Dear parents and carers,

Sunday April 25 – ANZAC Day – Congratulations and thank you to everyone who was able to come along to the ANZAC Day services last Sunday. Our students marched with a variety of different organisations.   It was noticeable that the crowds are growing most especially at the Dawn Service.  Congratulations to Genevieve and Charlie who did a terrific job at both services.  Thank you everyone!

During this week, we have hosted visitors from both Catholic Education and St Francis Xavier School at Lake Cargelligo. 

Our staff have continued working on developing new interdisciplinary units for use with students.  This is a project that we have been working on with the staff from CE and Lake Cargelligo since late last year, and we are looking forward to seeing this new method of planning in action.  This work also included working with Andrea Muller who is an expert in conceptual inquiry. Andrea worked with us from her home base in New Zealand

Our visitors from CE also worked with us to update our website.

It is always terrific to hear feedback from visitors about our students and our community – the feedback yesterday was very complimentary and a wonderful Pat-on-the-back for our children and staff!

Miss Schneider has also been participating in professional learning this week with peers from across several schools.  She has worked on this learning over the past 18 months and this week spent time working with the team from the Brown Collective and colleagues in Canberra.

Mrs Mitton, Mrs Hunter, and I will be participating in further training with Macquarie University’s MacLit program over the next two days.

Compass – earlier this week, information was sent home relating to accessing the parent portal.  As you are aware, we are a pilot school for the Compass rollout.  It is hoped that this technology will become even more useful to you over the coming weeks as more features are turned on.

You should now be able to download the App and/or access the program via your various devices.

One feature that I am sure you will find helpful is the option to report student absences via the app.  If your child/ren is absent from school, please remember to let us know the reasons for the absences so that this can be recorded accurately.

Mother’s Day – our P & F have been busy preparing for Mother’s Day on Sunday May 9.  There will be a stall on Friday May 7 with gifts available for purchase.  The P & F are also working on a few surprises for Mother’s Day and additional information will be coming home over the next few days.

Athletics Carnival – our athletics carnival is set for Friday May 14.  This year we are looking at holding our carnival in a slightly different format to help the day flow more smoothly.  More information will be coming home shortly.

Excitement is building for our K/1/2 excursion next week plenty of ideas about what we might see when we visit Canberra on Wednesday.

Please return any notes and finalise payment as soon as possible if you have not already done so.

I encourage you to keep in contact with class teachers to support the activities that children are working on at school and to keep us up to date with any concerns that your children may be dealing with.  Your support is appreciated.

Take care and stay safe,

We have had a busy week on the Religious Education front. On Monday and Wednesday of this week, the teachers have been collaborating with the teachers from Lake Cargelligo, to continue to create a ‘Small Schools Framework’ of interdisciplinary conceptual learning units of study. To guide us in our work, we had our RE team leader from CE, Lee Herden, and we were also very fortunate to have Andrea Muller, a conceptual learning guru, meeting with us virtually from New Zealand. Thinking was stretched, and ideas were bandied about as we worked through planning our units for this term. This is a long-term project, which will see the teachers and students from these two schools working together and learning more about each other and our communities.

Sacramental News

The meetings for the Confirmation candidates will begin on Tuesday the 4^th of May at 6 pm in the St Joseph’s School Library. A parent is expected to attend the meetings with their child. This year the meetings will occur each week for four weeks. Children in Years 5 and 6 (or older) who have already received the sacraments of Reconciliation and First Holy Communion will be eligible to join the Confirmation preparation group.

The preparation for Reconciliation and First Holy Communion will take place later in the year and these are prepared for, and celebrated usually within a week of each other.

If you would like your child to be included in any of the sacramental programs, could you please call the school or email me and leave the name of the child and the sacrament. The number is 6343 1514 and my email is leslie.king@cg.catholic.edu.au.