Newsletter Term 3, Week 4, 2023

Principal's Update

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to Term 3, Week 4!

Story time is well and truly underway for our Kindergarten 2024 children and their families.  Next week it is on Tuesday 8.45-9.30am.  We have wonderful staff including Mrs Fletcher and Mrs Betts/Mrs DesBrulais who share their skills in storytelling and organising wonderful activities for the children.  Story time is on every week this term on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays. All welcome!

Further to Story Time, Kindergarten 2024 children and their families will be invited to attend their transition to school (orientation) on Thursday 26^th October, 2^nd November, 9^th November, 16^th November from 8.45-10am and finishing off with our Teddy Bear’s picnic on Friday 17^th November.

I would like to congratulate your children for embracing our SBLM expectations.  This is our draft flowchart indicating our SBLM behaviours and our procedures.  This is continually being updated and tweaked and we are happy to publish a finalised copy in the near future:

CCC Athletic Carnival

Myself, Mr Banks and Mr Murphy attended the CCC athletics carnival last Friday.  I was very proud of all of our children who showed great sportspersonship and participated to as a team representing themselves and SBLM.  Great results:

St Brendan’s came 5^th overall out of 11 Catholic Schools on the Central Coast.  Well done team! These children are invited to attend the Diocesan Athletics Carnival on 30^th August at Narrabeen.

Rain R – 800m, 10 year 100m, Junior 200m, junior long jump, junior high jump

Aston R – 8 year 100m

Alexia G – 9 year 100m, junior discus, junior shot put

Samantha McD, Harper L, Alexia G, Rain R - Junior Girls Relay team 

Paige M – 12 year 200m

Kai P – 12 high jump

Chelsea R – 11 years long jump

Bethany P – 12 years discus, 12 year shot put

Isaac B – 12 year shot put

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I would also like to acknowledge a special result for Rain R who is the Central Coast Age Champion Award – Rain R! Wow!

Congratulations

Congratulations to our Mrs Mind who gave birth to their beautiful baby girl, Izzy Claire Mind, who was born on 27 July!

Congratulations to Miss Ashford, now Mrs Ramsay, we celebrated her nuptials on the weekend just gone in the beautiful Hunter Valley.

Public Speaking

The children K-6 have been preparing themselves for our school Public Speaking competition which was held last week.  Amazing talent from all the children, there is certainly skill in speaking in front of an audience.  I would like to congratulate Emily O and Ava-Lily A who came 1^st and 2^nd at the Year 6 public speaking competition and is now invited to attend the Cluster public speaking competition on Monday, 28^th August held at St Mary’s, Toukley. Well done girls and good luck!

School Disco

Have you RSVP’d for the school disco yet?  If not, please do so.  I am hoping it will be an great opportunity for the children to have fun with an excellent DJ and lots of dance floor space!  It is going to held at The Halekulani Club, Halekulani.  Infants is from 5-6pm and primary from 6.10-7.30pm.  The children from St Brendan’s Early Learning Centre are also invited to attend the infants disco!  Families will also have the opportunity to buy dinner there and make it a social occasion.  Children should always have an adult onsite at all times.  The bar will not be accessible from the disco area therefore we will organise water for the children to have access to.   Parents are selling items at the disco so please bring some cash with you! 

Items for sale will be:

Glow Sticks $1.00

Lolly Bags $2.00

Lucky No: $1.00 per number

Proceeds from the disco will help cover the cost of the DJ and help with Year 6 fundraising assisting to bring the costs down for end of year activities for Year 6.  Please come and support the disco and have fun too!  You find the link to RSVP on Compass invite.  A group of year 6 parents met with myself and Mrs Fletcher and Mrs Anderson to discuss Year 6 events, thank you for your time.  We will have another zoom meeting in the near future after the disco to go through more details – all parents are very welcome to attend the zoom.

Welcome

I would like to welcome Victoria Price as our School Marketing Officer during Mrs Gemma Murphy’s maternity leave.  Thank you Victoria for joining SBLM and assisting us with our promotions and communications in the community.

Senior Football

Well done to our Senior football team who won 2 our of 3 games at the gala day yesterday!  Thank you to our Super Coach, Mr Banks, for not only coaching the senior team, he also coached the junior team who attended the Catholic Schools Rugby League Gala Day at Blue Haven Oval.  Thank you also to Mr Schasser who attended the carnival to assist the junior boys team and for our wonderful parent helpers.

Our new soccer goals (x4) are a hit!  We have one set on our bottom oval and one on our top oval.  Thank you to our sport captains who put them out each morning and return them in the afternoon to an undercover area.

We will also be reviewing when the children are invited to return to school in their Summer uniforms – the weather is so unpredictable at the moment!

Upcoming Events

The children have been working hard on their Religious Art Prize. These are due to be completed next Friday and will be available for our school community to view on Wednesday 23^rd August in our hall.  This is also our Book Week parade day.

Mrs Ward has organised a book fair and a book week parade in Week 6.  The parade is on the Wednesday 23^rd August at 8.30am – all welcome to be part of this wonderful event.

We have scheduled the following emergency drills for our whole school leading up to a whole Carter’s Road emergency drill in December:

Monday Week 6 10am lockdown from classrooms

Monday Week 8 10am Evacuation drill from classrooms

Monday Week 10 10.45am Evacuation drill from playground

Monday Term 4, Week 2 10.45am Lockdown from playground

This is all to keep our community safe!

God bless,

Charlene Reid

Principal

Assistant Principals update

Collaborative Coaching:

We are now in our third term of Collaborative Coaching where all grades are continuing to focus on building skill, knowledge and understanding in the area of Numeracy (Multiplicative Thinking).  We have seen growth (as shared in our last newsletter) across all grades. I have included below further suggestions for Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 parents on ways you can support your child with their multiplicative thinking.  These are very simple concepts and activities that will support your child's learning:

KINDERGARTEN:  A GUIDE TO SUPPORTING YOUR CHILD IN MATHEMATICS (FORMING GROUPS)

Forming Groups in Kindergarten focuses on:

• forming groups through sharing and counting objects 

• making and continuing patterns which repeat. 

You can help your Kindergarten child at home by: 

• teaching them to share cutlery for each place when setting the table 

• sharing food items equally between siblings or family members by repeatedly giving each person one in the same order until there are no food items left. Discuss what happens if there is an odd number. 

• identifying and discussing patterns in and around your home such as lounge or bed linen material colours or shapes. For example, blue square – yellow circle, blue square – yellow circle, blue square – yellow circle 

• singing songs, creating dances and readings books with repeating, rhyming or rhythmic numbers, such as There were 10 in the bed 

• noticing patterns in nature, for example a beehive, petals on a flower.

YEAR 1 & YEAR 2:  A GUIDE TO SUPPORTING YOUR CHILD IN MATHEMATICS (FORMING GROUPS)

Forming Groups in Year 1 and Year 2 Focuses on: 

• using groups to solve multiplication problems or share to solve division problems. You can help your Year 1 and Year 2 child at home by: 

• playing skip counting games or taking turns to count by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s 

• using 5c, 10c or $2 coins to skip count money 

• drawing a skip counting hopscotch path with chalk. Use the hopscotch path in reverse to skip count backwards.

COVID TUTORING

Last term we exhausted our government grant for Covid Tutoring.  In Term 1 and Term 2 we were able to provide additional support to Year 4 in the areas of reading, writing and mathematics.  We have since been informed of an additional smaller grant and will look to providing support to another grade.

HIGH POTENTIAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

Every teacher in every classroom provides differentiated learning to cater to the needs of each individual student.  For high potential learners, this can be in the form of open-ended questions, extending prompts to accelerate thinking, the use of more complex literature, independent research tasks, reciprocal reading groups to name just a few. In addition to this, Mr Chandler facilitates an Advanced Numeracy Group. We encourage students to participate in the Newcastle Permanent Mathematics Competition, ICAS Assessments and Enrichment days. 

IN-CLASS SUPPORT

We also provide support in a range of classes including:

• Additional Support in Year 5 and Year 6 every Monday and Thursday across English and Mathematics
• Writing groups in Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 every Wednesday
• Maths Groups in Year 1 and Year 2 every Thursday

LUNCH TIME CLUBS

This term we have the following clubs operating

• Choir Wednesdays
• Garden Club Thursdays
• Library (open two lunchtimes a week)

HOMEWORK:

We had a parent inquiry regarding Homework expectations for Years 5 and 6.  Our Homework Policy on the school website.  Year 5 and Year 6 have 2-3 research tasks a term in addition to the expectation that they are reading on a daily basis.  In addition to this the teachers in Year 5 and year 6 have been sharing activities with parents on Seesaw on relation to Multiplicative Thinking.  Some activities were also shared in last week's newsletter.

K-1-2 HOME READERS:

A further question has been raised regarding the type of readers that are sent home with the children in Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2.  I would like to preface that reading at home should cultivate a love of reading, it should be easy and allow students to develop their fluency.  Students read a range of different types of readers including PM Readers and Decodable texts across Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2.  Readers in class are at an instructional level where the teacher will be working with students on an identified area of need.  Please know you are welcome to use any type of book, not necessarily the one provided by the school, and it is super important to model reading to your child too!  We do not send PM Readers or Decodables home due to the high number of books that are not returned.  This results in a huge and unnecessary cost to our school and does not allow us to have a full set, which is needed for reading groups.

ASSESSMENT

Naplan is one form of assessment we use to analyse student achievement.  A range of assessments are carried out in all Key Learning Areas every term. Our Semester Reports use descriptors to inform you where your child is sitting aligned to the Syllabus outcomes and expectations.  Our descriptors are; Elementary, Basic, Sound, Thorough and Extensive.  If a child is on a Personal Learning Plan, and are working within a different stage of the curriculum, their grade may be excluded.   Teachers and students work together to develop success criteria (a rubric), to identify where a child is achieving. Parent-Teacher Interviews are an excellent opportunity for you to ask your child's teacher how they are progressing with their assessments. We are mandated by NESA with how we report student achievement. 

NAPLAN

This Naplan used proficiency level descriptions to report on student achievement also.  We have shared this information with parents through Compass earlier this year.  The four proficiency levels are; Needs Additional Support, Developing, Strong and Exceeding.  We are currently analysing our Naplan data.  Please note there are a range of contributing factors for Naplan results:

• Every student's individual performance have an impact on our school's national average
• Almost all of our students engage with Naplan, even if learning challenges exist.
• Naplan was moved forward from May to March reducing the amount of learning time prior to the assessment
• The majority of the Naplan assessment is online (with the exception of Year 3 Writing) and a student's computer skills is without a doubt a contributing factor. 

Camp Quality

On Friday, 11 August 2023 Camp Quality will be provided educational sessions for our students about cancer.  We currently have several families within our community who are experiencing this within their lives.  We had a session for Kindergarten - Year 2 and another for Years 3-6.  Please refer to the information below:

Religious Education

Feast Day of Mary MacKillop

On Tuesday, it was the Feast Day of Mary MacKillop, who was committed to serving the poor, to going where the need was and to providing education for all Australian children. St Brendan’s students participated in a whole school Mass as well as a mufti day to raise money for Mary Mac’s Place at Woy Woy. All money raised will go to Mary Mac’s, which is a community kitchen and drop-in centre for anyone who is homeless or needs a helping hand. Mary Mac’s does not receive any formal funding and is only able to continue through the generosity of others.  

Click this link to donate to mary Mac's Place, Woy Woy.

https://chuffed.org/project/shout-a-mate-a-plate

School Updates

Book Week 2023

The theme for Book Week this year is Read, Grow, Inspire.

We will be celebrating Book Week by dressing up as our favourite book characters for our annual book parade on Wednesday 23rd August (Week 6). Parents and carers are welcome to join us on the silver seats. We will begin at 8:30am.

On Tuesday 22nd August the students will be having a visit from a Newcastle illustrator ~ Gwynneth Jones.

The Book Fair will be held in Week 5. Students will have an opportunity to visit the Book Fair to make a wish list to share with their parents and carers. Purchasing will take place before and after school. Times and dates will be shared with you closer to the date. 

Sport and co-curricular photo orders

Dear Parents,

These school sports and co-curricular groups were photographed on 28/04/2023:

* Captains and Leaders
* Student Representative Council 
* Year 6 

You can now view and purchase the group images listed above and if you place your order before 25/08/2023 you will get a 20% early order discount. Just click on the link below. Please note the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

ORDER NOW

Images can also be viewed by visiting www.advancedlife.com.au entering the code: 4Q5 D9E A8W and clicking on “Group Photos”

Important

·  Sports and co-curricular group photos can only be purchased online, PLEASE DO NOT return payment to your school

·  If your child's group or team is scheduled to be photographed at a later date, you will receive an additional email notification when the images are ready to be ordered

·  Photos will be returned to your school for distribution approximately six weeks after the discounted early order period has closed

·  Past years' photographs including sports, co-curricular and representative groups are also available at your school's advancedorder and your child's advancedyou photo sites

Advancedlife would like to express our appreciation to St Brendan's Catholic Primary School for placing your trust in us. Please remember we offer a 100% money-back guarantee on our products to ensure your peace of mind. We would also love to receive your feedback or resolve any issues you may experience, to ensure your satisfaction. If you have any questions, comments or feedback relating to your advancedlife experience, please contact us at www.advancedlife.com.au/contact

Awards

Merit Awards

Week 3

Week 4

Dojo's

Community News

St Brendan's and St Brigid's Combined School Mass and Youth Ministry

Join us at Youth Ministry where you will be welcomed by students from St Brigid’s and will join in some fun, collaborative, team events. 

Snacks and drinks will also be available.

The Family Mass begins at 5pm, after Youth Ministry.

We look forward to sharing the fun with you

Compass Calendar