ST ITA’S IS A COMMUNITY OF RESPECT FOR ONE ANOTHER

As parents, you want the best for your children. You want them to have positive experiences, healthy relationships and opportunities to learn. You want them to understand right and wrong. You want them to respect others, respect themselves and be respected.

Our Whole School Approach to Positive Behaviours plays a key role in teaching children about respect and respectful relationships. 

A whole-school approach encourages schools to review their existing procedures and culture to ensure that they model respectful relationships and gender equality practices across the entire school community. 

Cultural and procedural change, means schools and their communities look at staff practices, classroom management, school events, sport programs, formals and other occasions, to ensure all aspects of a school’s operation and culture are underpinned by respect and equality.

A whole-school approach to Respectful Relationships recognises that schools are:

• a workplace where all students, staff and parents should feel equally respected, safe and valued and have equal opportunities
• a safe space where young people can learn about gender equality and respectful relationships, in and out of the classroom
• part of the wider community that can model gender equality and respectful relationships.

COMMUNICATION IN OUR SCHOOL

As educators, we all understand the importance of family engagement with our learning community. It’s not rocket science to understand that when families are engaged with their child’s education, they are more supportive of it and in a better position to help further their student’s learning at home.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean family engagement is easy. Like the rest of us, parents are busy people, and even those who are most invested in their child’s education might fall out of the loop if we don’t take steps to make communication clear and easy. At St Ita’s, we’ve found that the keys to successful communication and an engaged community are Consistency, Accessibility, and Frequency.

CONSISTENCY

Several years whilst participating in our school review, our school InsightSRC data identified school communications as an area that needed to be improved across all levels of our school.

As a school we investigated what tools where out there and signed up school messaging service Schoolzine to circulate our newsletter and send out alerts to across our school community.

We have incorporated and created PAM (parent access module) which is our parent portal to access school reports, find NAPLAN results, update medical details and to distribute permission slips that need to be signed by parents.

All classes at St Ita’s use ClassDojo to communicate with parents reminding them of upcoming dates and events related to their child, their classroom and their learning. Showcasing student successes, sharing daily learning with parents, homework, assignments, calendars, and announcements are all hosted on the same app. It's a simple one stop shopping for parents.

FREQUENCY

I think it’s important that we send out messages from school regularly. It helps teachers get into the habit of sending out messages and gets parents into the habit of looking for them. When there are frequent, regular messages being sent back and forth, it just makes the conversation feel more natural and normal.

As a principal, I send out weekly messages to the whole community and I encourage family members to provide feedback or come to me with any questions or wonderings that they have. It’s important that our school community sees that all staff have a role to play in promoting effective communication across our school.

The expectation is also on teachers to make sure they are sending out messages to families on their ClassDojo celebrating successful learning and celebrating successes as children are access the curriculum in a variety of diverse and different ways.

ACCESSIBILITY

In the age of smart phones, using a mobile app for communication makes it easier to get everyone to sign up, but it’s also important for ongoing usage. We are able to reach nearly every family via a smartphone. Our parent participation in parent teacher interviews and school entry assessments is near 95 percent, and I chalk that up largely to the fact that scheduling is done via a communication tool that’s easy for parents to use.

Parents can see in real time what appointments are open and sign up accordingly. If they need to reschedule, there’s no need to send paper back and forth trying to nail down a new time.

YOUR CLASS TEACHER IS YOUR FIRST POINT OF CALL

Creating strong communication throughout a school takes some persistence, but the community that it enables is more than worth the work. If you have issues, concerns or wonderings relating to your child, your first point of contact is always your child’s classroom teacher. All St Ita’s teachers are available via ClassDojo, email or a phone call.

Just a reminder to parents that staff have been instructed to respond to emails or ClassDojo's as soon as possible, however, due to full class loads and after school commitments, this can vary from 12 to 24 hours. Please do not expect an immediate response to ClassDojo’s or emails. If you require a quicker response please contact our school admin and we will put a message through to the class teacher to respond to as soon as they can.

CHURCH CAR PARKING FOR MASS ON TUESDAY & THURSDAYS

Could I please ask all parents and staff to limit parking in the top tier of the Church Carpark on Tuesdays and Thursdays when mass is on between 9.30am and 10.30am. Please park on the bottom tier carpark on these days.

NAPLAN ONLINE

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) will take place on line this year between Tuesday 11th May and Friday 21st May 2021.

Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 participate in the annual NAPLAN tests in reading, writing, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy.

The assessment provides parents and schools with an understanding of how individual students are performing at the time of the tests.

NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process – it does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance.

NAPLAN also provides schools, education authorities and governments with information about how education programs are working and whether young Australians are achieving important educational outcomes in literacy and numeracy.

NAPLAN assesses literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through their regular school curriculum. All government and non-government education authorities have contributed to the development of NAPLAN materials. Students are assessed on the same literacy and numeracy curriculum content, regardless of whether they complete the tests online or on paper. Results for both formats can be reported on the same NAPLAN assessment scale.

All students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are expected to participate in the annual NAPLAN assessment. Students with disability may qualify for adjustments that reflect the support normally provided for classroom assessments. You should discuss the use of any adjustments for your child with your child’s teacher.

A student with a disability that severely limits their capacity to participate in the assessment, or a student who has recently arrived in Australia and has a non-English speaking background, may be granted a formal exemption. Your school principal and your local test administration authority can give you more information on special provisions or the process required to gain a formal exemption.

If a child is absent, schools may arrange for individual students to complete missed tests at another time during the school’s test schedule but not outside of it.

NAPLAN TIMETABLE