1 November 2018

Newsletter Articles

Dates to Remember

Principal’s Message

GRANDPARENTS DAY

We had a wonderful morning last week as we welcomed over 60 Grandparents to our school. The liturgy celebrated the wonderful gift we have of Grandparents. The dance group entertained the guests and we had a picnic lunch on the oval. Thanks to all that helped prepare for the morning – Miss Morris for the Liturgy, all the staff for the tasty sandwiches and all the children who welcomed our guests so courteously.

REGIONAL PUBLIC SPEAKING

We had seven children participating in the Regional Public Speaking Competition today. Well done to Lily W – K, April W & Isla W in Stage 1, Xavier N & Olivia K in Stage 2 and Jocelyn B & Joseph A in Stage 3. They competed against five other schools in the North Region at Corpus Christi. Public Speaking is a very difficult task and it is wonderful that these children showed the skill and fortitude to get up in front of people and say something. Whilst the Kinder group only had to deliver a prepared speech, the other children had to prepare and deliver an Impromptu speech as well.

We will let you know how they went in the next bulletin.

KINDER ORIENTATION

On Tuesday 13 November, we will be hosting our group of 2019 Kinders. They will be attending their first Orientation Day and will meet their “big buddies” for next year. We are looking forward to welcoming them to our school. A second day is set aside for 27 November.

PUPIL FREE DAYS

There will be two Pupil Free Days this term. Friday 30 November and Monday 3 December are set down for the teachers’ Retreat and a Professional Development day. Please note the school will closed on these days.

REC News

All Souls Mass

Children will be attending the parish All Soul’s Day Mass on Friday 2 November. In Christianity, All Souls' Day commemorates All Souls, the Holy Souls, or the Faithful Departed; that is, the souls of Christians who have died. Observing Christians typically remember deceased relatives on the day. All are welcome to join us in the liturgy. Mass begins at 9am. Sadly, this will also be the last Mass that we will be able to celebrate with Fr Thomas before he relocates to Singleton.

Plenary 2020

What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time?

This is the question we are being asked by the Bishops of Australia. Together, we are on a journey of listening to God by listening to one another. All Australians are invited to engage in an open and inclusive process of listening, dialogue and discernment about the future of the Catholic Church in Australia. Your voice is needed – join in! Speak boldly and with passion, listen with an open and humble heart. With faith and guided by God’s Holy Spirit, we journey together, toward the future. As a way of clearing our minds and preparing ourselves to listen and share, we are asked to prayer the following prayer:

Plenary Prayer

Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost. Come,
Holy Spirit of the great South Land. O God,
Bless and unite all your people in Australia
And guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another and to recognise Jesus,
our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories
and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future,
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age. Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us. St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.

Absences

SMS / Email notification of Absence

As part of Our Lady of Victories’ commitment to student safety and welfare, our school has begun notifying parents of their child’s unexplained absence via SMS message & email.

This service provides an SMS / email notification to parents of children who are marked absent from school without explanation once the roll has been checked in the morning.

Where possible, it would be appreciated if parents can notify the school at their earliest convenience regarding a child’s absence.

If a child is going to be absent for the day or is intending to arrive late (e.g. medical appointments etc.), then parents are asked to use the COMPASS APP or call the office to notify the school before 9:30am on the day rather than sending a note afterward.

It is hoped that by providing this service and in partnership with families we can continue to ensure all possible mechanisms are in place to maintain the safety of our students.

FEES – School, Dancing & Swimming

We are in the process of chasing up outstanding fees for Tuition, Dancing and Swimming. There seemed to some issues with money being collected and not receipted against your child – especially for dancing. We have sent out invoices to all parents of our dancers with what we can determine as outstanding amounts. If you are certain that you have paid the fees please jot me a note to explain, if not, then please forward your payment. Apologies to all those that might have been caught up in this misunderstanding.

Compass App

We are coming to the end of the term and we will soon be posting the Term 4 Children Reports on COMPASS. To access the reports you will either need the APP or access COMPASS through the webpage at the link below

Using the Attendance Notifications through COMPASS will be the preferred method of informing the school that your child is away. By sending it through COMPASS, it is immediately synced to the class roll.

You will be able to view the school newsletter there and notifications will come through Schoolzine similar to SkoolBag.

Skoolbag is Stopping

This Friday, 2 November, will be the last day that SkoolBag can be used to notify the school of your child’s absence. In addition, it will no longer be the conduit for communication of notices and information. It is vital that all parents download and begin using the SCOOLZINE App AND the Compass App on their phones and computers.

Skoolbag will no longer be used for notifications and such.

P&F News

P&F ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The AGM will be in March 2019. Please give some thought to nominating for a role with the P&F next year. The AGM will be held in March and all executive positions must be vacated. The current position holders cannot be re-elected to those positions under the constitution, which states you may only be elected to that position for two consecutive years. So please, to keep the association running next year come along to the meeting and put your hand up for a role. Position descriptions to come.

MCDONALD’S FUNDRAISER

We will be holding a McDonalds fundraiser in the next few weeks, further info will be sent home soon.

BUNNINGS BBQ FUNFRAISER

Sunday’s Bunnings BBQ fundraiser was a huge success raising approx. $1300! Thank you to everyone who volunteered. Every dollar raised goes to providing resources and equipment to enhance the teaching curriculum for all children in the school. We are targeting some new computers and resources

NEXT MEETING

Our Association’s next meeting is scheduled for Monday 26 November at 7pm in the school library. Come along and join in the discussions and decision making of the association.

Pastoral Care News

Week 3 already!

Our gardeners have been busy planting and weeding. We are hoping the insect repelling plants grow, and do the job they are meant to do.

A garden can be a great place for reflection, or a time to relax with friends. Our students love working their gardens, and watching it change.

Life is like a garden, constantly changing. I came across this quote: “We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”

Let us make the pay it forward week, and see how many lives can be changed.

I hope everyone is well.

Take Care and God Bless
Karen Johnson (PCW)

Class News

Kinder

In Religion, we enjoyed viewing video clips from the Bible. Our first clip was ‘Noah’s Ark’ and we learnt that God looked after Noah and his family when the flood came. We learnt that the Bible is a very special book. It is God’s book and it teaches us how to love God and other people. In English Kinder have been using the text ‘A Year on Our Farm” by Penny Matthews to learn about the seasons of the year and the jobs that need to be done on a sheep farm each season. In Literacy groups they take turns to build a farm, help the farmer do his jobs and play with the farm animals. They use their writing skills to write sentences about the animals and the food they produce. In Term 4, our Geography unit ‘Out and About on Farms’ is integrated with English. We explore farms as places where people live. We learn about the features of farms, what makes them special and how they are cared for. We record our findings on maps, graphs and charts. In Science, we had fun finding out how things in the classroom move and how size and shape affect movement. We learnt about push and pull forces and for News this week, we have to find a toy to bring to school and explain how it moves. The sheet in the News book will help with preparation. Visual Arts is providing opportunities for outdoor learning as we continue making sculptures using the rocks in our creek bed. This week we made Stone Cairns. A cairn is a man-made stack of stones, found all over the world, marking special places and used since ancient times. Maths is challenging as we are learning about Australian notes and coins. Please talk to your children about the value of coins. Simple adding of coins will help them develop an understanding that the same amount of money can be made using different coins e.g. Twenty cents is also two ten cents or four five cents.

YEAR 1

It certainly is shaping up to be a busy term! Year 1 have been working hard on speech writing in these first couple of weeks in preparation for public speaking selection. I would like to congratulate all the children on a wonderful effort to put together their own speeches and present them confidently in front of their peer, not an easy task to do!

We enjoyed taking our Maths lesson outside at the end of week 1 to measure capacity of objects in our new sandpit. Year 1 also built models of different volume sizes at the new outdoor tables. Last week we were learning about money and the value of different Australian coins. This week’s focus has been on patterns using symbols and odd and even numbers.

In Religion, our new topic is about values and we have discussed the use of rules. In particular, we have talk about why we have rules and what they do for us.

For our Art this term, we will each be creating a 3D project and would appreciate your help if possible. We are after any cardboard boxes that are the size of a cereal box or shoe box that you are happy to donate!

Year One have settled into swimming lessons well and are putting in a great effort each week. We are also very excited about our singing lessons with Jackie as we learn more of our songs!

Year 2/3

We have been developing our public speaking skills in year 2/3. We commenced our in- class public speaking development by deciding upon what criteria makes a good speech. We identified components such as good structure and delivery with a clear and expressive speaking voice. All students were involved in developing and delivering a speech and the results were very encouraging demonstrating significant effort and thought into the task. All students are to be congratulated for their efforts in developing this important life skill and we wish Isla and Xavier well as they represent our class. In maths, we are working on multiplication and division. We are specifically working on understanding how division works in year 2 and solving problems involving multiplication and division in year 3. In religion, we have commenced our unit on The Beatitudes, which are the key to Christian happiness through serving others and following God.

Year 4

Over the last couple of weeks in Religion, we have completed our study of Christian Scriptures and have begun a new unit of work titled ‘Liturgy’. We discussed the components of a celebration and used a Venn diagram to show the similarities and the differences between a religious celebration and a non-religious celebration. We were quite surprised to discover how many similarities there were between the two types of celebrations. In Maths, we have completed work on Whole Number and Patterns, as well as Addition and Subtraction of decimals with and without regrouping. We have enjoyed working with Mrs Knight in the Library while Mrs Spencer has been away. We used the book ‘Where the Forest Meets the Sea’ by Jeannie Baker to learn about rainforests and the effect of deforestation. This links with our Geography unit where we are learning about the effect of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.

Year 5

In Year 5 over the last fortnight, our focus has been on preparing for and then participating in our buddy-training day, which was held on Tuesday of this week. In the session, we remembered our first few days at big school and how our buddies helped us. We thought about and discussed memories of those days and everyone who shared did so with a smile on their face, showing that a great big buddy leaves a mark on us through happy memories. This is what we want to do for our buddies. We discussed the qualities we needed to possess and read the expectations that are upon us as a big buddy. Despite some of the expectations being quite challenging, we decided that it was worth it, and we all read and signed a pledge to be the best big buddy we could possibly be. After recess, we ‘met’ our little buddies through photos and started writing a letter of introduction to them. We are all very excited about meeting them in Week 5. We know we have a lot of responsibility ahead of us, but we think we are up to it!

Year 6

In Religion this week, we have studied the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis. We each wrote a twenty-word summary of the message it gives to us. We studied and discussed a very unusual painting of Creation called “Onement” by Barnett Newman. We also created a portrait of ourselves and wrote, underneath it, the things that are important in our lives. It was good to take the time to reflect on what we value in our day-to-day existence.

In English, we have read the picture book, Angel of Kokoda by Mark Wilson. The story is about a Papua New Guinean boy helps a young soldier as his village is torn apart by World War II. We have discussed the way the author tells the story and the effectiveness of the colours and illustrations in imparting an understanding of the Kokoda Track. We also noted the symbolism used.

In Maths, we worked on addition and subtraction and tested our abilities to add and subtract mentally as well as through formal algorithms. We planned a camping trip using a specified budget and searched websites to inform us of costs of equipment and other various expenses. This week, we are revising the concept of Cartesian Planes and had fun creating shapes on an axis, recording the coordinates and giving them to a friend to plot. It was fun to see if they could replicate our shape exactly!

In Geography, we studied an Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Country Fact Sheet on foreign investment and trade. We discussed and analysed the data and completed a table to show our understanding. Our Geography Homework Tasks are due to be brought in this Friday, so Mrs Carroll can monitor our progress.

We are enjoying Swimming and are participating well in the lessons each week. Great work, everyone!

SPORTS NEWS

Jessie Forbes once again represented the Polding Region at the NSW PSSA Athletics championships this week. She competed in the 100m, 200m, Long Jump & Shot putt. We are very proud of her efforts. Great job Jessie!

Term 4 Swimming

For sport in Term 4, the children are participating in a swimming program on Wednesdays each week for Weeks 1-6. Our sports day will go back to Wednesdays. The cost of the program is $10 per week and will be billed to your account or you can pay weekly if you prefer.

Our annual swimming Carnival will be held on Thursday 29 November.

Class Awards

Class awards for Week 10 last term.