomas Aquinas for 2024. However, Mrs Shannon Hart will be joining us from Holy Spirit in Nichols. Mrs Hart has been working in our system’s ELCs and Primary schools for over 10 years and we are very excited to welcome her next year.

I would like to remind everyone that all children are required to have a school hat. Children who do not have a hat will need to remain in the covered areas and will not be able to play on the oval or tar area. Please ensure that your child has a hat with their name on it. Hats can be purchased at the front office.

I wanted to share a conversation I had recently with a new parent to the school. Her child started a short time ago and has been so happy coming to school every day. She also mentioned that her husband was struggling to find his way to the assembly area on their son’s second day and that one of our students noticed that they were looking a little lost and offered to walk them around. This behaviour is typical of students here at St Thomas Aquinas. Their thoughtfulness and kindness is a testament to you their parents and carers and to the teachers who model this for them, and helps to make the beautiful culture we have here at the school.

Take care and God bless