Welcome to our new look newsletter. Early in Term 2 we will be looking for feedback from our readers as to how the format is working and what else we might do to make it more user friendly.
This week is the second week of Lent. In many of the things I have read to support my own Lenten reflection I am reminded that in our human frailty we need the full six weeks of Lent to help us take the time we need to turn back to the promises of the good news. It is hard to believe we are already two weeks into Lent. I’m not sure I have been so good at slowing down and allowing time for God just yet – lucky there are six weeks. A suggestion for prayer, that appealed to me, was to allow the name of one person to come forward each time I find myself in prayer this week and then make an action to reach out to that person. I see this as a time to spread hope through Lent.
The weather was relatively kind to us on Friday after the heat of Thursday as we celebrated our annual swimming carnival. We were implementing some new technology for scoring and results so the winners will be announced at Assembly this week! A huge shout out to our House Leaders, Sue Bath, and all our staff who ensured the smooth running of the event. Our participation and attendance numbers were up on 2023 which was great to see.
2024 is the final year of our current strategic plan. We are currently preparing for the VRQA and School Improvement Framework Review which will be held early in Term 2. Whilst this review will provide a launching place for our next strategic plan we still have key focus areas we are working towards in 2024.
Our Annual Action Plan can now be found on our College Website.
Our staff use these actions to inform their own individual learning and development goals. Earlier this year we heard about the growth and successes staff identified as a result of their goals in 2023:
- Improved use of High Impact Teaching Strategies (Metacognition, Worked Examples, Collaborative Learning)
- Development of classroom management skills to support positive behaviour through PB4L
- Recognition and acknowledgement of positive behaviours
- Improved subject literacy strategies
- Strategies to enhance student wellbeing
- Improved assessment and feedback processes
- Enhanced ability to improve relationships with students
- Living out the instructional model
- Linking learning to the real world
- Improved ability to explicitly teach competencies
Staff also identified
- Improved student academic achievement and growth (VCE Results/PAT/Assessments)
- Improvement in students with additional needs (SWANs)
- Higher levels of student submission of tasks
- Student utilising feedback more
- Students feeling more valued
- Enhanced student-teacher relationships
- Enhanced ability of students to work collaboratively
- Enhanced student agency
- Improved use of student subject specific vocabulary
- Improved PIVOT Results
We look forward to sharing our work with you through our newsletter across the year. We hope to share with you each term what students are noticing in connection to our improvement goals.
Only a month until we host the Kildare Ministries Conference. The theme of our conference is Encounter Dream Do. Families are asked to continue to stay across the information sent out via Operoo in relation to the early finish on Monday 25 March at 12.30pm. There will be no canteen on this day either. Next Monday five of our singers will travel to Melbourne to take part in the combined recording of the conference song.
Our College Open Days are almost upon us. We have already received a strong number of enrolment applications. Last week Marianne our registrar and myself visited a number of the smaller primary schools to the west of Clonard to extend our welcome to these communities. It is important that current College families who have siblings starting in 2024 commence the enrolment application process prior to the closing date. Our Open Day sessions are filling fast, so we remind interested families to book a session and ‘Come and See’.
Blessings
Luci
