9th June 2022

Principal News

Year Six Fundraising – Chocolate Drive

Our Year 6 students are off to the Sunshine Coast for their camp next term. Keep an eye out for the students selling chocolates, starting tomorrow! If you have any fundraising ideas or can support with fundraising, please let the Year 6 students and parents know.

Uniform Expectations

Now the cooler weather is upon us, a timely reminder that ONLY plain navy blue track pants and jumpers are accepted for the St Mary’s uniform. The St Mary’s school jacket is also available for purchase from the uniform shop.

Outback Principal’s Squad  

This week we have welcomed Mr David Anderson to our school to participate in the Outback Principal’s Squad. The purpose of this initiative is to help aspiring principals transition from being a teacher to being a leader and manager who can deliver on their education system’s strategic objectives and the strategic plan that exists in the community.  This opportunity has exposed Dave to the role of the Principal of St Mary’s School and given him a taste of both the contextual complexities and the intrinsic rewards that can be encountered. Dave is enjoying his week here and particularly noted the welcoming community we have in Charleville.

Have a wonderful fortnight.

Cheers,

Katrina

APRE News

Sacramental Program

Please pray for our students who will make their First Holy Communion this Saturday night, 6pm at Parish Mass.  We would love to see you there to support our students as they make this step in their Faith Journey.  A big thank you to their parents who have supported them.

APRE Conference

On Tuesday, May 31^st, I attended the Term 2 APRE conference for all Toowoomba Diocese. During the day we had the opportunity to discuss the changing role of an APRE within a modern Catholic School.  All feedback from APREs will be tabled to the Director of TCSO, Dr Pat Coughlan.  Other work centred around the upcoming Catholic Education Week celebrations from 24 – 31 July.  Did you know Toowoomba Diocese is hosting Catholic Education Week this year?  The opening Mass for the week will be held Tuesday 26 July at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Toowoomba.  Our Learning Support Teacher, Belinda Phillips, will represent St Mary’s at this mass.  Watch this space for more CEW news!

Prayer Assemblies

A big congratulations to Year 2, who taught us about Pentecost with their imaginative Prayer Assembly on Friday, June 3.  We look forward to Yr 3’s assembly about the Baptism of the Gentiles this Friday June 10 and Year 1’s prayer assembly about Mary on June 17^th.  Please see photos below of our Year 2 Prayer Assembly.

Only two and a half weeks of school to go! 

God Bless,

Kirsty Lines

APRE

Learning Support

It’s been a wonderful term so far for our students - learning and striving to improve. I am proud to see the effort and energy which the teachers at St Mary’s have put in to improving whole class and individual learning outcomes and goals this term.

Teachers have been collating evidence of the adjustments they are making in their planning and classroom management for their students. This evidence will be used for the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD) to ensure all students receive the support they require to access learning. This will be collated and sent off next week.

Throughout this term, our hard-working supported readers have been engaging in reading sessions with two different approaches. They are still continuing to do the guided reading sessions which involve targeted small group instruction. These are small groups with similar ability and needs working with texts at an instructional level to develop their knowledge and skills in reading and comprehension. This term, these students have also been receiving small group and individual sessions based on a synthetic phonics approach. We determine where the gaps in their learning are based on phonics, high frequency words and phonological awareness elements. From this, personalised lessons are tailored to fill these gaps to catch them up. We have seen some tremendous growth this term in these students’ reading – they should be so proud of how hard they have been working and how far they have come!

Unfortunately, due to the Covid situation, we were unable to have the Prep Vision Screening completed this term. I will provide further details as they come to hand regarding a rescheduled time.

As always, please feel free to pop in and say hi or send me an email if you have any questions or would like to chat. My email is: belinda.phillips@twb.catholic.edu.au

Kind regards,

Belinda Phillips

Library News

The Year Two students have been busy in their library lessons exploring Word and creating documents utilising their new learnings.

Some Year 5/6 students honing their research skills.

Love having helpers in the library!

Also love Dan and Jack intently reading at lunchtime.

Holidays are just around the corner!

Could you please ensure students return any outstanding loans? Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any queries regarding these.

To facilitate our term goal to all become “Super Readers,” students are encouraged to borrow extra for the holiday period.

Alice and Michelle

HPE News

In HPE students have been completing their assessment tasks, so the last two weeks have been extremely busy. Students will now start to practice the disciplines for our athletics carnival which will be held next term.

We had students compete in soccer, 10-11 years netball and softball trials. Well done to all students who participated at these trials.

Please enjoy some photos below.

Please remember if you have any concerns about your child in PE or Health, please feel free to contact me via Class Dojo or email susan.mcinnes@twb.catholic.edu.au

Regards,

Ms Mac.

Prep News

What a fun filled two weeks prep has had

• Under Eight's Day
• National Sorry Day – working with year 1 and year 2 to make meaning and understanding. During this, students created a healing prayer
• We created a big fairy house to use during outside play
• Worked with the year ones to understand Reconciliation Week and create maps using indigenous symbols

Year 1 News

Over the last two weeks Year One have participated in several fun and insightful activities from Under 8’s Day to Reconciliation Week activities with Prep and Deadly Choices.

Year One have been working very hard on their assembly to be held next week. We look forward to sharing with you all how Mary showed hospitality to her community.

Year 2 News

Happy Week 8 everyone!😃

We have had a very busy past fortnight. Under 8’s Day was a wonderful morning and all students who attended had a fantastic time – thanks to all who helped out!

Our prayer assembly was last Friday, and the class had a great time performing for all who could be there.

We have also been loving our buddy time with the year 3 class. Last week we made monsters using symmetrical shapes.

We will also be very hardworking this week to complete our assessments for this term.

Thanks

Year 3 News

Year three has been practicing our collation and research skills in HASS.

We have been enjoying our continued learning of Indigenous games with Deadly Choices and our year 2 buddies.

We had lots of fun sharing our knowledge about symmetry with our year 2 buddies by creating symmetrical monsters!

Year 4/5 News

Year 5/6 News

June Birthdays

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