Filter Content
YEAR 6 GRADUATION
Our Year 6 will be celebrating their graduation at the end of their primary school years on Wednesday 13 December. This is a whole school celebration, and all families and friends are invited to come along and congratulate the Year 6 class of 2023.
YEAR 5 CAPTAINS’ SPEECHES
Our Year 5 children have been working on how to present themselves as special leaders for our school as Captains and Sport Captains. We are inviting them to present these during Week 8 this term to the whole school each morning from Tuesday to Friday. The children will be asked to nominate a day to present their case in the Hall from 9:00am to 9:30am. If you would like to attend, please talk to your child to pick a suitable day.
CRAZY HAIR DAY
It’s always great to look forward to a fun day at school. The Parent’s Association is organising are inviting children to come to school with “crazy hair” and share a pizza lunch on Friday 24 November. If you would like a Pizza and drink lunch for your child, please log onto Qkr to place your order. Funds raised will go to a book camera projector for each class. These will support the teachers as they take up a new English Syllabus in 2024.
CHRISTMAS HAMPER RAFFLE
Parents should have received a notice by today asking families to donate items for our annual Christmas Hamper Raffle. Each class are asked to bring in some different items so that hampers can be put together for the raffle to be drawn at the Christmas Party and Concert on 11 December.
We are encouraging the children to come dressed in their festive gear with their donation on Monday 4 December. Please see the flyer at the end of the newsletter for details.
Thank you, everyone for your continued generosity and support.
CHRISTMAS PARTY & CONCERT
On Monday 10 December afternoon and evening, we are inviting all families and friends to our party and concert. From 4:30pm, there will be some great activities for the children such as face painting, tattoos, cookie making and much more. There will be a sausage sizzle dinner available and, from around 6:30pm, the children will entertain us in the hall with some carols they are preparing in their music classes. We might even host a visit from a jolly man in a red suit.
FIRST COMMUNION
On November 26 at 10:30am at Our Lady of Victories Church, several children will be finalising their faith initiation when they receive the Eucharist for the first time. It is a very special moment for these children and their families. We look forward to sharing the Eucharist at our school masses throughout their time at OLV. We wish the children all God's blessings and congratulations. All families are welcome to join us on this special day.
KINDER ORIENTATION
We had our second visit from our 2024 Kinders this week. Their parents were provided with some information from the Catholic Schools Eduation Officer for Early Learning, Bridie Stanger, about our Successful Foundations Program whilst the children spent more time with their buddies who are doing a wonderful job at making our new ones feel safe and welcome.
Our next visit will be on 15 November from 9:30am - 11:00am for the children only.
Positive Reward System for Playground Behaviour
Starting next week staff at OLV will be rewarding children who show positive behaviour in the playground. On the board outside the Year 2 room each class has a yellow laminated class list. Teachers will be giving out stickers to children who are doing the right thing on our playground. Once a child has received 10 stickers he/she will be rewarded with an ice block. The stickers will be removed and they can start collecting another 10 stickers for their next reward.
Cuppa & a Chat
During yesterday's Cuppa & a Chat we discussed the following:
*At the next Cuppa & a Chat looking at 2024 calendar and plotting different fundraiser activities throughout the year.
*Putting a suggestion box outside the office door for parents to suggest things they would like to see happen at OLV.
*As a community coming up with items that our fundraising money would go towards.
Our next Cuppa and a Chat will be 30th November please come along and join in with our discussions or send an email with your thoughts for next year.
Dear Stage 3 Parents and Students,
In term 3 and term 4, Stage 3 have been participating in the BECOME.ME program. It’s a fun, interactive way to teach young people the adaptive skills and curiosity they’ll need to explore, design and navigate the fast-changing world of work. BECOME.ME is integrated with our regular curriculum.
The program isn’t designed to direct them to particular occupations but to inspire them:
- to reflect on their unique and evolving strengths, interests and aspirations.
- to broadly explore the dynamic, exciting world of work, recognising and breaking free of gender and social stereotypes.
- to come up with multiple possibilities for their future that excite them.
- to design and implement experiments that allow them to test out and adapt those ideas.
FLIPPED CAREERS EXPO: THURSDAY 14TH DECEMBER 9:30-10:30am
The Flipped Careers Expo will be a great opportunity for our Stage 3 students to share their final projects. They will share their research and creative products in response to an inquiry question that focuses on a career of their choice. Stage 3 families and other classes will be warmly invited to come along to the Flipped Careers Expo on Thursday 14th December, from 9:30am-10:30am, in the school hall. Save the date!
Kind regards,
Stage 3 Class Teachers
Our Lady of Victories Shortland.
Useful links:
You can read more about the program
Check out the data privacy policy
https://www.become.me/privacy.html
Mosquitos
In order to Volunteer at OLV you are required to complete the Volunteer Induction and be cleared by the Catholic Schools Office to Volunteer.
Please follow this link https://www.mn.catholic.org.au/people/volunteer/ and complete the steps.
EXTERNAL PROVIDERS
If your child will be seeing a provider (e.g. speech therapist or occupational therapist) this year at school, please complete the attached application form and return to school. If you require further information, please don't hesitate to contact the office.
COMPASS
OLV uses the "Compass" App. Log in details for parents/carers have been emailed to all new parents. If you are still unable to login, or your account has been made inactive, please contact Leanne in the office to arrange a reset of your password.
- For all new families please familiarise yourself with the information booklet you received in your information pack or enrolment pack, "Parent Portal Compass User Guide" This is also attached
- Only Parents/Carers have access to Compass Parent Portal. Parents must have separate email addresses in order to both have access to compass
- New Users when logging into Compass are given the opportunity to update their details. 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. The system requires phones numbers to be in this format
- REMINDER: PLEASE ONLY EXPLAIN WHOLE DAY ABSENCES - PLEASE DO NOT REPORT PARTIAL ABSENCES through the Compass App. Reporting partial absences will cause inconsistences with your child's attendance
- SMS's are sent to parents of students who are absent from 9.35am each weekday morning. You will receive a text message if your child was not present during the marking the roll process. Please logon onto compass and explain your child's absence. Do not reply to the text as compass does not accept reply texts
- Please notify the office beforehand if your child is going to arrive late; you will however still receive an SMS. The arrival time of the student will be logged as an explained absence when they present to school on their arrival
- 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 not come to the Office for sign in. If your child is late, please come into the Office with your child and sign them in via the compass kiosk.
QKR APP
Part of “progress” is moving towards a cashless society. To assist with the banking, ordering and handling of money, we are moving more of our payments to the Qkr system.
You will find attached instructions for the QKR App. This easy to use phone app gives you the flexibility to place orders for Canteen and fundraisers from your phone. It also reduces the need for your child to bring cash to school. Please remember to amend your child's year group on the QKR App to aid the timely collection of their order. We will be moving to a wider usage of this app as the year progresses.
- Make sure your child matches the class they are in now. You may need to go to your account settings and change their class. This will have to be completed at the beginning of every school year
- Please do not send in a paper bag as well as ordering online; this will stop any double up of ordering
- If your child is away or sick and you have ordered their lunch, you have until 8.00 am to cancel your order on QKR and receive a credit for next time
- All ordering is now closing at 8.15 am Monday morning. This allows enough time to print out the relevant reports for our volunteer ladies
- As of Term 2 all lunch orders will only be able to be ordered through QKR. Cash on the day will only be for ice blocks, lollies and chips.
We will be looking at providing this service for other quick financial transactions such as sausage sizzles, raffles, pie drives etc,
Thaks to everyone for taking up this service.
Health Care Card
Most families have already completed the attached Health Care Card Forms and returned to the school with a copy of their Health Care Card. If you have a Health Care Card and have not handed it in please contact the Office. Health Care Cards gives up to 50% off your tuition fees.
KINDERGARTEN
On Thursdays, Kindergarten have Mrs Matheson and we sink our teeth into the Key Learning Areas that allow us to explore, ponder, investigate and research topics that are of extreme interest to our little friends.
Science: MATERIALS- WHERE FROM AND WHAT FOR? The children have been finding various materials around our school and talking about what they could be made from and where else they are found. Some clever cookies told us that glass was made of sand! The feathers on the chickens also sparked discussions about how some pillows and doonas are stuffed with feathers. Such an interesting unit.
Health: Look At Me Now! IsN our Health unit and the children are enjoying learning more about themselves personally. Some students completed the at home task, asking their parents how their name came to be and why. The responses were so heartwarming and those children who brought something in had such pride in presenting these to their peers.
Geography: People Live in Places – Part 2. Part 1 was so enjoyable last term, and the children are glad to be taking their newfound mapping skills into Part 2. The children will be moving forward with mapping, Aboriginal Peoples perspectives of local locations and building hands on structures of things around us.
Term 4 is halfway there, and it is flying by. We are working very hard in kindergarten.
Mrs M & Kindergarten
YEAR 1
In Year 1 we have been learning about the FLoSS and Zack rules. FLoSS reminds us that if the word is short and the vowel is a short sound that we need to double the last letter if it is an f, l, or s. The Zack rule teaches us that when the word is short and the vowel is short then we use 'ck' if the word ends with a /c/ sound.
We wrote some sentences and identified when we had to use the FLoSS and Zack rules.
YEAR 2
In year 2 Literacy over the past two weeks, our grammar focus has been on verbs and their tense. We first learnt that lots of verbs use the suffix ‘ed’ to show that they have happened in the past, for example 'jump' becomes 'jumped'. This week we looked at irregular past tense verbs such as 'wake' becoming 'woke', and 'stand' becoming 'stood'. Our challenge was to take the story that Miss Payton gave us in present tense and re-write the story in past tense. Miss Payton thinks that we are super smart grammar kids!
STAGE 3
This Term Stage 3 have been lucky enough to participate in the Jets: LEARN ONLINE Program, sponsored by Greater Bank. We have been practicing soccer specific skills that have been presented to the children online, by some of their favourite Newcastle Jets players. This year, OLV was also selected to be one of 20 lucky schools to receive an in-school visit from the Jets where we learnt fundamentals of soccer such as first touch, dribbling and passing. Although the weather wasn’t kind to us on the day, the students involved still had a ball.
SWIMMING CARNIVAL
With the children more than halfway through their swimming program, we need to look ahead at the Swimming Carnival coming up in week 8, 1 December. Nomination forms will go home next week, and parents are asked to discuss with their children in which events they would like to compete. Besides the form strokes of 50m and 25m formats, there will also be a 15m noodle race. There will be some novelty events for our non-swimming infants in the wading pool. The carnival will commence at about 9:45am at the Mayfield Pool. All parents are invited to come along and join in. The best place to see how your child is going is at the end of the pool as a timekeeper or judge – so why not volunteer to do one of these jobs. We will also need rope attendants. Please put your name down and help. Please return the nomination forms and volunteer form by the end of next week.
We would like to wish the following children a Happy Birthday.
| Kindergarten | |
| Year 1 | |
| Year 2 | |
| Year 3 | |
| Year 4 | |
| Year 5 | |
| Year 6 |
Congratulations and we hope you had a happy day
ST NICHOLAS OOSH Services
How to enrol for our OOSH Services:
You will be able to access the school newsletter here, special dates notifications and other messages from time to time.
Go to this link to download the Schoolzine App: