NEWSLETTER 32 - 18th October 2022
- Principals Reflection
- Term Dates
- Upcoming Events
- End of Year Reports - On Compass
- Contacting the School - Term 4
- Athletics Carnival - Thursday 3rd November
- Prep News - Mrs Jak
- Year 3 News - Mrs Meech
- Year 4 News - Ms Stuart
- Student Support - Mrs Marshall
- WEST Award
- Student of the Week & House Raffle Winners
- Religious Education - Mrs Dunn
- Book Club
- Tasmanian School Triathlon Challenge Registrations - Closed
- Traffic and Student's Safety
- Care and Concern
- Inquiring Minds
- Nut Allergy Aware School
Parents, students, and friends welcome back to school for Term 4. I hope that all of you have found some time over the past two weeks to rest and refresh ready for the final sprint that is Term 4.
The weekend’s Gospel reading from Luke describes one of Jesus’ Miracles where he cured the Ten Lepers. In the reading the lepers all ask Jesus to cure them of their ailment, and Jesus in turn cures them after they have followed his instuction to go and see their priests. However, only one of the ten men return to thank Jesus for curing them. As with so many of the Gospel readings, there are many layers to draw back from this account. However, for me, the obvious message here is one of gratitude or lack thereof. I know that I am guilty of lacking gratitude. I think this often stems from taking things for granted, or simply expecting things - a sense of entitlement. Perhaps this is how the nine that did not return to thank Jesus felt. Maybe they expected it to happen and did not see the need to thank Jesus. Perhaps they were so excited when they were healed that they got swept up in joy and ran to tell their families and friends. No doubt there are many reasons when we forget to be grateful. Sometimes for us, it can be that we have become so used to things that we forget how fortunate we are.
There is a great deal of research regarding the impact that showing gratitude can have. Of course it has a positive impact on those we are thanking, but it also has a positive impact on the individual expressing gratitude. We are happier when we take the time to be thankful. Really, it is a win-win for all involved. At St Patrick’s Catholic School, we aim to foster this spirit of gratitude. It is the Thanksgiving element of our WEST values. Our Spirit of Jesus moments provide staff and students with the opportunity to be thankful. And, everyday I witness students showing gratefulness for the actions of others in their lives.
I have great hope in the the fact that gratitude is a value that we continue to aspire towards at St Patrick’s and I thank all in the community for helping to contribute to our wonderful culture.
On the final day of Term 3, we had the opportunity to farewell Mr. Linhart. Mr. Linhart leaves a legacy at this school that will not soon be forgotten. At his final morning assembly, Mr. Linhart asked, "What happens when a stone is thrown into the water?” The students replied, “It makes ripples”, and “It makes a splash”. Mr. Linhart replied, “It leaves a hole doesn’t it, but that hole is soon filled back in by the water”. In one sense his analogy is correct, St Patrick’s will continue to operate and build on its strengths, many of which are due to Mr. Linhart’s work and influence. However, the water is forever changed, and although it will change again, I know that we are all grateful and will not soon forget the impact that Mr. Linhart has had on the Students, Parents, Staff and Community of St Patrick’s Catholic School.
Kurt Atkins
Acting Principal
2022
Term 1 - Thursday 3rd February - Thursday 14th April
Term 2 - Monday 2nd May - *Friday 8th July
Term 3 - Monday 25th July - Friday 30th September
Term 4 - Monday 17th October - Thursday 15th December
*Student Free Day Friday 8th July 2022
2023
Term 1 - Friday 3rd February - Thursday 6th April
Term 2 - Wednesday 26th April - Friday 7th July
Term 3 - Monday 24th July - Friday 29th September
Term 4 - Monday 16th October - Thursday 14th December
*Student Free Day Monday 24th April 2023
October
| Monday 17th |
First Day Term 4 - Summer Uniform Assembly - School Captain Nomination |
| Friday 21st | Inquiring Minds - 9.00 - 10.30am |
| Monday 24th | Assembly - School Captains Announced |
| Tuesday 25th - Friday 28th | Year 6 Camp - Hobart |
| Monday 31st | Socktober - Gold Coin Donation |
November
| Thursday 3rd | St Patrick's Athletics Carnival - Girdlestone Park, East Devonport |
| Monday 7th | Recreation Day Public Holiday |
| Tuesday 8th - Fri 18th | School Swimming Program (Yr 2-5) |
| Thursday 10th | NWCPS Swimming Carnival Burnie (Yr 3-6) |
| Wednesday 16th | NWCPS Athletics Carnival Penguin (Yr 3-6) |
| Thursday 24th | All Schools Triathlon Mersey Bluff (Yr 3-6) *Registrations closed Tuesday 18th October. |
| Friday 25th | Devonport Show Public Holiday |
Student End of Year Reports will not be printed this year and instead will only be available via Compass. Reports are easy to access via Compass and instructions for this will be made available in future newsletters. We will however print reports if requested by parents/guardians. This can be requested after the reports have been made available on Compass. Please note the reports from previous years and the Mid Year Report from this year can also be accessed via Compass (either in the App or the web version).
Parents are welcome to contact Mr Atkins, Mrs Marshall or Mrs Badcock at any time to discuss issues relating to their child’s education. It is important for parents to always make contact with the leadership team (Mr Atkins, Mrs Marshall & Mrs Badcock) or their child’s teacher if they require elaboration or clarification on any issue. Contact to the school can be made by either phoning the office between 8.00am - 4.00pm (after-hours phone calls will now go to the school message bank) your child's diary, or by making an appointment.
The school athletics carnival will be held on Thursday 3rd November. We are currently looking into a different format for the carnival this year with one of the changes being the location where the event is held. This year the carnival will be held at the East Devonport Recreation Grounds, Girdlestone Park. This will give us access to a larger oval for running events and the use of some of the Devonport Little Athletics equipment. Students will be bussed to and from the event. Further information will be provided to families as it is finalised.
This term in Prep, students will continue to develop their writing skills by using familiar words, phrases and images to communicate and idea. Students will enhance their writing by improving their letter sound knowledge, using basic punctuation such as capital letters and full stops and correctly forming upper- and lower-case letters. In Reading, students will be encouraged to recall key events from the story as a skill to support making meaning from texts. To improve fluency, students are encouraged to keep learning to read high frequency words for homework and to blend sounds orally to read. Students are supported in reading short decodable and predictable texts for homework through our home reading program. Show and tell will continue this term enabling students to share experiences, events and particular topics with their peers.
This term in Mathematics, students will sort, describe and name familiar two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects in the environment, describe position and movement and represent practical situations to model addition and sharing.
Our HASS unit will focus on Geography. Students will describe the features of familiar places (Latrobe) and recognise why some places are special to people. We will explore how places can be represented on maps and a globe and why places are important to people.
In Religion we will learn about God’s love in people and the world around us. We will read stories of God’s love in the Bible focusing on the birth of Jesus.
In addition to our academic goals, children will continue to grow socially through their friendships with their classmates and grow as responsible learners in the classroom and school environment.
This term, Year 3 will continue to work on a number of learning areas.
In Mathematics, we will be learning to:
-represent money values in multiple ways and count the change required for simple
transactions to the nearest five cents.
-tell time to the minute and investigate the relationship between units of time.
-conduct chance experiments, identify and describe possible outcomes and recognise the variation in results.
In English, we will be continuing to work on:
-planning, writing and editing informative text.
-building our knowledge of spelling patterns and sounds.
-extending our strategies for reading.
-developing and using comprehension strategies to build on literal and inferred meaning.
We will also be completing our Science Unit, “Earth and Space” and working in the school garden with Mr Tim. We will be participating in Drama lessons with Ms Melenna Zeleznik each Tuesday. This term we also will be participating in the Swimming Program and complete PAT testing. We look forward to a busy but rewarding term.
Mrs Meech & Ms Mundy.
This term will be a busy one and, being only nine weeks, will fly by quickly!
In English, we will continue with our persuasive writing focus and in reading groups work on our comprehension skills. In Mathematics we will start the term off with a unit on Probability focusing on identifying everyday events where one cannot happen if the other happens and identifying events where the chance of one will not be affected by another. In our History unit, we will be exploring the reasons behind the first fleet being sent to the Sydney colony and the conditions faced by those who made the first journey. In the final week of last term we started sketching some tall ships as a hook to our unit. Our Religious Education Unit for Term 4 is on Scripture.
We look forward to end of Year festivities in the final week.
Learning Plans were reviewed at the end of Term 3 and new learning plans for Term 4 (2022) and Term 1 (2023) were drafted. Both of these were sent home in the second last week of Term 3 with the request to either:
- Sign the ‘School Copy’ for the review and the new learning plan.
or
- Make a time to meet with your child’s teacher to further discuss the learning plans.
If you haven’t completed this yet, you will receive another copy (in case they have been lost over the holidays) of the learning plans this week. Thank you to all parents who have completed one of these options. Could any outstanding learning plans, or contact with teachers, please be completed by the end of this week.
Speech Screening - Kinder, Prep and Year 1
During Term 1 and Term 4, we routinely screen students who may have difficulty with the production of speech sounds. We screen all Kinder students, any Prep or Year 1 students who are currently on/or have been on a speech program as well as any students who the teachers have indicated may have some trouble with pronouncing some sounds in their speech. This process is a system wide (Tasmanian Catholic Education Office) initiative and allows us to identify and possibly provide intervention for students who may need support in this area.
This screening process will identify students who may have errors in producing the sounds that are not considered to be age-appropriate. Speech pathologists will then examine these screeners to identify students for possible further assessment in Term 1, 2023 and this may lead to support with our speech therapy teacher assistant. We will let parents know if their child has been identified for further follow-up as soon as we have this information. Based on past history, this will probably not be forwarded to us until December.
Congratulations to the following students who have received Student of the Week.
Prep: Chloe Johnson for an excellent effort with writing and reading Chloe. Well done for consistently trying your best.
Year 1: Grace Freeman For the pleasing effort and attitude shown towards all areas of school in Term 3. Great work Grace
Year 2: Ethan Dick for maintaining a consistently positive attitude and application to his school work.
Year 3: Ellie Hayes for demonstrating a positive attitude and great application toward completing her learning tasks.
Year 4: Hamish Crawford for his consistent application to his research and slideshow presentation on Abel Tasman.
Year 5: William Brazendale for the wonderful improvement he made in Term 3 with his reading and comprehension tasks.
Year 6: Oliver Gatehouse for the creativity and effort applied to his 3D Solar System project.
Congratulations to our House Raffle winners this week:
Dooley - Henry Jones Martyn - Lincoln Smith
Byrne - Alivia Dewrance-Milligan
Throughout the month of October we pray the prayers of the rosary.
The word “Rosary” means a chain of roses and the roses are prayers. The Rosary Prayer tells us about the life of Jesus and his Mother, Mary.
The prayer used beads to count prayers as they are said repetitively. The prayer itself is a meditation. The main prayer that is said is the Hail Mary, which is repeated as we focus on the main events of Jesus' life. If you have a pair of rosary beads at home please pray the special prayer with your children. The Rosary is prayed at Our Lady of Lourdes Church Friday mornings at 10.00 onwards and everyone is welcome. If you need a copy of the structure and prayers of the Rosary please contact Catherine Dunn.
CURRICULUM - SCRIPTURE
The children will be focussing on scripture in Religious Education this term. The progression of the learning is:
- Kinder - The Word of God is shared when we read the stories of God’s love in the Bible.
- Prep - Stories from the Scriptures teach us about the love of God
- Gd 1 and 2 - Scripture is proclaimed in prayer and worship as the Word of God.
- Gd 3 and 4 - Scripture teaches Christians how to live as followers of Jesus.
- Gd 5 and 6 - Christians reflect on the action of God in their lives in the light of Scripture, the Word of God.
There are some beautiful stories in the bible that unfold messages about life. If you would like to read some at home as a family, the stories of the parables that Jesus told are a good place to start. The most famous of these parables and the most widely read around the world is the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Advent Family Mass
On the second Sunday of Advent on the 4th December, there will be a School/Family/Parish Mass to celebrate together.
Christmas Mass
We are also celebrating Christmas with a School/Family/Parish Mass on Christmas Eve so please keep this date in mind also please.
Please pop these dates on your calendar as we would love you to attend.
The 2022 Tasmanian School Triathlon Challenge Registrations have now closed. As previously advised the event will be held at the Mersey Bluff on Thursday 24th November, the registration fee will be covered by the school. This year we will bus our students to and from the event; however, it will be parent's responsibility to get pushbikes to the event by the allocated cut-off time in the morning and to collect them at the conclusion of the event. Further detailed information will be forwarded to families as we receive it.
The school urges parents to support road safety by obeying signage or staff on duty requests. And asks you remind your child(ren) to be very aware of potential traffic related dangers around the school. Sometimes for example, pedestrians or motorists take short cuts, and if students are crossing inappropriately (with or without you), or just not aware of their surrounds by always looking either way, we could have an accident. The education and care of our students is a partnership between the staff and parents and we all need to play our part, even if only to demonstrate your support to any children watching.
Our school community is special in many ways - dedicated staff, supportive parents, and cooperative students. Our Mercy Charism provides us with key values that, I believe, are real ingredients for our uniqueness - Compassion, Hospitality, Respect and Mercy. We try hard to live out these values and one way of displaying compassion is for us to be a support to those in our school community who have undergone a loss.
‘Inquiring Minds’ Birth to 5 program - a ‘Set-Up for Success’ Catholic Education Tasmania initiative.
Our ‘Inquiring Minds’ birth to 5 program operates each Friday during school term time from 9.00am to 10.30am;This program involves a considerable focus on communicating to parents the learning intentions of important activities that are associated with early years learning. Mrs Klug will be working to engage parents in early years learning experiences that will ensure children who are enrolling in Kindergarten, will be informed in regards to developing key social, emotional, physical and cognitive skills and understandings.
A reminder to parents that St Patrick's is a Nut Allergy School and that we ask that parents not pack nuts or nut products in their children's lunchboxes.