Our Lady of Victories Primary School Shortland
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15 Lovell Parade
Shortland NSW 2307
Subscribe: https://olovps.schoolzineplus.com/subscribe

Email: admin@shortland.catholic.edu.au
Phone: 02 4951 1003

Term 1 Week 5

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Term 1 Week 5

THANK YOU

As we reach the half way point of the term, we do so because of the great patience and cooperation from parents. So a big thank you for:

  • dropping off patiently - driving to the bottom of the space before letting the kids out of the car;
  • not doing a u-turn outside the gate;
  • responding to bells with understanding;
  • staying socially distanced - even without the red dots;
  • holding your children's hands while walking across the road;
  • understanding that changes may come unannounced;

WELLBEING WEEK

Next week will be WELLBEING week and we want to revive our spirits and reset our focus on ourselves and each other. We want the week to be a stress free as possible and bring some joy into our work. The first step will be to cancel homework for the week - but we encourage you to do something fun as a family during the time your child might have done their homework -- go for walk, play catch, play a board game, do a jigsaw puzzle. Secondly,  we will have restful mediationor quiet time set aside each day to calm the children and provide a way to release any tensions. 

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

One of our School Improvement goals  is to improve our writing. Last year we concentrated on better spelling to write better and this year we will be focusing on making our sentences more exciting and focused on the style required. We will be sharing our work done in each class in our WOW WORK section in the class news. Check out the great work done this week.

NEW STAFF

We welcome someone new to our staff this week. Mrs Gallacher will be working with Kinder each day as a Learning Support Assistant. We wish her well with her stay with us and we are confident she will be a wonderful support fo the children in Kinder.

SAN CLEMENTE ORIENTATION

In line with current Covid -19 guidelines relevant to Catholic schools across NSW, and San Clemente’s wish to meaningfully engage prospective enrolments with our school community, the planned Open Evening set down for 4th March will be postponed to a date early in Term 2. It is hoped that, at that time, restrictions will have eased to the point where families can come to the school together to meet with staff and students and to experience a genuine appreciation of all that San Clemente has to offer. Enrolment applications for Year 7, 2022 and for other year groups are available now through the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle website and enquiries are welcome at the school office at any time.

During Term 1 there will be visits to our Catholic primary schools by members of the San Clemente staff and Executive to welcome Year 6 students to San Clemente in Year 7, 2022 and opportunities for students from other local primary schools to connect with the San Clemente community.

Details of an Open Day or Evening will be made known to all families when details are finalised.

 ENROLLING NOW FOR 2022

From March 1, the enrolment window for 2022 will be opened and we will be accepting enrolments into Kinder for next year. If you are looking to start one of your children next year, or know of anyone who is also considering this, please contact the office for an enrolment package.

ZONES OF REGULATION

This year we are introducing a program aimed at giving children knowledge and skill on how to monitor and self-regulate their emotions. The children will learn how they fit into the 4 zone and how they can move between them during the day. The four zones are: BLUE, GREEN, YELLOW & RED and can be summarised in this diagram.

Zones of Regulation | Stukey Elementary

Each class is developing their own icons to fit their style, but the ZONES are the same. Please talk to your children about what they are learning and how they can use the strategies they are taught. More information each newsletter.

One word Watermark - SERVICE

When we began the year, the staff decided on a word that would encapsulate our work here at OLV. After much discussion, blending our school Mission and Vision statement with the work being undertaken in ‘Clarity – What Matters Most in Learning, Teaching and Leading’ by Lyn Sharratt, which is the direction of the CSO over the next few years, the word SERVICE was chosen. We then went about defining what that meant for us. The following is our response.

Our Lady of Victories, Shortland is founded on the person of Jesus. By choosing ‘service’ as our 2021 motto, we choose to remain personally committed to serving others, following the example of Jesus.

‘Service’ indicates the nature of our relationships with our students and knowing all the faces that make up OLV. It is a relationship of genuine involvement and concern. We strive to nurture the personal growth, dignity and self-esteem of each student while serving their needs for academic progress.

We believe that all students can learn and we have high expectations for them. This means we must serve each ‘face’ through our planning, differentiated teaching and assessment practices, while fostering relationships, cooperation and respect through professional collaboration and our caring, nurturing classroom environment, which is the students’ ‘third teacher’ (Clarity p2).

It is with this in mind, that we look forward to a year of service at OLV.

Lent

Lent is the period of 40 days which comes before Easter in the Christian calendar. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, Lent is a season of reflection and preparation before the celebrations of Easter. By observing the 40 days of Lent, Christians replicate Jesus Christ's sacrifice and withdrawal into the desert for 40 days.

Project Compassion

Last week all families should have received their project compassion boxes. The theme this year is BE MORE. This week Year 3 began our week with their liturgy introducing us to this year’s Project Compassion theme. Thank you Year 3.

You could pray the following prayer throughout Lent.

God of all people and nations,

As you accompany us on our Lenten journey,

May our fasting strengthen our

Commitment to live in solidarity,

Our almsgiving be an act of justice, and

Our prayers anchor us in love and compassion.

Through living simple and loving generously,

May we care for our global family

And our common homer, as we

“Aspire not to have more, but to be more.”

We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

 

Throughout the term we will do some fundraising activities to raise money for Project Compassion.

 

Patty Dunn.

 

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SCHOOL FEES

Parents would have received their accounts last week and you are encouraged to pay them as quickly and as best as you can manage. Meeting these commitments is very important in the smooth running of resources and financial expenditure for the school.

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We have changed the SPORT LEVY this year so that it better reflects where the expenses are. The $200 will pay for all weekly PE Sport activities this year Gymnastics, Athletics, Dance & Swimming). It will also cover the costs of school carnivals for Athletics & Swimming including bus cost to attend these.

Parents are encouraged to contact the office and make arrangements if you are experiencing financial hardships. All families who had arrangements in 2020 will need to reapply for 2021.

COMPASS REMINDER

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PLEASE DO NOT REPORT PARTIAL ABSENCES through the Compass App.  Reporting partial absences will cause inconsistencies with your chid's attendance.

  • Please continue to email the school or contact the office to explain partial absence.
  • A Parent or guardian must explain or partial absences 
  • SMS's are sent to parents of students who are absent each weekday morning
  • Please phone the office to explain your child's absence
  • Please do not respond by text, the Compass system does not accept text messages.
  • If you notify the office beforehand that your child will be late, you will still receive an SMS.
  • All students must report to the office if they arrive late.  
  • On occasion you may be sent a text message even though your child is in attendance at school, this may be because they have arrived late and have not reported to the office. If this is case please feel free to contact the office to verify.

It has been noted that some parents have updated their mobile phone number by taking out the gaps within the phone number.  This is not required and may make  receiving compass messages until the matter is fixed from the office.

School Fees Billing Cycle Change: Annual Billing

School_Fees.jfifFollowing a series of meetings and workshops, the CSO and principal representatives committed to changing the school fee billing cycle so that each family now receives an annual bill at the beginning of the year.  This replaces the previous arrangement whereby families were billed school fees over Terms 1, 2 & 3.

The benefit of annual billing is that fee payers are able to see their full fee obligation for the year from early in Term 1, which will enable them to budget and plan their payments.

Payment method can be via direct debit with the CDF,

http://www.cdfmn.com.au/forms

BPAY using the fee statement reference number, or credit card over the counter or cash.

  • Each fee payer can tailor frequency of payments to suit individual circumstances
  • Direct debit payment frequency options can be established as weekly, fortnightly or monthly
  • BPAY can be at your discretion and can be set up as an automated payment.

Some fees, such as excursions and incursions, may continue to be charged separately during the course of the year prior to the event being held.

Statements will be issued regularly to allow monitoring of fee status.  All fees must be paid in full by 30 November.

The amended School Fees Policy and procedure will be published on the CSO Website shortly.

Parents are asked to complete the school fees payment frequency form and return to the office as soon as possible.  All payments of accounts need to commence prior to the 31st March 2021.

New Finance System

Our finance system will be replaced and centralised within the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese.  This will require a new platform for Compass and a brand new Finance System. 

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Today, you will receive a verification report for each student.  Could you please check all details are current and up to date, sign the form and return to the office as soon as possible.  

This is the first step in changing over systems and your prompt response in returning the forms would be very appreciated.

Introducing WOW Work

In our first newsletter of each term, parents receive a term overview regarding the topics that each class will be covering across the term. However, as part of our School Improvement Plan (SIP) for 2021, Kindergarten to Year 6 are making a major focus of improving their writing.

In order for you to see what we are working on in our classrooms, our class news for the rest of this and each subsequent newsletter has become our WOW work (Working On Writing).

Each fortnight, each teacher will add a short statement about what the class has been working on, which may include structured writing, using descriptive language, adding grammatical features, generating ideas, editing, etc. and will include 3 work samples to illustrate this work.

We look forward to being able to share the amazing work each class is doing.

Kindergarten

Kindergarten are learning to write letter shapes as we learn to name the letter and the sound it makes. Each letter has its own cue eg. 'm' is: 'one short stroke down, back up, a bump and a bump.'

The focus at this early stage is on correct pencil grip. The tripod grasp is the one we use. The pencil is held with thumb and index fingertips and rests on the middle finger. The other two fingers are curled.

We use a crossover pencil grip at school to teach correct grip. 

An alternative, if you don't have a pencil grip, is to have your child hold a cotton wool ball or similar object in their hand while they write. This will make the fingers curl under. 

Some suggestions to develop Fine Motor Skills for writing are: playdough, construction toys that click together, clipping pegs, using nuts and bolts, doing up buttons and zips and screwing and unscrewing jar lids. Of course, there are many others.

We are experimenting with writing during our play sessions as well as doing more explicit learning tasks. Some examples are included.  

Year 1

This term Yr 1 are learning about the structure of informative texts. We have learnt that labelled diagrams often feature in an information report. Here are some samples of work where the children drew their own diagram of one of our classroom chicks, and labelled it using descriptive language. The children have experimented with similes to describe features of the chicks and they have made good attempts at independently spelling unfamiliar words. Great work! 

Year 2

This term Year 2 are learning how to write recounts. These are examples of orientations for a book recount. The children had to mention who, when, where, and why.

Year 3

Year 3 has been working on expanding our ideas by using descriptive language. Last week, we completed a ‘Sentence Building’ activity. We started with a very simple sentence and added one small detail to the sentence five different times until we had created a much more complex and interesting sentence. See attached example. Yesterday, we completed an activity by describing some everyday objects in the classroom to make them sound more exciting. See attached examples.

Year 4

In Year 4 we are developing our skills in Narrative Writing. We have been studying descriptive language and have observed, in various stories, how description allows us to paint a picture of the scene in our imagination. With that in mind, we have been using stimulus pictures and writing colourful descriptions of the images depicted.

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One picture we used was of a boy in the desert and we wrote descriptively to express our perceptions of the scene. We initially listed all the nouns we could see in the picture and the used adjectives to enhance our writing. Here are three examples:

 Year 5/6

In the last 2 weeks, Year 5 and 6 have been working on using an image to generate ideas by annotating aspects of the image that could be seen, heard, felt, smelt and potentially tasted before writing. We have colour coded our thoughts according to the set success criteria which was to use the 5 senses.  Check out these amazing examples.

academysport.jpgSWIMMING SUCCESS

The children who represented the school at the Regional Swimming Carnival last week did an amazing job of showing what great school spirit looks like. Whilst the team was only small, they competed enthusiastically, in good humour and at their best. The children showed they cared more for others than themselves as exemplified in some of our Juniors swimming in Senior relays so they wouldn't miss out, seeing children swim just to have a go and enjoy the competition and represent he school. WELL DONE TO ALL OF THEM.

Special mention to Gemma M and Suma M who were selected to represent the region at the Diocesan Carnival today. We can't wait to hear of their efforts - Go Gemma and Suma.

SOCCER CHAMPS

The North Region conducted their winter sports trials this week and we must congratulate JULIAN a & HARRY F who were selected to represent North Region at the Diocesan trials next month. Well done boys  - we are very proud of you and best of luck for the Dio Trial.

Kinder Allison A, Charlie M, Elizabeth L, Henry W
Year 1 Anabel L, Andre C, Ariana C, Brian K
Year 2 Jimmy H, Sienna S, Jesse M
Year 3 Isabella C, Charlotte H, Blake B
Year 4 Gemma M, Mark M, Junior H, Chase B
Year 5/6 Tahlia B, Georgina H, Cooper C
Principals
Captains Max G, Anabel L
Lexia Awards
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AGM AND NEXT GENERAL MEETING

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The Association’s next meeting will be on Monday 22 March at 3.15pm.( A teacher will be able to watch any children of parents attending the meeting). The yearly reports from the different executives and the election of office bearers will take place at the AGM which will be followed by the General Meeting. If you would like to put yourself forward as an executive, the role descriptions are available below. Please come along and be part of the decision making processes of the school.

 

You will be able to access the school newsletter here and notifications will come through Schoolzine. Please DO NOT use the old SkoolBag App. It is no longer used for communications of notifications and messages.

Go to this link to download the Schoolzine App:

http://www.schoolzine.com/szapp

We would like to wish the following children a Happy Birthday

Kindergarten Allison A
Year 1 Thea W
Year 2 Ruby A, Madelyn M
Year 3 Millie H, Charlie F
Year 4
Year 5/6 Levi P

Congratulations and we hope you had a happy day

 

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Check out this link for more info on St Nicholas OOSH.

How to enrol for our OOSH Services: