Principal's Welcome Message
Lord, Your Spirit renews our faith, hope and love. Empower me to be your presence of love and compassion to others.
Dear Friends,
This weekend we celebrate the feast of Pentecost, a liturgical high point at the very heart of our faith. Pentecost reminds us that all of creation and humanity have been filled with everything that belongs to God. When we share with others what God has given us, we give people hope, renew life, foster peace and bring people into the universal family of humankind.
This week at our staff meeting, we focused on essential elements of Mathematics teaching at Holy Trinity. Mathematics is a fundamental way of seeing the world and every child must believe that they can learn Mathematics to better understand, communicate and effectively prepare for the world after school. Teaching of Mathematics should ensure children are given opportunity to develop fluency, understanding, problem solving and reasoning. It is essential that students are given opportunity to be challenged and develop reasoning, rather than allowing them to solve everything presented to them easily. The following are beliefs essential to Mathematics learning that the staff at Holy Trinity embed in their daily teaching:
- Everyone Can Learn Maths to the highest Levels. We encourage students to believe in themselves. There is no such thing as a "Maths" person. Everyone can reach the highest levels they want to, with hard work.
- Mistakes are valuable, mistakes grow your brain! It is good to struggle and make mistakes.
- Questions are really Important- always ask questions, always answer questions. Ask yourself: why does that make sense?
- Maths is about creativity and making sense. Maths is a very creative subject that is, at its core, about visualising patterns and creating solution paths that others can see, discuss and critique.
- Maths is about connections and communicating. Maths is a connected subject, a form of communication and can be represented in different forms. e.g. words, a picture, a graph, an equation, and link them.
- Depth is much more important than speed. Top mathematicians, such as Laurent Schwartz, think slowly and deeply.
- Maths lessons are about learning not performing. Maths is a growth subject, it takes time to learn and it is all about effort.
We look forward to sharing about your child's learning not only in Mathematics, but in all areas during interviews in Week 8. It is essential, and an expectation, that all families commit to an interview in Week 8 with your child/ren's teacher. An invitation was sent to everyone to choose a time this week via Schoolzine. More about the format of these interviews will be shared with you in next week's newsletter.
With every best wish for a wonderful long weekend and holy and peace-filled week ahead with your beautiful families,
Philippa
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Philippa Brearley - |