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Dear parents and carers,
This week has seen us working our way through the changing weather and temperatures.
At present, everyone is very busy with both school and home activities. We are now moving towards the end of a very busy term and it is noticeable that some of the children are becoming very tired. Please remember that a couple of early nights are of great value in helping to keep up with the busyness and fun that we enjoy at this time of the year.
Please be aware that classes will resume on Tuesday October 15. Staff will be participating in professional development on the Monday.
Yesterday, Yr. 5/6 enjoyed their excursion to Moxy Farms. I think that it was a fantastic opportunity for our students to use their classroom learning in a practical manner – thank you to Miss Schneider for your efforts to plan this excursion to complement the learning taking place in your class this term.
Thank you to Natasha and Paul Best for your generous support with transport to enable the trip to take place – this is greatly appreciated.
SRC Movie Night - Tonight will see us enjoy the Movie Night that has been organised by the SRC committee. I trust that everyone enjoys the movie. There will be a sausage sizzle to complement the cakes at intermission.
Mrs Heath will also be available to take you through the activities that we have been working on during our maths classes.
We hope that you enjoy the movie.
Publication Celebration - We are looking forward to seeing you tomorrow at 12:45pm for our Publication Celebration for this term. The children have all been writing and editing work across the term, and this is an opportunity for them to share their work with you.
You might have some good questions to ask your children about their writing and the decisions that they made when publishing it.
Good luck to Genevieve and Hamish who will represent our region at the Archdiocesan Public Speaking finals to be held in Boorowa tomorrow.
Please be aware that we have a number of bugs around at present. Given that life is busy both at school and at home, we would like to thank those families who are mindful of people becoming run down during very busy times and taking action as needed.
Parent Website – I encourage you to have a lot at the new parent website that was launched earlier this week. It contains a variety of useful information.
On Monday, Catholic School Parents Australia (CSPA) launched the Gearing Up For Parent Engagement in Student Learning resource at Parliament House. Guests included Minister for Education, the Hon Dan Tehan; Shadow Minister for Education and Training, Tanya Plibersek; Jacinta Collins, Executive Director of the National Catholic Education Commission and Director of Catholic Education Archdiocese of Canberra & Goulburn, Ross Fox. Guests also visited St Gregory's Primary School, Queanbeyan and Merici College, where students spoke about the many ways their school engages with parents. The free online toolkit has been designed to assist in making the transition from primary to secondary school a great experience for children, young people and their families.
https://www.parentengagementcspa.edu.au/
We have continued watching our ovals’ transformation this week. The new turf is coming along well. We are still in a waiting phase as the turf establishes itself. The turf will be ready for the first mowing this weekend. Once that job is completed then we will be looking to start using the oval for lessons and during the breaks
Swimsafe – please be aware that we have begun the process of planning for Swimsafe in Term 4. This will take place during Wk. 9 of next term.
End of year events – please note that dates for these events have been added to the calendar. Once we have met our new parish priests, we will confirm the Graduation Mass time with you.
Changes to routine - Thank you to those families who are keeping us informed when children are absent from school, or there are changes to the regular routine.
Please be aware you should be using the Skoolbag option or providing us with a note, so that our record keeping is accurate.
Enrolments for 2020 – if you have a child beginning school in 2020, please take the time to collect an enrolment form, complete, and return to school. Completing this process early will help us with planning for 2020 and mean that there is one less job for you to worry about as the busy end of year period comes about.
In closing this week, I ask that you keep Alexander and his family in your prayers as he recovers from his accident.
Sincerely,
The K/1 students have been learning about different forms of prayer in their Religion lessons during the latter half of this term. As with other curriculum areas, a lived experience gives students a deeper understanding, and is more memorable, so the students have participated in many prayer experiences. They have experienced praying in nature, while listening to the wind rustle the leaves of the giant, lemon-scented gum, guided meditation, mandalas, going to mass (which is many prayers that combine to create one whole prayer experience), singing as prayer, and most recently praying with the rosary. The students particularly loved praying with the giant rosary made of gumnuts, which was gifted to the school many years ago during NAIDOC Week.
Two students from the K/1 class have been so inspired from their experiences that they decided to write prayer books for the K/1 class. Children definitely learn what they live!
Please remember to have a look around at home for any extra library books. As we are now nearing the end of term, it is a good time to return books that we have finished reading, so that others can enjoy them too.
The children are reminded that they should be using a library bag to help preserve the books that they borrow in the best possible condition – thank you to those who do remember to make use of their library every week.
Year 5/6 have investigated measurement. We began with a narrative about a boy called Riley in year 4 who had caught a large Barramundi fish. Students had to estimate the weight of the fish compared to Riley. We used some 1kg, 200 gram and 100 gram weights and used hefting to estimate weights of some classroom items. The students then estimated the weight of the fish and placed their estimates on the board in a kind of stem and leaf plot. Students shared their reasons why they chose the weight; some explanations were based on prior knowledge and the clue of Riley being in year 4. We then used the data to work on mean, median and mode. What is your estimate?
Students also coded the Sphero robots to follow a path.
Kindergarten and year are also investigating position. We began our study with the story Rosie’s Walk, a cute story about a hen who walks around her farm, there are many ‘direction’ and ‘position’ words in the text. Students are currently drawing their own versions of Rosie’s walk. We also used our carpet as a giant grid to locate some classroom items. We also played hide and seek where 1 student hid an object and gave directions to another student so they could find the object. Knowing our right and left direction helps with hide and seek.
