Assistant Principal Pedagogy and Learning
Healthy Harold Visits Our School
This week, our students had the wonderful opportunity to engage in special Life Education sessions with Miss Rhiannon and Healthy Harold!
Each year level explored a unique topic tailored to their developmental stage, helping them build important life skills and understandings. These sessions link into the Health and Physical Education Curriculum standards of the Australian Curriculum.
- Kindergarten: Harold’s Big Feelings – exploring emotions and how to express them in healthy ways
- Prep: My Body Matters – learning about healthy habits and personal hygiene
- Year 1: Ready, Set, Go! – understanding choices and how they affect our health
- Year 2: Growing Good Friends – building respectful relationships and friendships
- Year 3: bCyberwise – staying safe online and being a responsible digital citizen
- Year 4: The Inside Story – learning about body systems and how to care for them
- Year 5: Take a Breath –investigate the issues around vaping and smoking and are encouraged to stop and “take a breath”, ask questions, seek answers and exercise critical thinking skills before making a decision.
- Year 6: Relate, Respect and Connect –explore how the physical and personal changes at this stage of life impact their behaviour, emotions and relationships. They also learnt how to recognise, react to, and report disrespectful, unsafe and potentially predatory behaviour online.
Students enjoyed learning alongside Healthy Harold, who used examples from his life to make the lessons fun and meaningful.
Life Education online hub also offers a range of parent resources, including podcasts and information flyers aligned with each module. These are a great way to continue the conversation at home. Please follow the link attached to this great resource for families- Life Education Parenting Guidelines.
Strengthening How We Teach Reading at Our Lady of Lourdes
At Our Lady of Lourdes, we are deeply committed to ensuring that every child becomes a confident and capable reader. As part of this commitment, our teachers recently participated in a Professional Development Day focused on improving how we teach reading across all year levels.
The day was centred on the updated Version 9 Australian Curriculum: English, specifically the Reading and Viewing components. Teachers worked together in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to explore the current research around how children learn to read, often referred to as the Science of Reading.
Throughout the day, teachers:
- Built a stronger understanding of ‘The Big 6’ and deepening our understanding of how reading develops, from learning sounds and decoding words to building vocabulary and comprehension
- Reviewed the curriculum standards for reading in each year level to ensure clear, consistent expectations
- Created shared goals for teaching and assessing reading to track student progress more effectively
- Worked across year levels to build a united approach to reading instruction throughout the school
This work helps us ensure that all children receive high-quality reading instruction, no matter which class they are in. It also means we are better equipped to identify when students need support and how to help them succeed.
As we continue this journey in our PLCs throughout the year, we’re excited about the positive impact it will have on student learning and literacy growth.
If you’d like to learn more about Unpacking the Science of Reading Research, we encourage you to explore the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) website, which has helpful information for families and educators alike.
Together, we’re building strong foundations for a love of reading—and a love of learning—for every child at Our Lady of Lourdes.