Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the 2023 school year at St Mary’s. After a much needed break, our amazing staff have been working hard to prepare their classrooms and create engaging learning experiences for their students. As is always the case, our wonderful students have settled back into school well and are very happy and content. 

Kindergarten 
With the help of their parents, teachers and Year 6 buddies, our new Kindergarten students have literally launched into ‘Big School’. This year we revamped our School Buddy program and it is proving to be very successful. Watching the older children care and support their little buddies is very special and something we treasure at St Mary’s.

We welcome our new Kinder parents and hope you feel the sense of belonging and family that epitomises our small school. Mrs Genevieve Schofield and our support staff are doing an amazing job with the little ones. Wednesday’s Rest Days are as necessary for Mrs Schofield as they are for the children!

New students and families 
We make a special welcome to our other new students and their families. Aria, Delilah, Olivia, Xavier, Alex, Charlotte and Charlie have settled in well and have become important members of our school community. We are very proud of the way our ‘old’ students welcome and look after our ’new’ students. We welcome all of our new parents and grandparents and hope to see you at school and at our upcoming school functions.

School Staff 2023

Leadership Team 

Teaching Staff 

Support Staff 

Meet the Teacher Meetings
Next Monday February 13 and Tuesday February 14, teachers will be available for individual parent/teacher meetings before and after school hours. This will give parents a chance to talk with their child's teacher and discuss their child’s learning goals for the semester. We understand how busy families are but we really hope all of our parents take up this opportunity. If you prefer a phone call, please let your child's teacher know.  Bookings are made through COMPASS. If you have any difficulties, please let your child's teacher know.

Opening School Year Mass, Family Picnic and Special School Assembly - Year 6 Student Leadership Induction and Kinder Welcome
Thursday February 16 will be a big one at St Mary’s! At 12:30pm the whole school will be attending our Opening School Year Mass at the Sacred Heart Church. We invite our parents, friends and grandparents to join for Mass. Following Mass, we will be having our first Family Picnic on the Front Lawns (1:30-2pm). After lunch, we will be hosting our first Whole School Assembly in the Performing Arts Centre (PAC) at 2pm which will incorporate a Kinder Welcome and a Year 6 Student Leadership induction ceremony. Parents are asked to bring along a picnic rug and food and drink for their families. Those children whose parents are unable to make it will also join in with their teachers and friends.

School Fees Remissions
In the next couple of weeks, Term 1 school fees will be sent home. We understand that the last few years have impacted many of our families and we do not wish to add any additional stress upon you in regards to school fees. We offer School Fees Remissions for our families experiencing financial difficulties.  It is important however, that parents make early contact with Mrs Hazell or me personally so we can assist you with the remission application. This is a highly confidential process. 

Little Investigators Playgroup
We are very excited to be able to re-open our amazing Little Investigators Playgroup for children 0-5 and their parents. Mrs Brooke Connaughton and Mrs Sue Heffernan will coordinate the playgroup each Tuesday from 9-11am.

Playgroup begins on Tuesday 21/02/23 (Week 4).

Please spread the news in the local  community. Our Playgroup is open to all families, not only those with children enrolled at St Mary's. It is offered at no cost to families. Please see our flyer at the end of the newsletter in Community Notices.

Facebook
Remember to keep an eye on our Facebook Page. We use Facebook to share many of the fabulous things happening everyday at St Mary’s with our parents, friends, grandparents and community members. It is especially great for grandparents who live at a distance.

Wishing you all a wonderful year ahead. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any  questions or concerns. We look forward to having a close partnership with all of our families.  

Noeleen O’Neill
Principal

"We must teach more by example than by word." ~  Saint Mary MacKillop

Dear Parents, Carers, Boys and Girls,

Welcome back! We are really excited for this year's journey of learning with our students and families!

Spelling Mastery

We at St Mary’s are delighted to inform you of Spelling Mastery, a program we’ve invested in to improve spelling abilities at our school. The children from Year 3-6 will be involved in this program and it will be happening from 9:00am - 9:25am each morning, Monday to Thursday.

Spelling Mastery is a fully scripted Direct Instruction program that has an extensive research base and is teacher directed. The program helps students understand the relationship between sounds, word parts, and spelling patterns. Spelling Mastery encourages students to learn strategies to spell correctly rather than rely on memory alone. There are three approaches within Spelling Mastery, phonemic, whole-word, and morphemic. 

• Through the phonemic approach, students learn the sound-symbol relationship between letters and sounds that help students spell using predictable patterns. For example, words like map, tap, fog, fan.  
• The whole word approach teaches students high frequency words and irregularly spelled words that do not follow a predictable pattern. Examples- ‘answer’ ‘the’ and ‘people’. 
• The morphographic approach teaches students that all words are made of one or more morphograph or word parts. They also learn rules that apply when combining morphographs to form words. Examples: ‘re’ as a morphograph has meaning. It means ‘again’... (repack, return, rerun) ‘-est’ means ‘the most’... (lightest, happiest, friendliest).  

Your child will learn to spell using all the above methods through lessons delivered in small groups. Please do not be concerned if word lists aren’t being sent home on a regular basis, as the focus of Spelling Mastery is for students to understand how to spell rather than spell ‘by heart’.  

We also recognise the need for practising the skills learned in class, so when there are word lists sent home it would be mainly when added practice is called for or if words are related to a topic being taught in class.

Please talk to us if you have any questions about this.

Save the Date - Saturday 11 March

Moruya Celebrates - Mardis Gras - Riverlights

On Saturday 11 March our town will be holding a community celebration with a street parade followed by activities in the park and then Riverlights on our beautiful Moruya River at dusk.

St Mary’s has been invited to be part of this year’s street parade. We would love as many of our students as possible to participate in this event. We will be taking the Moruya community ‘Back to Neverland’ and plan to have a float with that theme. Students would participate by wearing their Peter Pan costumes from last year's musical and walking as a group in the parade.

We will have more specific information for you in the coming weeks. We are really excited to be part of this community event.

NAPLAN NEWS 

This year students in Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 will participate in NAPLAN online. Year 3 complete Reading, Conventions of Language and Mathematics online. Year 3 complete writing with pen and paper. Year 5 complete Writing, Reading, Conventions of Language and Mathematics online. All students use headphones during the conventions of language test, the numeracy test and the Year 5 writing test so they can hear audio instructions. 

NAPLAN tests are in Term 1, and occur between the 15 March - 27 March.

NAPLAN FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 

What will be tested? 

• NAPLAN tests the important skills that are essential for every child to progress through school and life, such as reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy. The content of each test is informed by the Australian Curriculum. 
• The Literacy tests are based on content in the English learning area, and the numeracy tests draw content from the mathematics learning area. 

For more information on the types of skills and understandings that students are generally expected to demonstrate at their particular year of schooling, refer to the information provided for each domain in the NAPLAN section. 

What types of questions are in the tests? 

• Questions are multiple choice, technology-enhanced (such as drag and drop), or require a short written response for all tests except the writing test. In the writing test, students are expected to write a continuous text.

For more information about the writing test, see the relevant FAQs at NAPLAN - writing test 

The links below take you to demonstration tests for conventions of language (grammar, punctuation, and spelling), numeracy, reading and writing for each NAPLAN test year level: 3, 5, 7 and 9. As all Year 3 students will complete the writing test on paper, there is no Year 3 demonstration test for writing. 

https://pages.assessform.edu.au/pages/year-3-demos

https://pages.assessform.edu.au/pages/year-5-demos

Sue Heffernan
Assistant Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the beginning of the 2023 school year. It is so lovely to see all of the students back at St Mary’s. A very special welcome to our Kindergarten students and their families. Kinder have had a very settled start to the school year, and are pictured below, learning about Christian meditation.

K-12 religious theme for 2023
At the end of last year, our new school leaders from St Mary’s, St Bernard’s and Carroll College met to workshop the K-12 religious theme for 2023. The students decided that the theme would be:

"The fruit of love is service, which is compassion in action".
- St. Mother Theresa

This beautiful quote will be central to everything we do across our K-12 schools this year, encouraging us all to respond to the Gospel messages of kindness, respect and forgiveness. 

Sacrament of Reconciliation
Students in Year 3 are invited to celebrate the sacrament of Reconciliation this term. During Week 3, an enrolment letter will be sent home with students. Please also note the following key dates for the sacrament of Reconciliation:

4th / 5th March - Commitment Mass for those receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation 

Friday 10 March - Year 3 Reconciliation Retreat Day at Carroll College

Tuesday 28 March - Celebration of First Reconciliation

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the sacrament of Reconciliation.

A prayer for the new school year
God of wisdom and might, we praise you for the wonder of our being, for mind, body, and spirit. Be with our children as they begin a new school year. Bless them, their families, their teachers and staff. Give them the strength and grace as their bodies grow; wisdom and knowledge to their minds as they search for understanding; and peace and zeal to their hearts.

We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Gen Schofield
Religious Education Coordinator (Acting)

School Vision and Mission

On Friday the 27 January our staff began the new school year with a professional learning day. This day was led by Tim Smith, our Performance and Improvement Leader from Catholic Education. On this day we began the process of re-imagining our school Vision and Mission statements. 

A school vision statement is what we as a school are looking forward to achieving in the future, and the mission statement allows us to express what is unique about St Mary’s Primary School, our beliefs, values and the behaviours we exhibit at our school.

Developing a Vision and Mission statement is a rigorous process of thought and consultation. We look at what we value as a community, where we want our school to go and what we want for our students and families. 

We were fortunate to have Marg Croese and Jan Morris from our Parish, join us for part of the day to share stories about the history of our school. We also examined the charism of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, the Religious Order of nuns, that served the educational needs of the St Mary's families in Moruya for over 100 years.

The staff and leadership team have developed a workable draft which will undergo a number of revisions and things will be added and adjusted over the coming weeks. The next step will be then to share this with our students, families and Community Council for further input.

Faith in Learning  - 2023 System Day

On Monday 30 January, our staff joined with 2000 colleagues from across the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn at the National Convention Centre in Canberra to engage in insightful presentations from leaders in Education and Faith.

Archbishop Christopher Prowse gave the opening address and he talked about the importance of ‘walking together in 2023’. Being a community that discerns and acts together in the name of Jesus works to improve the education and faith outcomes of students by creating communities of faith in learning and learning in faith.

Our system director Mr Ross Fox shared his passion and commitment to providing the staff in our system with the professional learning, resources, and most current evidence-based research and knowledge, to support our teachers deliver high impact instruction in the classroom.

In his keynote address Mr Noel Pearson, Indigenous leader and chairman of non-profit Good to Great Schools Australia, threw his support behind Catholic Education’s Catalyst reform. He was in ‘furious agreement’ for the reform agenda our System has, and said that it is the most important thing happening in school education. He believes our System of schools will be a beacon for the community. 

Throughout the remainder of the day our staff were able to attend a range of workshops presented by leading educators from around the country. The day was inspiring and affirming for the work we are doing at St Mary’s as we continue to build our knowledge in the Science of Learning and the Science of Reading to transform our students' lives through learning. We are fortunate to be part of a System that prioritises learning and evidence based practice.

High Impact Teaching Practices (HITP) - In Action

‘HITP in Action’ is an aspect of the Catalyst program that supports our teachers to improve their practice through practical professional learning. It is a comprehensive professional learning program, encompassing both the theory of the Science of Learning and coaching, for each teacher to enable high impact instructional strategies in the classroom.

At St Mary’s we have been very fortunate to be working with Dr Lorraine Hammond and the team from Shaping Minds, Jordan O’Sullivan and Brooke Wardana. These educational coaches have been working with all our staff to share their expertise and knowledge through a combination of professional learning experiences, demonstrations of teaching in our classrooms, immersive staff meetings, and ongoing support via email. 

This week Jordan worked in our Stage 3 classrooms and with our Stage 3 teachers on the High Impact Teach Practice of Daily Review. After school he led our Staff Meeting with a focus on differentiation in the classroom. All our staff have thrived working alongside these coaches and are so dedicated to improving their teaching practice. 

Our coaches are very complimentary of the leadership team and staff in their commitment to providing the best education to meet the needs of our students. They always comment on how much they love working with the staff and students at St Mary’s.

Greetings from the School Counsellor and important information about how to access School Counselling.

Hello lovely St. Mary’s families.My name is Faith and I have been part of the CatholicCare Student and Family Counsellilng team since 2019. During such time, I have worked in our regional primary and secondary schools as a student and family counsellor.

I am a social worker; I have previously worked in legal, AOD, and homelessness sectors. My passion for my role stems from an innate desire to help. I strive to assist my clients in acknowledging their strengths and realising their potential. I love working with diverse needs and have particular interest in neurodiversity.

In my school counselling work, I provide short term client centred support to children and their families drawing from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Strengths Based, Mindfulness and Trauma informed approaches in a developmental context. For more complex issues I also provide referrals and information/parent consultation.

Please feel free to touch base with any questions or concerns relating to the counselling service. I am at St. Mary’s Thursdays and alternating Fridays.

How to make an appointment. 

If your child was seen by the school counsellor last year and you would like them to receive support in 2023, we require you to complete a new counselling registration form. The link can be found below. New referrals and requests can be made via the same link.

Parent consent for counselling continues to be required for all primary school students and will be sought and provided via email. Where parents are separated, we require the written consent of both parents. Once the referral has been received by myself, I will contact parents on my next day at St. Mary’s to further discuss the referral.

More about School counselling/how to access school counselling at St. Mary’s.

As part of the pastoral care program for students at St. Mary’s, students have access to a Student and Family Counselling service provided by CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn (CCG). CCG are contracted by the CEO to provide a counselling service to students and their families on site. There is no fee to access this service. The service offers short term counselling support (roughly up to six sessions per referral issue) to children and their families – the counsellor can also provide referrals or advice for more complex issues requiring intensive or long-term therapy/support.

The role of the counsellor is to focus on the emotional, social, and educational well-being of the students. Counsellors welcome contact with students having difficulty with some part of their life, the concern does not have to be a big one. It is better to seek help sooner rather than later. Some typical concerns that counsellors work with include anger, anxiety, behavioural problems, low mood, family changes/separation, grief and loss, learning and educational challenges, parenting challenges, peer and other social relationships, school avoidance, stress and study skills. As well as individual sessions with students, counsellors consult with parents and teachers and make referrals to other services and supports. 

Student and Family Counsellors subscribe to a set of professional ethics that include duty of care and respect for the individual rights to privacy and confidentiality. The counsellors’ obligation is to ensure the safety, wellbeing, and confidentiality of the student they are working with. All counsellors are mandated to report any disclosure or sign of abuse (including self-harm) or neglect to Child Protection Services. Outside of our mandated requirements, all counselling sessions are confidential and the details will not be discussed with other parties unless consent is given by the client.

Faith Costigan
Student and Family Counsellor