Term 3 Week 10 / 13 September 2023

Principal - Ms Katrina Dunne

What are our ‘big rocks’ at St Mary’s School?

Throughout the past three years, the staff at St Mary’s School have worked on seven big rocks for our school - Behaviour, Facility Improvements, Wellbeing, Refining Curriculum, Collective Teacher Efficacy, Being Distinctively Catholic, and Community Engagement. We would love to hear your feedback on these big rocks and will send through a Teams link via Parent Portal this week. Please take the time to complete this short survey over the holiday break. We look forward to hearing and reading your feedback.

Farewell Miss Harding 

This is Ashleigh Harding’s last week at St Mary’s for 2023. Miss Harding will relocate to Barcaldine this holiday break. We take this opportunity to thank Miss Harding for her wonderful work at St Mary’s over the past six months, especially with her tireless work with Sport at school, district, regional and southwest levels. You have made HPE an enjoyable experience for many students at St Mary’s School and given your unconditional extra for our students to have access to wider sporting opportunities. We wish Miss Harding all the best!

Tuckshop will return in Term 4!

Thank you Mrs Alice Short, who has taken on the tuckshop convenor role at St Mary’s School, beginning in Week 1 of Term 4. We look forward to sharing the tuckshop menu with our families over the holiday break.

Have a fabulous break. See you in Term 4!

Cheers,

Katrina

Date Claimers

APRE - Mrs Kirsty Lines

TERM 4 HERE WE COME!

How exciting to think we have so much to look forward to in Term 4!  Please see below:

Friday, October 6: Year 5 leadership retreat at Graham Andrews' Park – 9am start, concluding with a liturgy and sausage sizzle for future leaders around 12:30pm.  Parents welcome to attend liturgy and sausage sizzle.

Friday October 27^th – Official blessing of refurbished buildings, amenities & library.  9am here at school.  Bishop Ken, Dr Pat Coughlan and members of Coorey family are our special guests.  We’d love to see as many parents, former students and friends of St Mary’s there as possible!

Tuesday, November 21 – Year 6 Liturgy and Graduation ceremony

Class prayer assemblies to be confirmed in first newsletter of Term 4.

HELP!!!

With the lovely Mary Dunne moving, St Mary’s Parish needs a new co-ordinator of the Melbourne Cup Sweep.  This is the only major fundraiser for the Parish for the year.  Could you lend a hand?  Please see Fr Peter or phone 46543394.

Thank you for a wonderful Term 3

It’s been another huge term with Confirmation, Catholic Education Week, The Assumption of Mary and learning about our Mercy value of Excellence!  Please see some photos below of our term.  Thank you to Fr Peter, Sr Elizabeth, Katrina and our fantastic staff for all of the hard work you do!  We are very blessed to have such a wonderful group to carry on educating our students in the Mercy Tradition!

Learning Support News - Mrs Belinda Phillips

Wow! It’s incredible to think we are nearing the end of Term 3. Thank you to all parents and family for your support, through working with your child at home. We have witnessed great growth and improvement across all classes in reading and engagement with learning this term.

I look forward to hearing all the exciting holiday plans from students. I am eager to work with class teachers this week regarding their planning for Term 4. I will support teachers to incorporate inclusive education approaches into their Term 4 planning for their class. St Mary’s teachers work hard to develop differentiated planning for their students in their curriculum as well as pedagogy in the classroom.

I wish you all a relaxing and safe holiday and look forward to seeing you all in Term 4.

Our Auslan sign this edition is Holidays:

1. Your hands start flat in front of your chest, palms facing out.
2. Both hands do 2 circles, each at the same time and finish back in front of your chest.

Curriculum - Mrs Vanessa Alexander

Welcome to the end of Term 3. I hope you have had an excellent term.

By now, most families would have taken part in the Student Led Conferences. We would love some feedback regarding this process as this is the first time, as a school, we have presented Parent / Teacher Conferences in this way. As always, we strive for excellence and value our families’ input.

Have a wonderful holiday,

Vanessa Alexander

Please find the link to the Microsoft Form below.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=_f1LV0RCBUK3EBaPWwxYDY02do4BFBhCpX5UzLf9ScxUM05CQzgzM0tJWEZaUkZQT1NFV1RTRFFIQy4u

Eating a Rainbow of Fruit and Vegetables

Library - Mrs Michelle Sheehan

So proud of our Readers Cup students who competed in Brisbane last week at the State Finals. With such a busy term and all the extra curricula activities, it was go hard…to the end.

Such a great experience for the five students.

Some fun snaps!

Year 3 - Miss Katherine Spalding

As the term comes to a close, there have been so many wonderful things happening in Year Three over the past few weeks.

In week six we had lots of fun exploring and experimenting for Science Week! A big thank you to the lovely parents and friends who helped all our different experiments run smoothly.

Week seven was a busy week with both Book Week and the Performing Arts Festival. We shared our love of literature and dressed as our favourite book characters.

We are very proud of our efforts from the Performing Arts Festival! The students showed beautiful behaviour and sportsmanship as they performed the verse speaking and vocal ensemble. We received a highly commended for our singing and were very excited to earn silver with our poem!

A special thank you to Mrs Alexander who has prepared a colourful fruit platter for us and shared some wisdom on the benefits of eating food from across the rainbow. Oh so delicious and nutritious!

Year 4 - Miss Taylor Morrison

Welcome to Week 10 St Mary’s! Term 3 is absolutely flying by… check out what Year 4 have been up to over the past few weeks.

We had a BLAST celebrating National Science Week. Thank you to everyone who entered our Science Week Competition!

How special was Book Week! I think the teachers enjoyed dressing up just as much as the students!

In Week 7, Year 4 engaged in a Health lesson to explore ‘eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables’. We had so much fun trying new foods!

WOW did Year 4 demonstrate excellence at the Charleville Performing Arts Festival. They worked so hard on their performances, and it showed. They not only received GOLD but were awarded with Outstanding Verse Speaking Group. What little legends! Congratulations to all our St Mary’s performers.

Students have been working hard in the classroom, finalising their persuasive texts, creating projects based on the First Fleet and Erosion, and exploring the concept of data through surveying each other! Over the next few weeks in Maths, we will consolidate our learning by using given data, timetables, and timelines to make decisions about how to spend a day at the movies!

Year 4 has shown an incredible amount of growth this year, not only academically, but also in their behaviour and dedication to learning. Since they are doing a fabulous job following our Mercy Values and classroom expectations, we have begun weekly focuses to step it up again! Last week, we discussed the importance of manners. Manners allow us to show gratitude, spread compassion and create a positive school culture filled with strong relationships.  “To learn etiquette, is actually learning how to see others, and respect them.” 

I look forward to meeting with you all this week for Student Led Conferences, to celebrate growth and discuss student goals for the remainder of the year.

Until next time,

Miss Morrison and the Year 4 Crew.

Year 5/6 - Ms Amy Halliday

There is no I in TEAM! And… what a Team! A picture paints a thousand words.

5/6 students sure know how to fit a bunch of exciting events and activities into a term. Watching from a distance, and by requesting regular image spamming from Mr Pete, it has been visually clear to me what a strong and connected group we are. The images attached are what really impressed upon me the growth of our Team and the students’ brave natures. From camp to Performing Arts Festival to Reader’s Cup and a myriad of sporting adventures. Some amazing accomplishments from our students have included attendance at Regional Athletics with Millie and Luca being selected for states, many 5/6’s participated in a basketball clinic hosted by a 2 time Olympian and NBL champion and what about Reader’s Cup?! Congratulations to you all. A holiday is most certainly in order for our amazing students so they can return refreshed and ready to learn in Term 4.

September Birthdays

P & F News

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