12th May 2022
Principal News
From the Principal’s Desk
Principal’s Forum
I packed my winter woolies and hit the road for Warwick last Monday to participate in an extremely informative week. Dr Pat Coughlin addressed the Principals on Tuesday morning with Teaching, learning, and getting better at it, followed by Strategic Plan discussions. The work is in bringing the plan to reality and we will continue our great work here at St Mary’s as we execute our plan throughout the next four years. If you are not familiar with our Annual Action Plan and/or Strategic Plan, and what we aim to do at St Mary’s School, please take some time to visit our classrooms, speak with staff and read the fortnightly newsletter as we all share many goals and successes with our community. We are all part of the team driving and achieving this plan together for our students and I look forward to sharing our learnings with you all over the coming months this year.
Annual Action Plan 2022
Key focus areas for our school this year include:
- Engaged students, personalised learning:
- Graduate teacher induction and mentoring
- Building staff knowledge and skills of Reading Improvement Strategy, Essential Skills for Classroom Management and the Diocesan Learning Portal.
- Development of the whole School Learning Framework and Scope & Sequence for each learning area
- Being distinctively Catholic
- Developing Mercy charism and understanding of the four pillars (compassion, hospitality, justice, excellence)
- Updating the vision and mission for St Mary’s School, embedding the mercy values
- Staying on mission
- Staff goal setting and professional development support
- Leadership survey and performance review
- Using resources wisely
- Creating a Master Plan 2022 – 2032 with the support of TCSO
- Seeking feedback (through the use of Microsoft Forms) from our school community to improve and maximise student outcomes
School Fees
We would like to remind families that all outstanding fees are due as a matter of urgency. Term 2 invoices were sent via email last week. When families enrol their children at a Catholic School, they are asked to enter an agreement for the payment of School Fees. The level of fees is kept as low as possible, so the school is available to all families seeking a Catholic Education for their children. This level is decided on the assumption that all families pay a share of the school’s costs through the regular payment of School Fees. Our expectation is that:
- Fees are paid in full after the account is received, or;
- An arrangement is made for regular Direct Debits to the school bank account, so as all fees are paid overtime, or;
- In cases of financial hardship, the parents/caregivers make a confidential arrangement with the Principal for part payment, extended payment or concession of the fees amount.
The office will contact any overdue accounts in the following fortnight.
NAPLAN
NAPLAN dates for this year are Tuesday 10th – Thursday 12th May. The testing will be delivered in an online format (excluding the Year 3 Writing test). St Mary’s uses NAPLAN data, along with anecdotal data from classrooms, standardised testing such as PAT R, PROBE, running records and formative and summative assessment, to inform teaching and enhance student learning. We wish our Year 3 and Year 5 students well as they complete their testing this week.
Show Holiday
A reminder that we have our annual show holiday this Friday, 13th May. Don’t forget to take some time to visit the schoolwork pavilion to have a look at the entries this year. Show work results will be published in the newsletter next fortnight.
Have a fabulous fortnight
Cheers
Katrina
APRE News
Sacramental Program
Please pray for our students, who will be making their first Holy Communion at Parish Mass on Saturday, June 11 at 6pm. All are welcome to attend to support them. Please see their picture below.
Sophie Boot Anniversary
Thank you to our Yr 5 and 6 leaders for leading the small ceremony remembering former student, Sophie Jane Boot on her anniversary on April 28th. I received a message from Sophie’s family thanking St Mary’s for continuing to honour Sophie’s memory. Please see photos below.
Prayer Assemblies
How exciting to be able to watch our classes perform their Prayer assemblies this term! So far 4/5 has explained the life of Jesus to us in mime and last week 5/6 led us in learning about the Mercy value of Hospitality (the value we are focussing on this term). There will be no prayer assembly this week due to the show. Please see the timetable below for remaining classes’ prayer assemblies this term. We look forward to seeing you – 11.10am in the PAH.
Prayer Assembly Timetable Term 2
WEEK 5 – 20th May | Prep |
WEEK 6 – 27th May | NO PRAYER ASSEMBLY – UNDER 8’S DAY |
WEEK 7 – 3rd June | Yr 2 |
WEEK 8 – 10th June | Yr 3 |
WEEK 9 – 17th June | Yr 1 |
Wishing everyone a happy time at the show on Friday, which is also Our Lady of Fatima’s feast day.
God Bless,
Kirsty Lines
APRE
Library News
“Be a Super Reader” is our theme for this term and students have contributed to a list on how we can be Super Readers, there are so many ways we can be! The list is displayed in the library and parents are most welcome to check it out, you may also have another idea to add.
Look out for our caped Super Readers!
Educating students is a partnership between families and the school community and ‘Read More in May’ is a fabulous initiative for families to consciously set aside time every day for family reading. Information, the printable reading log, as well as tips for supporting your child to read can be found on the Scholastic National Reading Month website.
Participating in the Premier’s Reading Challenge also provides another avenue for students to become ‘Super Readers.’ Students will be completing this reading challenge and log at school, and I am sure we can all achieve the set target by August 26.
Pre – Year 2 Read or experience 20 books.
Years 3 – 4 20 books.
Years 5 – 6 15 books
Changing it up is also one way of facilitating students becoming ‘Super Readers.’ The library is a constantly changing space with differing displays designed to expose and entice students to read a variety of genres, authors, and subjects.
Our Year 2 students are well on the way to becoming ‘Super Readers’, obtaining their Shelf Marker License this term, which allows them to borrow independently from all sections of the library.
Hot off the press, new titles are eagerly sort by students so in keeping it fair, we raffle them. If students miss out, they then need to reserve the title on our Web App (which they can also do on a home device) or if they are in the younger grades, they write their name on the reservation sheet.
Love the sudents playing teachers
They even have their own resource cupboard for supplies.
HPE News
Hi and welcome to week four newsletter edition.
In PE students are focusing on the following skills.
- Prep: Two hand catching – high and low and underarm throw.
- Year 1&2: Dodging skills.
- Year 3: Passing - chest, lob, shoulder and bounce passing for accuracy.
- Year 4&5 and 5&6: Learning a variety of offence and defence skills to play Tchoukball.
Health this term students are learning the following content.
- Prep: Exploring how their bodies are growing and developing, and identify the actions that will keep them healthy, such as diet, hygiene and physical activity.
- Year 1 and 2: Exploring what shapes their own, their family and classroom's identity. Students are examining similarities and differences in individual and groups and identifying ways to include others to make them feel they belong.
- Year 3: Exploring the concept of sustainable practice and the ways that they can contribute to the sustainability of the environment in their home, classroom and school.
- Year 4/5 and 5/6: Concentrating on investigating a variety of drink options, including soft drinks, energy drinks and fruit juice, and the effects they have on the body. Students are interpreting a range of preventative health messages to help enhance their decision-making skills now and into the future.
Please contact me via Class Dojo or Email if you have any concerns/questions with your child’s learning in HPE.
Ms Mac.
susan.mcinnes@twb.catholic.edu.au
Prep News
Let’s take a look at what awesome and fun filled learning we have been doing over the past two weeks.
We have explored our STAR and Mercy values in our class where we have come up with our expectations that we are to follow in order to be successful learners at St Marys.
We have thoroughly been enjoying our Library lesson where we explore new texts and Mrs Sheehan tells us about fantastic stories.
After lunch students have explored a variety of different mindfulness strategies and this week, we explore yoga and meditation.
Students have been blowing me away with there ability to give writing a go. Showing our STAR value of striving to achieve. Take a look at some of the hard work of students
Over the past two weeks we have been thoroughly enjoying our Deadly Choices program where we have learnt traditional Aboriginal games. We can’t wait to learning more about these games and also about healthy choices for our bodies.
We can’t wait to see what prep gets up to the next two weeks with the Charleville show coming up this week and also under 8’s day on the 27th of May.
Thanks
Imogen Hunt
Year 1 News
Year One have been working very hard on our show art and handwriting, we look forward to seeing our hard work on display this weekend. We have been talking a lot how we can become better writers and how to edit our work.
Year One has been doing a fantastic job at bringing their homework back, keep up the good work!
Deadly Choices have been visiting on Friday’s, we have been learning about healthy eating and screen time. Students have been very engaged in this and participating in all activities.
Under 8’s Day will be held on the 27th of May at Charleville State School, I invite all parents to attend.
Year 2 News
Happy week 4 everyone!
The last two weeks we have been working hard on our show work and fitting all our learning in these short weeks!
The students have been having a blast at Deadly Choices, learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander games, and learning to make healthy choices in our day-to-day lives. This has tied in nicely to our HASS unit this term, where we are learning more about First Nations People and their connection to land.
We have started our focus on Australian money in math and are learning about writing narratives in English.
We are focusing on chemical science and what happens when we mix different substances together.
In Religion we are learning about how the stories in the bible challenge our thinking and making connections to these.
Happy show week! 😊
Year 3 News
Year 4/5 News
Year 5/6 News
What a great start to the term we have had in Year 5/6!
We have thoroughly enjoyed engaging in the Deadly Choices program, learning all about making healthy choices for our bodies! We loved making smoothies last week, some of us even went home and asked for a blender!!!
Well done on a fantastic prayer assembly 5/6. You did a wonderful job displaying what hospitality means and how we can be hospitable at St Mary’s.
We had had such a great time working on our show work, we look forward to seeing some of you at the Charleville show this weekend. Take a look at our Poetic Narratives and corresponding artworks if you get a chance!
Good luck to all students sitting NAPLAN this week, stay positive, you will all do amazing!
Looking forward to continuing our learning and fun over the next few weeks!
Warm Regards,
Miss Morrison and the Year 5/6 Crew.
2022 Charleville Show - School Work Results
Flyers
