29th March 2023

Principal - Mrs Katrina Dunne

Welcome to our last newsletter for Term 1. This year is shaping up to be an extremely busy one. It is timely to reflect on what extraordinary work is done at St Mary’s School by all our staff, students, and wider community. We are dedicated to improving the social and educational outcomes for our students. Let’s celebrate and share some of the great achievements this term. 

• Reading Improvement Strategy support for teachers through professional development and in the model of coaching and feedback provided by Sue Keefer (Education Officer), Vanessa Alexander (Middle Leader) and Kirsty Lines (APRE/LST). Prep parents, please check your child’s schoolbag at the end of the week for your holiday reading pack to continue working on your child’s skills. Year 1 – Year 6 students are also encouraged to borrow holiday readers to continue reading over the holiday break. Reading for 20 minutes per day is recommended over the entire school break.
• Essential Skills for Classroom Management and Berry Street Education Model professional development for teachers, classrooms and students has seen an improvement in overall classroom behaviour and successful implementation of high standards of behaviour to support and develop a caring and safe environment for our students. At St Mary’s School, we base our actions and words on the Mercy values of Excellence, Justice, Compassion and Hospitality at all times.
• The Grounds and Classrooms have received a long-awaited face-lift over the Christmas break and throughout this term. Classroom refurbishments including classroom teaching walls, new student desks, new floor coverings and blinds have now been installed in each classroom. Beau Inkpen from Gums and Roses has volunteered countless hours, along with our groundsman, John, to have our playground and gardens looking outstanding.

Prep 2024

We encourage families who may have a child eligible for Prep in 2024 to ensure an enrolment application has been submitted through the online application process (link can be found on our school website). Children who are born between 1/07/2018 to 30/06/2019 are eligible to enrol for Prep 2024.

School Fees

Term 1 school fees are due! It is imperative that all families meet their financial commitment to the school by paying their fees in a timely manner. Not only is regular payment of fees a condition of enrolment, but school fees are also a major source of income for our school. Your prompt payment allows our school to meet financial commitments including our staffing model for 2023. Thank you to all our families who have paid their fees for this term.

Staff announcements

We welcome Miss Ashleigh Harding to our school staff next term as the Health and Physical Education teacher. Miss Harding is known to many of our families and wider community, as a former teacher at Charleville State High School and local coach/committee member of a range of social sporting groups in our town. Ashleigh looks forward to developing her professional skills and experience as she dives into teaching in a primary school setting. She will also teach the students at St Patrick’s School in Mitchell. Please join me in welcoming Ashleigh to our staff and school community.

On Tuesday, the students had their last PE lesson with Mrs Angela Stirton. Our school is extremely grateful to have had Mrs Stirton relieve in the PE role until a successful recruit was obtained for the remainder of the year. We wish her all the best with upcoming surgeries and look forward to having her back in a relief capacity throughout the year. Cheers to a great term, Mrs Stirton, including a successful cross country and colour run event last week. Please join me in thanking Ange for her commitment to our school this term. 

We farewell Nicholas Whatling, Instrumental Music teacher, at the end of this term. Nicholas is relocating to Ipswich Grammar School. Our students have enjoyed the instrumental program that Nicholas has been able to offer since 2021 and we thank him for his enthusiasm and passion that he shared with our students. We wish you all the best, Nicholas.

Term 1 concludes Thursday 30^th March and resumes Tuesday 18^th April 2023.

Toowoomba Catholic Schools Office approves two travel days per year for St Mary’s School. This year, these days are scheduled for Friday 31^st March and Friday 1^st December 2023. Students will not attend school on these days. Monday 17^th April is a Staff Professional Development day, therefore Term 2 will resume for students on Tuesday 18^th April.

Have a wonderful break everyone,

Cheers

Katrina

APRE News - Mrs Kirsty Lines

Easter Mass times

Please see below the dates and times for all Masses over the Easter season.  You and your family are most welcome to attend these masses / ceremonies.  I particularly recommend students & their families involved in the Sacramental program try to attend one of these ceremonies.

Prayer Assemblies

Thank you to Yr 1, who have been learning about the Gifts God gave them, for their beautiful prayer assembly on Friday.  It’s not easy to present a wonderful prayer assembly after running cross country, but they did it!!  Please keep an eye out for our prayer assembly times for Term 2 in our first newsletter of the term.

Thank you for a wonderful Term 1

It’s hard to believe we are nearly finished another term.  Easter is a wonderful time of the year, a time of new life and second chances!  I invite our students and their families to reflect on this over the holidays, and come back in Term 2 ready to tackle any new challenges after a restful break. 

God bless,

Kirsty Lines

APRE

Learning Support News - Mrs Belinda Phillips

Welcome to our final newsletter for Term 1. The Leadership Team have analysed all the data from the Term 1 reading data capture. This has given us valuable information around the areas which each student requires further support or extension including specific decoding areas, vocabulary, literal and inferred comprehension concepts. Understanding this information helps us to group students appropriately into specific reading intervention groups based on their abilities and needs.

With the Easter holidays coming up, it’s a great reminder that we can all take on a little role in supporting our child’s development, even at home! Please try to listen to your child read over the holidays, and don’t forget to ask them questions about what they have read. Even a simple Who, What, Where, When, Why, How?  approach can be enough to get your child thinking about what they have read.

Auslan Sign

This week our Auslan sign is

Easter.

Using your index and middle finger, run your fingers from the back of your left hand to the tip of the fingers.

Wishing you all a wonderful Easter break.

Belinda Phillips

Curriculum News - Mrs Vanessa Alexander

Library News - Mrs Michelle Sheehan

Book Fair – It’s A Wrap

A big thank you to Michelle Ebsworth, Ash Pezet, Ange Stirton, Vanessa Alexander, Row Winks, Steph Nixon, Katrina Lehmann, Aimee Thompson and Bec Tickell for being part of our Book Fair sales team.

Love how well the Year 5/6 class and the Preps worked together completing their wish list.

More winners from our term reading competition each selected a book from either Book Fair or Book Club as their prize. Absent from photos are Nicholas, Grace, Laura, Meg and Mia.

It is important that students continue reading over the holidays, so we will be enabling students to borrow extra books this week.

Happy Holidays!!!

Alice and Michelle

The Arts News - Mrs Leilani Thomas

The Arts

Wow! There goes term 1 flown by incredibly fast! We have been getting messy in the Arts room getting our assessment ready. Maybe you haven’t noticed because the lovely P&F bought us a set of smocks. Here is Year One showing them off! They also bought us a classroom sink so we don’t have to ferry water in buckets. I can not thank you all enough for fundraising to make such wonderful changes to our teaching and learning. What a HUGE difference it has made! What do you think?

Our Preps to Year 2 are ending the term on the page ‘my heart is full of hope’ creating forests using perspective and proportion. Super tricky but a wonderful message to end on. As I mentioned last newsletter we have been looking at identifying emotions and how they feel in our bodies, and exploring strategies to support regulation. One of our favourite songs at the moment is ‘The Breathing Song’ by Narwhal and the Waterfalls. You can find it on Spotify or Youtube (with actions!). It’s a great song you can sing at home with different breathing styles and includes some of our favourite strategies for regulation – breathing! 
Youtube: The Breathing Song (Lyrics Video) | SEL Song for Kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoEqvoMoZsQ

Year 3 & 4 are finishing up their boardgames! Combining visual arts and media they have created games, cards, dice, spinners, tokens/players and more, using a variety of design elements and principles we have been exploring so far this year. I can’t wait to share their games with you all. Students have all been working incredibly hard, and they are looking stella! Here the year 3’s explored a fun technique of transferring colour using streamers to create the backgrounds of their games.

Year 5 and 6 have been working on a self portrait project, not a true portrait of self, but rather how they wish others perceive them. When finishing our colour-wheel eyes we explored some techniques to give the illusion of perspective and proportion which we are integrating into our portraits. Here are a couple of examples. Once we get a splash of colour on them they will be uploaded into the computer for us to get creative in our digital learning space. I can’t wait!

Choir

This week our choir did a surprise performance, performing Tim Minchin’s ‘Naughty’ from Matilda the Musical, for the school to kick us off for the final week of term.  I will leave you with one of our favourite lyrics from the song:

[…] if you haven't got a fairy to fix it
Sometimes you have to make a little bit of mischief!

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 27^th – 31^st 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 Trials 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 Trials in Cairns  on the  18th - 21st May.  
• Good Luck to Sienna Baldwin, Taylah Thureson, Sophie Tickell, Isabelle Crisp, Riley Sullivan  were selected in the Charleville and District Netball 10 - 12 years team and will be competing in Charleville on Wednesday 29th March.  good luck to these girls
• A big congratulations goes to Millie Williams as she competed at the State Trials for Aquathlon in February - well done Millie

We wish all the students the best of luck with their upcoming trials.

Prep News - Miss Imogen Hunt

Hip Hip Hooray!!!! We have almost survived our first term in Prep.

The last few weeks have been busy completing assessment.

We completed our digital technology assessment by exploring different software and what devices we might find in our world. Students designed and then created a piece of technology. Take a look at some of the designs. Then students were given the task of role playing with these devices. It was fabulous to see students' creativity come to life.

We were very excited to retell the story of ‘Who Sank the Boat'. Students worked in groups and individually to retell the main events of what happened in the story. It was wonderful to see the partnerships within our classroom for all students to be successful.

We also have been taking 'popping in our bubble' very seriously when lining up to head to lunch.

What a wonderful end to week 9 with the cross country and the colour run. Students and teachers had a blast. It was marvellous to see Prep students working with 5/6 buddies to complete the colour run. It is amazing to see the bonds they are creating. Congratulations to the students who were successful in gaining ribbons on Friday.

Thanks,

Imogen Hunt

Year 1 News - Mrs Bernie McPhee

What a busy couple of weeks it has been at St Mary’s. In Year 1 we have been working on our oral language skills, by practising mini skits/plays from one of the Julia Donaldson books we have been studying. Students have been working on their expression and different voices, some even added some sound effects.

We have spent some time with our buddies. First we made different dinosaurs with shapes, which was lots of fun and then we got to hang out in the Cobb & Co and learnt a couple of new games. We learnt to play “Fly”, which is a running and jumping game and a Rock, Paper, Scissors game, which involved jumping in hoops and then doing rock, paper, scissors. We have really enjoyed working with our Year 4 buddies this term.

Some of our amazing Park creations are finished. We are very proud of them. They will be coming home sometime this week.

I have to say that I am super proud of all of Year 1 for the fantastic job they did at presenting at Prayer Assembly. They were so brave, spoke so clearly and sang beautifully. The students who were away on Friday still need to take some credit as they helped us practise over the last couple of weeks.

Friday was a very exciting day for us with the cross country, Prayer assembly and the colour run. Watching all students have a go at their cross-country distance was super exciting. They were so enthusiastic to do their run and ran so well! Congratulations to all students for doing your best!

Finally, was the very FUN Colour Run! Nothing like being coloured by your teachers, completing an obstacle course with our buddies and generally having a great time!

Year 2 News - Miss Holly Price

Happy week 10 everyone!

A huge congratulations and thank you to all year 2 students for their massive effort this term – we are off to a great start to the year. I would also like to thank all parents and carers for their support and cooperation to assist in their child’s educational growth.

Over the last two weeks, we have been finalising assessment tasks and revising topics focused on over the term. We have also had a few surprise visitors to our classroom – photos are attached below. Toward the end of week 10 students will have their well-deserved class reward of a movie session and free dress day.

I encourage all students to continue reading for 10 minutes every day over the holidays to continue their wonderful growth. I wish everyone a safe and happy Easter break and look forward to seeing you all at the beginning of term 2!

Kind regards,

Miss Holly Price 😊

Year 3 News - Miss Katherine Spalding

Thank you to all the wonderful parents, grandparents and supporters who came to our prayer assembly. We had so much fun preparing and were very grateful to share our work with you all.

I am very proud of the massive effort the year three students put into their NAPLAN. Over Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of week eight, the students completed their writing, reading, language conventions and mathematic tests. It only seemed fitting to celebrate the end of a big week with Zooper Doopers (for their super dooper work).

Last week we were also lucky enough to be part of the Vicki Wilson netball clinic. Vicki taught us how to exercise and have fun and the importance of sportsmanship. The students were able to take these valuable lessons to the cross country and support each other as they ran their races.

As the term comes to a close, I want to thank everyone who has made my move and first term in Charleville so wonderful! Wishing you all a safe holiday and looking forward to the remaining year ahead!

Year 4 News - Miss Taylor Morrison

Week 10, WOW has this term gone fast. I am so proud of all the progress made in Year 4 already this year.

Over the last fortnight, we were lucky enough to participate in a netball clinic with Vicky Wilson. We gained some wonderful skills and showed incredible teamwork.

As Year 1 and Year 4 have been doing some work with shapes, we had a great time in buddies, designing our own dinosaurs using 2D shapes.

Book Fair! Oh, how we love Book Fair. Students enjoyed getting to create their wish lists.

Here is a little insight into the kind of Brain Breaks we get up to in Year 4. During this one, we attempted to draw a picture while balancing it on our heads.

Check out our awesome PowerPoint presentations on a chosen country from Africa or South America that we created in HASS.

What a wonderful term we have had. Enjoy the holidays everyone and we will see you in Term 2.

Warm regards,
Miss Morrison and the Year 4 Crew.

Year 5/6 News - Ms Amy Halliday

5/6 have had so many special treats in the last week or two! We had a fabulous netball skills clinic, and everyone had an exceptionally good time. We also undertook cross country and the colour run – which is always a winner.

In other learning areas, we have been studying Digital Systems – and are now looking at user interfaces and what common elements make them easy to use and popular. We will be studying angle, line, 2D shapes and nets in this last week of school. English should be fun as we finalise our paragraphs and create our BTN style recordings.

It is our last week of term and we have accomplished a great deal. As leaders we will be working hard to the last minute and will assist others to do the same.

Tuckshop News - Mrs Betty Couch

TUCKSHOP URGENTLY NEEDS HELPERS - this Thursday -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

March Birthdays

Flyers