9 May 2019

Newsletter Articles

Dates to Remember

Principal’s Messages

NAPLAN 2019

Next week our children in Year 3 & 5 will undertake the annual NAPLAN Assessment. This year the Assessment will be completed “online”. We have had our trial and at that point our technology hardware resources coped adequately for the requirements to do the assessment on line. The beauty of the online platform is that it is intuitive and adjusts the Assessment according to the abilities of the child. We are providing the children with “ear buds” and these will be their own and kept in the classroom for future use with for other programs.

The Assessments will take place during the first session of each day (between 9am and 11am). The schedule for next week will be as follows:

• Monday – 13 May – Final hardware checks
• Tuesday – 14 May – Writing
• Wednesday – 15 May – Reading
• Thursday – 16 May - Language Conventions (spelling, grammar)
• Friday – 17 May - Numeracy

It is important that your child participates but should not feel stressed about doing so. NAPLAN is meant to be a snapshot of where your child sits in a continuum of learning, and to identify any holes that may be within the teaching at the school. So, please try not to make any appointments etc. during these periods.

NEW FACEBOOK PAGE

Last week, we took on the directive from the CSO to open our Facebook page to the “World Wide Web”. To date, our page has been a closed page for invited friends only. With the implementation of a “Communications Policy” by the Catholic School’s Office we are required to open our page to the wider community to increase our public profile, and provide opportunities to share the activities happening at school and much more. Please feel free to make post and comments relating to happenings at the school. The new address is”

Our current page has now been closed down.

The new page will steer away from being a source of answers for questions, but rather a platform to promote the school and inform the community of what is happening at OLV.

Another aspect of the CSO policy is the reference to “Closed Groups”. Our diocesan schools and their related communities should not be promoting any closed groups within or about the school. Whilst these may be seen as a good way of passing on information etc. about what’s happening in your children’s classes, these groups are discouraged and should not, at any time, include the following:

• The school name or crest or reference to it;
• Photos of children in our school uniform;
• Photos of children or teachers without their permission;
• Any mention of other parents, staff or children’s performance or interaction with each other (ie gossip)

COMMUNICATIONS

The school provides information to parents via a number of platforms. These include:

• Facebook
• Newsletter via Schoolzine, Compass and email;
• Notifications via Compass and Schoolzine;
• School Website – available at the link below.
• Paper Notices – Rosters, calendar, term planners
• Word of mouth

As you can see, there are many ways parents receive information and where information can be retrieved. When our Facebook Page changes to an open page, parents are urged to use the other forms of communication and information sources rather than pose questions or seek reminders about upcoming events. If there are late changes to scheduled events, then COMPASS Notifications are the preferred means of passing on information, especially short term or unscheduled events. Don’t forget to make changes to your Term Planner if changes are notified.

If you need a question answered, please try the following:

• Refer to the last newsletter, Compass Notifications or the SZApp
• Ask a friend
• Email the school at admin@shortland.catholic.edu.au
• Give the school a call on 49511003

WINTER UNIFORM

Our change into winter uniform is the beginning of Week 3. So, go through your cupboards, check out the sizes and be prepared for ties, jackets, tunics and long sleeves to meet the winter uniform requirements. Remember – sloppy joes are not accepted school uniform options.

Woollies EARN & LEARN

We are excited to be taking part in the 2019 Woolworths Earn & Learn program. During the previous campaign, we were able to purchase some great resources with the points we earned, thanks to you. From now until June 25th 2019, you can collect stickers at Woolworths that go towards Earn & Learn points. For every $10 you spend at Woolworths (excluding the purchase of tobacco, liquor and gift cards), you will receive a sticker. These stickers can then be given to your children to collect on a special sticker sheet. Just bring them into school or pop them into the OLV School Box at Jesmond Woolworths. Don’t forget to collect them from your friends and relatives if they are not supporting other schools. Last year we were are to purchase some very valuable play resources and musical instruments.

The more points we earn, the more we can redeem from a choice of over 10,000 educational resources including mathematics and English resources, art & crafts materials and much, much more! We are grateful for your support and look forward to a successful program. If you have any questions, please ask at School.

REC News

Another busy term ahead of us. We began our term with our Easter Liturgy led by Year 6 followed by our Liturgy this week by Year 5, Children of God.

This Friday, Year 1 and Year 2 will be leading our Mother’s Day Mass at 9:30am, followed by craft activities to which all Mum’s, Nan’s, Aunties and friends are invited. We will conclude our morning with a sausage sizzle. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Below is a list of upcoming Liturgies and Masses for this term.

Fundraising

I would like to thank and congratulate all students and families for raising $732.70 for Project Compassion in Term 1.

This term we will be fundraising for St Vincent De Paul. We will have a Winter Appeal where all items will be given to our local St Vincent De Paul group. On 6th June we will have a Sleep Out at school which primary students can participate in, followed by a Pyjama Day on Friday 7th June for all students to participate in. More information about these events to follow in the next few weeks.

Celebrating Mothers

Tomorrow we celebrate the wonderful gift of motherhood and recognise the wonderful work the mothers in our community do for their families.

We begin the celebrations with Mass at 9:30am. After Mass all mums, grandmothers and any other significant women in your children’s lives are invited to share some craft activities with the children then a sausage sizzle. To round off the celebrations our Lunchtime Dancers will entertain us with a short presentation at 11:30am.

From The Office

School Fees

Our Term 2 school fees for 2019 have been sent home. Please note: An error was made on the statements. Dance Fees for Term 2 should be $45.00 per term. Amendments on your invoices have been made and new statements have been sent home this week. It would be appreciated if all accounts be paid promptly.

If you would like to manage your account with regular payments, please contact Leanne in the office, who can help you with a payment plan. Those who are in legitimate financial hardships can make application for consideration by making an appointment to see the Principal.

All extracurricular activities (Dance, Gymnastics etc) will be included on your accounts as they arise, so that a closer tracking of payments and receipts can be done. All receipts of payments will be emailed to the primary email supplied by parents through COMPASS.

Statements will be emailed home monthly. If you are paying by direct debit or BPAY your statement is for your records only.

KINDER Enrolments 2020

The enrolment period for 2020 is currently open. Parents who are seeking enrolment for their children at OLV in 2020 should ask for an Application for Enrolment from the office. Alternatively, an enrolment pack can be found our school website at the link below.

or on the CSO website at the link below.

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

SZApp

Go to the link below for more information about the SZApp:

You will be able to access the school newsletter there and notifications will also come through Schoolzine.

P & F News

UPCOMING EVENTS

Election Cake Stall and BBQ

After the successful fundraiser held on State Election Day we are hoping to repeat this with a Cake Stall and BBQ on Federal Election Day on Saturday 18 May. We will be looking for volunteers to help out and more of the great cake/slice/biscuit donations we had for the last day. With everyone’s little bit, we made over $900 at the last election. Let’s go for the magic $1K

Bunning BBQ

If you can’t help out at the election BBQ, maybe you have a couple of spare hours on Sunday 2 June. We will be sizzling sausages at Wallsend Bunning on that day. Look out for the VOLUNTEER request coming soon.

School Disco

We are holding a fun disco night on Friday 24th May from 6pm – 8pm. The theme is FLOURO FUN. Children will be able to purchase Hotdogs (pre-ordered), drinks, chips and lollies. Please return the order form and Attendance Note with payment by Tuesday 21 May. It should be a great night – as it always is – and if you can help out in some way, please indicate on the note as well.

Next Meeting

Monday 27 May in the library at 7:00pm.

Volunteer Sign Up

Volunteer Sign Up

We are going to tryout an electronic method of signing up as a volunteer for certain events. If you can help out at the Election Cake Stall and BBQ, go to the website below and put your name down in a convenient time. We will commence setting up for the event at 7:30am and should be packed up by to 2pm.

CANTEEN NEWS

The canteen will be open on Fridays only this term. If you can spare some time please let Rowena Olenjik know as we still need helpers for canteen to open consistently next term.

Term 2

UNIFORM POOL

Our Uniform Pool is located in the Bell Room next to the Year 1 classroom. We are open every Thursday 8:40-9:10 am.

• Back in stock are our new school bags ($60) and our library bags ($15).
• Also available for purchase are Art Smocks ($10) and with winter coming, our School Jackets in selected sizes only, (size 4,6,8,14) for $45 each.
• OLV Hair Scrunchie Packs are now available to purchase for $5 each at our School Uniform Shop. If you can’t make it to the shop on a Thursday Morning, then send your $5 in a labelled envelope via your child’s class note bag.
• Variety of used uniforms starting from $2 an item
• Cash only purchases as no Eftpos available

Uniform Shop

Please note our uniform pool runs on the generosity of those who donate their used uniforms. If you have any used uniforms you no longer require, please feel free to drop them at the school office for recycling through the uniform pool. We would really appreciate any winter uniforms and sports uniforms that no longer fit your child.

Pastoral Care News

Welcome to Week Two. Our young gardeners were busy weeding last week. I needed to go out and purchase more gardening gloves. So many volunteers! Thank you for those who have volunteered to assist with cleaning up. It is a huge task and I understand how busy everyone is these days.

This week in craft, some of our talented people have been creating something special. I hope you will be one of the lucky recipients.

Take Care and God Bless
Karen

Class News

Kinder

Welcome back to Term 2. Our Religion unit is “The Church as the Family of God”. We learn that the Church is not just a building but is made up of all the people who belong to God’s family. We identified some important things about being part of a family such as feeling accepted, feeling loved and feeling safe. We also discussed the things a family does together. We learnt that our school is a part of God’s family. Our Kinder class will be celebrating a Mass on Friday in Week 8 on the theme of “Families” and we would like a family photo please from each student to put on our poster which will be displayed in the Church for our Mass. Please send in a photo ASAP or email it. We are also having a Monday Liturgy in Week 5 on the theme of ‘Families’. Our Reading groups started this week and are progressing nicely, thanks to all our helpers. If you would like to volunteer as a Reading helper you are welcome. In Maths we are counting to 20 and back again and playing games such as Bingo to help us recognise the numerals to 20. In Science we are learning about the weather. We viewed images of symbols in our environment eg. a McDonald’s sign, road signs and safety signs. We identified weather symbols and illustrated them, matching them to the correct weather words. Our History unit is “Families, Food, Festivities”. A focus in this unit will be on food, cooking methods, utensils and crockery. I have some kitchen utensils from the past (artefacts) to examine and would like some more if possible, please!

Year 1

Welcome back everyone to Term 2! It has certainly been a busy start! Last week we wrote recounts about our Easter holidays. Year 1 were excited to share their Easter bunny stories. This week we are back into reading groups and spelling activities, with our focus on words that have bossy ‘e’, such as ‘like’, ‘hope’ and ‘rude’. Last week, we were working on place value in Maths, looking at how many tens and ones are in a variety of two digit numbers. This week, we have enjoyed learning about number patterns that increase and decrease. We have been ‘cracking the code’ and solving patterns that have missing numbers because we can see a pattern. In Health, our topic this term is called ‘Medicines and Me’. We are learning about safety around medicines and who gives us medicines. This term, Year 1 are learning about the sacrament of Baptism. We enjoyed making our sacrament booklets this week that fold out to show us the seven different sacraments. In our library lesson this week with Mrs Spencer, we enjoyed hearing about what school life was like in the past at OLV (Mrs Spencer attended our school as a primary student). Children were interested to hear about the changes, including going home for lunch if you lived nearby! Everyone has been very busy working on our Mother’s Day Mass with Year 2, which is this Friday 10th May in OLV church at 9:30am. We hope you can join us to celebrate our Mums!

Year 2

During Health Year 2 will be working through The Friendship Saver Program with Valeria Huens, our school psychologist, once a week. This program is an evidence based universal intervention and prevention program that is designed to enhance students’ friendships and reduce conflict amongst peers. Over 8-12 weeks students develop a shared language and skill set for understanding friendship, conflict, independent problem-solving skills and conflict management strategies. Research indicates that improved peer relationships promote general wellbeing, school engagement, self-confidence and can improve academic outcomes. Please encourage your children to share with you what they learn each week. So far we have discussed whole body listening and working in groups. If you would like to read more about this program please go to the link below. If you have any questions about the program please feel free to contact Valerie Huens at the school on Tuesdays.

Also this term we have started our Dance unit for sport and the children are so excited about this. They have even been rehearsing their dance steps at lunch time. It is fabulous to see such enjoyment taking place. What a talented bunch of students.

Year 3 /4

In Religion, we have started learning about ‘The Sacrament of Confirmation’. In this Sacrament we become fuller members of the Church and can say ‘Yes’ to God without others speaking for us. Confirmation gives us the strength to follow Jesus and to become involved in the mission which Jesus left to the Church. In English we are reading the book “The Letters of Rosie O’Brien” by Kate Walker. Rosie is a twelve-year-old Irish girl who was sentenced to fourteen years transportation to New South Wales for stealing a laced-edged handkerchief. In Maths last week, we worked on increasing our knowledge of whole numbers. We learnt to expand a five-digit numbers using standard and non-standard notation. This week in Maths, Yr 4 is learning the strategies of trading and regrouping in addition and subtraction, while Yr 3 are using known strategies to add and subtract three, four- and five-digit numbers. Yr 3 are also doing some NAPLAN practice questions. In History, we have started to learn about the First Fleet and why English convicts were sent to Australia.

Year 5

Year 5 began the term preparing for their Week 2 Liturgy ‘Children of God.’ The past fortnight in Maths we have been looking at length. Students have used various measuring devices to measure distances around the school and items in the classroom. We have also measured the perimeter of things around the school as well as looking at the perimeter of various shapes. In PDH, we have begun a new topic for the term focusing on drug and alcohol awareness. The past fortnight we have looked at both legal and illegal drugs as well as the benefits and negative effects of legal drugs such as medicine and caffeine. In Art, we have begun our new unit. The past fortnight, students have been looking at, discussing and analysing various artworks of Julian Ashton. Students also did their own research to compare the works of Julian Ashton to other artists of this time in relation to the elements of art. In Science, we have started our new unit looking at states of matter. Students have conducted an investigation to observe different items and categorise as a solid liquid or gas, based on their properties. We have also began looking at how states of matter alter as we add heat to a solid or liquid.

Year 5 have shown great enthusiasm to all lessons over the past 2 weeks. It is great to see their positive attitudes and enthusiasm to begin Term 2.

Year 6

It is great to be back after a lovely break!

In Religion, we have started a unit on Sacraments of Service. We have recalled memories of our lives and each of us has written our own timeline. We have recalled and discussed the Seven Sacraments and how they reflect Jesus’ ministry and life.

In Maths, we are working on addition and subtraction in problem solving and we are practising the “Guess and Check” strategy as we work to solve a variety of problems.

In History, we are learning about the significant events which eventually enabled our Indigenous Australians to have the same rights as all Australians. We will each be researching one of these events over the next few weeks for homework, then presenting it to the class.

We are all very excited about the Year 6 Camp which is next week, from Wednesday to Friday. We have organised our groups for the cabins and are all eager to go!

We attended the Teen Talk with Susie Blackwood last week and learnt many interesting facts about life. It was very informative and, although some of us felt a little awkward at the start, we soon relaxed and realised it was a very worthwhile experience for us.

We had a visit yesterday from the Principal, Mr Burgess and the Year 7 Coordinator, Patrick Doyle, from San Clemente. We enjoyed learning about the school and are looking forward to Year 7. Some students will be going to St Pius X next year while 16 will be attending San Clemente.

Sport News

Diocesan Cross Country

Our children had a great day yesterday at the Diocesan Cross Country Championships. 19 from OLV participated with about 800 children from all around the Diocese. Competing over a distance of 2 or 3 kms, our best performer was Julian Alterman who placed 11th in his age group. Well done all of you.

Regional Soccer Gala

On Friday 28th June, the North Region will be conducting a Soccer Gala at Raymond Terrace. It will be for interested children in Year 3-6. We hope to field 4 x 7-a-side junior teams and 2x 11-a-side senior teams. Look out for further information and nomination requests later in the term. Let’s hope the weather doesn’t spoil the event again this year and we get to run our in our new playing strips provided by the P&F.

Shortland Soccer

Shortland Soccer Club are in need of players to fill their current teams and would love any players that may be interested to get in touch with them. It is not too late to join. They would love to have anybody interested. Please contact Sandra Buxton, SUJFC, 0412 891 424.

Class Awards