Dear Parents, Guardians and Carers,

The half-yearly school reports will be available on PAM on Monday 20th June. If you are yet to access PAM and are unsure how to do this, please contact the school office.

The reports form one part of the reporting process regarding your child’s learning behaviours, strengths, and areas for improvement. Reporting is formative in its nature, and thus explores ways that the school, in partnership with the students and parents, can develop ways to improve each child’s learning. The reporting process is an integral part of teaching and learning. Therefore, reports are based on a range of assessment practices and evidence such as teacher observations, annotated student work samples, tests and presentations. These practices along with the Student Report enable regular monitoring of student learning and ongoing constructive feedback, with the intention of improving student learning over time. Students are an important part of this process as the learning we wish to improve is theirs!

The Student Report is therefore not intended to be the only form of communication between the teacher, student and parents in relation to student learning and achievement. In conjunction with the report will be a student-led conference where the student will lead the discussion about their learning showing examples of pieces of work and sharing their growth with you and their teacher.  

We will be holding the student-led conferences on Wednesday 22nd June and Thursday 23rd June. In these sessions parents will make an appointment to meet with their child’s teacher. You will be able to book an appointment time later this week when the bookings open via PAM. You will receive notification via email when they are open.

The student led conferences will begin at 2:40pm. All students will be taken to the hall at 2:30pm to be supervised by Specialist Teachers and those students who have their student-led conference first up, will remain behind with their classroom teacher so their conference can begin promptly. Each student led conference will go for no longer than 10 minutes. Please respect the timeslot you have been allocated, as going over time or running late greatly impacts other parents and teachers.  

These conferences are an opportunity for your child to showcase their learning with you, they are not a time to discuss reports or progress. If you wish to discuss these items at any stage throughout the year please contact your child’s teacher to make a follow up appointment. 

Principles for savvy parenting in a digital world  by Jocelyn Brewer

Don’t ‘ban’ devices, make a plan

Creating your family’s technology use agreement is an evolving task and requires careful considerations. Involve your children in decisions about what are meaningful restrictions on the use of devices, based on what is fair, healthy, and aligned to the values of your family. Consider these key features:

• Avoid bookending the day with technology use, especially before bed

• Limit the stretches of time spent online in one sitting/viewing, break this up across the day

• Diversify the digital ‘diet’ – explore a range of online activities (games, TV shows, apps, etc) and try new content that might not be as popular, but possibly more pro-social

• Have clear expectations across the offline aspects of the day/week (around chores, learning, etc)

• Outline where screen-based media use can take place. Avoid bedrooms in favour of common areas.

Effective technology contracts involve consistency, protecting time offline for exercise, socialising and other activities. Avoid using time online as a currency and create rewards and consequences that suit your particular family and situation. For more structured support on co-creating this digital wellbeing plan collaboratively with your kids, join this course.

Co-view and co-play, to spark conversations

Using technology together – by viewing content or playing games – is a good way to prompt meaningful conversations about device use, online activities and interactions. This will help young people make sense of their experiences and build skills to circumvent and/or manage online issues.

Bring curiosity rather than fear to these conversations. Talk about what you and they do, see and read online, how they feel about this activity, and how they respond to others. Fake news and misinformation is rife online, so helping kids understand how to spot dodgy information and think critically about what they see online is vital. Be conscious of listening to young people’s perspectives, rather than lecturing them about what they ‘should’ do (they know this but doing it in reality can be tricky!).

Parental monitoring software can help, up to a point

There are hundreds of monitoring and tracking tools designed to help manage time online, or block age-inappropriate content. While these tools can be helpful, the social-emotional and cognitive skills that allow us to manage our choices and behaviours require real-life opportunities to rehearse and repeat. Software doesn’t do the tough work of parenting (negotiations, communication, battling big emotions and burgeoning identity and independence) for you or guarantee no exposure to dicey content!

Don’t sweat the screen ‘time’, consider broader factors

Parents can get caught up on the amount of time their children spend online. Yet there is no agreement among experts as to what constitutes excessive time online. Instead, focus on:

• the quality of the content – what is it about, is it developmentally appropriate, does it require passive or interactive consumption?
• the context in which the technology is being used - when alone, in groups, or to pacify a child in a café or to stop a tantrum, in a global pandemic and lock-down?
• the cognitions (that is, the mental action) associated with the activity – are these thoughts helpful and constructive?
• the function of the activity – is it to study, for social connection, information gathering, or other uses?

Asking these more detailed questions about online activities will help parents make more informed decisions about whether particular technology use is serving their children’s wellbeing and development, and how to help their children manage this tech use.

Check your own habits and be a positive digital mentor

Parents are important role models for children – and this extends to screen and smartphone use. Be mindful of your own digital habits (and how easily they can creep into overuse territory) to ensure you set a valuable example of safe and savvy digital citizenry. Kids see our use of technology and consider that as the standard, try ‘narrating’ what you’re using devices for – is it to pay bills or organise the family, or to answer emails that could probably wait?!

Confirmation Candidates

We congratulate the grade six Confirmation candidates and their families on their dedication in preparing to receive the sacrament of Confirmation. Bishop Greg Bennet will join us to celebrate the sacrament of Confirmation next Friday June 3rd at 4:30pm and 6:30pm. Please keep our candidates, their families and our sacramental team in your prayers at this time. 

CSEF closes on 24th June 2022. Therefore applications must handed in to the office by 21st June to allow for processing. Thank you.

Thank you to everyone who has brought in bottle tops and bread clips for recycling.  We have saved a huge amount from going into landfill and they will be used by plastic manufacturers to make things like play equipment, sensory toys and gardening equipment.  Lids for Kids is the program collecting and organising the recycling of the lids. Their website is lids4kids.org.au 

Please continue to bring in bottle tops (milk, long life milk, water and soft drink) and any type of bread clip.  The bins are still out the front of the hall.

Thank you to the Student Leaders who tackled the massive job of sorting out the bottle tops and bread clips.

Issue 4 orders are due back by Friday 3rd June 2022.