Dear St Anne's Community,

This week I am at the Catholic Principal's Retreat in Bowral. We have been discussing the new system initiative called Catalyst. Catalyst is a professional learning program for school improvement. There are two bold goals that are incorporated into Catalyst; Every student is a competent reader and High impact teaching practice is visible in every classroom. As a system, we will progress through various professional learning sessions over a number of years to reach these goals. I thank our staff for their support of this program. The second part of the retreat was based on "The Inner Work of Leadership" and it was led by Caroline Thompson, Director of Faith Formation, Mercy Partners. It has been a great time for reflection and faith formaton.

A warm welcome to Mrs Kate Harris and Mrs Samantha Park, who will be job sharing Year 4 for the rest of this year. 

I am very pleased with the new Maths Program in Years 7 and 8. "Maths Pathways" is a first of its kind Learning and Teaching model that's changing Maths classrooms. Within our context, the students are excited about Maths and they are being rewarded for their effort with excellent growth. I would like to thank Miss Jamieson and Mrs Collins for all the work they have put into making this new program a success and I look forward to hearing all the good news stories that continue to come out of these classes.

The K-2 Initialit program is also well under way in our classrooms. Initialit is a Direct Instruction Phonics program. Thank you to our K-2 teachers for their work with implementing this program.

Have a great weekend. Take care,

Grant Haigh