Dear Parents and Carers

Our Year Five children have just returned following three days at Camp Birrigai. I am guessing that many of you may have may have visited this site as primary-aged children. Did you participate in the Gold Unit?

The Camp site was destroyed by the horrific bushfires which swept through Weston Creek and Tuggeranong in 2003, so from my point of view it certainly looked like a very different complex. One of the many benefits of children attending camp is that it enables them to experience school life from an entirely different aspect. For many children it’s their first lengthy time away from home albeit just a few kilometres out of suburban Canberra.

Thank you to our staff who supervised the children over the three days. You can appreciate it is demanding job which normally involves 18 hour days and significant responsibility.

Enrolment Period

We are now approaching the final few days of the Official Enrolment Period and as such I would like to remind our current families that it is important to submit your application before COB tomorrow, Friday 28th May. I would be grateful if you could pass this message onto anyone who is considering enrolling their child into our 2022 cohort at St Matthew’s.

The enrolment application link is included for your convenience: https://cg.catholic.edu.au/parents/enrolment/

District Cross Country

Yesterday around fifty children from our school attended the District Cross Country at Stromlo Park. Our Year Five children briefly left camp to represent their school at this event. Congratulations to these children on this achievement. All our parents who regard themselves as runners, would appreciate the perseverance and endurance that is required to run long distances. My father, standing on the sidelines with a nice warm coat always called it character forming!!!!!

Thank you to Mr Luke Folkard who facilitated St Matthew’s attendance and supervised the children on the day.

Tell Them From Me Parent Survey

During the next two weeks you will receive an invitation to participate in a System-initiated survey. Catholic Education has chosen a new provider and once again the survey will be available to staff, parents and children. Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey, your thoughts are important to our school, especially during times where parent access has been limited by the Pandemic.

May God bless you and your families

Graham Pollard

Principal

Twice a term, our teachers meet together at the end of a busy teaching day for a very specific purpose. At first glance, if you were to look through the window, you might think you were witnessing a regular administrative or staff meeting. However, if you could listen in on the conversation, you’d hear teachers discussing programming, assessment and data analysis; see them reading research articles; and observe them undertaking activities to replicate strategies that could be used in the classroom.

Currently, all teaching staff are implementing their professional learning plans for 2021, which includes participation in a formal school-based Professional Learning Community (PLC). Professional learning communities (PLCs) are an approach to school improvement where groups of teachers work collaboratively at the school level to improve student outcomes.​ PLCs help to create a culture that is committed to professionalism and fuelled by collaborative expertise. PLCs ensure a focus on continuous improvement by linking the learning needs of students with the professional learning  and practice of teachers.

Last year, PLCS were formed by classroom teachers to investigate and improve our literacy practice and phonics instruction. Collaborative expertise and rigorous academic and classroom-based research in both groups resulted in two key outcomes: the school implemented a new structure for our literacy block, as well as a scope and sequence for systematic phonics instruction from Kindergarten to Year 2.

This year, we have teaching teams collaborating to improve their teaching practice in the areas of Religious Education and Mathematics. A key activity of future PLCs will be teachers conducting observations of a colleague’s classes and providing informed feedback about an area of practice. Teacher collaboration and feedback is essential, and embraced with enthusiasm at St Matthew’s for the benefit of all of our students.

Yes - through the window, you thought you were witnessing a regular staff meeting, but it really was so much more than that.

Petra Cole

Assistant Principal

Petra.Cole@cg.catholic.edu.au

Deforestation

In year 4 we have been learning about how human activity has impacted our landscapes. One of the things that has had the most profound impact is deforestation. We observed that the results have been devastating over the past 100 years. The main cause of deforestation is agriculture and the main cause of forest degradation is illegal logging. In 2019, the tropics lost close to 30 soccer fields worth of trees every single minute.

Deforestation occurs when forested areas are cut and cleared. David Attenborough made the point in his most recent documentary that the world has lost 3 trillion trees which is over half of the world’s rainforests in the last 100 years.  Therefore this results in less oxygen. That’s less fresh air for us to breathe.  

We would like to plant trees for our local area here at St Matthew’s. We would like to ask if any parents can donate cakes for our bake sale that will happen on Friday of week 8 at recess and lunch. (Friday 11 June.) 

Planting trees here at St Matthew’s will:

• It will protect our local wildlife 
• It will increase our oxygen 
• It will reduce our carbon footprint 
• It will help to reduce air and noise pollution 

If you are able to help us, please fill in the Google Survey below. 

Bake Sale Donation Form

Thank you parents and guardians for your time. ☺️

By Audrey Pozzi and Ella Wilkinson 

4M

Sunday Gospel Reflection:

Mk 16:15-20

The Easter season celebrates some of the most important events and beliefs in Christian tradition. In the last seven weeks, we have remembered Jesus’ Last Supper with his friends (regarded as the institution or establishment of the Eucharist); Jesus’ death on the cross; the discovery of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday; the appearances of the Risen Lord to his disciples; the Ascension into Heaven; and finally, the Holy Spirit filling the disciples at Pentecost. They are events that have shaped Christian belief for nearly 2,000 years. They provide the basis of beliefs and teachings such as: Christ present in the Eucharist; the resurrection of Jesus and the hope of resurrection for all people; the divinity of Jesus; and the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit in the world. The period of Easter-Pentecost celebrates these truly momentous events, beliefs and teachings.

Almost to round off this extraordinary focus on Christian beliefs and teachings, the Church this week celebrates the central doctrine of Christian faith: the Trinity. The belief in the Trinity is the belief that there are three ‘persons’ in the one Godhead: Father; Son; and Holy Spirit. The understanding and articulation of this doctrine occurred over time and was not until well after the writing of the gospels and other New Testament letters. Consequently, there are no specific scriptural passages that identify explicitly the doctrine of the Trinity.

This week’s Gospel passage, the commissioning of the disciples from the Gospel of Matthew is perhaps the closest any New Testament writer comes to an expression of the Trinity when Jesus instructs the disciples to baptise ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. The word ‘Trinity’ does not appear anywhere in the New Testament although one can certainly see the beginnings of ideas about a Trinitarian God. It was not until 325, at the Council of Nicea, that the doctrine of the trinity was established as being orthodox teaching. This council sought to officially define the relationship between the Father and the Son as a response to the arguments of Arius (later known as Arian heresy). The statement of beliefs developed by this council in 325 is the Creed (credo = I believe) that is used in Catholic churches around the world today.

Adapted from Greg Sunter

Kids prefer maths when you let them figure out the answer for themselves. 

Some food for thought….

A common view is that students learn maths best when teachers give clear explanations of mathematical concepts, usually in isolation from other concepts, and students are then given opportunities to practise what they have been shown.

I’ve recently undertaken research at primary and junior secondary levels exploring a different approach. This approach involves posing questions like the following and expecting (in this case, primary level) students to work out their own approaches to the task for themselves prior to any instruction from the teacher:

The minute hand of a clock is on two, and the hands make an acute angle. What might be the time?

There are three ways that this question is different from conventional questions. First, it focuses on two aspect of mathematics together, time and angles. Contrasting two concepts helps students see connections and move beyond approaching mathematics as a collection of isolated facts.

Second, the question has more than one correct answer. Having more than one correct answer means students have opportunities to make decisions about their own answer and then have something unique to contribute to discussions with other students.

Third, students can respond at different levels of sophistication: some students might find just one answer, while other students might find all of the possibilities and formulate generalisations.

The task is what is described as appropriately challenging. The solutions and solution pathways are not immediately obvious for middle primary students but the task draws on ideas with which they are familiar. An explicit advantage of posing such challenging tasks is that the need for students to apply themselves and persist is obvious to the students, even if the task seems daunting at first.

After the students have worked on the task for a time, the teacher manages a discussion in which students share their insights and solutions. This is an important opportunity for students to see what other students have found, and especially to realise that in many cases there are multiple ways of solving mathematics problems.

It is suggested to teachers that they use a data projector or similar technology to project students’ actual work. This saves time rewriting the work, presents the students’ work authentically and illustrates to students the benefits of writing clearly and explaining thinking fully.

Subsequently, the teacher poses a further task in which some aspects are kept the same and some aspects changed, such as:

The minute hand of a clock is on eight, and the hands make an obtuse angle. What might be the time?

The intention is that students learn from the thinking activated by working on the first task and from the class discussion, then apply that learning to the second task.

The research aims to identify tasks that not only are appropriately challenging but can be adapted to suit the needs of particular students. For example, there may be some students for whom the first task is too difficult. Those students might be asked to work on a question like:

What is a time at which the hands of a clock make an acute angle?

The intention is that those students then have more chance of engaging with the original task. Of course, there are also students who can find answers quickly and are then ready for further challenges. Those students might be posed questions like:

With the minute hand on two, why are there six times for which the hands make an acute angle? Is there a number to which the minute hand might point for which there are not six possibilities?

There might even be advanced students who could be asked:

What are some times for which the hands on a clock make a right angle?

The combination of the students’ own engagement with the problem and the different levels of prompts means the students’ work contains rich and useful information about what the students know. Teachers can use this not only to give the students feedback but also to plan subsequent teaching.

Students welcomed the challenge

The project found that, contrary to the preconceptions of some teachers, many students do not fear challenges in mathematics but welcome them. Rather than preferring teachers to instruct them on solution methods, many students prefer to work out solutions by themselves or by working with other students.

The project also established that students learn substantive mathematics content from working on challenging tasks and are willing and able to develop ways of articulating their reasoning.

By Peter Sullivan

Professor of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Monash University

Over the coming weeks, I will post photos of our students here at St Matthew’s undertaking some of these challenging tasks. Keep your eyes peeled for lots of learning. 

Rachel Powell

Curriculum Coordinator

rachel.powell@cg.catholic.edu.au

Cancer Council ACT does not generally recommend sun protection behaviour (i.e. hat wearing and sunscreen application) when UV levels are under 3 due to the low risk associated with skin damage at this level.

In Canberra, UV levels drop and remain under 3 (low) all day, each day, around the June and July period and so the End of May is Hats Off Day for Canberra primary schools and early childhood services. This may assist Canberra children with their winter Vitamin D requirements.

Term 2 school fees are now overdue unless payment is being made by instalments. Please contact the front office if you have not received your fees or you have any questions.

Financial hardship during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Catholic Education acknowledges the financial hardship that the Covid-19 Pandemic has caused and the unprecedented economic impact on many families. If you have been financially impacted or have any concerns around fees, please contact Mr Pollard directly, so that arrangements can be made.

Happy birthday wishes to Sibella A, Olivia O, Jaskirt S, Emmanuel N, Everly P, Camilla L, Stella M, Kerys R, Brodie A, Lewis K, William C, Samaira V, Riley F, Oliver L, Isaac M, Marisa M, Imogen B, and Daisy H, who recently celebrated birthdays.

St Matthew’s Clothing Pool