Dear Parents & Guardians

Yesterday we received some welcome news that restrictions have eased for schools and parents and visitors will now be able to attend school-based activities.

Visitors to school grounds must comply with vaccination requirements, face mask requirements (primary schools only) and practise respiratory etiquette and good hand hygiene.

Parents, guardians and carers attending school sites for drop off and pick up who do not enter school buildings do not need to comply with vaccination requirements.

Parents are welcome through our school gates to drop off students and stay for morning announcements. If parents need to see their child’s teacher, enter classrooms or attend any future events including those held outdoors they must do this via the front office to sign in and show proof of vaccination.

We have a number of upcoming events which we are excited to invite you into our school, please see further information enclosed within this newsletter.

A reminder that students are not to be at school before 8:30am and must be supervised until our gates open at this time.
Our school start time is 8:55am; this is when the bell rings and students line up for morning announcements in the undercover area. By 9:00am students are settled into their classrooms and teachers are mandated to complete the roll at 9:00am.

Children arriving after 9:00am are to be brought to the office to be signed in by a parent/guardian and will be marked as late arrival on the roll.

Catholic schools in the Diocese of Sale aim for continuous school improvement. An essential element of this improvement is understanding how students, parents and staff perceive the Catholic identity of our school and what they might like Catholic identity at St Angela of the Cross Primary School to look like in the years ahead.

These surveys will assist us in better understanding how our Catholic Identity is expressed. The results will contribute to a reliable picture of our school’s Catholic Identity, which we will use to inform our School Improvement Plan for the next four years.

Whilst this survey is not compulsory we thank you for your consideration of this request and for your anticipated participation. Please see the attached letter for further information on how to complete this survey.

NAPLAN is a national literacy and numeracy assessment that students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit in May each year. NAPLAN assesses the literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through the school curriculum and allows parents to see how their child is progressing against National Standards.

NAPLAN assessments are now completed online with the exception of grade 3 writing. Our students will shortly commence practice assessments to prepare them for the tests in May.  Please see the attached flyer for further information.  

Please see the below dates for school assemblies.
Please note these will be held in the undercover area and will commence at 3pm.

Tuesday 8th March

Tuesday 22nd March

Thursday 7th April (Easter Raffle)

Today the students at St Angela of the Cross celebrated Shrove Tuesday with a pancake picnic.

Shrove Tuesday is a Christian celebration falling on the Tuesday before the beginning of Lent. During Lent, Christians give up luxuries to remember when Jesus went into the desert for 40 days to fast and pray. Thank you to our wonderful parent helpers who assisted in cooking and serving pancakes to students and staff.

Deals with the devil

Luke’s gospel tells (Lk 4:1-13) of Jesus deliberately going into the wilderness and wrestling for forty days with the question of his vocation and how he would give himself for others. He rejects the way of power and glory, rather choosing the way of service and suffering. In our own lives, we too face those temptations to accumulate material riches, to seek popularity and to build worldly power and we ask how we might fortify ourselves to overcome these temptations.

Pope Francis has preached[1] about the temptations encountered by Jesus in Luke’s gospel (Lk 4:1-13), pointing to three ruinous and misleading paths:  greed for possession, human vainglory and the exploitation of God.

Particularly in the modern western world where many of us have so much already, we easily recognise the first temptation in that crazy impulse to accumulate even more. The devil tempts us to believe “nourishment, life, fulfilment, happiness … is possible without God.” Jesus tells us otherwise.  

“Vainglory”, the second temptation, we recognise too, that excessive pride in oneself or one’s achievements. The vanity, conceit or egotism of thinking we are better than others. Not so!

But what of the third temptation, “exploiting God to one’s advantage.” Pope Francis teaches us, “In response to the devil who, citing Scripture, invites Him to seek a conspicuous miracle from God, Jesus again opposes with the firm decision to remain humble, to remain confident before the Father: “It is said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God’”.  Thus, Jesus rejects perhaps the most subtle temptation: that of wanting to ‘pull God to our side’, asking him for graces which in reality serve and will serve to satisfy our pride.”

Rationalising that the ends justify the means, cutting deals with the devil or taking shady short-cuts, compromises, gamesmanship, these are the temptations drawing us away from humility and confidence in the Lord.

Deacon Mark Kelly

[1] Pope Francis Homily on Luke 4:1-13, 2019

Ash Wednesday – 2 March 2022  

(Week beginning Monday 28th February) 

This week the season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, which also marks the beginning of the annual Caritas Australia Project Compassion Appeal. Donations to Project Compassion allows Caritas Australia, the Catholic Agency for International Aid and Development, to work with local communities around the world to end poverty, promote justice and uphold dignity. 

The theme of Project Compassion 2022 is ‘For All Future Generations’ and reminds us that the good that we do today will extend and impact the lives of generations to come. It invites us to make the world a better place by working together now and finding long-term solutions to global issues.  We encourage you to put your compassion into action this Lent through your prayer, fasting and almsgiving by supporting Project Compassion. Next week, each family will receive a Project Compassion box and/or a set of envelopes for their donations or you can donate online via the Caritas Australia website at: lent.caritas.org.au

Each week as part of our Literacy lessons, the Foundation students rotate through fun and motivating fine motor-based activities. These learning experiences help students develop strong, flexible fingers, hands and arms. They also promote hand-eye coordination, problem solving skills and foster language and conversational skills.

Two of our favourite activities this term have been finger gym and the day we arrived at school to discover our chairs had grown hair! Who knew learning could be so much fun! We are very proud of how hard you are working at school Homegroup M and Homegroup H.

In Grade One, students have been continuing to work on their fine motor skills by participating in formal handwriting sessions. Our focus has been on body letters such as; a, o and m. We have also been working on using the dotted thirds to correctly form our letters and sit them on the lines. This will be a continued focus in our Literacy lessons throughout the term to consolidate our skills.

Over the past few weeks in literacy, we have been learning to retell a story off by heart using actions to help us remember the words and sequence. It’s called Little Charlie and here is a little video of our class reciting it using expression for the characters' voices as well as the actions for the connectives and nouns. They learnt this story within three days! They have done so well! We have even let the students take over from the Teachers as the main story tellers too and they get to wear the special Storytellers Cloak.

We are now beginning to plan our own stories using the same structure but changing the characters, setting and the goodies in the bag. The students have been thinking of lots of adjectives and adverbs that they could put into their story. Maybe they could tell you about their main character and where their story will be set.

As always, we are working hard on handwriting and presentation too, in preparation for ‘publishing’ our stories next week.

The students have been working hard in literacy since the beginning of the year to improve their writing skills. 

Along with Homegroup TP, Homegroup L have been busy learning to recite the Little Charlie story, being able to recite the Little Charlie story has enabled the students to imitate the language they need for a narrative, before reading and analysing the story, and then writing their own version.

We have been learning how to become better writers by exploring connectives, adjectives and adverbs and adding them into our story to make it more exciting. Our next step will be to write our own version of Little Charlie.

Students have been participating in games, skills and activities in preparation for our whole school athletics day.  This has included running and loco-motor relay races, target throwing and hurdles. Senior school students have also been focusing on setting personal goals and challenging their own personal best. We continue to promote and utilise our school-wide expectation of ‘Persistence’ when completing these challenging, yet fun activities!

Last week Billy and Isabella represented St Angela of the Cross at the Warragul District Swimming event. Both students swam exceptionally well within their chosen events of freestyle and breaststroke. Congratulations from the whole school community at St Angela of the Cross on your achievements.

On Friday 18th March, the students at St Angela of the Cross will participate in an AFL school engagement clinic. These clinics are inclusive, fun and engaging sessions that mimic Auskick activities and allow for everyone to get involved and stay active.

 All students are required to wear their sports uniform on this day.