3rd March 2022
Principal News
Principal’s Forum Day
Last week, I attended the Principals’ Day online. The day provided an opportunity for principals across the 31 schools in the diocese to come together for professional development and valuable information regarding system initiatives and projects. Some of the key focus points were:
- The 2022-2024 Strategic Plan for TCSO and the flow into school level Strategic Planning with Dr Pat Coughlin
- Reading financial data with Julie Payne
- Updated enrolment procedures with Julie Payne, and
- Primary Principals Association meeting
Annual Action Plan 2022
Key focus areas for our school this year includes:
- Engaged students, personalised learning:
- Graduate teacher induction and mentoring
- Building staff knowledge and skills of Reading Improvement Strategy, Essential Skills for Classroom Management and the Diocesan Learning Portal.
- Development of the whole School Learning Framework and Scope & Sequence for each learning area
- Being distinctively catholic
- Developing mercy charism and understanding of the four pillars (compassion, hospitality, justice, excellence)
- Updating the vision and mission for St Mary’s School, embedding the mercy values
- Staying on mission
- Staff goal setting and professional development support
- Leadership survey and performance review
- Using resources wisely
- Creating a Master Plan 2022 – 2032 with the support of TCSO
- Seeking feedback (through the use of Microsoft Forms) from our school community to improve and maximise student outcomes
Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) – Coordinator: Melinda Phillips 0419 699 201
Outside School Hours Care continues this year at St Mary’s School in the Performing Arts Hall. If you would like to take advantage of this service, please call Melinda Phillips (after 12 noon Monday-Friday) to secure a spot for your child/ren. We are excited to offer this service to our entire community and believe this is a wonderful opportunity to share our school culture with other community members as they experience some time at St Mary’s School.
Vacation Care will be offered this Easter Vacation, please contact Mel to secure care for your child/ren as soon as possible 0419 699 201.
Tuckshop Convenor – required ASAP
We are currently seeking keen applicants for the Tuckshop Convener role. Friday tuckshop will return when we can successfully fill this position. This is a paid position. Contact the office for more information.
P & F 2022
The P & F will meet on Monday 28th February at 3:00pm and Monday 21st March at 5:30pm this term. If you would like to be a part of the P & F, please come along to these meetings. If you cannot attend a meeting and would like to help by volunteering your time, please contact Mel Doolan, Jacqui Tickell, Vanessa Alexander or Michelle Ebsworth.
Welcome to Charleville – P and F are volunteering at this event
You are invited to the Welcome to Charleville celebrations at the Showgrounds on Saturday night. The P and F are providing the slushie and popcorn stall. If you would like to help at this, please let a member of the P and F know. See you there!
Important Dates….
Saturday 5th March | Welcome to Charleville at the Showgrounds |
Tuesday/Wednesday Week 7 and 8 | School Swimming |
Week 9 | Learning Support Teacher visit |
Bookfair: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday | |
Parent-Teacher Interview Week | |
Thursday 31st March | School Cross Country and Colour Run |
Have a fabulous fortnight
Cheers
Katrina
APRE News
YR 6 INDUCTION LITURGY
A huge thank you to all parents who attended our Yr. 6 Induction Liturgy in person and our St Mary’s family who attended ‘online’ on Friday, 18th February. In this COVID environment we were very grateful to be able to celebrate our Yr 6 cohort, albeit in a different way than usual. Thank you to Fr Warren for leading us in Prayer and a big shout out to Phil Margetts, our tech ‘dude’, who organised our online streaming and recording. The Yr 6 class enjoyed watching their special morning back again – although the biggest hit of the morning was the induction cake! Please see photos below.
SACRAMENTAL PROGRAM
Our Sacramental candidates for 2022 will be making their first Reconciliation on Friday, 18 March at 9:30am, in the church. This is a private sacrament, with students and parents attending. Please pray for our candidates at this special time. If you have a child who would like to participate in the Sacramental program, it is not too late! Please come and see me or contact me through email, Kirsty.lines@twb.catholic.edu.au or by phone 46541638. Please note your child must be baptised Catholic to complete the sacraments.
ASH WEDNESDAY – THE START OF THE SEASON OF LENT
This week we begin the season of Lent – with Ash Wednesday marking the start. You may have noticed your student talking about their ‘Lenten Promise’. Christians around the world recognise the six weeks of Lent as time of reflection, penitence and spiritual preparation before Easter. In the Catholic tradition, part of this reflection and preparation is to make a promise to try to help others / improve ourselves. These promises may be ‘I will make my bed every morning to help mum and dad’ to ‘I will go without my Friday afternoon treat and give the money to CARITAS’. What is your student’s Lenten Promise? Will you join them? Some food for thought.
PROJECT COMPASSION APPEAL – CARITAS AUSTRALIA
As part of Lent every year, CARITAS Australia launches an appeal called ‘Project Compassion’. You will notice a box on your child’s classroom prayer table, to collect donations. This year’s appeal is ‘For all Future Generations’ and focusses on the difference CARITAS makes to children and improving conditions for all now, and into the future. I encourage you to explore the Project Compassion stories with your students at home, as we will be at school. The link to the website is below.
PLEASE PRAY FOR UKRAINE
During our Liturgy on Ash Wednesday, St Mary’s students will join millions around the world to pray for Ukraine. From the Catholic News Service:
Pope Francis called on people to pray and fast for peace in Ukraine on Ash Wednesday. Before concluding his general audience Feb. 23, the pope called on believers and nonbelievers to combat the "diabolical insistence, the diabolical senselessness of violence" with prayer and fasting.
"I invite everyone to make March 2, Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting for peace," he said. "I encourage believers in a special way to devote themselves intensely to prayer and fasting on that day. May the Queen of Peace protect the world from the folly of war."
We will continue to pray for the people of Ukraine and for a peaceful resolution.
Wishing you a blessed fortnight,
Kirsty Lines
APRE
Curriculum News
This last fortnight some of our teaching staff have been involved in many PDs including the Five from Five Webinars – Essential Knowledge for Classroom Teachers and Deep Dive into Synthetic Phonics. Some teaching staff have also participated in the TCSO Phonics to Spelling refresher courses for P-2 & 3-6. It has been wonderful to see all our staff so eager to continue their learning journey.
Wishing you all a wonderful fortnight,
Vanessa
Learning Support
I thoroughly enjoyed my on-campus week, last week! It was great to finally be able to spend a whole week at St Mary’s. I got to know so many wonderful students and I loved seeing the amazing learning taking place in all the classrooms. Although we had already started some small group reading sessions online via Teams, it was great to be able to do this in person. I am excited to continue doing these sessions with the students via Teams when I am based in the Toowoomba Catholic Schools Office, with the help of our very capable school officers. This week I will be attending a Professional Development session regarding the National Consistent Collection of Data for students with Disabilities. By collecting consistent data, the school can plan and adjust the learning and environment for these students to best support these students at school.
As someone who is fluent in Auslan and a very firm believer that it is a language we should all learn so we can communicate with those in our community who might not have another form of communication, I would like to take this opportunity each newsletter to share a new Auslan sign for our community to learn. My daughter, Lara is sharing how the sign is done.
This week’s sign is:
How are you? – in Auslan, the same sign is used to ask, ‘how are you’ and ‘I am well’
- Using your right hand, point to your chest with all fingers.
- Bring your hand forward to make a thumbs up sign.
Have a great week everyone!
Mrs Phillips
Library News
Lunchtime in the Library
The library is always a hive of activity during first break with students able to choose from a range of activities or they can simply relax and chill.
Library Borrowing
So great to see students eagerly borrowing and we love it when students tell us about the books they have read. We also love students sorting their own returns.
Some Class Snaps
We all enjoyed listening to our felt story, The Spottiest Caterpillar and we were so good at sequencing our story photo cards.
Year one students activating their brain at the commencement of their library lessons.
In year two we have been learning how to locate books in the fiction section and we were able to create our own spine label and then find where our book would sit, if we were the author.
Press Release
Book Fair Coming Soon!
The Arts
This year we will be introducing specialist Arts classes, with each term focusing on a different learning area of creative or performing arts.
- TERM 1 – Visual Arts
- TERM 2 – Music
- TERM 3 – Drama/Media
- TERM 4 – Dance
This term our Visual Art units focus on reinventing and recycling, and to achieve this, I will need your help! If you have any special items we can recycle or reinvent, please bring them to school and place them in the boxes in front of the Arts and HPE Room. Please note we do not have space for a build up of recycling, so please just bring in items that make you feel inspired!
Looking forward to creating with you all,
Mrs Thomas
HPE News
Welcome to the halfway mark of the term! Our students have been making great progress in swimming, learning about safety in the water, foundation movements (kicking, arms and breathing) of the different strokes. The older grades are working towards perfecting these specialised movements to enhance stroke performance overall.
In Health students have been learning about their self-identities, by dissecting their personal qualities, personal values and reflecting on personal experiences. We then examine how all these characteristics, behaviours and experiences help to shape the person we become. Some great in-depth whole class discussions have been had forging a deeper level of thinking.
Also don’t forget District Sport Trials are in full swing, please return your forms by the due date so your child does not miss out being nominated. Any questions please feel free to send me a message via email or Class Dojo.
Yours in PE and Health
Ms Mac.
Prep News
Preps have been working on the difference between long and short words, syllables and they are starting to learn some sounds this week. They are continuing to work on the numbers to 10 and are practicing subitizing, which is the ability to recognise how many in a small collection without counting.
Year 1 News
The last two weeks in Year One have been very eventful. We have been learning about 2D shapes, skip counting and how to write a response to books we like. In religion Year One have been looking at God’s gifts to us, with this week focusing on the beginning of Lent. On Thursday last week, Year One had a great time participating in a session run by the NRL.
Year 2 News
We celebrated being in year 2 on Tuesday the 22/2/22 last week - Twosday! The class also had a great time at the NRL workshop, trying new skills and drills.
Our seeds that had been planted for science (focus on life cycles) have sprouted and will hopefully grow into flowers over the next two weeks – updates to come.
We have started planning to create the ‘Most Magnificent Thing’ in English, focusing on the procedures and writing for a particular audience. Any old boxes or plastic bottles would be very much appreciated to help us create this.
Year 3 News
Year 4/5 News
Year 5/6 News
January Birthdays
Aria Richards, Levi Mitchell-Russell, Jan Kenafake, Katy Dunne, Ben Gentle, Taylah Thureson, Sienna Galletly-Baldwin, Miss Hunt.
February Birthdays
Pippa Ebsworth, Adam Elias, Harlow Thompson, Mila Saunders, Lucas Thomson, Tyson Ballard, Henry Lehmann, Zoe Ebsworth, Byron Dempster, William Dare, Sophie Tickell, Ruby Anderson, Nicholas Newby, Mrs Fisher, Mrs Csatlos, Mrs Thomas.
March Birthdays
Daniel Batstone, Lexi Tickell, PJ Pezet, Walter Cameron, Jock Winks, Hope Castles, Billie Doolan, Rosie Ballard, Ella Owen, Betty Thomas, Regan White, Mrs Hampel, Mr Lambourne, Mrs Lines.