St Mary's School Robinvale eNewsletter

Principal's Report

Dear Parents & Carers,

Apologies that we were not able to get this newsletter out to you last week. The reason why is explained below!

If you have been into the school over the last few days you will notice that administration has relocated to the new building. There was a lot of equipment to move but Lisa Zappia and Gab Cardin are now working from their new offices and the rest of the staff, including myself, will follow before the end of the term. The students are very excited about this and many have already popped in to the new student entrance to check it all out. The old administration and staff building will be demolished over the school holidays to make way for a new classroom and outdoor learning area. This signals the next phase of our building project, the remodelling of the Junior Wing. It will be some time before this part of the project is complete but we do anticipate our nearly complete new Junior Toilet block and play area will open early in term 2. How exciting!

As there is still a lot of construction happening at the front of the school, we are going to keep the front gate closed and continue to use the Parke Street gate as our main entrance until the project is complete. Thank you for your ongoing patience and support with this.

For the past two weeks our Year 3, 5 and 7 students have been participating in NAPLAN testing. Although it provides important information about each student’s progress it is worth remembering that it is only one form of assessment we use at St Mary’s to track student progress. NAPLAN has been scheduled earlier this year in the hope that the results will be available sooner, enabling schools to use the data in a more timely manner. We will let you know when the results arrive. Thank you to all the staff, parents and students who worked hard to ensure NAPLAN was completed successfully this year and to Nicole Zappia for her coordination.

Last Thursday we celebrated Harmony Day. The Australian Government recognises Harmony Week as a celebration that acknowledges our country’s diverse population and brings together Australians from all different backgrounds. It’s about inclusiveness, respect and a sense of belonging for everyone. It has special meaning for the Robinvale community, and particularly for us at St Mary’s, as we have such a rich and diverse community to honour and celebrate. A huge thank you to the students and staff for the wonderful displays that they created and for their informative and entertaining presentations at our special assembly. Thank you to the parents who came at such short notice to join the assembly. It was our original intention to hold the assembly ‘in house’ but with such wonderful presentations being put together we felt it was too good to keep all to ourselves. We hope those that were able to come enjoyed it!

This week our Student Leadership team headed to Melbourne to participate in the GRIP Conference. GRIP is a student leadership training organisation who run conferences and workshops all over Australia. Our students thoroughly enjoyed the experience and came home with lots of ideas and enhanced leadership skills. Thank you to Fiona Pike and Des Lowry for organising and supervising the trip.

As well as our student leaders being away, our Year 3/4 students headed off to Lake Cullulleraine for their camp on Wednesday. We’re sure they will have an amazing three days experiencing all that the lake and its surroundings have to offer. We are looking forward to hearing all about their adventures when they return on Friday afternoon. Thanks to the Year 3/4 team, Miss Zappia and Miss Pepping for joining the campers.

Next Tuesday and Wednesday we will hold our term 1 Parent/Teacher interviews. I encourage you all to take this opportunity to meet with your child/rens classroom teacher/s to share their experiences and learning as well as set some goals moving forward. If you haven’t already done so please book a time online through School Interviews, the details of which were sent home last week. If you are unsure of how to do this please contact the school for assistance.

This will be our last newsletter for term one as we head into the school holidays and Easter next week. I’d like to thank all of you for helping make the start of this year so enjoyable and on behalf of myself and the staff I wish you all a happy and holy Easter. Please note that, as Thursday 6th April is the official end of the Victorian school term, students will be dismissed at 1.30pm. Students who travel on NSW buses (Euston 1 & 2) will need to be collected at this time.

Kind regards,

Andrea Welsh

Religion

Project Compassion

During the period of lent our school supports Caritas Australia’s major fundraising appeal Project Compassion. Project Compassion brings thousands of Australian schools, parishes and supporters together to donate and raise funds for people living in some of the most vulnerable communities across the world. Project Compassion boxes were sent home after Ash Wednesday to each family and your generous donations and support can help change lives today. Boxes are due back to the school office by Wednesday April 5th. Over the coming weeks students will be involved in a range of project compassion fundraisers at school to raise awareness and funds to support those in need.

SWPBS

This week our SWPBS is to report incidents or concerns to the relevant teacher.

SWPBS focus for next week is to participate in all activities respectfully.

Primary

Foundation

Foundation students have started attending school full time and although there are some tired students by the end of the day, everyone is doing exceptionally well!

We are full steam ahead with our InitiaLit lessons. Students can now read and write 5 letters and are using this skill to read and write short words. In mathematics lessons, students are working with writing numbers and number names up to ten. The Religious Education lessons focus has been on CARITAS and how we can help others. Health lessons are full of learning about healthy healthy foods and how to pack a healthy lunchbox, sometimes including treats. We have started Performing Arts and Gross & Fine Motor lessons on Wednesdays, this has been so much fun!

A reminder to parents that it is expected that Reading Diaries are filled out each time you share a story with your child. This is to begin the habit of filling out the diary correctly for when Foundation students begin bringing home readers next term.

As the end of Term 1 is beginning to come nearer, just a reminder of the importance of dropping students off in time for them to unpack their bags and attend the toilet prior to classes beginning. Students should be dropped off to be ready prior to the bell ringing at 8:45am.

Year 1/2

Hello families! We’ve had another spectacular week of learning. On top of our set curriculum, we have all enjoyed extending ourselves in Harmony Day activities. The Year 1/2 teachers are very impressed with how well everyone performed their short presentations. Miss Pepping’s class also thrilled us with their performance at last weeks assembly.

We have continued to write predictions for the texts we have been reading and will now be considering descriptive words (adjectives) to describe people, places and things (nouns). We will be considering the Easter Story in Religion for the rest of the term.

We are starting to see an increase in home reading habits, and encourage this continues to enhance reading skills.

Year 3/4

The Year 3 students successfully completed NAPLAN Assessments. It was a pleasure to see them show confidence when appearing for the test. Harmony day was a huge success with the Year 3/4's representing South Africa, Thailand and China. Students showed a lot of enthusiasm while preparing for the Harmony Day assembly.

In Reading and Writing we are looking at making connections and learning to change the setting, characters and other parts of the text read before. Maths has been interesting with the Year 4’s focussing on formal addition algorithms and Year 3’s working on learning different strategies for addition.

Year 5/6

Congratulations to Year 5 students on completing their NAPLAN assessments for this year. All students should be proud of their efforts.

It was wonderful to see everyone involved in our Harmony Day celebrations on Tuesday. The students thoroughly enjoyed observing the wonderful displays in classrooms and watching each class showcase their chosen country. It was great to see their confidence shine through on stage.

In reading, students have been focusing on interpreting visual elements. We have been looking at diagrams, maps, graphs and other interactive elements found in a text. Students are using these elements to support their understanding of a text. In Maths, the Year 5 students have moved on from looking at addition, subtraction and multiplication strategies, with a new focus on decimals. The Year 6 students are working on multiplying decimals.

Physical Education

Well done to all P - 6 students on a very active Term 1 of PE! We have had tennis, swimming, Bluearth Games, small ball skills and the swimming carnival. Term 2, we will begin preparing for our School Cross Country which takes place in week 2 (Tuesday 2nd May). Students in Year 3 - 6 have the opportunity to qualify for the Sunraysia South Primary Division in Mildura two days later on Thursday 4th May. Our Secondary students will be hoping to qualify for the Mallee Division Cross Country in Ouyen a little later on Wednesday 17th May.

Art

Year 1/2 and 3/4 classes have completed various Harmony Day crafts and activities in Art this week such as painting masks, making headbands and Scrabble tile names.

Year 5/6 have continued to look at the artist Paul Klee and use his artwork for inspiration to create their own. They have worked hard to finish their abstract continuous line portrait and painted them with water colours. These will be displayed in the gym.

Secondary

Year 7/8 Homeroom

Well done to all our Year 7 students who have completed their NAPLAN testing this week. Congratulations to Harlow Middlebrook who has been selected at the Year 7 class captain for this year.

Please remember to send your easter egg raffle donations in. We will be having our Secondary Easter Raffle next week.

Parent Teacher Interviews are in week 10. We look forward to seeing parents and students at the interviews.

Well done to all students who created the display for Harmony Week in the Year 7/8 glassed area.

English

Both Year 7 and 8 students have been practicing literal and inferential comprehension strategies as our reading focus, using texts from the topic of Ancient Worlds. We have been revisiting nouns and sentence structure also.

Maths

In Year 7 Maths we have been looking at prime factors and factor trees. Students will complete their next Maths Pathways module test next week along with another diagnostic test.

Science

Year 7’s are starting to learn about classification of animals and plants and why we do this. They’ve also been growing beans inside and outside of our classroom under different conditions. Year 8’s have started learning about both animal and plant cells.

Religion

Year 8 students will continue looking at beginnings as their topic for the remainder of this term. We have been looking at creation stories from a range of different religions. Next week we will begin to look at the history of St Mary’s school and research the beginning story of the school and the Sisters of Mercy.

Physical Education

Year 7/8 have been learning how to play volleyball over the past few weeks. All Students have been encouraged to try something new no matter what level of skill they have!

Health

Year 7’s have been looking at why we have to stay active throughout our lives. Not just at school but at home and in their own time. Year 8’s have been looking at making good choices with exercise and being healthy in general.

Humanities

Year 7’s have been learning about democracy and the legal system. This has included knowing the difference between local, state and federal parliaments. The Year 8’s have been looking at how Australia has changed with migrants over the years. They are also interviewing an older family member about their families arrival in Australia and how things were different for them in a new country.

Food Technology

Last week students made hot cross buns, this continued to develop their understanding of raising agents using Hi protein flour and yeast. Students have been working on developing their own healthy muffin recipe to meet the requirement of their design brief and will cook these on Friday.