1st September 2022
Principal News
Charleville Performing Arts success!
Congratulations to our students and teachers who participated in the Performing Arts Festival last week and on the weekend. We have a remarkable amount of talent throughout our school community! I recognise the amount of work that goes into the performances, both from students and teachers and would like to thank everyone for their extra commitment over the past few months.
Breakfast Club
Breakfast Club continues each Monday and Wednesday morning. We thank the team at CWAATSICH for providing this service for our students. All children are welcome to access Breakfast Club from 8:00 – 8:20am each Monday and Wednesday.
Parent-Teacher Interviews – Week 9
This term, teachers will be conducting 15-minute parent-teacher interviews to share information regarding your child’s progress this reporting period. This interview will give you an opportunity to discuss your child’s achievement, effort and behaviour. Below are some questions that may guide your questioning during the interview time.
- 5 questions parents can ask teachers:
- What is my child learning?
- How is she or he doing?
- How do you know (how she or he is doing)?
- How can she or he improve?
- What supports can I provide, and can you provide if she or he is struggling? When will we check in again?
It is important that all parents/carers have input into these conversations throughout the school year. Please ensure that you make contact with your child’s teachers to confirm an interview day and time for next week.
Parental Involvement and Engagement: What’s the difference?
While involvement involves taking part in the activities already determined by the school, engagement entails the parent taking a step further and being part of the decision-making process.
Parental involvement looks like: volunteering in the classroom or within the school environment, communication with the teachers through events such as parent-teacher interviews or class dojo or attending school assemblies or performances.
Parental engagement is the additional input that parents add to the school and classroom. It may take the form of - school programs that support parents (information nights, program training e.g. positive parenting), involving parents in decision-making on matters such as school tuckshop, encouraging parents to help children with homework and other learning tasks.
Parental engagement and involvement actions work hand in hand for the best possible outcomes for a student’s academic performance. One cannot be fully effective without the other. We would like to open opportunities for Parental Engagement through the formation of a School Advisory Council at St Mary’s School for 2023 and beyond. If you are interested in becoming a board member, please email katrina.dunne@twb.catholic.edu.au by Friday 16th September to register your interest. Board members will include - Pastoral Leader, Principal, Teacher, 3 x Parent Members, Parish Member, Financial Advisor and a P & F Member. Board members freely and fully participate; are all equal; honour and abide by board decisions; are guided by loyalty and integrity; and observe confidentiality.
Have a wonderful fortnight.
Cheers,
Katrina
Date Claimers
- Student Free Day – Friday 2nd September
- Week 9 - 2023 Prep Enrolment interviews
- Week 9 - Parent-Teacher Interviews
- Grandparents' Liturgy and Morning Tea - Friday 9th September
- Weekend Mass – every Saturday at 6:00pm
- Assembly and Mega Draw – Friday 16th September
- St Mary's Fete - Friday 21st October
APRE News
Grandparents' Liturgy
We are excited to announce our annual Grandparents' Liturgy on Friday, September 9th at 9:30am in the church. This year we will be joined by a group of past students who attended St Mary’s in the 1960s and 70s as part of a reunion.
We would love to see as many parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, family friends and friends of St Mary’s as possible. There will be open classrooms after the liturgy at 10am with a shared morning tea down at the lunch shed at 10:30am, provided by the school. Please come along to celebrate the special people in our student’s lives and our fantastic school!
Prayer Assemblies
Many thanks to Year Three for their prayer assembly on Friday, 19 August, teaching us about the Psalms. We look forward to Year Two’s assembly about the stewardship of creation the Thursday, September 1st at 11:05am in the PAH. Prep will perform their prayer assembly on Thursday, September 8th at 11:05am in the PAH, day changed due to Grandparents' Liturgy on the Friday.
Classroom Support
I would like to thank our teachers for welcoming me in their classrooms this term to model lessons and give feedback to them in different areas of teaching religion. The best part of my job as APRE is working with our staff and students to ensure the RE curriculum is delivered effectively and understood by students. Please see below some photos of our Preps engaging in ‘Godly Play’ – where stories of the bible are related to students in an oral tradition and with an opportunity for dialogue. If you have any questions as to how our RE curriculum is delivered please do not hesitate to talk to your classroom teacher or myself.
Wishing you a blessed fortnight as we travel to September holidays,
God bless,
Kirsty Lines
APRE
Curriculum News
Last week I asked families to email me with their ideas of how they go about reading experiences at home. Please see some of the responses below.
- “Over the last six years our reading routine has changed many times. At the moment we put the baby to bed with songs and cuddles and the big kids choose a story each to either have read to them or read to us.”
- “Sometimes we read books, other times we tell talking stories and sometimes we listen to ABC Story Salad. When we are feeling particularly creative, we will make up our own stories using the Story Salad model.”
- “One thing we do is read while the kids are in the bath, they seem to be more calm and less argumentative. Sometimes I do all the reading, sometimes we do a page each, and sometimes they read to me! I’ve never been knocked back yet when I say pick a book for the bath. By the way, I definitely don’t trust them to hold the book, that’s my job 😂.”
- “We live a little bit out of town and sometimes, the kids read stories on the way in or out of town.”
- “Now that the kids are getting older it’s great to have conversations about books with them. Even just reflecting on the differences between a book and a film.”
- “Not particularly reading, but when the kids were little, we did a lot of car talk. We would literally talk about everything we could see. There was often a time limit on this as quiet time is also important.”
- “We take it in turns to read at night, reminding each other not to talk like robots.”
- “We take the time to read the junk mail. It is so much fun and the kids enjoy reading another genre (catalogue). We often chat about our pocket money and do some maths with regards to our wish lists.”
“We always included reading every night in their bedtime ritual. My husband also had an ongoing story involving animal characters and local town identities that he told to the kids at night that evolved over a number of years. They all still mention it.”
“One of our family sayings was that we would never say no to buying the kids a book, but we would say no to a toy.”
Thank you everyone for sending in your home reading ideas and what you do as a family to practice reading at home! If you haven’t tried one of these, give it a go! I’d love to hear what your new experiences were like!
Have a great week!
Vanessa Alexander
Learning Support
This term has been jam-packed in the Learning Hub. Earlier this term, our audiology testing took place. We were lucky to be able to fit so many tests in during the audiologist’s visit. Hearing is such a key underlying factor to successful student learning and class engagement. St Mary’s staff focus on the connection between hearing, speech, and oral language as a key ingredient to learning. If your child had an audiology test completed and you would like further clarification on their hearing report, please pop in and see your child’s teacher or feel free to send me an email: belinda.phillips@twb.catholic.edu.au
In Week 6, our TCSO Occupational Therapy Adviser, Rachel Crooke, and our TCSO Speech Language Pathology Adviser, Alex Borlai, visited the school. They observed students in their classroom environments and will provide class teachers with recommendations and suggestions to enhance engagement and learning for students.
Our reading intervention groups have continued this term with the 2-level approach giving students many different opportunities to learn, develop and demonstrate their phonics knowledge and reading skills. We have seen great success in this model and feel so proud with how well our students have progressed over the last term. This term, we have intensified the writing intervention for students across year levels. These sessions involve small group sentence work with our younger students whilst the older students are developing their writing skills across sentence and text level based on various audiences and purposes.
Auslan sign: This edition I have 2 Auslan signs that are closely related. School and class/classroom
Below is the Auslan Signbank’s sign for: school (see:Signbank (auslan.org.au))
School: with a flat hand beside your face, wave your hand straight in front of your face. Repeat this.
Below is the Auslan Signbank’s sign for: class (and also classroom) (see:Signbank (auslan.org.au))
Class: start with both hands: thumb and first finger like a C. They should be touching. Make them go around in a circle so the little fingers of your fists are now touching.
I look forward to my visit in Week 9. I’d love to meet with any parents who would like support or assistance in helping your child reach their full potential. Email if you would like to make an appointment or pop into the Learning Hub and say hi.
Have a great week!
Belinda Phillips
Library News
Book Week… It’s a Wrap!
A big thank you to students, teachers, and parents for ensuring Book Week was a vibrant experience for all!
Year 5/6 busy with our Book Week activities in the library.
Fun times in the library on Thursday night.
As a whole school we committed to the Premier’s Reading Challenge in Term 2. Students have been busy updating their forms and utilising our Accessit Web App to view their borrowing history data to complete their reading log.
Wow! What a fun & busy week!!!
Alice & Michelle
HPE News
Hi St Mary’s families and welcome to week 8! Last week Cricket Australia visited our school and rolled out sessions to all classes. All students showed great enthusiasm in these lessons and learnt some new skills. Please see some photos below.
In Health, students are deep in the learning content of the Daniel Morcombe Curriculum – Recognise, Report, React. These lessons are generating some constructive conversation in the classroom.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any concerns or queries relating to your child’s learning.
Yours in HPE,
Ms Mac.
The Arts
Charleville Performing Arts Festival
Thank you so much to all our families for supporting our school in taking part in the Charleville Performing Arts Festival each year. This year out of the 370 items over five days, St Mary’s students featured in over 163 performances in drama, verse speaking, dance, film, vocal and instrumental pieces.
I want to take this opportunity to specifically thank our wonderful teachers, not only could you find our teachers in 14 performances themselves, but they also volunteered their time throughout the festival, as panellists, ushers, costume dressers, emotional supports and they even showed up to watch our performers every day of the festival.
It warms my heart to see our school share our Mercy Values with our community, whilst celebrating and promoting the Arts with our children.
‘Composed in Queensland’ with Opera Queensland
Our other big project in the Arts space this term is a project called ‘Composed in Queensland’. Opera Queensland have been working with a select few children in grades 4 to 6, to compose a song specifically about our community.
They will be here this week to finish our song with the children and will showcase their hard work at an event this Thursday 1st September at 6:30pm at the Racecourse. We would love for you to come! Hope to see you there!
Prep News
Wow what a big two weeks we have had in Prep.
Students have been working so beyond hard on their verse speaking where last Friday ALL students got up on stage at the Performing Arts Festival and blew the crowd away. Students were awarded with a GOLD medal performance and should be so beyond proud of themselves.
Additionally in Art lessons this term students were practising their singing skills and on Friday ALL students got up on stage and presented L.O.V.E which was such a cute performance. Students were awarded with a BRONZE medal performance, and they are already looking forward to next year.
Last Monday we had the Army band come to our school and present a fun filled lunch time session. Students listened and danced to modern/pop music. It was such a fun experience and Preps loved the music.
Book week was a blast this year. It was awesome to see all students dressed up as their favourite book character. Students thoroughly enjoyed their special treat of having the St Mary’s crew perform 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
On Wednesday, students had another special treat for the week when Alex Glenn and Justin Hodges popped in to speak about the importance of school, attendance, positive mindsets, respect, listening to each other, aspirations and working to achieve our goals.
We have also had some special visits from some new four legged family members in our class over the last two weeks. It was so lovely to meet and pat the dogs and we can’t wait to see the adventures they bring into our kids lives.
Important events that are coming up for prep
- Prayer assembly – Week 9 Thursday 8th September
- Grandparents' liturgy – Week 9 Friday 9th September
I hope all families have a wonderful two weeks and I can’t wait to see what adventures the rest of this term is going to take us on.
Thanks,
Imogen
Year 1 News
Welcome to Week 8.
What a busy term we are having! Disco, Bands, Performing Arts Festival and Book Week.
After studying the non-fiction text, ‘Wombats’ by Claire Saxby, the children wrote and discussed several facts they could recall about bare-nosed wombats. Whilst writing these facts, they were asked to consider using the sentence types they have been learning about in class.
In math last week we had a fabulous lesson collecting data from a chocolate box. Students emptied a box and categorised the different chocolates, discovering which chocolate was the most popular and least popular. They then looked at their data to determine the total amount of chocolates in the box. Students then used their knowledge of money and skip counting to identify how much money would be raised if the whole box was sold.
Year One did a wonderful job at the Charleville Performing Arts Festival, placing third for their song and second in their poem ‘Laddies and Jelly Spoons’. We are fortunate to have such a talented group of Year Ones! An extra big shout out to Jan, Jaxson, Maddie, Meg, Patrick, and Lacie, for their performance in solo verse speaking and duo speaking. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank one of our fabulous School Officers, Taylah Short. Taylah supported not only the Year One poem and song, she also dedicated her own time to help our solo and duo performers. We are extremely lucky to have such an amazing School Officer.
Year One strutted their stuff for Book Week! There were some FABULOUS costumes. It was great to see every student bring their books to life. During Book Week, we also had The Australian Army Band visit. Students had a fabulous time.
Thanks for your continued support. Please contact me if you have any queries or concerns.
Courtney
Year 2 News
Wow! What a busy fortnight we have had!
Our visit from the Australian Army band was a wonderful break in our busy week to enjoy some fantastic music and bust some moves! The students loved the visit from Alex Glenn and Justin Hodges, who came to talk to us about the importance of attending school, working together and inspiring all children to achieve their dreams.
Book week parade was very exciting and students came in some very impressive costumes – thank you for being part of this. Charleville Performing Arts Festival has brought on a very busy week last week and it was amazing to see the talent we have in our school and wider community! Congratulations to everyone who entered over the week. Year 2 was awarded a gold medal for their song ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ and a bronze medal for their poem ‘Gran can you rap?’.
We have our prayer assembly coming up this week on Thursday. Come along if you can, to see what we have been learning this term. 😊 Student free day on Friday 2nd September.
Year 3 News
Wow! With the St. Mary’s Disco, Brisbane Army Band, Book Week and the Charleville Performing Arts Festival we have definitely been busy!
Throughout these events we have continued our exciting learning about the rotation of the Earth in science, the importance of Country and Place in HASS, different types of poetry in English, and telling the time and 3D shapes in Maths.
Please add our Year 3 Poetry night to your calendars- Wednesday 14th September!
Year 4/5 News
Year 5/6 News
What a busy fortnight we have had at St Mary’s!
We have been so focused in 5/6, writing our very own news reports on the first moon landing!
In our HASS unit this term, we have been enjoying learning about migration and are currently learning about one of our favourite authors, Anh Do!
In science, we have created some AMAZING diagrams of our solar system and have moved onto learning about Earth's tectonic plates and how natural disasters occur! We can’t wait to take our science knowledge and apply it within design to create some 3D dioramas!
Last week was an absolute dream! We enjoyed singing with the Australian Army Band and dressing up for Book Week. Thank you, Mrs Sheehan and Mrs Short, for always providing us with intriguing new books in the library!
Later in the week, we took part in the Charleville Performing Arts Festival where we smashed it… receiving gold in both our chorale and verse speaking performances. We were also awarded the ‘Outstanding Verse Speaking Group’ for 2022! How cool is that 😊
Until next time,
Miss Morrison and the Year 5/6 Crew.
Parents & Friends Association
September Birthdays
Milla Winks, Elsa Huynh, Jaxson Elliott, Shane O'Connor, Remi Walton, Lacy Orupe, Rowdy Williams, Ari Thompson, Alec McKellar, Iris Metcalf, Heath Watts, Harry Thomas, Kurt Young, Teddy Metcalf, Eliza Toms, Mrs Johnston, Mr Mulhall, Mrs Phillips, Mr Patterson.
Happy birthday to all students and staff who celebrate their birthday in September.