Maths Challenge
Congratulations to over 100 St Pius X students who played their part in our school achieving six State Winning Awards and one Highly Commended Award in the 2018 Primary Mathematics Challenge. The students have been investigating a range of complex issues and drawing upon mathematical skills and processes to draw conclusions and make recommendations or pose other problems.

The children will be meeting the Minister of Education, the Hon John Gardner alongside other winning schools this Friday night at a special Award Ceremony.

St Pius X to offer SHIP program from 2019
Our work in providing extension and enrichment for students with particular gifts and talents has encouraged us to explore initiatives specifically designed for students with high intellectual potential (SHIP). This has also been very much encouraged by the School Board who recognise the strides that we have taken in supporting children with specific learning needs and that Gifted and Talented children themselves also have their own particular learning needs. It is indeed a sad reality that many gifted children in Australia are not inspired, or challenged appropriately in their learning and consequently do not come close to reaching their potential at school and beyond - the reality is that they need specialist support 

Gifted students are Special Needs students and policies and practices that addresses the education of all students with Special Needs must be inclusive of the gifted. (Beattie et al 2006) .  
   
To commence our SHIP program here we will be appointing a SHIP facilitator whose first task will be to identify specific children who would benefit from the programs offered. There will be several tools used to do this including parent, teacher and peer nominations. I anticipate that children will come in and out of the program depending on their particular strengths and the focus of the program over the term/semester. We will begin with a focus on Philosophy for Children, a program that helps children think divergently and deeply.  

From Australian Curriculum - While the objectives of the Australian Curriculum are the same for all students, learning needs of gifted and talented students may differ dramatically from those of other students. Not only are gifted and talented students likely to make progress towards these objectives at a faster pace than other students, but they are also often capable of achieving at a level beyond their same-aged peers. Even though their cognitive development may not correlate with their chronological age, gifted and talented students are generally placed in Australian schools at the year level appropriate for their age. As a result, they are likely to require personalised learning through a range of adjustments to teaching and learning if the curriculum is to meet their needs. 

I will be sharing more information as we commence the program and describe our progress and findings. To my knowledge we will be the first Catholic Primary School in South Australia offering such a program and I am very excited about this initiative.

At Last…..
You will notice the yellow markings at the front of our school on Windsor Grove. These are guides for the work that is about to be undertaken to remediate the poor drainage and regular flooding that occurs. Pt Adelaide/Enfield Council will be undertaking this work as early as next week and this will mean some traffic restrictions and congestion. As soon as I have details, I will inform you of these.

Class Structures in 2019
For your information I include the following -

In 2019 there will be 3 Reception classes, 3 Year 1, 3 Year 2, Two Year 3, 2 Year 4, 2 Year 5, 2 Year 6 and 1 Reception Term 3 class.

Term 4 offers the opportunity for parents to inform me about any thoughts that you have in relation to your child’s placement in 2019. As has been stated in previous years, this is not an opportunity to ‘pick a teacher’ but rather to provide us with some further insights into your child’s learning dispositions, friendship groups, talents and skills etc that you wish us to be aware of. Of course, teachers already have much of this information and you would be aware that placing multiple children across two and sometimes three classes needs a great deal of consideration. As has been stated clearly in the past, information from parents should not be considered as a guarantee of a particular placement. There are many factors that teachers weigh up including friendships, a balance of gifts, talents, learning and emotional needs across the classes. Sometimes, we can just see that a particular child will just ‘click’ and be inspired by a particular teacher. So, in summary, we will absolutely respect any information that you would wish to provide in relation to your child’s class in 2019. This will be added to all of the other information in order to discern the best learning environment for your child in our judgement.