15 March 2018

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Message

We had a wonderful community celebration of Catholic Schools Week (CSW) on Friday last week as we highlighted some of the things we do at Our Lady of Victories. There was a great roll up of parents, relatives and friends at the Year 5 Mass, Open Classrooms and Concert. CSW is a special time in the year when we celebrate and give thanks for Catholic Schools, especially our own school, Our Lady of Victories. “Catholic Schools: Faith in Our Future” focuses on strengthening relationships between students and their Catholic faith by ensuring that all students – with support from their parents, staff and members of the wider diocesan community – will have every opportunity of realising their potential.

At Mass with the school last Friday, Fr Thomas asked two very good question – “What is the difference between our school and the other schools? What makes it better? What would be your answers to these questions?

Our Captains attended the CSW Diocesan Mass last week also. Here is what they had to say about it:

At the start of the Mass, we listened to the Acknowledgement of Country, then, high school students carried crosses to the altar. The theme of the Mass was ‘Faith in Our Future’. At the end of the Mass we sang a joyful song. - (Immanuel)

It was a fun experience. We saw Keilie H. (who was singing in the choir) and we saw Bishop Bill. We had Holy Communion and got a blessing. We met other captains and the Mass ended with a great song. - (Kane)

We had lots of fun at the Cathedral learning about the theme of the Mass, ‘Faith in Our Future’. We met lots of other Captains, Vice-Captains and Principals. The amazing Mass ended with a bright song. Keilie H. is an amazing singer - (Zoe)

At the Cathedral during the Mass we sang some hymns and heard Keilie H. sing with her Aspire group. We met other representatives from schools from all around the area. I saw some of my former classmates from St Patrick’s at Wallsend. It was a beautiful Mass led by Bishop Bill. I had a great day. - (Ruby)

Holy Week

Holy Week Liturgy

On Thursday 29th March, there will be a Holy Week Liturgy in the church commencing at 10.30. During this Liturgy, we will be remembering the events leading up to the death of Jesus. The symbols of Jesus’ Crucifixion will create a sacred space to help us all remember the anguish that Jesus suffered to save us. Everyone is welcome to join us in prayer as we prepare for the great feast of Easter.

Last week, the Project Compassion story we heard at Monday’s liturgy was about Evangeline from Australia. Next Monday, we will hear about Ditosa from Mozambique and the ways that Caritas Australia has helped improve her life and the lives of others. Monday’s Liturgy will be led by Year 4.

Please support Project Compassion during Lent.

Visit the Caritas website below.

KINDER Enrolments 2019

The enrolment period for 2019 is now open. Parents who are seeking enrolment for their children at OLV in 2019 should ask for an Application for Enrolment from the office. Alternatively, an enrolment pack may be found our school website at

on the CSO website below.

If you are aware of any families that are also considering enrolling next year, please pass on this message.

If parents of Year 6 are looking Application forms for a Catholic high school, these will be sent home in week 10. They need to be returned to school by end of Week 1 in Term 2. These will then be forwarded to the respective high schools. Parents have a choice of sending their children to San Clemente at Mayfield or St Pius X, Adamstown. Parents may not make application for enrolment at both schools. Further information regarding enrolling in a Catholic High School is available on the CSO website below.

If parents are looking towards the public or selective high school, they should contact that school.

Compass Training

Myself and 3 other staff members have been attending training in a new reporting, attendance and administration system which OLV will be introducing over the coming months. There will be significant changes as to how we interact as a community and what services will be available to parents online. The new program, COMPASS, will enable parents to interact with their children’s progress in real time as well as communicate with teachers and the school via a new platform that will eventually phase out a lot of the paper communications.

There will be a Pupil Free Day on Monday 9 April ahead of the COMPASS platform going “live”. At first, it will only affect how the teachers take the roll and manage attendance. Gradually parents will be given access to different aspects which will assist with their communication with the school (this will become more evident as training for parents is arranged and communicated in the next bulletin). It will be an exciting and interesting time for all.

Gate Entry

We have upgrades the security of the front gate. For different reasons, in the past, visitors have had to call the school to gain access because the gate was locked or they could not manage the latch. A remote access has been installed and visitors are now required to press the intercom button on the gate. This will call the office and when answered the gate will be unlocked remotely for accepted visitors (don’t forget to smile at the little camera). Visitors are then required to report to the office to sign in to register their presence on site. (this will change to an electronic sign on in the near future). Initially, all other gates will be locked once the bell rings and any late arrivals must use the main gate. As we move to a totally electronic mode, some leeway will be tolerated until the end of term. If you exit via the front gate during school hours, please ensure the gate is securely closed behind you.

Library Borrowing

Library borrowing will be each Wednesday. Each student needs to have a library-borrowing bag. Books need to be returned each Wednesday. Please ensure books are kept safe when at home. Returning them to their library bag after each use would be perfect. Lost or damaged books will need to be replaced. Library bags are available from the uniform pool for $10.

Book Club

Book Club went home today and is due back Friday 23rd March. Please ensure all orders have the child’s name, class and amount clearly labelled on the form and envelope.

Stage 2 Excursion

Years 2, 3 and 4 will be attending an excursion to Awabakal Environmental Education Centre on Tuesday 3rd April. Notes have been sent home with the students in these classes outlining the day’s program and the cost. Please return the permission slip attached to the note, with payment, to school by Wednesday 28th March. Extra notes are available from the Office.

School Fees

Every family should have received a school fee statement for Term 1 fees by now and have made payments or made payment arrangements with the school. If you have not had a chance to get to your school fees yet we urge you to make some time to look at your fee statement and work out what payment option suits you best. The school takes many methods of payment and Mr Vandermaat is happy to sit down with any family to work out a payment plan that suits your financial situation. Leaving school fees until last minuet can make them overwhelming and unmanageable. Please feel free to contact the office regarding; Direct Debit, Eftpos, BPAY, cash, cheque, credit card or if you would like to make an appointment to meet with Mr Vandermaat regarding your fee situation. Please also remember if you are a Health Care cardholder you are entitled to a 50% discount on the tuition part of the school fees once you provide the school with a copy of your health care card and sign a consent form.

P&F News

If parents would like to add to the monthly meeting agenda, please call Kylie Westaway or send an email to OLVparentsandfriends@gmail.com.

Meeting Dates for Term 1

1. AGM News - Executive positions - Not all positions were filled at last week’s AGM and we are still looking for nominations from anyone interested in filling the role of P&F treasurer. Please contact Sally Walsh or Kylie Westaway,
2. Next Meeting – 26 March - 7pm

Easter Raffle:

Monday 19 March is an out of uniform day.

Instead of a gold coin donation, we ask that you send your child/ren bring to school a donation of Easter eggs, bunnies or chocolates as a contribution towards the annual Easter Raffle prizes. If you have any unused baskets to donate, please bring them in as well.

Crates will be left in front of each classroom in the morning for the collection of these donations.

Please note: food donations must be unopened.

The annual Easter Bonnet Parade will be held Wednesday 28th March at 12noon in the school hall. Children are encouraged to make an Easter bonnet or dress up for the parade.

Raffle ticket books went home last week for the annual Easter raffle, which will be drawn Wednesday 28 March after the parade.

Each family has been allocated 15 tickets to sell and the P&F would appreciate your support in selling these tickets. Ticket stubs and funds raised can be returned to the office the zip lock bag provided and clearly labelled ‘Easter Raffle’.

Anyone who would like more tickets to sell can collect them from the office.

If you are unable to sell all of the allocated tickets, that is OK, please ensure you return them to the office by Wednesday 28 March.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! P&F Association

Pizza Day

The P&F we will be hosting a Pizza Day on Thursday 12 April with notes to coming home soon

Clothing Pool:

The Uniform Pool is now set up and operating from the “Bell Room” next to the Year 1 classroom. The Uniform Pool is open every Thursday morning from 8:40am – 9:10am.

Along with second hand uniforms there are a limited amount of new sport uniforms in sizes 4, 6, 8 & 14 available:

Sport Shorts - $25
Sport Track Pants - $35
Sports Jackets - $ 55

Please Note: we can only take cash sales as no EFTPOS facilities are available.

Canteen:

Class News

Kinder

Kinder had an exciting time performing their two items for Catholic Schools Week and they did a wonderful job. Thank you to everyone who visited our classroom to see what we have been getting up to in ‘Big School’. You would have noticed when looking through our books that we are already reading and writing. Next week we will be taking home our first Readers to practise reading at home. Two readers will go home on Monday, please send them back on Friday in the Homework folder. In English we will have covered all the alphabet letters up to ‘Nn’ by the end of the week. We have been identifying the beginning sound in words eg. Lion begins with ‘Ll’. We need lots of practice in listening for beginning sounds as this skill is needed for Reading. Our shared Reading text is ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. We learnt about the life cycle of a caterpillar and sequenced the events in the story. We learnt some new vocabulary (cocoon or chrysalis and transform). In Religion, we completed our unit on ‘Jesus a friend To All’ and will be starting our ‘Lent and Easter’ unit this week. We will learn the symbols of Lent and Easter and what makes Lent and Easter a special time. In Maths, we have been working on Multiplication. This involves making groups of objects and identifying if they are equal or unequal. We need to know how many groups there are and how many in each group. In Science, we viewed videos of animals on ‘ABC Splash’ and identified their needs and how they protect themselves. In Visual Arts, we looked at portraits by Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Margaret Olley. We discussed why artists paint portraits and are having a go at painting our own portraits. We decided to do a Picasso style portrait as we thought we would be more successful with abstract art at this stage.

Year 1

In Religion this week, we've looked closely at the Lenten season. We viewed a short animated clip online of Jesus' 40 days in the desert and thought about the challenges that He would have faced in that time. During Lent we are challenged to give generously to Project Compassion, to pray a little bit more and to maybe give up a treat or two as we grow closer to God in preparation for Easter. In English so far this term, we have focused on reading narrative texts. But this week we started looking at information texts and how they are structured. We used a cut-and-paste activity to place information about 'Sunflowers' under specific headings (Classification - Description - Habitat - What does it need to grow? - Interesting facts). We then labelled a diagram of a sunflower, as diagrams are often included in information texts. In Maths last week Yr 1 were developing their skip counting skills in learning centres. The children had the freedom to choose the activities that appealed to them, and they rotated around the different centres as they completed activities. We enjoyed learning how to skip count by 2s, 5s and 10s. This week we have been learning all about fractions. Our focus has been on halves of wholes. We loved performing our song 'Icky Icky Insects' for the school community at the CSW concert last Friday, and so enjoyed sharing our classroom and our learning with our families and friends!

Year 2/3

In the past fortnight, year 2/3 has been busy in maths focusing on fractions and now length. Year 2 considered halves, quarters and eighths and informal units for measuring length, while year 3 also considered thirds and fifths as well as measuring in metres and centimetres. We measured ourselves using metres and centimetres, while year two measured their height in hand spans and footsteps. We noted the measurement issues with each of these measures. In English, we have considered where to place speech marks when using direct speech. We have also started persuasive writing while studying the mentor text The True story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka. We noted also the reasons why the wolf was not to blame for destroying the homes of the little pigs and eating them. In History, we considered Playground by Nadia Wheatley, which depicts the traditional way of life for Aboriginal people. In Science we learnt about T-charts and identified categories for grouping animals. In Religion, we started our unit about Jesus, Lent and Easter and recorded ways for preparing for Easter.

Year 4

During the last two weeks in Religion, we have completed our unit on ‘Jesus’ Ministry’ by exploring ways that we can continue Jesus’ mission in the world today. We then began the ‘Lent and Easter’ unit where we read a story from Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 4:1-11) about Jesus spending time in the wilderness. We watched a video of the story and discussed the message that Jesus wanted us to understand from his actions. In English, we completed reading ‘The Tale of Despereaux’ by Kate DiCamillo and then watched the movie. We compared the book to the movie by using a venn diagram and wrote our own comparisons. In Maths, last week we worked on multiplication and in particular, factors. This week we are working on fractions, learning about equivalent fractions, and comparing fractions with different denominators. In History, we have started the second part of our Term 1 unit, which has a focus on early explorers to Australia. With Mrs Spencer during Library time, we are learning about Abel Tasman and in class this week, we have read about the Dutch explorer Willem Jansz. During Personal Development and Health, we have talked about the effects of smoking on a person’s health and lifestyle.

Year 5

Last week in RE we started our Lenten/Easter unit by considering the concept of ‘journey’. We have viewed videos and discussed the ideas presented about physical, personal and spiritual journeys, and especially how these may involve change or transformation. In English, we have continued our story and, as always, have learnt so much about the individual characters, but also about how their lives, emotions and experiences are both so similar and interconnected, but so completely different from each other because of their life experiences. In Maths with Mr Hammond we continued our work with length measurement focusing on how measurements can be recorded in different ways eg 125 cm = 1 m and 25 cm = 1.25m. In Maths with Ms McGann, we have been working on subtraction strategies and problem solving activities. In History we learned about the lives of two convicts, William Horten who worked on a rural property and the ‘convict architect’ Francis Greenway. In Science, we looked at camouflage as a way for animals to survive in the desert. We also looked at other reasons why animals use colour in their environment. In Art, we have been sketching personal items that will eventually be included in our final artwork. In Music, we’ve continued to listen to and sing different reggae rhythms. Our PE rotations continue to be heaps of fun and we can see our improvements. Last week’s sport session was the last one with our current sport, that being Ultimate Frisbee for the Stage 3 boys and Oz Tag for the Stage 3 girls. We have had so much fun learning, practicing and refining our skills. As of today, we have swapped and enjoyed our first session. All of this and we led a beautiful Mass for Catholic Schools Week, in which every member was involved, hosted family members in our classrooms during our open classrooms and danced up a storm for our mini concert. We’ve had a great fortnight. Bring on the next one!

Year 6

In Religion, we have begun our unit on Lent and Easter and we are exploring and deepening our understanding of the season of Lent through observing media and following up with discussion and by looking at the significance of Ash Wednesday and what it all means in relation Jesus. In English, we have started sharing our picture books on the SMARTBoard. Each of us is completing a peer assessment sheet for each book. We worked together to decide on aspects of the books we wanted to assess and compiled a sheet which included them. All the stories are of great quality! In Maths, we have completed a variety of activities as we work on fractions and decimals, including online activities, creating fraction lines and determining equivalent fractions. In History, we are continuing to understand the process involved in Federation, in parliament and the structures of the government. In Sport time this week, the Year 5 & 6 boys started to practise and play League Tag. The girls really enjoyed their five weeks and developed great skills over the time.

AURORA

From April, your diocesan magazine Aurora will appear in The Newcastle Herald on the first Saturday of the month. This will increase circulation and allow Aurora to be part of people’s weekends (at least once a month)!

Insertion in other newspapers remains unchanged, hence Aurora will be in The Maitland Mercury, The Singleton Argus, The Manning River Times and The Scone Advocate on the Wednesday after the first Saturday and in The Muswellbrook Chronicle on the following Thursday. The magazine can also be read online at mnnews.today – your source for local Catholic news in the Hunter. Subscriptions are available below.

LEXIA AT HOME

It is great to hear that so many children have been able to download the Lexia Core 5 program at home. Some are even using it with their IPads!

Here are the details again if you would like to do Lexia at home.

. If you would like to use the program at home you will need to download this new version. You can download from the link below

or, you can use it via your web browser.

You do not need any codes but will need the admin user email address. lady@victories.com.au from their children log on with their usual Lexia username and password. I Pad and I Pad mini users can download the Core 5 app from the App store- search for “Lexia Reading Core 5”.

If you have any problems, please contact me at the school on a Tuesday or Friday. – (Jenny McCallum - Learning Support Teacher)

SPORTS NEWS

School Cross Country

On April 5, all the children are invited to participate in the School Cross Country trial to select our representative team for the Diocesan trials in May. A course will be laid out in Northcott Park (adjacent to the school on Lovell Pde) and the children will compete, running different distances according to their age groups.

The infants up to the age of eight will participate in a 1km event, 8-10yr olds in a 2 km event and our seniors in a 3 km event.

The children are encouraged to participate at their own pace and complete as much as they can, or more if they like. However, if children wish to represent the school at the Diocesan trials in Term 2, then they will have to complete their distance under the qualifying times.

Racing commences at 10am and parents are invited and encouraged to come along and join in the exercise with their children.

Events commence at 10am.

Stay tuned for a permission note to come home soon.

Diocesan Swimming

A terrific effort by our children who competed at the Diocesan Swimming Carnival last wek. Well done to Dakota, Bailey, Ari, Angus and Sam (who filled in for Deacon). Very impressive were our 4 boys who made up relay team who came 10th in the Diocese in the Junior Boys race.

Regional Touch Football Trials

If any children are interested in participating in the Regional Touch Football trials, please drop a note to Mr Vandermaat to nominate your child. Interested children should be playing the sport on a regular team competition and should be of representative level of ability.

Coles Sport for School

For every $10 spent at Coles, customers will receive one SFS voucher. Send these vouchers in to school and put them in the collection box in the foyer. There is also a collection box at Coles, Wallsend for our school. Final days for vouchers will be in May. Get your friends and relatives collecting and send them into school.

Lunch Time Dance

The Lunch Time dance program is now well under way and the children are thoroughly enjoying the program. Most of the children have paid for this terms participation and we thank you for your prompt attention to this commitment. For those students who are regularly attending the Wednesday lunchtime dance group and have not paid the $30 we ask that you forward this payment to the office by the end of the week to secure your childs’ place in this activity. If you are having financial difficulty please see Mr Vandermaat to make alternative arrangements.

Class Awards

Class awards for Week 4