WELCOME TO TERM 2!
We hope everyone had an enjoyable break and found the time to rest and recharge their batteries, ready for a busy term of inspired teaching and learning at St Mary’s. The St Mary’s community warmly welcomes Niranjana (Yr 1) and Jacob (Year 4), and their families to our school. We hope that you are settling well and beginning to form strong connections. 

To stay well-informed of the many exciting activities and events that our learning community has planned throughout the term, it is important to check our communication channels for details and any updates regularly. To ensure effective communication with our parents and carers, we have several channels available, including our fortnightly newsletter, Facebook posts, class weekly memos and COMPASS. Please refer to the COMPASS calendar for upcoming dates.

STAFF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING 
On Monday 29 April, teachers in all schools in the Canberra/Goulburn Diocese spent the day engaged in quality professional learning dedicated to curriculum implementation. As a school, we spent the first half of the day further exploring the teaching and learning cycle  with a focus on the key ideas that underpin effective assessment. 

During the afternoon session, teachers had the opportunity to examine some of our school assessment data. Teachers use data to check and understand where their students are in their learning and to plan what to do next. Effective analysis of student data shows improvement in student learning across the school as well as help teachers identify areas where students’ learning needs may require additional attention and development.

Through their ongoing commitment to the latest pedagogical approaches and best practices, our teachers create dynamic and engaging learning environments where every student can thrive. Their passion for education and unwavering support for our students is truly commendable.

Thank you to the students and families who were able to attend the ANZAC services in Tuross, Tomakin and Moruya on ANZAC Day during the school holidays, they were respectful ambassadors for St Mary’s.

We received excellent feedback from our visitors, who were particularly impressed by our dedicated staff and well-mannered friendly students. Our staff's commitment to providing a supportive and nurturing environment for our students was evident throughout the morning, and we are grateful for their hard work and dedication. Our vibrant classrooms and outdoor spaces left a lasting impression on our visitors. They were impressed by the resources we provide to ensure our students have access to the best possible learning environment. Overall, our Open Day was a resounding success, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our staff and students. It was a fantastic opportunity to showcase our school to the community and highlight what sets us apart. We look forward to welcoming many new faces to our school in the future and continuing to provide exceptional education and opportunities to our students.

SAFE ENTERING AND EXITING THE SCHOOL
The safety of our community is always paramount and your cooperation in the following areas is expected. The school's staff car park is still being used by parents for student drop-offs and pickups. We kindly request that families refrain from using the school car park for these purposes. The only exception is for persons with vehicles that display a disability parking sticker to park in the disability space.  

An increasing number of students are walking through the staff car park. Students have been told that this is an unsafe behaviour that can have serious consequences. Families are asked to remind their children that they should be entering the school through the Queen St (bus), Page St or Church St gates, and using the marked pathways or grassed areas to move through the school. For safety reasons, please do not walk through the staff car park at any time. 

NATIONAL SORRY DAY, 26 May
National Sorry Day, 26 May, is a day to acknowledge the strength of Stolen Generations Survivors and reflect on how Australians can all play a part in the healing process for the people and the nation. While this date carries great significance for the Stolen Generations and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, it is commemorated by Australians right around the country.

On Friday, 24 May, our Stage 2 students will be walking across the Batemans Bay Bridge in unity to recognise Australia’s traditional owners and pay respect to the Stolen Generation. Following the walk they will have morning tea and a barbeque on the Clyde River Foreshore.

We look forward to sharing this special celebration with the St Bernard’s and Carroll College communities, as approximately 1000 students and staff come together in prayer. A permission form for students to attend will be up on Compass. All families are warmly invited to attend.

AUSTRALIAN EARLY DEVELOPMENT CENSUS (AEDC)
From May 2024, our school, along with thousands of others across the country, will participate in the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). The AEDC is a teacher-completed census (similar to a questionnaire) which provides a comprehensive picture of how children have developed by the time they start their first year of full-time school (Kindergarten). The AEDC is an Australian Government Initiative and is completed nationally every three years.

Children don’t miss any class time while the AEDC is completed, and parents/carers don’t need to supply schools with any new information. The data collected through the AEDC is used by schools, communities and governments to better understand children and families’ needs, and identify the services, resources and support they need. AEDC results for individual children are not reported and the AEDC is not used as an individual diagnostic tool.

Participation in the AEDC is voluntary, however the AEDC relies on all schools with children in their first year of full-time school participating in the collection. Families don’t need to take any action unless they choose not to include their children in the census. If this is the case, please let Mrs Schofield know by the 4 June. To find out more about the AEDC and how it is being used to help children and families visit: www.aedc.gov.au

REPORTS AND PARENT TEACHER MEETINGS
Semester One Reports will be available to you through Compass on Friday 21 June. Parent teacher meetings will be held in Week 9 on Monday 24 June, Tuesday 25 June. More information will be available in the coming weeks.

MOTHER’S DAY
In preparation for Sunday 12th May I wish all of the Mums, and women in our lives, in the St Mary’s community a very Happy Mothers’ Day. Your leadership, care and organisation ensures our learners (and entire families) are given the environment and opportunity to grow and flourish. 

We were delighted to celebrate with so many of you this morning, and thank you for all you do, with a fun and tasty breakfast! It was really lovely to see and share breakfast with several generations of our mothers today. Thank you also to our staff for their preparation in setting up, cooking and serving our breakfast this morning.

Thank you to Mrs Schofield for your preparations with the Kinder children in preparing a beautiful liturgy celebrating our Mum’s! Thank you also to our Year 6 students for supporting your buddies…you are great role models!

We pray to our Mother Mary to bless all the mothers of the St Mary’s school community. May Mother Mary bless you all, inspiring and energising you by her gentle example of love and perseverance. May she guide you each day as you care and guide your child/ren to grow and flourish. Below is a prayer you may like to pray together with your family on Mother’s Day. 

Dear Lord, 

We pray for young mothers, who give life and count toes and tend to our every need; may they be blessed with patience and tenderness to care for their families and themselves with great joy. 

We pray for our own mothers who have nurtured and cared for us; may they continue to guide us in strong and gentle ways.  

We remember mothers who are separated from their children because of war, poverty or conflict; may they feel the loving embrace of our God who wipes away every tear.  

We pray for women who are not mothers but still love and shape us with motherly care and compassion.  

We remember mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers who are no longer with us but who live forever etched in our memory, with love. 

Amen.  

MOTHER’S DAY RAFFLE WINNERS
Thank you to everyone who supported the Mother's Day raffle by buying tickets. I would like to especially thank the Community Council for organising the Mother’s Day raffle, the great prizes and for selling tickets. To the businesses who donated so many amazing prizes...there wouldn't be a raflle without you all! Thank you!

Congratulations to the following families who have an ‘extra surprise’ to share with their Mum!
Oyster Farmers Daughter voucher - S Raycanovski
Oyster Farmers Daughter voucher - L Joy
Ballards Pharmacy voucher - C Brown
Choose to Move voucher - M Rose
Resting Ridge Leather Co voucher - K Cooper
Resting Ridge Leather Co voucher - E Booker 
Beauty on Q voucher - E Davis
Gundary Bakers gift pack - M Cowley
Gundary Bakers gift pack - Grant family
Gundary Bakers gift pack - I Colburn
Mogo Pies voucher - K Eke
MR Roofing voucher - C Heffernan
Moruya Health Cafe voucher - L Cassidy
Moruya Health Cafe voucher - T Afflick

KEY DATES FOR THE DIARY - TERM 2

 God bless and take care,

Mrs Sue Heffernan
Principal (Acting)

Dear Parents and Carers,

ICAS is an online academic competition that is designed to assess students’ higher order thinking and problem-solving skills in English, Mathematics, Science, Writing, Spelling Bee and Digital Technologies.

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.

We are excited to be offering ICAS to our students this year and look forward to celebrating their achievements.

 ICAS Assessments 2024

Parent orders close Monday 29 July 2024

Mrs Jessie White 
Coordinator (Acting)

Welcome back to another wonderful term of learning in Year 3! We have picked up where we left off in term one and have started a new term with lots of enthusiasm for some wonderful learning experiences to take place.

Religion
This term in Religion, we are looking forward to our new unit, ‘The Local Faith Community’. We will be looking at how we are part of our Sacred Heart Parish Community and The St Mary’s School community. To begin, we discussed groups we belong to and what it feels like to belong. The unit will explore rites of initiation, eg: Baptism and identify the significant people connected to our school and our church. This unit will also deepen our understanding of our place within our faith community here at St Mary’s.

Some students reflected on what it looks like, feels like and sounds like to belong to a group.

Some students reflected on the various groups we can belong to.

Koa: I belong to a family group and a League Tag group.

Ryan: I belong to a Karate group.

Zane: I belong to the Sharks Under 9’s rugby group.

Charlotte: I belong to a Netball group.

Reign: I belong to a guitar group.

Calvin: I belong to a soccer group

Maisie: I belong to my family group.

English
Students are well and truly into the swing of our new routines and are enjoying the Reading and Spelling Mastery programs which run 4 x sessions per week. In Year 3, we have started our new novel study units, and are enjoying our novels written by Indigenous Australian authors.novel. This term, our novel is Yirra and her Deadly Dog Demon, which is about a mischievous dog named Demon and provides young readers a contemporary view of urban Indigenous life in Sydney.

Students in Year 3 began our first week back at school making predictions about the text and using the cover and title to suggest what they think might be happening in the text.

I predict….

Ashley: ‘that the dog is very annoying because he steals undies and chews up shoes. They might have to sell Demon to the pet store.’

Bentley: ‘they will get a dog trainer to train the dog. He will be sensible and not be crazy.’

Charlotte: ‘that Yirra’s Mum will get cross because the dog steals undies and run away.’

Oliver: ‘that the dog will be very annoying and they will eventually find someone to train Demon. Yirra doesn;t want to give Demon away but someone will help her.’

Tash: ‘ that Demon the dog is a mischief because he steals things. After they find someone to train him, he will be a whole lot better than he was. He will learn to be a better dog and not have to sell him.

Calvin: ‘Yirra will get a trainer and the dog will become nice and won’t steal undies and shoes. The dog will have a better life not being bad and not getting into trouble. Demon will be loved.’

Eve: ‘ that Yirra won’t be able to find a dog trainer and will have to give away her beloved Demon. But then, after a few days, he will be too much for the new owners to handle and they will give him back to Yirra and he will be much better behaved.’

Cooper: ‘ the dog will go wild and keep stealing things like shoes and undies. They won’t find a trainer in time and they will have to sell him.’

Zane: ‘ the dog will go wild even though he looks like a nice dog.’

Hattie: ‘they will find someone who will be very good at training Demon to be better behaved.’

Koa: ‘that the story will be about Demon the dog being a bit naughty and cheeky.’

Maisie: ‘that Yirra will try to find a trainer and one day, she finds one who has very good methods and the methods work and Demon becomes a much better dog.’

Akeyla: ‘that Yirra will be worried she won;t be able to find a trainer in time and Demon will run away. I think that Yirra will have to go find him and she will find him living in a gutter.’

As part of our English session, we investigate new and interesting vocabulary which is linked to the whole class reading text. Some of the words we used this week included the words slyly and nuisance - which were both used to describe Demon the Dog. The students were asked to complete a sentence about a nuisance dog. 

‘The dog was a nuisance because…..’ 

Maths
CMC (Connecting Maths Concepts) continues to be our main maths focus this term and students are gaining confidence with the reinforcement of mathematical skills each day. As part of our maths learning, we also use Daily Review to consolidate our understanding of many key concepts and enjoy practical, hands-on activities each Friday. As part of our learning last Friday, we investigated right angles and went in search of these within our classroom. We were able to find some right angles in some very strange places!

History: Community and Remembrance and Anzac Day
In History this term, we will continue to learn about the heritage of our local area and explore the historical features and diversity of our community. Students were impressed by the famous Mrs Christine Greig who showed the students (and featured) in a video on the Moruya Quarry and its link to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Linking nicely with our History unit on Community and Remembrance, we celebrated ANZAC day by joining in a whole school Liturgy to mark this special and will continue to deepen our knowledge into celebrations and commemorations, both locally and in other places around the world. 

We used a recent Art session to complete drawings of Poppy flowers as we learnt these were growing in Flanders fields and are also used as a symbol of remembrance for those who fought and died in the Wars.

Akeyla F bought some of her Dads Army uniform and supplies to show us and told the class about her Dad being in the Army in East Timor. ‘My Dad was in the Army for 5 years. He joined when he was only 17. He has been to lots of different places and lived all over Australia. My Dad was a weapons specialist, teaching the trainees in the Army how to use weapons properly.’

Slouch Hat: My Dad wore this only to special events and when he was doing a drill.

Small Hat: This is called a beret. My Dad wore this every day. In the Army, only people who work in combat jobs are allowed to wear these hats everyday instead of the slouch hat.

Shirt: My dad wore this shirt as part of his uniform everyday and overseas. The middle part of the shirt has a rank slide. This tells people what rank he was in the Ary. My dad was a corporal. 

Music
The students in Year 3 are buzzing with excitement to participate in Music this term. We will be exploring different aspects of musical concepts in singing, playing and moving activities which will focus on temp, beat, dynamics and rhythm patterns. We will also focus on music appreciation and discuss the differences and similarities between various types of music. This week's introductory activity was playing the game of ‘Apple Pie’, where a student stands at the front of the class with eyes closed, while having to guess who is saying the words ‘apple pie’ in a disguised voice. This game was lots of fun and identified changes in pitch, tone and volume.

My favourite musical instrument is….

Reign: Guitar - ‘because I like strumming the strings and learning the songs with my Nan.’

Benjamin: Flute - ‘because it can be peaceful and relaxing and my mum likes listening to flute music.’

Ryan: Drums - ‘because you can bang them really hard and they make a loud sound.’

Patrick: Piano - ‘it would be good to learn to play the piano because it can make peaceful music.’

Science
This term, students in Year 3 will be learning about states of matter: solids, liquids and gases in our new Chemistry unit. The students will begin by identifying the difference between each of the following states of matter and understanding they are different because they have different properties, which can be explained by looking at the arrangement of their particles.

Solids - Solids are objects that keep their own shape and do not flow. 

Liquids - Liquids flow easily and are neither a solid nor a gas. Liquid can take on the shape of any container it is poured into.

Gases - Gases are air-like substances that can move around freely.

We are using the Good to Great Schools Australia program (GGSA) which provides a thorough and comprehensive learning program into the various aspects of the science curriculum. The students are very excited for the practical sessions in this unit which will no doubt provide lots of fun as well as deep learning opportunities.

Sport
This term we welcome Cheryl Sutherland to St Mary’s to share with us her love of everything HOCKEY! Cheryl has been part of the Eurobodalla Hockey Association for many years and is very keen to share her incredible skills and knowledge about the game. Last week, the students were shown a hockey stick and discussed the importance of having a stick that was the right size for them. They focussed on dribbling the ball and keeping it stuck to the bottom of the stick. The students also practised doing push passes to a partner, stepping forward with their front foot and pushing (not hitting) the hockey ball using the strength and power from their legs and arms to ensure the ball makes it the distance to their partner. Rules and safety measures were also discussed - including NOT raising the stick above the knee or swinging the stick around. We thank Cheryl for volunteering her time to teach the students the skills to play hockey and we hope that in the future, we may be able to participate in a gala day to practise these skills.

Mrs Megan Grant
3 Blue Teacher