Term 3 - Week 4 / 3rd August 2023

Principal - Ms Katrina Dunne

Healthy Lunchboxes

A healthy lunchbox is essential for children’s overall health, growth and well-being. We acknowledge that there are a lot of school days to pack lunchboxes! If you are like me, I am guessing that you dread packing lunchboxes? They are just another thing on the never-ending to do list of the administration of family life. But what if we changed our mindset around lunchboxes? What if instead of thinking of lunchboxes as a nuisance, we thought about them as a gift for our children? They’re a gift because the food we pack for their lunch has the power to nourish their body and brain and help with their learning. Of course, this really depends on the quality of the items we pack in their lunchboxes. See the ‘5 Steps To Pack a Healthy Lunchbox’ below. Print it off and stick it on the fridge! Get your children involved in packing their lunchboxes too! It’s a great reminder to also ask our children, ‘Did you have enough food today?’

Shaping Our Future Survey

With only a few days left to share your views and shape our future, we encourage parents to complete the Shaping Our Future – Toowoomba Catholic Schools perception survey. As a community of Catholic schools together, TCSO strives to create places of work and learning where everyone belongs, feels valued and succeeds. If you are yet to share your thoughts, I invite you to complete this survey before Sunday, 6 August 2023.

Prep Enrolments 2024

Does your child turn 5 by 30^th June 2024? Enrolment interviews for Prep 2024 will take place in Week 8 of this term. Please contact Deidre or Loretta in the school office to arrange an appointment for an enrolment interview. Our Mini-Mary’s pre-prep program will be held in Term 4.

Have a fabulous fortnight,

Cheers

Katrina

Date Claimers

APRE - Mrs Kirsty Lines

Assumption of Mary

On Tuesday, August 15, we will celebrate the Assumption of Mary as a school with Mass.  Did you know the Assumption is one of the last Holy Days of Obligation on the liturgical calendar?  It is also our Parish Feast Day!  What a wonderful opportunity to celebrate Mary, mother of Jesus and our fantastic parish of St Mary’s.  This is also a very exciting opportunity for Year Four, with Year 5/6 being on camp, to lead our school in prayer.  We would love to see you there to support our students and celebrate our parish, and of course, Mary.

Sacramental Program

We were so excited to welcome Bishop Ken Howell to our school last week!  Bishop Howell made a special point of popping in on Yr 4, where most of our Sacramental candidates were and meeting the children.  The Bishop’s office has confirmed Confirmation will take place on Sunday, August 13 during Mass at 9am.  We’d love to see everyone there to support our students as they are confirmed.  Please see photos below of the Bishop’s visit.

Catholic Education Week

Thank you to everyone who came and supported our students and school as we celebrated Catholic Education week!  We are truly blessed to have such a supportive community!  Please see photos below.

Thank you

Lastly, I would be remiss not to say thank you to Taylor Morrison and Amy Halliday, both of whom filled in for me whilst I was on leave.  And a big thank you to our fearless leader, Katrina Dunne and wonderful staff for all their support! 

Wishing you a blessed fortnight,

Kirsty Lines

APRE

Learning Support News - Mrs Belinda Phillips

What a wonderful week I had last week while on campus. It was great to work with class teachers and see the fantastic work that is happening in each classroom to support students in literacy and mathematics.

Last week, we were also lucky enough to have our new Guidance Counsellor, Jesse Kupper on campus. I will be working closely with Jesse to identify students who might benefit from his support. We will also be exploring some more whole-class Tier 1 supports to put in place based on student needs. After being without a Guidance Counsellor for quite some time, we are very excited to have Jesse join our team.

The Auslan sign for this newsletter is:

Have

Have a great week.

Belinda Phillips

Curriculum News - Mrs Vanessa Alexander

Announcing the implementation of the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum 

Throughout this term, our school will be implementing the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum with all students. The curriculum is based on principles of best practice in child safety education and centres around three key messages: Recognise, React and Report.

Through a series of lessons, students will learn how to recognise, react and report when they are unsafe or find themselves in situations that can have a significant detrimental effect on their physical, psychological or emotional wellbeing.  

Information about the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum can be found at https://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/stages-of-schooling/daniel-morcombe

Eat a Rainbow of Fruits and Vegetables

Library - Mrs Michelle Sheehan

This term we will be celebrating Book Week (19th – 25th August) - Yay!

Each year since 1945 the CBCA (The Children’s Book Council of Australia) has organised Book Week, which essentially is a book competition celebrating books by Australian children’s authors and illustrators.

We have been exploring the theme, “Read Grow Inspire” in our library lessons, with students in every class initially uncovering the theme by either completing a 15, 30, 50 or 75 piece online jigsaw puzzle.

Students in all classes have also completed a Kahoot, an online quiz, all about Book Week. 

Book Character Parade – Tuesday 22nd August in the Cobb & Co Hall. Parents are encouraged to come along and join our celebrations.

On our parade day students, teachers, and parents as well, can come along dressed as a book character. Students are required to bring along the book which inspired their character.

We are all getting very excited about this day as we are being inspired by last year’s photos, which are displayed in the library.

Feel free to pop in and check them out.

Year 3 - Miss Katherine Spalding

A busy start to the term!  

In week one we commemorated NAIDOC week with a variety of activities. We welcomed Alara Geebung to teach us about boomerangs and techniques to throw them effectively. In library, Mrs Sheehan entertained us with an excellent retelling of the dreamtime story of ‘The Giant Dingo Dog’ and worked with our year 2 buddies to create a NAIDOC week mural.  

In week two, we launched deep into our learning this term. In English we have been learning different language features to write an engaging poem. In maths we have been working on our number place value and fractions. In Science we are exploring where our earth is in outer space and in HaSS we have investigated Charleville’s own history. To finish the week, we had a very successful sports carnival! Some fun was had at the ball games station! 

During week three, the whole school celebrated Catholic Education Week. The students demonstrated excellence as they lead the readings and singing during our year 2 and 3 liturgy.  A special thank you to the parents who were able to attend!  

For the term ahead we will continue with lots of exciting learning! Some key dates to note:  

Week 8:                Eat a Rainbow of Fruits and Vegetables: 22nd August  

                                 Performing Arts Festival: 25th and 26th August  

Week 9:                  Pupil Free Day: 1st September  

Week 10:                St Mary's Got Talent: 15th September  

Year 4 - Miss Taylor Morrison

Happy Week 4 everyone!

Year 4 have been busy bees over the past few weeks and are very much enjoying learning about new topics and concepts. This term we will be focusing on imaginative and persuasive texts through a novel study of 'Storm Boy' by Colin Thiele, about a boy and his pelican. Students are absolutely captivated by the story, and we can’t wait to find out what happens next…

Take a look at what else we will be learning about this term:

Mathematics - number patterns and sentences, time, mapping, and data.

Religion - living in community, practices and characteristics of contemporary parishes and dioceses.

HASS – First Fleet, including life in the 18th Century Britain, the Industrial Revolution and the impact colonisation had on Indigenous Australians.

Science: how natural processes and human activity shape their surroundings. Soils, rocks and landscapes, including factors that affect the erosion of soils.

Technologies: the suitability of materials, systems, components, tools and equipment for a range of purposes.     

Throughout Term 3, we will also draw a significant focus to our Mercy Value of Excellence. Excellence calls us to act with courage and try to be our best in all we do. Catherine McAuley once said, 'We must strive to do ordinary things extraordinarily well'. I challenge you all to identify acts of excellence with your children each week this term!

At the beginning of the term, we celebrated NAIDOC Week. We were fortunate enough to have Alara Geebung lead a workshop with us about Indigenous artwork and techniques.

Buddies, oh how we love buddy time! In Term 3 buddy lessons, we will be exploring what a ‘Growth Mindset’ is. Year 4 are experts in this topic as a growth mindset is encouraged every day in our classroom. Therefore, we are taking our knowledge and skills, and teaching the Year 1’s. We enjoyed sharing our thoughts on the ‘Power of Yet’ recently and discussed what skills we cannot do yet but look forward to grasping in the future.

In the spirit of wellbeing, we also had a special visit from ‘Pathways to Resilience’ where we learnt more about our brains and how they work!

Looking forward to another fabulous term together.

Until next time,

Miss Morrison and the Year 4 Crew.  

Year 5/6 - Mrs Amy Halliday

Year 5/6 are having an amazing start to the term with all systems go for learning. We are well into our studies and are back into a learning routine. A large focus of our term is fundraising for and going to camp! We are very close now. Please take the time to look over all the organisational documents.

At our Sports Carnival years 5 and 6 represented their houses and competed well. Everyone pushed themselves out of their comfort zones and I noticed students giving things a red hot go even if they didn’t feel confident. Talk about developing resilience! Our captains did a lovely job in their leadership roles.

Catholic Education Week was a huge success. The buddy group liturgies were a warm, inviting environment where we were able to share and celebrate communities of faith, hope and love. Buddies is always a highlight for our class. Everyone enjoys a song and dance too!

August Birthdays

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