Dear Parents and Carers,

St Mary’s is buzzing with energy and excitement. Peter Pan rehearsals are in full swing and the staff are busy organising Kindergarten Orientation Days, Remembrance Day, Mission Day and other End of Year activities to celebrate a wonderful year of school. 

Alongside the fun, daily learning and assessments continue in each classroom as teachers prepare to write your children’s Semester Two school reports that will be ready at the end of Week 9.

Peter Pan 
With only two weeks to go, Peter Pan is nearly here! It will be an incredible show.  Tickets are selling fast, so make sure that you get yours before they sell out. Thank you for supporting the Community Council’s Jar fundraiser. We have some spare jars at school if you need them. Our very creative and hardworking canteen manager, Mrs Hayley Van Weerdenburg is also planning something special for the Friday before the big week!  

2023 Student Leadership
At St Mary’s we consider all of our Year 6 students to be school leaders. The Year 6 Buddy program with the new Kinder students is one of our most important leadership programs. In addition, we have a Student Leadership Team. In the coming week, our current Year 5 students will be invited to nominate themselves to be on the Student Leadership Team for 2023. Following interviews and speeches, Year 3-5 students and staff will vote for who they believe will make the best School and House Leaders. To encourage broader school leadership, students will nominate the areas of school life, that they would like to lead in e.g. Social Justice and Fundraising, Liturgy, Hospitality, IT and Media, Sport, Speaking at formal events, Performing Arts, Environment and Indigenous Culture. The Year 5 teachers will support the students with this process. 

The 2023 Student Leadership Team will be announced at the End of Year Awards Night on Tuesday December 6.

Kinder Orientation
Next Wednesday November 9, we will be hosting our first Kinder Orientation morning. I am pleased to be able to announce that Mrs Genevieve Schofield has agreed to be our Kindergarten teacher from next year. Gen has worked closely with Mrs Jacquie Stephen for the past two years and is ready to take on the challenge and have the privilege of teaching our youngest children. If you know of any parent who is still undecided about Kindergarten for next year, please encourage them to speak with us as soon as possible, and come in and see how amazing Early Years’ Learning is at St Mary’s.

Feedback from Catholic Education 
In recent days, the Leadership Team has been involved in Communities of Practice and Teams meetings, focusing on School Improvement. We have had the privilege of sharing our data and successes with High Impact Teaching Practices with Mr Tim Smith our Performance and Improvement Leader, Mr Patrick Ellis, Education Lead at Catholic Education, other Principals and Assistant Principals. Earlier this week, a teacher from St Bede’s in Braidwood spent the day with us to learn more about Explicit and Direct Instruction in Literacy and Numeracy. Feedback from Catholic Education and our Instructional Coaches has been very positive and provides momentum for continuous improvement. Thank you to our teachers and students for taking up the challenge to become even better at what they do.  

Combined School Mass- Postponed
Unfortunately, the K-12 Combined School Mass with St Bernard’s and Carroll College has been postponed until early 2023. I will inform you of the new date as soon as it is determined.
 
2023 IMPORTANT DATES

# Kinder rest days at home - Wednesdays from Feb 8 - March 1 inclusive

God's blessings on your families.

Noeleen O'Neill
Principal

Dear Parents, Carers, Boys and Girls,

Explicit Direct Instruction
This term, as part of the staff professional learning on helping students to be better writers, staff have been studying the importance of vocabulary. Vocabulary is defined as, the words children must know to communicate effectively. In school terms, it can be described as oral vocabulary or reading vocabulary.

What is interesting is that whilst many children come to school with what they term Tier 1 words - words that they need to use to be functional, such as basic nouns or labels for objects etc, good readers and writers are often those children who have a wider range of vocabulary, rich in descriptive words and subject specific words.

It is well known that the larger the vocabulary children have, the more successful they tend to be in reading and writing. Our teachers use Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) in their strategically planned lessons to teach new vocabulary. The lesson begins with the teacher teaching students the meanings of words, showing the words in multiple contexts, and lastly providing repeated practice and opportunities to use those words in different contexts.

During EDI lessons, teachers utilise ‘engagement norms’ to motivate students and hold them accountable for their learning. Engagement Norms ensure children are doing something every minute, whether it be discussion with a partner, reading text aloud, showing responses on a whiteboard or gesturing. These norms are designed to keep students actively engaged in their learning.

It has been wonderful to hear the effects of this vocabulary instruction in my conversations with students and as I read it in their daily writing samples that they proudly share with me.

Yesterday we had an early career teacher from St Bede’s at Braidwood come and observe some of our teachers ‘in action’ as they delivered their explicit direct instruction lessons. At the end of the day this young teacher shared with me that after observing our teachers, she now felt she had many new things to add to her own teacher toolbox that would support her in the effective delivery of explicit direct instruction and daily review. It was a very affirming experience for our teachers and a testament to the success of their implementation of this high impact teaching practice in their classrooms.

Year 6 Future Finder Program - UOW
Today our Year 6 students participated in an ‘Introduction to University' program at the University of Wollongong Batemans Bay campus. The Year 6 Future Finder Program is an initiative of the University of Wollongong, which aims to develop our students’ future aspirations and expand their understanding of future careers and job possibilities.  Students have participated in a range of faculty taster sessions that has given them an insight into potential post-school pathways and careers. 

There was much excitement as students extracted Banana DNA and completed an engineering challenge to design a way to transport a ball from point A to B. In criminology, our students have had to assess a crime scene, look for evidence and try to work out the scenario of the crime! They have heard from two neuroscientists about how incredible our brain is…did you know that our brain is creating illusions for the ways we interact in our world, for example, when we speak no sounds come out…it’s the waves in our ears and brain interpreting this information! Our minds are blown!  

The university supports this program by providing bus transport to and from the venue as well as morning tea for our students and teachers. We would like to thank the University of Wollongong for this opportunity to explore the possibilities available for our future.

God bless and take care.

Sue Heffernan
Assistant Principal

Dear Families,

Christian Meditation
Last week we were fortunate to have Helen Bramanathan visit us from Catholic Education in Canberra to work with staff and students to refine our practice of Christian Meditation. Christian Meditation is a prayer practice which our students take part in daily at St Mary’s. It is a practice leading from the mind to the heart. It is a way of simplicity, silence and stillness.

Helen spoke very positively of her time in classrooms with students, describing it as “an absolute delight”. Helen also led our Staff Meeting, working with staff to further develop our understanding and use of the authentic practice of Christian Meditation with our students.

Mission Day
We will celebrate Mission Day this coming Thursday 10th November. Students and staff will join together for a Whole School Mass at 9:15am and we warmly invite our families to come along too. Following Mass, each class will be organising their own fundraising stall, with all money raised being donated to Caritas Australia. There will be a Bake Stall, White Elephant, Ice Creams, Biscuit Decorating and Year 6 are planning a variety of fun and interactive stalls. We thank you for your support of this great cause and hope you can join us for some of the fun!

Prayer for World Mission Day

Gracious God, 
you gave us Jesus to show us how to reach
out with compassion and love. 
Help us to accept our mission
to be faithful witnesses to Jesus’ message
and to bring your love and peace to others through our words and deeds.
We ask this prayer through Jesus, your Son. Amen.

Wishing you God’s blessings for a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Jess Afflick
Religious Education Coordinator

Archdiocesan Public Speaking
Last week, I had the pleasure of listening to three of our students Tessa H, Lila W and Grace R represent St Mary’s in the Archdiocesan Public Speaking Competition. All three students delivered engaging and interesting speeches to the judges. Although delivered directly to a camera, and without a live audience in front of them, this didn’t phase the students as they spoke with articulate voices and showed great presence in front of the camera. Competition was very tight in all year levels with only a few points separating all contestants.

Congratulations to Lila W who was runner up in the Year 4 competition. Her speech "If I had anything I could wish for it would be to change the weather," was thoroughly enjoyed by the judges. All students deserve a big congratulations from the school community for making it to the finals.

Justin Bateman
Coordinator

English
This term we have been focusing on Explicit Direct Instruction to inform our writing. This has helped us recognise the specific grammatical components required to construct compound sentences and complex sentences and punctuate accordingly. We are putting the concept of “little and often” into practice, with students challenged to write many different grammatically correct sentences in creative ways. Year 5 have been using that knowledge of correct sentence structure to form paragraphs and construct sizzling starts to hook the reader from the very first line.

The Daily Review has become a big part of our literacy program, with students continuing to engage with fast paced, high impact lessons. These lessons are aimed at recognising the way digraphs, trigraphs and morphographs can be identified in many different words throughout the English language. Students have been called upon to challenge themselves and each other to build their vocabulary and knowledge of spelling rules.

Daily Review is also a huge part of our Maths curriculum. Students are able to put their learning that has been previously taught into practice through a range of rich activities. A clear favourite is speed times tables where students complete as many questions as they can, including various challenge questions at the end involving three and four digit numbers. 

Religion
In Religion we are developing an understanding and appreciation of mission and the call to mission through Scripture. The students have been exploring and learning to implement ways to continue the mission of Jesus in our school and community. 

We will explore further in depth the role of the Caritas organisation and investigate a range of stories that involve Project Compassion to raise awareness and about the challenges experienced by people who live in poverty. We are looking forward to Mission Week next week where we can play our own part in raising awareness and money for those in need.

In Science, we are learning about forces including gravity, wind resistance, aerodynamics and Newton’s Third Law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). We constructed parachutes out of different materials and of different sizes to measure the effect of wind resistance. We had loads of fun throwing them off the second story balcony and timing their fall. We are now setting our sights on a loftier mission to send a bottle rocket straight up into the air as high as we can. Our aim is to apply the concepts of aerodynamics, thrust and stability to ensure our rockets have sufficient fuel (air pressure and water), are adequately streamlined and as stable as possible so they go as high as they can. We will measure the effects of altering the fuel payload on how high they go.

Mr Campbell, Mrs Kenny & Mrs Afflick
Year 5 Teachers

Mrs. Afflick - Religious Education Coordinator / Year 5 teacher
We love Mrs Afflick as our teacher because she is kind, loving, happy, helpful, fun, safe, good at teaching, nice, funny, amazing, fabulous, helpful, cool, fair, excited, smart, cool, caring, chill, happy and easy to understand. She makes sure everyone else is happy. "I feel like I can go to her about anything, she explains things well and helps me grow every day".

I love teaching at St. Mary’s because of the wonderful sense of community here! I love the students, families and my colleagues here at St. Mary’s and I think it is a very special place to be a part of.

St Mary’s Presents ‘Peter Pan the Musical’

Peter Pan and his friends are flying into St Mary’s in less than two weeks time! The school is a buzz of excitement as final rehearsals are underway, costumes are being made, props and backdrops are receiving their final touches. The excitement and enthusiasm levels of the students in the school is at an all time high!

Tickets are selling at a rapid rate for the evening performances, so please ensure you have purchased your tickets on QKR. We still have seats available for the matinee show on Tuesday 15, therefore please encourage neighbours, friends and relatives to purchase a ticket so they do not miss out on the magical production.

The Community Council will be providing light refreshments during the short intermission of the night performances. A note has gone home to families asking for  donations of baked goods, these will be available for purchase via cash transactions.  

Times and dates for performances are as follows:
Tuesday 15 November Dress Rehearsal: 12 pm-(local preschools attending)

Tuesday 15 November: 6.30 pm Evening 

Wednesday 16 November: 12 pm Matinee-(St Bernard’s Primary School attending)
Wednesday 16 November: 6.30 pm Evening

Please be advised that further communication will come via Compass next week outlining the finer details of the musical. We thank you for your support and understand the extra effort and planning such an event like this involves. It will certainly be worthwhile for the wonderful memories a whole school production like this provides.

We look forward to seeing you all very soon as the staff and students of St Mary’s escape to Neverland!!! 

The Production Team

The Community Council is planning numerous fundraising events to be held at the upcoming Peter Pan The Musical and we need your help!

The Fundraiser we’ve planned a Jar Tombola, which works as below:

1. Simply fill an empty jam jar with lollies, biscuits, small toys, pencils, anything you have that you think someone else would appreciate – see examples in picture.

2. Each family can then donate their jar by dropping off at the St Mary’s office (or alternatively send in with students) in the period commencing the week prior to the Musical.

3. Community Council will be selling tickets ($5 per Jar) at the evening performances – you simply buy a ticket, you are given a number that corresponds to one of the jars, and you then collect your prize!

In addition to the fundraiser, the Community Council will also be planning to provide intermission refreshments at the evening performances of Peter Pan – a cup of tea/coffee and a sweat treat for $4. If families would like to support the Community Council with donations of cakes, slices or biscuits for the performances, that would be much appreciated. Donations of food can be made to the office on Tuesday 15 November.

The Community Council will also be selling raffle tickets for this year’s Christmas Raffle at the evening performances. The raffle features excellent prizes from many very generous local businesses including Surf the Bay, Moruya Pharmacy, Moruya Golf Club, the Health Café, Sports First, Church St Pizza, Resting Ridge Leather Co and the Broulee Brewhouse. Tickets are $2 each, or 10 for $10 and can be purchased on the night or via QKR!

St Mary's Primary supports this wonderful initiative, please help Ava D (Year 6) reach her fundraising goal. If you can't make a donation, it would be great if you could share the fundraiser to help spread the word. Thanks for taking a look!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Beautiful-elis-battle?utm_campaign=p_nacp+share-sheet&utm_medium=email&utm_source=customer