Dear Parents and Carers 

The term seems to be flying by rather quickly.

Our Year 6 students are currently preparing to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation where they will renew their faith and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit can have a transformative impact on our lives. These gifts are shown in our thoughts, words, and actions, guiding us to live and act like Jesus. It's through living out these gifts that we can witness the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, not just for ourselves but as a testimony to those around us.

As Year 6 take this next step in their faith journey, please keep the Year 6 students in your prayers. All families are welcome to join us at Mass on Sunday 29 June at 10.00am.

In the coming weeks, the Sacred Heart Parish of Moruya will farewell our Parish Priest, Fr George Azhakath, as he takes up his new appointment as Parish Priest of Narooma. We extend our appreciation and thanks to Fr George for his faithful service and the care he has shown to our parish and school communities. We wish him every blessing as he begins this new chapter in his ministry.

Fr Josh Scott will commence his role on 4 July and is very much looking forward to working with our students, staff, and wider community. We look forward to warmly welcoming Fr Josh and supporting him as he begins his ministry with us.

Fr Josh – A Journey of Faith and Service

Fr Josh comes from the country town of Young, NSW, where he grew up as the eldest of three siblings. A true country boy at heart, he’s known for his down-to-earth nature, his approachable personality, and his genuine love for people. He’s passionate about helping others explore life’s big questions and discover a sense of purpose and meaning.

Unlike many priests, Fr Josh didn’t grow up in a religious household. His family lived as atheists or agnostics, and faith wasn’t part of daily life. But as a teenager, he found himself searching for something more—asking questions about existence, truth, and what it all means. This journey led him to explore Christianity, and in 2005, he made the personal decision to become Catholic.

After his conversion, Fr Josh became active in his local parish, serving at Mass, visiting the sick, and helping out with community projects in his local community. In recognition of his service, he was named Young Citizen of the Year for his hometown in 2007.

Before becoming a priest, Fr Josh worked with students with special needs, and later in tourism, public relations, and economic development. Still, he sensed God calling him to serve in a deeper way. In 2010, he entered the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Sydney to study for the priesthood, preparing to serve in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn.

During his formation, Fr Josh ministered in a variety of settings—working with young people and in aged care, with migrant and indigenous communities, the homeless, and the dying. He was ordained a priest in 2017 and has since served in schools and parishes across the ACT and NSW.

One of the most profound chapters of his ministry came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he served as Senior Chaplain at Calvary Hospital in Canberra. As one of the only priests allowed in hospitals at the time, he supported patients, families, and exhausted healthcare workers with prayer, a listening ear and mentos.

Fr Josh also spent seven years as Archdiocesan Youth Chaplain, working closely with teens and young adults through retreats, events, and one-on-one ministry. Most recently, he served as Interim Administrator of St Christopher’s Cathedral in Canberra.

Outside of ministry, Fr Josh enjoys rugby league (especially the Sydney Roosters), Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, music, philosophy and politics.

Fr Josh brings heart, honesty, and a strong sense of mission to everything he does. He is excited to serve the community of Sacred Heart Parish in Moruya and looks forward to journeying together in faith, service, and friendship.

National Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week

Last Monday marked National Sorry Day, a time to remember and acknowledge the Stolen Generations—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their families. This year, 26 May 2025, also marks 28 years since the Bringing Them Home report was presented to the Australian Parliament in 1997.

The theme for both Sorry Day and National Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June) this year is "Bridging Now to Next". This theme reminds us of the importance of learning from the past, recognising its impact today, and working together to build a more respectful and united future.

On Monday our First Nations students from Years 3–6, along with our Stage 3 classes, took part in the annual Sorry Day Bridge Walk at Batemans Bay. This meaningful event brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in a powerful act of unity, promoting understanding, healing, and reconciliation. St Mary’s is proud to be part of this important initiative. By participating, we affirm our commitment to walking alongside our Indigenous community and working together toward a more reconciled future.

Leadership
In Week 3, I had the privilege of attending the Experienced Principals’ Leadership Program—a gathering of school Principals from South Australia, NSW, Canberra and Victoria, designed to deepen our understanding of leadership and strengthen our capacity to make a positive impact in our schools. A highlight of the course was hearing from leadership expert Dean Williams, who offered powerful insights into the role of principals as leaders of change. He challenged us to look beyond the day-to-day demands of school management and reflect on how we lead with purpose, influence our communities, and foster meaningful growth. 

Dean spoke about the importance of adaptive leadership—understanding the complexities of school communities, engaging others in the process of change, and leading in ways that empower staff, students, and families to contribute to a shared vision.

As I reflected on our school community at St Mary’s, I felt blessed for the opportunity to lead such a welcoming and committed community. Although I’ve only been at St Mary’s a short time, it is clear that this is a school built on strong values, dedicated staff, and a genuine care for every student. I look forward to applying what I have learned to continue growing a culture of collaboration, inclusion, and continuous improvement. 

The Council of Catholic School Parents (CCSP) is hosting webinars for parents and carers in June.

Kind regards
Jo 

Johanna Wain
Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

THE SIMPLE VIEW OF READING: WORD RECOGNITION
The aim of learning to read is comprehension, or the capacity to extract meaning from print. Reading comprehension is largely the function of 2 broad skill sets, identified in the Simple View of Reading. These skills are word recognition and language comprehension.

At St Mary’s every class from Kindergarten to Year 6 starts their day with 25 minutes dedicated to word recognition. But what exactly is word recognition? Simply put, it's the ability to use groups of letters to recognise and understand words. While it may sound straightforward, there are many techniques to help us become more efficient readers and spellers as we grow.

In our K-2 classes we use the InitiaLit program which focuses on developing automatic word recognition through explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondences and the application of phonic skills in reading single words and sentences. In our Kinder class, students are developing their phonemic awareness—the ability to hear and play with parts of words and individual sounds. Our Year 1 and Year 2 classes enhance their understanding of phonics, focusing on how letters and combinations of letters represent the 44 sounds of the English language. They learn about various digraphs, including "ai," "ay," "ee," "ea," "oa," and "ow," along with other letter combinations like "igh," "ue," "ew," and more!

For our Year 3-6 students, the journey into the fascinating world of Morphology (the meaning in smaller parts of a word) and Etymology (words origin) has begun. During Spelling Mastery, we build dependable word recognition and spelling skills through a highly structured direct instruction method that blends the following approaches: 
Phonemic approach 
* Helps beginning spellers learn the relationships between spoken sounds and written letters and then apply them to spelling. 
Morphemic approach 
* Exposes advanced spellers to prefixes, bases and suffixes. 
* Combine words and word parts to spell multisyllabic words using a small number of reliable rules. 
Whole-word Approach 
* Gives spellers at all levels the meaning and root of a word and shows how the word's spelling is influenced. 
* Spell common, high-frequency words which are irregular in their letter sounds. 
* Commit these potentially troublesome words to memory.  

Students in Year 3 to 6 participate in four 20 minute Spelling Mastery lessons each week. Explicit instruction, careful selection of spelling words, and repeated and cumulative practise help students master each concept and reinforce and retain key information.

We look forward to witnessing the growth in all our students as they continue to build their skills in word recognition.

ICAS ASSESSMENTS
These optional academic competitions test students’ higher-order thinking skills and develop critical thinking and problem solving through academic challenges. St Mary's is offering Maths, English, Science and Spelling Bee for Years 2-6 and Writing and Digital Technology for Year 3-6. 

Every student who participates is celebrated and recognised with a printed certificate in each subject area, and an online results report to track development each year. Top performers are eligible for one of the highly coveted ICAS medals.

To learn more about this year’s exciting ICAS competition, visit: (icasassessments.com/products-icas/)

How to participate in ICAS  

If you wish for your child to participate in ICAS this year, please:  

1. Read about ICAS subjects and prices here: (icasassessments.com/products-icas/)  
2. Read the Privacy Collection Statement below.
3. Read the terms and conditions here: (icasassessments.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-ICAS-Assessments-Schools-TsCs_S2023.V6-1.pdf) 
4. Go to the Parent Portal to sign up to chosen subject areas here: (shop.icasassessments.com/pages/pps)  
5. Enter our school’s access code – SJE888 
6. Enter your child’s details, select the subject areas your child would like to participate in, then proceed to payment.

ICAS results and certificates
All assessments will be conducted online, at school. We will notify you of the date(s) that we will run ICAS assessments, and when your child’s ICAS results are ready. Your child’s ICAS certificates will be delivered to school. Once we have received them, we will present them to your child to bring home. The back of the certificate will show your child’s ICAS results and the login details, “TAP ID and Pin”. - Use these to enter the Results Portal orti.icasassessments.com/ortiStudent

Privacy collection statement  
The following information is a privacy notification about how your child’s data is kept private and secure.

ICAS Assessment is owned by Janison Solutions Pty Ltd (We, Us, Our).

To deliver assessment products, Janison will require your child’s School to obtain your consent to provide Janison with certain personal information of students. Janison will collect, store, use, disclose and otherwise deal with such personal information in accordance with its privacy policy (below). We are aware of our responsibility to protect personal information related to children and students from being disclosed when we deliver an ICAS Assessments product. Unless you, as the child’s legal guardian consents, we will not:

• collect any personal information or data of children other than the information we need for the successful completion of an assessment, test, or exam. 

• transfer any personal information we obtain from a child in the delivery of assessments and tests to any jurisdiction outside of Australia. 

• share any personal information relating to children with any third parties (except for those third parties necessary for us to carry out our Services or provide our Products e.g., medal engraving). 

• use any personal information or data relating to children for marketing purposes.
  
  You can view our full privacy policy at https://www.janison.com/privacy-policy/. 

We may retain personal information and data relevant to a child for their future purposes or for research purposes by Janison for the duration of the school life cycle of the child. However, if you or your child at any time wish to have their personal information or data removed from our systems, they or you may opt out by simply contacting our Privacy Officer at privacy@janison.com or by contacting icasassessments@janison.com.

ICAS Assessments 2025

Parent orders close Monday 28 July 2025

God bless and take care,

Mrs Sue Heffernan
Assistant Principal

Year 3 has made a sensational start to Term 2. Mrs Durnan and Mrs Ziegler would like to commend the students for the enthusiastic, attentive and cooperative attitudes they bring to school each and every day.

Visual Arts
Students have enjoyed opportunities to explore different artistic techniques during Visual Arts this term. As part of our Religious Education unit we have been learning about gifts of the Holy Spirit. We created artworks using our silhouettes and water colours to highlight our skills and vibrancy which make us unique in this world. We are currently creating autumn inspired texture prints blending paint colours. We can’t wait to share these with you soon.  

English
Year 3 have continued to enthusiastically participate in our English Daily Reviews. They have been committed to moving their learning from their short-term memory to long term memory. They have been expanding on vocabulary, identifying syllables for a given word, listing common and proper nouns and consolidated their reading fluency. Students have started to write their speeches for the Public Speaking Competition and our topic is ‘If animals could talk, what would they say”  Here are some of our ideas so far:

Maths
In Maths we have been developing automaticity for times tables, identifying the numerator and denominator for fractions, used partitioning to solve addition and subtraction problems as well as accurately identifying time. This week we have been focused on learning about how to multiply and divide by 10,100 and 1000.

Science
In Science we have been learning about different types of matter. We have been experimenting with adding heat, or cooling different substances and predicting their results. Students in particular loved making salt crystals by heating epsom salts and watching them materialise as the salts cooled to show the different particles and how they attach to each other. 

Performing Arts
In Performing Arts with Mrs Shannon students have been loving the opportunity to get hands on with instruments in music lessons. Year 3 have been learning how to read music and to play the ukulele and glockenspiel!

Mrs Carla Durnan and Mrs Alyssa Ziegler
Year 3 Teachers

Stage 2 AFL Gala Day
On Monday, 19 May, we welcomed the South Coast AFL team to St Mary’s to run an in-school AFL Gala day. Our stage 2 students were very excited and couldn’t wait for the fun to begin. The children all participated in skills and drills, to assist with understanding the game of ‘tag, 1, 2, 3’ then moved into mini games, all on the luxury of our school oval. We thank the team from South Coast AFL for organising such a fun day and helping the children learn more about the great game of AFL.

CECG Cross Country: Mt Stromlo
We congratulate the 16 students who travelled to Canberra on Friday, 16 May to participate in the CECG Cross Country. With all the practice and training from Mr Hill's running club, the children headed off over the hill to run against other students from Southern, Western and Northern regions. They were greeted with sunny and warm-ish running conditions as well as some tough competition. Many of our students ran their fastest PB’s and some only seconds out of the top 6 runners which is a fantastic achievement. Following this event, we have 5 students competing at Sydney Equestrian Centre on Wednesday 11 June. We wish them all the very best of luck and congratulate them for reaching this level of achievement. 

Byron S, Calvin M, Rayne C, Declan T and Andre L

DECLAN T missing from photo

Weyman Cross Rugby League Gala Day
On Wednesday, Students in Stage 2 and Stage 3 participated in a Rugby League Gala Day at Ack Weyman oval. It was a great day for football and we had so many children keen to join in the league tag games, with many not having played this before. We also had our experienced contact (tackle) players ready to take on the teams from St Bernards and Broulee Primary. It was wonderful to see all students playing in the spirit of the game and demonstrating positive sportsmanship and just enjoying playing football with their friends. A special mention and thanks to Tim and Mick Weyman for coaching our tackle teams and fostering such a positive team environment. Our league tag players just got better and better as the day progressed, with many offering to step in and act as sub players for teams short a few players. A highlight was watching Koa R in Year 4 encouraging others and Beau McD in Year 5 checking on the St Bernard’s player who was injured during a tackle. Well done to both of these students on demonstrating such care and compassion towards others.

We are looking forward to having Mekinda Gleeson, NRL Development Officer, come into our school later in the year to conduct skill and drill sessions for our students.

NSWPSSA Rugby League
We wish Xavier E all the best as he travels to Blacktown in Sydney on Sunday for 3 days of football fun! Xave will be representing St Mary’s and Canberra Goulburn as part of the MacKillop Rugby League team at the NSWPSSA Championships. Congratulations Xave for reaching this level of achievement and we are very excited to hear all about it on your return to school. 

MacKillop Soccer
This Friday, Mackenzie H will be competing at Sydney Wanderers Football Park in Sydney as part of the Canberra Goulburn Girls Soccer Team. Mackenzie has had a very successful representative season recently, being awarded the Ray Tweedie medal for the ‘Player of the Tournament’ at the Far South Coast Soccer Tournament in Nowra. This representative event was against teams from the Shoalhaven, Tablelands, Highlands. As she moves into representing St Mary’s and the CECG Diocese, we wish Mackenzie lots of luck at the next level and look forward to hearing of her results in the next newsletter.

Mackenzie: ‘ A few weeks ago, I went to Nowra to play rep soccer for the Eurobodalla at the Branch Championships. This weekend, we had the chance to go into first place in the competition. We tied our first game and won the rest of the games. I scored 4 goals and we won the overall Branch Championships. I also won the Ray Tweedie medal for the best player in the 12 year olds competition. The comp was really hard versing all the other teams from the Shoalhaven, Tablelands, Highlands’

Tennis Clinics
Next Friday, we begin a 3 week Tennis program with Rob Frawley from the Batemans Bay Tennis Academy. All students from K-6 will be participating in the clinics and are to wear their sports each Friday for the duration of the program. We are so lucky to be holding the clinics here at school with Rob bringing portable nets for us to use. I am sure the children will have lots of fun and enjoy learning some new skills in the game of tennis.

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead.

Mrs Megan Grant
Sports Coordinator

Mini Vinnies Winter Appeal – Let’s Make a Difference Together

Our Mini Vinnies members were surprised to learn that over 122,000 people are currently experiencing homelessness in Australia, and that in 2022, 3.3 million Australians were living below the poverty line. Moved by these statistics, they’ve decided it's time to take action—and they’re inviting our whole school community to join in.

This year, the Mini Vinnies team will lead the St Mary’s Winter Appeal, supporting the incredible work of St Vincent de Paul. We are calling on all families to help by donating much-needed items.

What can you donate?

• Non-perishable food: tinned soups, pasta, pasta sauce, tea, biscuits
• Warm items: blankets, jumpers, scarves, gloves and socks
• Hygiene products: toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant

Items can be sent into your child’s classroom and will be collected over the coming weeks to be presented at our Winter Appeal Mass on Friday 27 June (Week 9).

Colours for a Cause

Next Friday 6 June, our Mini Vinnies team is hosting a special ‘Colours for a Cause’ Mufti Day to support the St Vincent de Paul Winter Appeal.. Students are invited to come to school in casual clothes for a gold coin donation - but there is a fun twist! Each class will be assigned a specific colour, and we’re asking students to dress in their class colour for the day. We can’t wait to see the multicolour magic, all in support of a great cause. Let’s show our true colours and make a difference together!

Kinder: Yellow
Year 1: Blue
Year 2: Orange
Year 3: Green
Year 4: Red
Year 5: Pink
Year 6: Purple

Your generous support will help bring warmth, comfort, and dignity to those doing it tough this winter. Together, let’s show what our St Mary’s community can do when we come together for a cause.

“Every day is a chance to be better than we were the day before.” Ted Lasso