Feast of the Sacred Heart and Grandparents Day
This morning was a very special one at St Mary’s. We were honoured to be able to celebrate The Feast of the Sacred Heart with a whole school mass and Grandparents Day morning tea. Thank you to Father George, Mrs Jessie White, Mrs Fran Devonnald, Marg Croese, Rhonda and Eugene for their part in the Mass and celebrations.

Congratulations to our very special Year 1 students for their reading and beautiful hymn and movement at Mass. We were also suitably impressed by the amazing bush dancing back at school. Who knew that we have such talented Stage 1 children, parents and grandparents!

Enrolments
Our Kindergarten enrolments for 2025 are looking strong. Mrs Sue Heffernan and I have recently had the pleasure of meeting many new children and their parents. We still have more interviews to go! New families have chosen to join us at St Mary’s because they either already know of students and families at our school or they have heard positive things about our staff and our teaching and learning programs. Our small family-like atmosphere is also one of the reasons that parents choose us.  Of course,  our current students are our greatest ambassadors and I thank them for that. 

If you know of other parents interested in enrolling their children into Kinder or other grades in 2025 or later this year, can you please encourage them to make contact with the Front office as soon as possible. Early next term, staffing for 2025 will be determined by Catholic Education and I need to have a clear picture of the number of children at each grade level. It is possible next year that we may end up with a waiting list in some grades. 

School Uniform
Thank you parents for supporting us in making sure your children are wearing the correct school uniform. All students should be in full winter uniform by now. Please ensure clothing is named on the inside, especially jumpers and jackets, as they tend to be taken off on warmer days.

Parent Night
On Wednesday June 12, the staff will be sharing information with the parent community about assessment and the learning programs we use at St Mary's. This meeting will take place in the PAC 6-7pm. Please register your interest via the google link below. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdI4eLEErQ-T1D9qboqJRN-Jv-oNxyhXhT8eQHQdv8ceOA4YQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Please be advised that childminding will be available if required.

We look forward to welcoming you to share some nibblies and connect with other parents as we discuss our core business at St Mary’s.…learning.

Staffing
Mr Justin Bateman has extended his leave for the rest of Term 2. We have employed Mrs Christine Greig to teach Mr Bateman’s Stage 2 class on a Friday. Mrs Greig has also been asked to continue supporting Mrs Schofield in Kindergarten four days a week this term. With two teachers and a full time CSA in the Kindergarten space, the students are very well supported in their learning. It is such a delight to see and hear our youngest students learning to read and write. 

Student Management and Support
We are very proud of the students at St Mary’s. They have a well deserved reputation in the community for being polite, friendly and well behaved. 

Occasionally, as is the case with all children, some students do not always make good choices and this affects them and others. We have a Student Management and Support Plan that is well understood by our students. When something goes wrong, we endeavour to keep things simple by referring back to our four school values. Students are asked the  following questions:

Were you being kind?
Were you being safe?
Were you being respectful?
Were you doing your best?

We are here to support your child to stop and think, make the right choices, accept consequences and learn from all situations. Occasionally, a student may require some time away from their class and teacher to discuss and reflect on their behaviour. We always emphasise the impact of there behaviour on others. 

Parents will be informed if a situation is of a serious nature or if a pattern of misbehaviour is occurring. Thank you for your support with this. When teachers and parents trust each others’ decisions and work together, the students know what is expected of them at school and on the bus. 

Essentially parents and staff want the same thing; For each child to grow up to be the best person they can be. 

Little Investigators Playgroup
A reminder that our Little Investigators Playgroup is held every Wednesday morning in the PAC for children aged 0-5 and their parents. If you know of any parents who would like a free morning of early year’s learning and fun, please tell them to come along next week. Little Investigators is open to all, not only our St Mary’s families. 

Fee remissions/financial support
It is important to know that no student will be denied a place at St Mary’s due to financial stress. We offer fee remissions for those families in need of support during the year. Please contact Annette Hazell in the front office if you are having any difficulties in paying school fees. All information will be held in the strictest of confidence.

Prayer for Grandparents

Dear God, 
Please bless our grandparents. 
Thank you for the life they gave my parents and for the life they give to me. 
For the ways they helped me and made me strong, I give thanks. 
For the ways they love me no matter what, I rejoice. 
For the ways they have paved the road that leads me here, I am grateful. 
Let them grow in wisdom and joy in life.
Let them find peace and rest from their work. 
Let them be healed of every sickness and pain. 
And let them see with their own eyes the glory of your Son,
Jesus, in the love of their children and grandchildren. 
Bless them always until they come to rest in you.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. 
Amen

God’s blessings on you and your families.

Mrs Noeleen O'neill​​​​
Principal

Student Reports - Semester One 2024
Your child/children’s teachers have been finalising students' assessments and Semester One reports. We frequently hear them talking and discussing work covered, results gained and effort applied to decide on a final grade. Reporting is not an easy process, and there is much time, thought, and deliberation put into the final result. 

We thank all staff for their commitment to ensuring that students' reports are a true and accurate reflection of their progress. We congratulate students on their hard work and to all parents on the support of their child, as individuals.

The semester reports provide a grade for learning in each Key Curriculum Area and Engagement with Learning statements. Please note this is a ‘progress report’ of your child’s learning journey and reflects the effort and commitment they have to their school work. Parents are encouraged to discuss all aspects of the report with their child. It is very important to recognise your child’s success and progress in all areas of development. 

Semester One reports will be available to you through Compass on Friday 21 June. If any parent requires a hard copy of the report, please email the front office.

Parent Teacher Meetings
Parent teacher meetings will be held in Week 9 on Monday 24 June and Tuesday 25 June for Kinder, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 3/4, Year 4, Year 5, Year 5/6 and Year 6. This is an official meeting time set aside for you to discuss your child’s progress with the class teacher. At this meeting the teacher will also explain your child's half yearly report and how the grades are determined based on work samples and assessments. The meetings will be 10-15 mins in duration. 

Bookings for meeting times can be made through the online Compass portal from Friday afternoon the 14 June. Parents will be notified via Compass that bookings are open. If you have difficulty making a booking, please email your child’s teacher or phone the front office.

Of course, parents are always welcome to make an appointment at any time throughout the year to meet with the class teacher/s, just as teachers can contact parents to organise meetings. If you are unable to attend a meeting during Week 9 and would like to discuss your child’s progress, please contact your child’s teacher to arrange another suitable time to meet. 

The booking portal on Compass will close on Sunday night 23 June.

Carroll College Variety Night
St Mary’s Primary School and St Bernard’s have been invited to attend and perform at the Performing Arts Variety Night at Carroll College on Wednesday 3 July, Week 10. This year St Mary’s will preview a sneak peak of two songs from our musical Mary Poppins, performed by our main cast members. 

The Variety Concert will commence at 6.00pm with a light supper available for purchase from 5:15pm. There is no cost for entry. All families are invited to attend and be entertained by the students from our K-12 Pathway schools.

Mrs Sue Heffernan
Assistant Principal

English
In English, students continue to engage in daily novel study with our text “Yirra and her Deadly Dog Demon.” With her Mum on a warpath, it’s a race against time for Yirra to find a dog trainer for her naughty dog Demon. This book gives students a contemporary view of urban Indigenous life in Sydney. It has encouraged rich discussions as we unpack the content. Our daily reviews have focused on introducing new vocabulary, sentence construction, grammar and morphology. Weekly explicit handwriting lessons also take place, with a focus on pre cursive writing experiences. During writing time, students have used a variety of picture stimuli to expand the kernel sentences and substituted more engaging verbs, to enhance the quality of their sentences. 

Xavier - I really like our new novel and using the new vocabulary words to write interesting sentences. 

Winter - I enjoy our handwriting lessons each week, as we are learning how to write in cursive. My other favourite part is reading mastery when we read new stories each week and have to answer questions. 

Lucy - I like when Mrs Hampson gives us time to read our books silently and when she reads to us. 

Bernadette - I love our new novel because it is about a girl called Yirra and her dog Demon. She is having trouble getting him to listen to her. I also enjoy spelling mastery, because I like learning to spell new words with Mrs Hampson. 

Maths
Our Connecting Maths Concepts focus on big ideas in Mathematics, which teaches explicit strategies that enable students to master challenging concepts. Our students continue to develop their problem-solving capabilities and their ability to think and communicate mathematically. During weekly daily review students are practising their skills with telling the time, speed times tables facts, measurement and volume and capacity.  

Milton - I really like doing our times tables each week and I am getting faster with the answers. Most nights at home I use a timetables app that Mrs Hampson showed us and it is really cool. 

Elsie - Our CMC lessons are really good because we get to work with number families and get quicker at knowing our timetables. 

Patrick - On Fridays we get to do maths daily review where we get to answer different types of questions and my favourite questions are timetables ones. 

Alonso - My favourite parts of our maths lessons are when we do our number families and when I keep improving with my timetables. 

Religion
As we continue to engage actively in this term's unit ‘The Local Faith Community,’ students this week had a special visit to the Church to meet with Father George and find out about the day in the life of a Priest. Father George also took the time to explain how we are part of our Sacred Heart Parish Community. 

Alonso - Father George told us that before he was a Priest he used to play lots of golf and was a really good basketball player. How cool is that!

Bernadette - I loved learning that Father George has a really busy daily routine and he goes to bed really early because he gets so tired. 

Hugo - Father George taught us about his day to day life and I liked when he explained the different symbols in the Church. 

Winter - Father George taught us that our Church is 137 years old and I liked looking at the different things that can be found in our Church. 

Koby - When we went to the Church the other day I learnt that Father George has 6 brothers and 1 sister and he enjoys eating fish for dinner. 

Creative Arts: Music
This term we are learning to play music using body percussion and other sound sources to explore and demonstrate the concepts of tone, pitch and dynamics. Students had lots of fun working together to create their very own thunderstorm, using only parts of their body. We also looked closely at the Sound of Music and had a go at writing our own music notes to perform a group solfege. This was lots of fun! 

Koby - It was so fun when we played the apple pie game and it was so cool when we made a thunderstorm with our body. 

Charlie - I liked doing the thunderstorm dance, because I like moving around. 

Elsie - In Music, I liked creating a storm because we got to use the different parts of our body to make music as the instruments. 

Patrick - It was really fun when we played the game apple pie, because I got to change my voice so the class couldn’t recognise it was me. 

Visual Arts
Students have demonstrated their understanding and skills through a variety of mediums this term. They have discussed their plans with peers and how these affect their selection of materials, tools and techniques they have used for each art piece. Below is a small selection of different art we have completed this term.

Lucy - My favourite art this term was when we drew the Opera House and made it all colourful. 

Tane - I enjoyed creating our Sally Morgan artworks, because we got to use different shapes and bright colours. 

Ethan - I like colouring in. It is fun. 

Milton - I liked sketching our cassowaries because they were challenging and very detailed. I think mine turned out really good. 

PE
In PE lessons with Mr Hill, we are preparing for our athletics carnival coming up at the end of this term. We have practised our distance and sprinting skills and we have begun our field events of long jump, discus and shot put. We continue to participate in cooperative games, to encourage sportsmanship and contribute as a member of a team. Friday hockey skills sessions with Cherly is definitely a weekly highlight for us all!  

Noah - The best thing about PE is that we get to learn new games and learn how to look after our body. 

Arthur - I have enjoyed doing high jump this term with Mr Hill, because it has taught me to jump higher and it is really fun. 

Xavier - In PE, my favourite game is Capture the Flag and when Mr Hill teaches us new techniques to help with our running. 

Evander - PE with Mr Hill  is fun and I have lots of fun learning how to play new games with my friends. I have also learnt how to run faster this term. 

Tane - I really like playing Capture the Flag, because it is really fun exercise and you can work as a team with your friends. 

Bernadette - I like playing Bop Tag, because it is fun to celebrate with your team members when we win and we get to learn to share and communicate with each other. 

Science: Excursion to the Eurobodalla Botanic Gardens
Students thoroughly enjoyed our day out at the Botanic Gardens this week. We participated in a variety of activities, including regeneration activities, a bush walk and plant identification. As you can see from the photos and our recounts, we had the best day and were sad when it was time to hop on the bus and travel back to school.

Lucy - I really liked learning about plants and how to use a magnifying glass to see if it was a boy or a girl. You have to look at how many styles a plant has. 

Noah - From our excursion today, I learnt that the Kangaroo Paw plant looks like a kangaroo foot and I also learnt about different plants on our nature walk. 

Tane - I really liked going on our walk in the bush to find different plants and I enjoyed listening to the birds sing. 

Hugo- I enjoyed going on the bush walk and my favourite plant I saw was the grass tree. I also learnt about photosynthesis and what botanists do for their job. 

Koby- This excursion was very fun, because I got to learn about flowers and their purpose in life. When we went on our walk I learnt that different plants have different features and different jobs in life. 

Ethan- I liked looking at the flowers and my favourite is the white one.

Mrs Alicia Hampson​​​​
3/4 Maroon Teacher

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)

Mary Poppins: Assistance with class dance items

Please place the following dates into your calendars as Mary Poppins is flying into St Mary’s on 5th and 6th of November. 

Mary Poppins is a whole school production, which means that all students, Kindergarten to Year 6 will be involved. Each class will have a dance item that they will rehearse during class time in Term 3. Our school musical is always a wonderful community event and this year we are asking for as many parent volunteers to assist us to bring our magical dream to life! 

We are asking for parents who would like to assist with the dance component of the class items. Each class will be allocated a song and we are requesting that parent helpers join us during school hours to assist with simple dance choreography. This will take place during Term 3 and will require visiting the school once a week. If you are a dance teacher or someone who loves to move and groove we are seeking your assistance. You will work in collaboration with a class teacher and the production team. If you are interested please contact Mrs White. jessica.white@cg.catholic.edu.au 

Please keep your eyes on the Newsletter and Compass, as we will soon be requesting parents to assist with backdrop painting, set and prop design. 

Many thanks in advance. 
The Production Team

Guitar Group
Guitar group has started again this term. 

If you are in Years 3-6 and interested in showing us what you know or exploring new tunes, please join us First Break every Thursday in our school Library. 

Beginners welcome!
Mr Campbell and Mrs Devonald