15th March 2023
Principal
Welcome to Week 8!
Did you have an opportunity to read our Annual Action Plan focus areas in last fortnight’s newsletter? If you missed it, I have mentioned them again below. If you would like further clarification of how this impacts our school and/or your child’s education, please arrange a meeting to catch up or give me a call to discuss. I would appreciate all feedback from our families to ensure that we have clarity of our journey this year.
Annual Action Plan 2023
Key focus areas for our school this year include:
- Engaged students, personalised learning:
- Mathematics curriculum planning, teaching and assessment for Prep – Year 6
- Essential Skills for Classroom Management – profiler training for all classroom teachers
- Implementation of Berry Street Education Model across the school (including an update of the St Mary’s Behaviour Policy)
- Being distinctively catholic
- Align schoolwide social emotional and behaviour systems to create Learning Dispositions at St Mary’s School
- Staying on mission
- Clarity of the Annual Action Plan for students and school community
- Increase parent engagement and seek parent/student feedback to inform school improvement through the parent and student lens.
- Collective efficacy and Using resources wisely
- Developing a culture of care for all staff including goal setting and weekly meetings for intentional planning with teachers and leadership staff.
Parent-Teacher Interviews
Teachers have commenced parent-teacher interviews before and after school this week. I strongly encourage all parents/carers to take this opportunity to engage with your child’s teacher and attend a parent-teacher interview to discuss your child’s achievement, effort and behaviour. Some questions that might guide your enquiries during the interview include:
- 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?
Reading Everyday is the St Mary’s Way!
Although the life of a parent is often hectic, you should try to read with your child at least once a day at a regularly scheduled time. Don't be discouraged if you skip a day or don't always keep to your schedule. Did you know that by reading for twenty minutes each day, your child will be exposed to reading approximately 1, 800, 000 words per school year!
School Contact Process
This year, we have implemented the Parent Portal for communication between home and school. Please know that you are welcome to phone or email the school for all queries. Below is a guide for your convenience.
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 fabulous fortnight.
Cheers,
Katrina
School Fees
When paying your school fees - Please quote your personal CHA (number) as your reference.
Bank Details
Account Name - St Mary's Primary School Charleville
BSB - 064 786
Account No - 100025079
If you or your child's contact details change throughout the year - please don't forget to update your details on Parent Portal.
Please ensure your child's belongings are labelled
APRE News
Sacramental Program
This Friday, March 17th, our students who have elected to take part in the Parish students their Reconciliation work books are due to Mrs Lines Thursday, 16th March. We wish our students taking part all the best as they begin their Sacramental journey.
Prayer Assemblies
Congratulations to our Prep students, who, along with their Year 5/6 buddies, presented a very meaningful prayer assembly on Friday March 10th about forgiveness. We look forward to seeing Yr 3 & Yr 1 perform their prayer assemblies in the coming weeks – please note Yr 3’s assembly will be Friday, March 17, and Yr 1’s assembly will be Friday, March 24th, at our last assembly of the term.
Easter Remembrance
Our whole school Easter Remembrance will take place in Term 2 – on Friday, 21st April in the Performing Arts Hall at 11:05am. A quick whole school assembly will take place afterwards. We’d love to see as many parents, grandparents and St Mary’s Parish members there – spread the word!!
As we begin the journey in earnest to Easter, (and the school holidays!), wishing you peace and rest in the next two weeks.
God bless,
Kirsty Lines
APRE
Curriculum News
Dear Families,
A busy race to the end of Term One with lots of events happening.
The question I pose to families this week is: What strategies do you use to support your child with reading or spelling new and/or unfamiliar words at home? Please send your responses to vanessa.alexander@twb.catholic.edu.au. There is a free coffee voucher available to the first five parents to respond to this question by Friday 24th March.
NAPLAN
NAPLAN is a national test that takes place across the country in years 3, 5, 7 & 9. The test collects national data about how students across the country are progressing in writing, reading, language conventions (spelling & grammar), and numeracy. St Mary’s Year 3 and Year 5 students will participate in the testing this week on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. An information letter was sent home to parents earlier in the term and if you have any questions about the NAPLAN test, please contact our school office during office hours.
Family & Teacher Conferences
Invitations have been sent home to families about conferences with your child/ren’s teachers. Please use this time to meet with them to gain an understanding of your child/ren’s learning journey. This is an opportunity for families to ask questions about learning, social interactions, and any other specific information that will support their child/ren in the classroom and in the playground.
Wellbeing
Last newsletter I spoke about the importance of nurturing our wellbeing and I gave some examples of the things I do. But to be totally honest, sometimes these don’t work and I still find myself sinking down into the depths of darkness. I know it sounds ridiculous but giving myself time to wallow in that place and give the kids a device while the baby sleeps and I just nap or read a book is totally ok. Sure, I could have done all the washing and probably had dinner and the lunchboxes ready. But here’s the thing, I don’t do that all the time and most of the time I will use that time to get “stuff” done – but sometimes I just need time out. And you know, after that, I did feel much better. A big shout out to our partners out there who often support us by sharing the doing of “stuff”.
Library News
Congratulations to our first six winners who received their book prize in our 'Take Time to Read Everyday' Competition.
Book Club Due Thursday 16th March
Book Fair is happening next week.
Tuesday 21st March
2:15 – 3:15 pm
Late Night Shopping 5:00pm – 6:00pm
Wednesday 22nd & Thursday 23rd March
8:00 - 9:00 am
2:15 – 3:15 pm
Parent helpers required, sign up roster available in the office or email preference to michelle.sheehan@twb.catholic.edu.au
See you at Book Fair
Michelle & Alice
Learning Support News
I am very excited to be on campus this week. I look forward to getting to work with teachers and students in person this week. This week, we have Rachel Crooke our visiting Occupational Therapist visiting for 2 days from TCSO. She will be visiting each classroom to complete some general observations of the classes and how well the students have settled in to their new year level.
During my campus visit this week we will also conduct our NCCD school team meeting where we will review our school’s NCCD (Nationally Consistent Collection of Data) for students with disabilities collation from 2022 and begin gathering our data for 2023.
Our Auslan sign for this newsletter continues with emotions:
anger/angry
1. Hand starts cupped in front of your tummy. 2. Bring your hand up and open the hand out as it comes up. Y
I look forward to seeing everyone around the school this week!
Belinda Phillips
The Arts News
It’s hard to believe the end of the term is so very close but we have been extremely busy bees! Our Preppies, Year 1 and Year 2 continue looking at creating strategies for regulation and how Arts can support us on our journeys to self-regulation. Our emotion this week was anger, and we created explosions using our most effective strategy: Breathing! Check out our wonderful explosions:
Check out Year 2’s finished colour wheel lions!
Our upper school had their regular lessons disrupted by a creative brainwave, as we came up with a timely idea to create Stations of the Cross to decorate the school! I cannot wait to share these with you all; they are stunning! Keep your eyes peeled for these.
Sport News
Congratulations to the following students who have been chosen to represent the school at the following sports -
- Charlie Peart has made the 10 – 12 years Cricket South West team to compete at the State Carnival at Rockhampton on 27th – 31st March - well done Charlie
- Addison Itzstein, Harry Thomas, Charlie Sullivan, Malakai Thompson have qualified for the South West Swimming Team and will be competing at the Swimming State Championships that will be held at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre, Chandler - 26th - 28th March - congratulations to these students
- Harry Thomas has been selected in the South West 10 - 12 years Touch team and will compete at the Touch State Championships in Cairns on the 18th - 21st May.
- Good luck to the students who are competing in the Charleville & District Trials on Tuesday 14th March for Netball and Rugby League
We wish all the students the best of luck with their upcoming trials.
Prep News
What a massive two weeks it has been for our Preps.
We presented our first ever prayer assembly last Friday about Jesus forgiving a woman. Prep should be very proud of themselves for getting up on stage and presenting this. They were superstars.
In science we have been looking at the world around us. To extend our learning we looked at a nature scavenger hunt. Students were very interested in wondering what they could find. We kick started our assessment by planting our chives heads. Fingers crossed we can care for our plants and take them home at the end of the term.
In math we have been exploring how tall we can make things and counting how wide or high we can make it. From this, students started exploring 2D shapes and where they can find them in the world around us.
In English we have been exploring sequencing. Students were very interested in remembering the story of ‘Hattie and the fox’. From this students were able to provide a retell of the story and check for themselves if they had it in the right sequence.
Please see our photos below
Thanks,
Imogen Hunt
Year 1 News
Over the last week, we have been busy learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives to make our writing more interesting. We have also been learning several strategies to do addition. Students are really doing well when adding numbers using a number line.
In Geography and Design and Technology, we have been learning about the features of places and whether they are natural, managed or built features. We have designed our own parks labelling the features we would like to see in a park. The plans are looking wonderful. See the photos below. We are looking forward to actually making these parks with all the boxes that have been donated.
Last week we were lucky to have Mrs Lines visit with us and help us write about our gifts/talents. She also helped us change our sacred place.
A few lucky children have earnt 50 or 100 points and have chosen to spend the day with one of our Bilbies. They have also taken them home for a night and had adventures together.
Year 2 News
Year 2 have made some amazing models of butterfly or frog lifecycles using play dough! We have also been writing information reports to explain each stage in these lifecycles.
Over the next few weeks we are going to explore the lifecycle of turtles, as interest has peaked since Tiddles the turtle has joined our room!
Our focus in math for the next fortnight is 2D and 3D shapes, identifying edges, corners and sides. In HASS we are exploring Charleville in deeper detail and in Science we are observing our growing grass heads.
Parent-Teacher meetings will commence in week 9 (Monday 20th March – Friday 24th March). Please feel free to send a message via Parent Portal to book a time.
Year 3 News
In year three we have been continuing our science investigation into living and non-living things. As a class we have been fascinated by all the preying mantis that have been in our environment. This has been the inspiration for our research. We hope to learn how to support a preying mantis and create a safe habitat for one in our classroom.
We have also been very busy preparing for our prayer assembly. In preparation, we have been learning about Moses leaving Egypt and the 10 commandments. We have also learnt about Jesus teaching the beatitudes and how we can have a blessed life. We invite everyone to join us this Friday as we share our learnings on assembly!
We kindly ask that you keep us, (and the year 5’s), in mind this week as we complete our NAPLAN tests this week!
Lots of busy work ahead as we prepare for the end of the term.
Year 4 News
Year 5/6 News
5/6 do not muck around and it has been a whirlwind fortnight! We certainly know how to accomplish a thing or two in a short space of time. We have been reviewing our knowledge of decimal fractions in order to move on, over the next two weeks, into addition and subtraction of decimals. Year 5/6 also put in a lot of time with our Prep buddies preparing a lovely Prayer Assembly. We were so impressed by Prep as it was their first prayer assembly, and they did an amazing job.
In other learning areas, we have been studying Digital Systems - looking at the transmission of data over networks. We will be progressing to digital realities and user interfaces which should spark some great ideas and discussion.
We are heading into the end of term and Year 5/6 are leaders who will be modelling how to finish a term strong. As a team we will make it our focus to build each other up and maintain the high standards of learning and Mercy Values we have modelled throughout the term.
Tuckshop News
TUCKSHOP URGENTLY NEEDS HELPERS on the following dates - 10.03.2023, 24.03.2023 & 30.03.2023
The food on our menu is prepared in our kitchen for your children using fresh fruit and vegetables. The children love the biscuits and muffins that have hidden fruit or vegetables in them.
For tuckshop to continue I need your help one day every term. Please contact the school office to register or the class teacher.
Thanks to the parents who assist.
A reminder to families to use the new tuckshop menu for this year which is on the Parent Portal and also in this newsletter.
P & F News
The P & F AGM will be held on Monday 20 March commencing at 5:30pm in the Cobb & Co Hall. All positions will become vacant. Please attend and support our wonderful school.
March Birthdays
Olivia Itzstein, Coen Wright, Audrey Balkin, Laura Halliday-Inkpen, Walter Cameron, PJ Pezet, Eloise Price, Lexi Tickell, Jock Winks, Rosie Ballard, Hope Castles, Billie Doolan, Ella Owen, Kaylee Tait, Betty Thomas, Regan White, Mrs Hampel, Mr Lambourne, Mrs Lines.
Happy birthday to all students and staff who celebrate their birthday in March.