Updates
Secondary Student Round Table
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.
CEDoW Step into Teaching Scholarship Program – Applications Closing Soon
Apply by Friday 19 September 2025.
Schools are asked to share the following opportunities with students and include the information in parent/carer communications.
All Year 12 students are invited to apply for one of the following scholarships:
- Step into Teaching Scholarship Program
- Step into Teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Scholarship Program
To learn more, students should speak with their TAPs Coordinator or visit the Catholic Education Office website here.
Free Webinar – Unlocking Your Child’s Potential
The Council of Catholic School Parents have partnered with Beyond to help parents and carers nurture their children’s unique strengths and talents. As part of this partnership, a free webinar has been organised for parents and carers.
Prepared for parents of Years 3–6 primary school, the webinar empowers parents to recognise and nurture their child’s unique strengths and talents, guiding them toward greater confidence, motivation, and resilience.
Nurturing Strengths – Primary Parent Webinar
Date: Wednesday 10 September 2025
Time: 12.30 pm – 1.15 pm
Schools are to promote this opportunity to parents through their communications channels.
CatholicCare Counsellors – Staff Development Day
A message from CatholicCare, Wollongong
CatholicCare 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), on mobile: 0419 462 621.
NESA News
Strengthening Your eTAMS Security
NESA will introduce a new, secure way to sign in to eTAMS in October, called NESA Identity (NESA ID). The changes will include 2-step verification and a stronger password policy to protect your account.
From October 2025, you will:
- Sign in to eTAMS with your email address instead of your 6-digit NESA account number.
- Reset your password according to the new policy and set up 2-step verification.
Prepare for the change:
- Sign in to eTAMS using your current credentials.
- Make sure your mobile number is up to date.
- Check the email listed in the ‘NESA ID email address’ field – this will become your username in October.
- Verify the email listed in the ‘Communications email address’ field.
- Confirm any changes.
Key points:
- NESA recommends using a personal email as your NESA ID. Using a work email may require extra steps to set up your NESA ID.
- If you are a principal, accreditation supervisor, principal delegate, or hold a role receiving frequent or sensitive communications, use a work email for your communications email address.
- NESA will notify you before the changes take effect, with clear step-by-step instructions.
Look Out for HSC Showcase Nominations
HSC students across NSW will find out if they’re nominated for an HSC Showcase over the next three months, starting with CALLBACK and OnSTAGE performances next week. Being nominated is a major achievement, recognising that a student’s work meets syllabus outcomes and HSC exam standards. The HSC Showcase Hub has all the information you need, including key dates for nominations, selections, and events.
Visit the HSC Showcase Hub here.
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.
CEDoW Library – Resource of the Week and Book Week
ACEN eBook
This week’s Sora eBook edition is Fiction and Non-Fiction.
Use the link here to explore eBook titles for primary, secondary, and staff through the Australian Catholic Education Network (ACEN). To sign in to Sora, select “ACEN” as your school.
ClickView Highlight
This week’s ClickView highlight is Mapping and Geography Skills. You can view it here.
Our schools celebrated 80 years of the Children’s Book Council of Australia during August. Please see here for some Book Week photos from around our Diocese.
If you have any questions, please get in touch with Jim Gallagher, Library Services Manager, at gallagherj01@dow.catholic.edu.au.