Term 3 Week 3 2022
From the Principal
Dear Parents and Carers,
Welcome to Catholic Education Week. This week is a wonderful week in which we celebrate the distinctive mission of Catholic Schools as we challenge our students, staff and families to live out the message of Jesus in order to make a difference in the lives of those in our school and in the wider community. The theme for Catholic Education Week 2022 is Communities of Faith, Hope and Love. This week sees many events occurring to mark this special week in our calendar. On Monday, Mary and I took our school captains to the Catholic Education Week Mass at the Sacred Heart Cathedral. It was a wonderful way to kick off the week of celebrations.
Yesterday saw the magic of this year's theme shining brightly as we joined Burdekin Catholic High School and St Colman’s Catholic School for Founders’ Day. On Founders’ Day, we look to the past, to the founders of the Religious Orders who established our schools and infused them with the Charism that makes them special. The life and vision of our founders encouraged others to follow their mission in life, to be like Jesus and bring God’s love to everyone they served. Building on our strong Catholic tradition, the theme for Catholic Education Week 2022, ‘Communities of Faith Hope Love’, encourages us to have faith, hope and love in the future of Catholic schooling for our students and their families - our church family.
The day started with a combined Catholic schools’ Mass presided over by Fr Manoj. Mass was a joy-filled event as all three schools embraced the theme of Communities of Faith, Love and Hope. Fr Manoj’s Homily, disguised as a magic trick, reminded us that even though each school is special and unique in their own way, what binds us together is our shared faith, hope and love.
After Mass, the schools shared a meal, before moving into activities designed to bring all three schools together in community. Students in Prep - Year 4 participated in Art, Music, and Craft activities. Art involved students decorating three large calico signs related to this year’s theme of Catholic Education Week. Music saw students engaging in a variety of musical activities, including singing and making music, to connect to their faith, as well as feel and express love and hope. Craft was a huge hit as students made a bracelet or necklace with a range of coloured beads and an engraved laser-cut cross with the symbols of this year’s Catholic Education Week theme - cross, sun and heart.
Students in Year 5 - Year 9 participated in Sport, Drama and Tech activities. Students developed their teamwork skills by participating in a range of games on the oval. Drama saw students stepping out of their comfort zone as they developed creative problem-solving skills through a range of games that required them to work together and support one another. While in Tech, students were encouraged to be both bold and imaginative as they created paper planes and competed against each other to see which one could fly the furthest.
The day’s celebrations concluded with a drone photo being taken of the three schools gathered as a community of faith, hope and love. A huge thank you to BCHS for hosting us and for organising the activities for the day.
This afternoon our Executive Director Mrs Jacqui Francis will present the Spirit of Catholic Education Awards at a special ceremony in Townsville. The Spirit of Catholic Education Nominee for St Francis in 2022 is Rita Cranitch. You will find the details of Rita’s nomination below. Please join me in congratulating such a worthy recipient.
Rita in her long and varied career with Townsville Catholic Education has been a classroom teacher, an APRE, a Principal, a consultant, a Teaching and Learning Advisor and a Learning Enrichment teacher and often a combination of two or more of those roles. She has been a juggler extraordinaire, never putting in less than one hundred percent in any role undertaken. Many hours have been spent of personal time to cater to the demands of the roles so that the students in her care have always benefitted. At the heart of it all is Rita’s belief that every child has potential and can succeed if we can tap into the best way for them to learn.
Rita firmly believes in developing Professional Learning Teams to develop the pedagogical competencies of the teachers on staff to support the students in their care. She spends many hours attending face-to-face and online PD to keep abreast of current educational thinking, which may help her in her role of advising and educating teachers on best practice. Her PD sessions are informative and practical supporting the strategic directions of the school and TCEO. She regularly spends time in the classrooms modelling learning strategies and working with teachers to determine the best way to use resources and implement programs.
She has researched and spearheaded unique programs such as Learning Connections; a movement program aimed at developing developmental skills, concentration, learning, and behaviour; Building Blocks For Learning Framework, for the development of skills children need to achieve academic success in school; and currently, the Effective Spelling program where children’s curiosity about words is the springboard for activities to learn spelling in literary contexts. These programs have been implemented in response to data gleaned from Early Years testing and identified needs of students within the school.
She has worked with teachers to communicate the changing demands of the NCCD requirements and supports staff in identifying, recording and uploading evidence of interventions for students requiring support. She is passionate about upskilling all staff working with our students and organises School Officer Professional Development activities that support the learning needs of the student body. Due to her efforts, our support officers are quite competent in assisting with many of our programs.
Rita’s passion and commitment to providing the best educational practice challenges us all to do that little bit extra to achieve great things with our learners.
New Flags
On Monday Mr Dale Last, Member for Burdekin, presented flags to our school captains on behalf of Andrew Willcox who is the Federal Member for Dawson for our new flag poles that were installed over the holidays. We are looking forward to training our Student Council on how to correctly put the flags up each day. It was wonderful to have Mr Last here for our Catholic Education Week Liturgy and he also drew out our PATH prizes for Week 2.
Mulkadee
Congratulations to Lisa, Alice, Sofia, Adelaide, Alaya, Bella, Harper, Zara, Grace and Alex who participated in Mulkadee last week. Mary and I attended the final performance on Friday night and it was incredible to see not only what was put together in just one week but also the unbelievable talent that exists in our Diocese. Thank you to Mrs Julyan for organising and taking our students to Mulkadee this year.
Prep 2023
If you have a child due to start Prep next year and you haven't yet put in your enrolment forms, please do so as soon as possible. I will be starting interviews for Prep 2023 on the 1st of August.
Father’s Day Stall
Please save the date for the Fathers Day Stall to be held on Wednesday 31st August. Bhree-Ana and Teena are currently seeking donations for the stall and these include chocolates, home-made treats (fudge, etc) and lollies (jellybeans, liquorice, smarties, etc). Can you please send an email to butteen08@hotmail.com with items that you may like to donate so that a list of donations can be compiled. More information to be provided over the coming weeks.
I hope you all have a wonderful week.
Take care and God Bless
Amanda
Religious Life of the School
Yesterday our three schools came together as a Catholic community. We celebrated the Founders of our school and the ways we live as communities of faith, hope and love. Our senior students who had jobs during the liturgy that began the day, read well and capably carried out their roles. We then moved to rotate through activities including art and craft, music and dance, sports and computer lab. All our students were well behaved and participated enthusiastically in the activities that were organised for the day. We thank Burdekin Catholic High School for hosting the event and for the wonderful way their students guided and cared for our younger students.
A Christian life is lived in community. Jesus showed as how to live in faith, hope and love throughout his ministry. His greatest commandment which we see lived out in the parable of the Good Samaritan was; love of God and love of neighbour. This was the most important part of The Law for both the Jewish and Christian communities. At the heart of our school community is faith in God, hope for the future and love of God and each other.
During this week we have been asking our students:
What does a community of faith, hope and love look like – feel like – sound like?
Is our school a community of faith, hope and love?
How can we each work together to make our school a community of faith, hope and love?
Year 3A sent me this lovely infographic showing their discussion of the topic:
We come to you Loving God, knowing that you are with us and in us.
May we open our hearts to welcome and value all who belong to our school communities.
May we open our hearts to have faith in the gift of God’s love.
May we open our hearts to show love for each other and all those in need.
May we open our hearts and use the gift of hope to see all the possibilities of the future.
Give us strength and courage to be signs of your faith, hope and love in all we do and say.
We make this prayer through Jesus, our teacher.
Amen
What better way to end Catholic Education Week than with a school youth mass on Sunday. Please come along and celebrate with us at 5:30 pm Mass. If your child is able to attend and take a role as a reader please let me know. Everyone is welcome to come along and participate.
School Youth Mass
Sacred Heart Church
Sunday 31st July 5:30pm
ALL WELCOME!!
God Bless
Mary
Aiming for Excellence
Ready Set Write!
This week we received another positive feedback from a parent about our Ready, Set, Write sessions. A child has gone from being unwilling to write to spontaneously writing at home. This is great to hear. If you feel it is not working for your child, please let us know why you believe it is not working so we can adjust what we do.
You HAVE to help me!
The child usually means: I want you to do it for me. Our daily goal is to ensure all children have access to learning, demonstrate their learning, and make progress. Our longer term goal for all students is that they become confident, independent learners.
Parents often ask how their children are helped in class. Often they think that having a school officer beside them will help. Unfortunately, a school officer cannot be beside a child all the time throughout the day or be on call if needed. A child who needs support to access the curriculum and make progress usually requires some form of support throughout the day. This is why adjustments are part of the teacher’s daily teaching program. We also have whole school supports in place.
At the whole school level:
All classes are equipped with a soundfield system which supports all students but is vital for students who experience difficulty with processing information and hearing in the presence of background noise.
Every classroom displays a visual timetable which helps children with anxiety about what is happening next or have organisational difficulties. All students have access to a Chromebook and the Read and Write program which will read text, write and repeat text a student has spoken, as well explain the meaning of a highlighted word either pictorially or verbally.
In class
Not all children have the same needs but access to the adjustments are available to everyone.
These include:
- Use of hands-on materials
- Repetition of instructions and checking that the instructions are understood.
- Word walls of vocabulary being used to teach new concepts.
- Use of formative assessment.
Formative assessment is informal and helps the teacher identify how children are progressing with learning new concepts. This results in some children completing extension activities, some practising a particular skill that has not been consolidated and some working with the teacher as the concept is retaught or revised. This is when the school officer is involved by either working with the practice group or answering questions from the students leaving the teacher uninterrupted to work with their focus group.
There are some activities during a school week when a child requires the personal support of a school officer. This is usually specified in their learning plan.
- Focussed learning groups ( intervention) are accessed by students who the teachers have identified as requiring intensive teaching or practice of skills to close gaps in learning.
Some students have needs that are met by working on an alternate ( not year level) curriculum program.
The above is not an exhaustive list of adjustments made to support children with their learning but I hope it does provide an insight into how children’s learning needs can be met without them having someone beside them to ‘help’.
If you would like more information please do not hesitate call or email me. Thank you to parents who have already used this offer.
SCIENCE EVENT:
August 13 - 21st is NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK. - with the theme, GLASS- More than meets the eye.
Have you organised your team? You can set an excellent example of involvement and willingness to ‘have a go’ for your child/children.
ICAS
ICAS is a competition designed to recognise and reward academic excellence.
Students in Years 2-6 are invited to participate in the online ICAS assessments for English, Science and Mathematics. The cost for each assessment is $19.25 with the school subsidising $9.25 per test. Final day for registration is today, Wednesday, July 27, 2022.
If your child is interested in participating complete the registration form below and return with payment to the office by today, Wednesday, July 27, 2022.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to call me on 47832877.
Rita Cranitch
Leaning and Teaching Adviser
Inclusive Practices Teacher
From the Guidance Counsellor
In this edition of SchoolTV - BODY IMAGE
Kids today are more obsessed with their body image than those in past generations. This is partially influenced by the media and their social connectivity. Encouraging kids to have a healthy body image in childhood, can lay the foundations for good physical and mental health later in life. Children need to understand that their body shape and size is not a reflection of their health or success. Parents and schools need to work together to help kids understand that everyone is born with their own ‘body-suit’.
In this edition of SchoolTV, parents will learn how to encourage their child to have a positive body image and why it is so important to their mental health.
We hope you take time to reflect on the information offered in this edition of SchoolTV and we always welcome your feedback. If you have any concerns about your child, please contact the school guidance counsellor for further information or seek medical or professional help.
Here is the link to the Body Image edition of SchoolTV
https://sfatsv.catholic.schooltv.me/newsletter/body-image
Sacramental Program
Students of the Week
Community
Reanna Rodrigo - Reef Fest Colouring Competition Winner
