Updates

Secondary Student Round Table

Audience: Secondary 

A reminder to RSVP to the Student Round Table event by Friday 5 September 2025. This event will be an inspiring and formative experience for students to connect, collaborate and champion respectful relationships within their schools.

Please contact Liam Nicholls and Jenn Sharp with any questions: respectfulrelationships@dow.catholic.edu.au.

menALIVE Growing Good Men Weekend 2025

Audience: Principals and leaders, please share with your school community
Date: Friday 5 to Sunday 7 December 2025
Venue: The Tops Conference Centre, 51 Bendena Gardens, Stanwell Tops

A powerful weekend experience for fathers and their teenage sons (ages 12–17), supported by Bishop Brian Mascord. Strengthen your bond, explore the journey into manhood, and share in engaging activities, reflection, and a meaningful Rite of Passage.

Places are limited, so register early to secure your spot at a weekend that has been a life-changing experience for hundreds of dads and lads. The cost is $500 per father–son pair, which includes accommodation, meals, adventure activities, and resources. For more information and to register, see here.  

CatholicCare Counsellors Staff Development Day – 24 September 2025

A message from CatholicCare: CatholicCare Wollongong will be hosting our annual Staff Development Day on Wednesday 24 September 2025. All school counsellors rostered to work on this day will be attending the event, and therefore, there will be no counsellor coverage in schools on that date. We appreciate your understanding and support, and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Contact: Tina Acevska, Manager, School, Student and Family Program (SSFP), mobile: 0419 462 621.

Positive Behaviours for Learning

Victorian Education has produced a series of Positive Classroom Management Strategies in ‘placemat’ format.

Each of the eight placemats presents evidence-informed practices that create safer, more purposeful learning environments supporting student learning, wellbeing and behaviour.

Classroom Behaviour Expectations and Rules

Help your students thrive! When students know exactly what is expected of them, they are more likely to demonstrate those behaviours. This placemat provides a simple, effective framework for creating and teaching classroom rules that are observable, measurable, positively stated, understandable, and always applicable (OMPUA). Give students the structure they need to succeed academically and behaviourally.

Classroom Procedures and Routines

Free up your students' working memory and reduce their cognitive load! Well-established routines help create predictability and structure, which is critical for the success of all students, especially those with diverse learning profiles. By clearly defining and teaching procedures, you can increase instructional time and create a positive, collaborative classroom culture.

Encouraging Expected Behaviour

Build stronger teacher-student relationships and promote student motivation. The placemat on encouraging expected behaviour provides a menu of techniques to acknowledge and reinforce positive behaviour. Learn how to use specific, positive feedback frequently and immediately, with a goal of a 4:1 ratio of positive to corrective feedback.

Discouraging Inappropriate Behaviour

Turn behaviour errors into teaching opportunities. This placemat provides a continuum of instructional responses to address inappropriate behaviour, just as you would with academic errors. The educative approach focuses on using brief, calm, and respectful corrective feedback to re-teach expectations and guide students toward the desired behaviour.

Active Supervision

Be present and purposeful in your classroom. Active supervision involves moving, scanning, and interacting with students to create opportunities for teaching, prompting, encouraging, and correcting behaviours. This simple yet powerful strategy reduces inappropriate behaviour, increases student engagement, and helps pre-empt escalations.

Opportunities to Respond (OTR)

Boost student engagement and academic outcomes! Opportunities to Respond (OTR) are instructional questions or cues designed to elicit a student response. By presenting varied OTRs at a brisk pace, you can increase on-task behaviour, make learning visible, and provide immediate feedback to students.

Activity Sequence and Choice

Empower your students and increase task completion. For students who can do a task but are reluctant to start, offering choices and strategically sequencing activities can be a game-changer. This placemat provides guidance on how to offer choices in tasks, materials, or even the order of work to build independence and create more equitable learning environments.

Task Difficulty

Ensure your work tasks are a perfect match for student skill levels. When work is too difficult, it can lead to disengagement and problem behaviour. Learn how to adjust task length, time, or response mode to ensure more students experience success and promote on-task behaviour and task completion.