15th February 2023

Principal

2023 has kicked off to be another exciting year at St Mary’s School.  Reflecting on the first four weeks identifies the tremendous work from our students, teachers and school community. A special mention to parents and teachers who prioritised their time for our parent-teacher night. The classroom presentations were a great opportunity to see firsthand what students are doing in their classrooms, gain clarity of the school and classroom expectations and to gather and share a social chat amongst our school community.

The P & F met on Monday 6^th February in the school library. If you would like to be a part of the P & F, please check the Parent Portal calendar for meeting dates and times. If you cannot make a meeting and would like to help by volunteering your time, please contact our P & F President, Mel Doolan.

We look forward to our first Whole School Opening Mass and Student Leadership Induction in the St Mary’s Catholic Church, since 2020. Please join us this Friday for the celebration mass at the Church from 9:00am. This year, we invite parents and families to sit with their children in the Church.

The fortnight ahead…

Swimming

Class swimming commenced this week. We are fortunate to have Mrs Stirton and Mr Winton working with each class each Tuesday. The improvement and rising ability levels of our students is a result of the high-quality program that we offer. Please help us encourage your child to attend as many swimming lessons as possible for the following four weeks. If you are available to help as a spotter or in the pool with students, please contact the school office.

Ash Wednesday

All welcome! 9:00am Wednesday 22^nd February in the church. We would love to see you there.

Tuckshop

Tuckshop continues this year with Mrs Couch. Please have your orders in on Thursday morning. A tuckshop menu is available on the Parent Portal. If you can volunteer on Fridays from 8:30am – 10:30am, please contact your classroom teacher or the school office.  

Parent Engagement… Why? How? We want your input!
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 invite our families into our school to support their children’s learning journey this year. If you have an idea of how we could improve our parent engagement at St Mary’s School, please share this with your classroom teacher or member of staff. We look forward to welcoming parents and carers on our learning journey throughout 2023.

Dates to highlight on your calendar:

NOTE: please see the calendar on the Parent Portal app for up-to-date events throughout the term.

Have a great two weeks,

Katrina Dunne

APRE News

Opening Mass 

Friday February 17^th at 9am

ALL WELCOME!

St Mary’s celebrates our Yr 6 leaders for 2023 and 110 years at our Opening Mass, this Friday, 17^th February at 9am in the church.  We would love to see as many parents, grandparents, family members and friends there as possible!

This year we are trying something new – parents, grandparents, etc will be able to sit with their children / grandchildren etc during the mass.  Usually, this is just for Grandparents' Day liturgy, however with this arrangement being so successful the decision has been made to enable this to happen in all masses/liturgies during the year.  We’d love any feedback so please feel free to email me: kirsty.lines@twb.catholic.edu.au or ring 46541638.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday – such a special time for our Yr 6 students, receiving their badges!

Sacramental Program

Our Sacramental program for 2023 is up and running with eligible students receiving their Reconciliation booklets and information around our program.  Reconciliation for candidates will be Friday, March 17, 9:30am in the church.  This is a private ceremony with just the candidates’ families in attendance.

It was fantastic to see some of our students at Mass on the weekend!  Please see pictures below of our students helping with offertory. 

Ash Wednesday – the beginning of Lent

On Wednesday, 22 February, at 9am, our school with mark the start of Lent with an Ash Wednesday liturgy in the church, at 9am.  Fr Peter will be away – Sr Elizabeth and I will lead students and staff in prayer.  We welcome all parents, grandparents, family members and friends to come along to receive the ashes and mark the beginning of a special time of reflection. 

In the busyness of the start of the term, wishing you peace and happiness in the coming fortnight.

God bless,

Kirsty Lines

APRE

Curriculum News

Dear Families,

Last week I shared with you how important it is to let yours and other’s light shine, and to be aware that our actions and words aren’t blowing out these lights. The spark that resides in us all is to be acknowledged and cherished.

This week I would like to share with you some information about supporting your child with reading at home. The Queensland Education Department have kindly shared some short and clearly demonstrated videos. Please, I encourage you to explore these videos (25 in total) as they explain and demonstrate the learning to read process for families and how you can support learning to read at home. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgjv5epyrnQCffe4OU-owSsONVK_qZIIF

I would also like to acknowledge the work Belinda Smith from The Root Cause has done with our staff, families and students in our school and our community over the last week. Please look for a flyer in your child’s school bag and register to the Family Gold Pass. This is a free service to support you, our families, on your own food journey. For more information: https://therootcause.com.au/

Library News

We have been discussing our Term 1 reading theme in our library lessons, highlighting the importance of reading every day along with the scientifically proven mind and body health benefits of reading.

To foster our term reading theme we are giving away 30+ books – YEAH!

Students must respond ‘read every day’ when ‘take time to’ is spoken to receive an entry into our competition.

A big thank you to all for making Library Lovers’ Day so amazing!

Thanks to our many parents and students for ensuring that borrowing is happening each week at St Mary’s.

Alice and Michelle

Learning Support News

What a wonderful week I had on campus last week. It was so lovely to see how our students have grown and the positive attitude which they are already applying to their learning and culture of the school. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting classes, (in their very fancy new classrooms!), and seeing how each student is settling into an exciting year of learning. This week we begin our reading support intervention sessions. It will be a similar approach to last year’s reading support whereby Mrs Lines will take students in small groups for guided reading, twice a week. In these guided reading groups, there will be a greater emphasis on developing students’ comprehension skills. Following from this, twice a week, I will have the same small groups for an intensive phonics focus to develop their decoding skills. We look forward to seeing tremendous growth in our readers and developing a love of reading. Small group writing and mathematics intervention will also begin in the next two weeks as students become settled in their classes.

As always, please contact me by email if you would like to chat or ask any questions: Belinda.Phillips@twb.catholic.edu.au

The Auslan sign for this edition is happy. Auslan signs: (https://auslan.org.au/)

HAPPY

Palms of hands clap together then the right hand comes up. Repeat this.

Have a great week!

Belinda Phillips

Learning Support Teacher

The Arts News

ARTS

What a massive fortnight we have had in Arts! We have been diving headfirst into Music, Visual Arts and Media!

We have pulled out the bells and boomwhackers, creating a symphony of fabulous sounds! Boomwhackers are plastic tubes that when hit on another surface play a specific note. We have created melodies, played chords, and had a whole heap of fun exploring concepts of rhythm and pitch.

While in Art we are unpacking mark-making and introducing new techniques. The whole school has started the year with self-portraits, concepts of self and expression. While the upper years have looked at the mathematics of facial proportions and line, the younger years have focused on emotions, line and colour.

Check out our creating in action:

CHOIR

In choir we have been unpacking harmonies and parts, and how we can use them to create depth and texture to our singing. While we have revisited some of our old favourites we have also looked at a new song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, can you guess the song from these lyrics?

Bright colours shining, wonderful and new.

And in the east, the dawn was breaking,

And the world was waking.

Prep News

What an awesome start to our school year. We have experienced many firsts over the last two weeks. Some of these included buddy sessions, assembly, sport lesson and an art lesson. These times have allowed students to see learning through a variety of ways which has been fabulous to witness.

In our afternoon session this week students had to work together to design a city of Charleville. This included use of train tracks, building houses out of Lego and placing living things throughout the town. Students were able to explore concepts of HASS and Science throughout this learning time. It was fabulous seeing all students participate and think more deeply about their learning.

In our Library lesson we experienced the fabulous story telling that Mrs Sheehan creates for our students. This was a story all about the caterpillar and how it would eat all different kind of flowers and grow spots.

Thanks,

Imogen Hunt

Year 1 News

We have been busy earning Dojo points in Year 1. After receiving 50 points, students are eligible to receive a prize. We have students who have been redeeming prizes last week and more this week. Children are choosing to sit on a teacher's chair for the day, having their shoes off for a day (in the classroom only), 10 minutes of free time, the day spent with one of our Bilby friends (soft toy) or small prizes out of the prize box. It’s great to see students working hard to do the right thing.

In Science in week 2, we spent time out in the playground on a “Playground Safari”, looking for what animals we could see in the school yard. We first made some great predictions about what we thought we would see. While outside there was much excitement when we saw lots of different creatures, including lizards, ants, birds, cicada shells and butterflies. Students were great at recording their findings on a map of the school.

We have been lucky to spend time with our Year 4 buddies, when we were learning about emotions.

Please remind students to return their Homework books on Monday so we can stick in the new sheets for this week.

Swimming is starting this week. Please ensure that students wear their swimmers to school on Tuesday morning and that they bring their uniform, spare underwear, a towel and goggles (if they have them).

Year 2 News

Year 2 have been so lucky to have Sister Elizabeth in our room last week to tell us about what school was like when she was a child. Students were very interested to see what was different and what is similar to school life for us today, and they asked many great questions.

We have been doing some hands-on learning in math, focusing on addition and subtraction.

Our prayer assembly is next Friday (24^th February), if you can make it, we would love to see you there!

If you missed our Parent-Information night I have attached all information to Parent Portal.

Have a great week!

Miss Price. 😊

Year 3 News

We are all settled in and learning is a go! In the past fortnight I have been in and out of the classroom completing professional development and it has been so lovely to hear nothing but positive reports from the year three students. 

In the photos attached you will see the early stages of our science investigation. We are observing and discussing the difference between living and non-living things. This discussion has tied in nicely to our HaSS geography unit as we are investigating man- made and natural features of Australia.

As a class we have realised we want to know more about the man-made features in Charleville than the natural. In being new to town, I personally still have a lot to learn about the natural features of this part of the world.

I kindly invite anyone who has knowledge of natural features around us to reach out and share their knowledge (whether it be of native plants, waterways or habitats supporting wildlife). We are extremely curious! 

Year 4 News

Welcome to a new fortnight St Mary’s community!

We are having so much fun in Year 4.

In English, we are thoroughly enjoying our class novel, (Malamander), and have been working hard to develop our comprehension skills.

In Math, we are becoming experts with place value!

The Year 4-6 girls enjoyed having St Ursula's here to discuss what boarding would look like in a few years’ time!

We have been exploring the digital world and began working on our coding skills this week.

Looking forward to a wonderful few weeks together! 

Warm regards,

Miss Morrison and the Year 4 Crew.

Year 5/6 News

This fortnight has been very busy as we start to get into the swing of our learning routines. Students are putting in a huge effort and producing quality work. I would like to use this forum to publicly advise parents their child has earnt an extra scoop of ice-cream for dessert!

There has been a lot of sport, sport and more sport! This fits in well with our Habits for Healthy Living Unit. PE with Mrs Stirton is a huge treat, and students are engaging in some excellent mobility and fitness training.  We also enjoyed some great results from students who represented our school in a variety of different fields!

As Year 5/6 students, we have a huge responsibility to model positive play skills and students are taking on this leadership role in the playground and around the school in several ways. Our Prep students love buddies with our class and other grades enjoy playing ball games with the big kids on the oval. Keep up the fantastic work Team 5/6.

Tuckshop News

Thank you for the parent volunteers on Friday mornings. I am still in need of volunteers in the tuckshop even if it's only 1 Friday a term. Please contact admin at St. Mary's School if you can help.

The food on the menu is home baked where possible. The muffins and biscuits are a healthier alternative with the incorporation of either fruit or vegetables.

Thanks,

Betty

Tuckshop coordinator. 

P & F News

February Birthdays

Flyers