Newsletter, week 6, Term 2, No 3

Principal's Report

Dear Parents & Carers,

Last week we celebrated Catholic Education Week. Catholic Education Week is a time when we traditionally celebrate Catholic education and recognise the important role our schools have in the church and the wider community. The theme for the week was Faith in the Future which speaks of the essence of hope in faith. 

2021 Catholic Education Week is made even more notable by the fact that we are also celebrating 200 years of Catholic Education in Australia. This year we are commemorating the anniversary of the opening of the first official Catholic school in Australia. The school was founded in October 1820 by Fr John Therry and was located in Parramatta. Over the last 200 years Catholic schools have educated millions of young people and today we educate one in five Australian students. At St Mary’s we are extremely proud of our Catholic tradition and of the value our schools add to Australian society. We hope you feel the same! We expressed our pride through taking a special whole school 200 year photo which we look forward to sharing with you soon.

Coinciding with Catholic Education Week is the Feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, patron of Australia and our school. As is our tradition we honoured our namesake, St Mary, and our school with a special celebration day. The day began with a whole school Mass where it was wonderful to have so many of you join us! After Mass we all formed groups and enjoyed ‘round robin’ tabloid sports. Following this we all were all treated to a sausage sizzle lunch and a fun activity back in our classrooms to end the day. Remember to keep an eye out for photos of the celebrations on our Facebook page. Thank you to everyone involved in the day but especially to Leanne Chirchiglia for her planning and organisation, the Year 8 students and class captains for their support during the tabloid sports and to Joe Chirchiglia and the Learning Diversity team for providing us with a delicious lunch.

Another tradition that we intend to keep is using Catholic Education Week to open our enrolments for the following year. If you are considering sending your child to St Mary’s 2022 enrolments are now open. Please feel free to contact or call in to the office and collect an enrolment pack. We will be offering tours of the school at a later date but there is no need to wait for this if you would like to speak to us sooner.

Our staff recently participated in our biannual anaphylaxis refresher training. This is a reminder to all of us that we do have students in our school with this life threatening condition so it is important that we are all trained and aware of their needs. It's also important to remind families to be mindful of what you pack in your children’s lunch boxes as we do have children in our school who are allergic to certain foods, in particular nuts. 

This year’s candidates for the Sacrament of Confirmation are nearing the end of their preparations for this important step in their faith journey. Please keep the candidates, their parents and those supporting them in your thoughts and prayers.

Kind regards,

Andrea Welsh

Religious Education

In recognition of 200 years of Catholic education in Australia, Catholic Education Week 2021 will align with school communities across Australia in celebrating this landmark event. The theme for the week is Faith in the Future which speaks of the essence of hope in faith. A central focus of the week will be the celebration of the Feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, Patron of Australia and our School.

Primary School

Prep

It has been another busy two weeks in the Foundation classrooms. In Literacy, we are learning the sounds /e/, /n/ and /g/ and the tricky words ‘to’ ‘that', ‘they’, ‘are’, ‘said’. We haved enjoyed reading short sentences with tricky words and words we know how to sound out. In Maths, we are learning about shape and colour patterns, the number zero and using a 5 frame or 10 frame to work out a quantity of counters. On Wednesday May 19th at 11am we read the book called ‘Give Me Some Space!’ for the National Simultaneous Storytime. Well done to Kaisa Zappia (Room 5) and Saige Shawcross (Room 6) for winning the class copy of the book after each class listened to the story together. In the afternoon, we loved creating an astronaut and making a rocket launch into the air with a straw. 

Year 1/2

Over the last few weeks Years One and Two have been busy with the topic of Space. We joined in
the reading of a story book last Wednesday that was listened to by children right across Australia
and New Zealand. The book was called Give Me Some Space, and was read by an astronaut on the
International Space Station. We have read lots of information about space and used this in our
writing.
In Maths the Year Ones have been doing a fantastic job with addition and turn around facts, and the Year Twos have been measuring using metres. Maybe you could measure some things in metres at home.

Year 3/4

We are learning about literal meaning and inferring from images and text for Reading. Our Writing focus has been on writing simple sentences which make sense. In Maths the Year 3 students are learning about multiplication facts and the Year 4 students are learning about data collection. Humanities has been very exciting for students as they get to act out in a play related to First Fleet. Science has been interesting with experiments to understand Force. We are also learning about the force of gravity and its impact on movement and speed.  Our Religion focus is on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The Sacrament of Reconciliation offers the Christian forgiveness, reconciliation & the opportunity to celebrate God's unconditional love. National Simultaneous Story time was a huge success with all our students, it was an inspiring and thrilling experience for students to hear the story live from space.

Art

Yr 1/2 MMR have just about completed their landscape drawings. They have put so much effort into their drawings, considering their background, mid ground and foreground. The main focus of their drawing was a tree or trees. They are so colourful.

Yr 5/6SM and 5/6CC have been constructing tree houses using cardboard and exploring different ways to join it together. Some of the designs are excellent, small groups are working well together and  their work will be completed soon.