Dear Families,

Welcome back after what we hope was a relaxing and blessed Easter holiday break with your children. 

Staff Professional Learning 
On Tuesday 26 April, the St Mary’s teaching staff attended a Catalyst professional learning day in Canberra with several Catholic schools from our diocese. The focus of the day was embedding High Impact Teaching strategies to improve student outcomes and was conducted by Associate Professor Lorraine Hammond AM, PhD, CF from Edith Cowan University, WA. This was a wonderful opportunity for the staff to engage in high-quality professional learning to further develop the quality of learning offered to our students. 

On Monday this week, Jordan O’Sullivan from Shaping Minds returned to St Mary’s and worked in our Year 3-6 classrooms demonstrating the strategy known as Daily Review. This strategy will become an important part of our daily routine to address reducing cognitive load and supporting the retention of knowledge.

ANZAC Day 
Our nation commemorated ANZAC Day on Monday 25th April, and we thank the students who participated in the ANZAC March in Moruya and the services at Tomakin and Tuross Head. The school held our own ceremony with the children last Thursday. Commemorating this important national event is very important so that our students can learn all about what the thousands of men and women sacrificed during the Gallipoli event.

In Pope Francis’ Easter message he names the numerous countries suffering war around the world today and there are surprisingly so many. Pope Francis reminds us that, “... every war brings in its wake consequences that affect the entire human family: from grief and mourning to drama of refugees, and to the economic and food crisis, the signs of which we are already seeing. Faced with the continuing signs of war, as well as the many painful setbacks to life, Jesus Christ, the victor over sin, fear and death, exhorts us not to surrender to evil and violence.” 

May God bless people of goodwill everywhere and may God give them the courage to continue to fight for justice and peace in our world. 

Let us reflect on and acknowledge the bravery of all these men and women and all those who have lost their lives in pursuit of peace and justice and safety for others. Let us also pray for the thousands of service men and women and their families currently serving in the Australian Defence Force.

Open Morning - Kinder 2023
2023 enrolments for Kindergarten (and other grades) are now open. If any family has a child to commence school next year, please download and complete the enrolment form available on the school website as soon as possible so that we know how many places we will have available for new families in 2023. 

Please notify any new families interested in attending St Mary’s to register their commitment to join our St Mary’s community.

We already have a number of new and existing families who have enrolled their children for 2023.

Teddy Bear’s Picnic
Kinder had a very exciting day on Wednesday at the Teddy Bear’s Picnic hosted by St Bernard’s School at Batemans Bay. We travelled by bus with lots of Kinders and teddies on seats. The children were not disappointed on our arrival at St Bernard’s when we were greeted by the friendly, welcoming staff and students. Our morning was packed with lots of engaging “teddy bear” activities. The children rotated from room to room, participating in teddy bear parachute games, Art Works - designing their own teddy on ipads, decorating teddy biscuits, paper plate crafts and teddy bear dancing. 

Lunch was a very welcome sausage sandwich in the sunshine before we departed St Bernard’s with a small bag of goodies and some very sleepy passengers.

We thank the St Bernard’s Principal, Mrs Wain and the Kinder teachers, Mrs Brady, Mrs Beattie, Mrs Hicks and all their helpers for their hospitality and for such an enriching and fun day. 

Year 6 Combined Schools Leadership Day
Year 6 students from St Bernard’s travelled down on Wednesday and together with our Year 6 students, enjoyed a combined schools Leadership Day. We were extremely fortunate to welcome two former St Mary’s students as guest speakers. Carolyn Turnbull, Managing Director of Tourism WA, joined us via Zoom link as our first guest speaker. She spoke to the boys and girls of how she always dreamed big and worked hard to achieve success throughout her career so far. Carolyn was very engaging and left the students with an inspiring message to reach high, dream big and always know they can achieve great things in this big wide world. Michael Weyman joined us as our next guest speaker and had the students hanging on his every word as he talked about the importance of working together as a team to achieve success and some key leadership figures who were integral to his successful playing career. Following our guest speakers, students took part in a number of team building activities such as a water marathon and tower building task. This was followed by a BBQ lunch and we finished the day with a beautiful liturgy. We thank our guest speakers for sharing their wisdom and to our new friends from St Bernard’s for sharing in the day with us. 

Totally Terrific Thursday
On Thursday, St Mary’s staff shared their crafting expertise with the students. It was a wonderful opportunity for students with similar interests across the grades to come together and share the experience. Students spent the time making a variety of different gifts for Mother’s Day. We hope you enjoy the special surprise from your child/ren for Mother’s Day.

NAPLAN Timetable for Year 3 and Year 5
Next Tuesday NAPLAN assessments begin for Year 3 and Year 5 students. A reminder that these assessments are a snapshot of what your child can do across various domains of literacy and numeracy. These assessments will be held first thing in the mornings so please make sure your child arrives at school on time prior to the bell.

Below is the NAPLAN timetable for the next two weeks. If your child is unable to attend one of the tests, then they will have time to complete a make-up test. Year 3 students have until the Friday of the first week (13 May) to complete a writing catch-up test on paper. For online tests, Year 3 and Year 5 students have until the end of the test window (20 May) to complete catch-up tests.Students who are absent on the above dates will sit the tests from Monday 16/05/2021 to Friday 20/05/2021. In the event of technological issues, we also have these dates as back-up for the whole grade/s. If you have any questions, please contact Mrs Heffernan or Mr Bateman.

Mother’s Day Breakfast and Liturgy
This morning we celebrated our beautiful Mums! It was wonderful to see so many mums and grandmothers come along to join us for a delicious breakfast. This was followed by a lovely liturgy in honour of our mums, presented by Kinder. Thank you to Mrs Stephens for her preparations with the children and also a very big thank you to Mrs Croese who stepped in to prepare with the students this week in the lead up, while Mrs Stephens was away. Kinder did a wonderful job leading us in music and prayer. 

Additional Pupil Free Days – Term 2
As communicated earlier this week, Catholic Education is expanding on the support offered to schools to facilitate professional learning due to the pandemic. This term, Director Ross Fox has provided each school with an additional two days of Professional Learning. The additional pupil free days for St Mary’s Moruya, St Bernard’s Batemans Bay and Carroll College Broulee will be the last two days of Term 2. These dates are Thursday 30 June and Friday 1 July 2022. The additional days will certainly support us in planning for Term 3 and focusing on Catalyst initiatives.   

Special School Assembly -  2021 Awards
On Monday May 16, we will be hosting a Special Whole School Assembly at 12:45 pm in the  Performing Arts Centre (PAC). We are finally able to gather together as a community and announce our Class Award recipients from last year.

Please join us if you can to share in this special occasion. Parents are welcome to stay on and have another family picnic on the front lawns. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us!

School Winter Uniform
By now, students should be transitioning into their full winter uniform.The mornings are certainly getting cooler. We ask that by Monday 16 May all students are wearing the correct winter uniform in time for our special awards assembly. A reminder to please that students wear black school shoes with the winter uniform and sneakers on sports days. Please follow the link to see the full list of winter uniform clothing. Please also ensure that children are wearing correct footwear. Black shoes are to be worn with school uniform and sneakers are to be worn on sports days.

Confirmation Enrolment Meeting
If your child is in Year 6 and will be making the sacrament of Confirmation this term, there is an information and enrolment meeting which will be held this Wednesday 11 May here at school. The meeting will begin at 5:00pm in the Year 6 classroom.  Please come along if you would like to enrol your child to be confirmed.

Maths

We have begun extending our learning in the area of Whole Numbers. Students are exploring how to vertically add and subtract a variety of two, three and four digit numbers with trading. We manipulated different MAB materials to visually see the connection between moving the blocks and carrying out operations on numbers. Our Daily Review warm ups were introduced and promoted consolidation and automaticity of knowledge, skills and strategies. Our focus this week was on fluency and pace of word problems, number facts and skip counting.

Religion
Students have investigated what creation means to them, what they feel when they are outside in nature and how they view creation and the environment around them. In learning groups students were able to define ‘sacred’ and share a place and discuss the following questions: Why is it sacred to you? How do you act when you are there? and How would you want other people to treat this place? From our love for these places, we will start to explore how people have different views for places and the environment around us and continue to appreciate the diversity of creation through inspiring our local community in building a more sustainable future.

Geography
This week students have been studying some of the key natural features of China including the landscapes, climate, vegetation and animals, then compared these places to Australia. Students will investigate sustainable farming by looking at two case studies, one of cocoa farming on the Ivory Coast and one from a farm in NSW. We will learn about how eating seasonal produce is good for the environment and use websites to think about our own sustainable eating habits. Students will have the opportunity to study Australian specific sustainability, including the Great Barrier Reef protection plans, Queensland community gardening and how schools are practising sustainability. Towards the end of the term, students will learn and think about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples approaches to sustainability, and their connection to country. Students will learn about their use of resources from the land, in particular bush foods. Finally, we will discover what the North Pacific Gyre is and conduct our own guided research about it, prompting us to think about the waste created by humans and how this is managed.

Megan Grant
Sports Coordinator

Helping children to identify and express their feelings 
Sometimes our children have big feelings and it is difficult to know how to respond as parents. Big feelings are often expressed as behaviours that can be challenging or concerning.  As a parent you have an important role to play in developing your child’s emotional skills and helping them to learn healthy ways to express their feelings. We know that children who learn to cope with, and express their feelings are more likely to have good mental health and wellbeing, resilience, ability to cope with change and setbacks, display less unfavourable behaviours, be more confident, and have a positive sense of self. The earlier we can build a child’s ability to identify their feelings and implement healthy coping strategies, the better.

Here are some great tips from Kids Helpline that can help your child to learn about expressing their feelings: 

• Tune into cues - Sometimes feelings can be hard to identify. Tune into your child’s feelings by looking at their body language, listening to what they’re saying and observing their behaviour. Figuring out what they feel and why, means you can help them identify, express and manage those feelings better.
• Behind every behaviour is a feeling - Try to understand the meaning and feeling behind your child’s behaviour. You can help your child find other ways to express that feeling once you know what is driving the behaviour.
• Name the feeling - Help your child name their feelings by giving them a label. Naming feelings is the first step in helping kids learn to identify them. It allows your child to develop an emotional vocabulary so they can talk about their feelings.
• Identify feelings in others – Provide lots of opportunities to identify feelings in others. You might ask your child to reflect on what someone else may be feeling. Cartoons or picture books are a great way to discuss feelings and help kids learn how to recognise other people’s feelings through facial expressions.
• Be a role model - Kids learn about feelings and how to express them appropriately by watching others. Show your child how you’re feeling about different situations and how you deal with those feelings.
• Encourage with praise - Praise your child when they talk about their feelings or express them in an appropriate way. Not only does it show that feelings are normal and it’s ok to talk about them, it reinforces the behaviour so they are likely to repeat it.
• Listen to your child’s feelings - Stay present and resist the urge to make your child’s bad feelings go away. Support your child to identify and express their feelings so they are heard. When feelings are minimised or dismissed, they will often be expressed in unhealthy ways.

For more information and additional resources, please visit the Kids Helpline website. You may contact Faith, the school counsellor if you have concerns about your child’s wellbeing or require personalised support to develop healthy coping strategies. See the link for school counselling referrals below. All fields must be entered. Please note, consent requirements apply.