Dear Parents,

Recently we were fortunate to receive a copy of the book titled ‘Annabel’s Mum’. This book is based on the real journey of a young mother diagnosed with cancer during the pregnancy of her second child. This story highlights the feelings of change and uncertainty from the perspective of a child – just a toddler at the time of her Mum’s diagnosis. However, it also celebrates the excitement and gift of new life and pays homage to memories of the people we love.

This book was written by one of our school mums, Kristy Telford. Kristy has been suffering cancer for many years and has an incredible fight on her hands at the moment. Throughout her years with cancer Kristy has always been selfless and has looked to see how her experiences could help others. This book may help a child to understand that although many changes occur when a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, the child is still important; the child remains safe, loved, and will forever be connected to their loved one.

A copy of this book is available through our school Library and is available for all families to utilise. Alternatively, copies are available at the office for $20.  I would like to thank Kristy for kindly donating a copy of her book to our school and offer the following prayer for her, the extended Telford family and all families who are currently suffering from ill health.

God of healing mercy, in Jesus your Son
you stretch out your hand
in compassion, restoring
the sinner, healing the sick,
and lifting up those
bowed down.

Embrace us now in your
loving care, particularly
those afflicted with cancer,
for whom this intention
is offered. May the Spirit
of Jesus bring us all health
in soul and body, that with
joy and thanksgiving we may
praise you for your goodness,
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

This afternoon your child/ren will bring home an envelope marked 'confidential' with details to a survey. Insight SRC are conducting a survey on behalf of our school and Diocese of Sale Catholic Education Limited. It is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of parents’ perceptions of their child's experience of school.

All families at our school are asked to complete this survey, although we strongly encourage it, your participation is voluntary. Instructions on how to complete the survey are included in the envelope and we would greatly appreciate your input.

Surveys need to be completed by Friday 20^th May.

Having a whole school approach to positive behaviour allows for a consistency of expectations and behaviour management across our school. The following visual is displayed in each of our classrooms and is a guide for teachers/students to be able to follow if students are struggling to meet the school expectations.

The next Parents and Friends Committee meeting will be on Friday 20th May at 9am, all are welcome to attend.

Please RSVP in the below webform:

Parents & Friends Committee Meeting

The P & F Commitee will work on providing a positive and friendly community beyond the classroom. This will include the coordination of fundraising and fun events for our students and families to engage in.

The students all participated with great determination and effort, all while showing such amazing house spirit. It was wonderful to see so many spectators supporting our school. Congratulations to all for a fantastic effort!

1st |  Blue House

2nd | Red House

3rd | Yellow House

4th | Green House

Congratulations to all of our individual winners.

Homegroup H

Lyric D & Mackenzie M

Homegroup M

Margot K & Makayla B

Homegroup B

Leo P & Isla B

Homegroup TP

Flynn M & Lailah S

Homegroup L

Ethan D & Ella L

As a result of the global pandemic, there has been a noticeable shift in the amount of time people spend on screen-based devices. Families are transitioning back to pre-COVID routines but many are still struggling to re-establish the boundaries and rules around screen use. Some continue to deal with digital conflict and tech-tantrums on a daily basis. The latest research found that 77% of teenagers spend more than five hours on screens per day, but it is important to note that not all screen time is considered equal.

Parents play a crucial role in modelling a positive and healthy approach to using screens and assisting children to navigate the content they watch. It is better to model and mentor screen use, rather than monitor it. Children tend to do more of what they see us do, and less of what we tell them to do. However, it is still important to outline the risks and highlight the benefits of screen use to ensure you keep a balanced attitude. Encourage discussions around the issues that people experience in monitoring their screen time and be honest about your own difficulties.

Parents need to remain firm in their approach to managing screen time. Excessive screen time can be detrimental to a child’s overall wellbeing. Ensuring the correct privacy settings are in place is vital to prevent children from being inadvertently exposed to inappropriate content or online predators. Parents need to also be mindful of the potential impact screen time can have on a child’s social, emotional, educational, behavioural, and even physical domains.

In this edition of SchoolTV, care-givers will be provided with a range of guidelines and strategies to help manage screen time at home. We hope you take time to reflect on the information offered in this month’s edition, and we always welcome your feedback.

If you do have any concerns about the wellbeing of your child, please contact the school for further information or seek medical or professional help.

Here is the link to this month's edition https://stangelawarragul.catholic.schooltv.me/newsletter/managing-screen-time

Love IS All there is!!

Mahatma Ghandi said, “If more Christians were like your Christ, there would be more Christians.” 2000 years after Christ, only 30% of the world’s population are Christians (over half of those are Catholics). Considering the astounding “Good News” we should be spreading and Jesus’ instruction to “baptise all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit”, not overly impressive.

Do others see us as Christ-like disciples? Jesus tells us that it is “by this love you have for one another that everyone will know that you are my disciples.”(John 13:31-35). “All that matters is love, a love that is expressed most purely when we sacrifice ourselves for the well-being of others. When we love in this way we show that we are disciples of Jesus who laid down his life for us”. (St Paul’s Sunday Missal). Do we love like Him? Otherwise we’ll never spread the Good News.

Can others see in us a love, not merely of the “worthy” or those who love us, but the love Jesus showed for the least (even haters)? Love for young people off the rails, street people and addicts, homeless, rough sleepers, sufferers of domestic violence, trafficked humans, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, prisoners, dysfunctional families, those grieving at loss and dislocation, many indigenous people, disabled and ill brothers and sisters.

All humanity, especially the poor, ragged and disadvantaged are precious to Jesus, as well as the misguided, ignorant and plain sinful. He loves them all and calls us to do no less. Catholics today enjoy infinite opportunity for self-sacrificing love and plenty of ways for “sleeves rolled up” engagement.

Others can witness Jesus’ disciples faithfully self-sacrificing in our daily lives when we work with one or two of the many Catholic social service organisations. Don’t just think about it – do it!

Deacon Mark Kelly

Last term each family received a Project Compassion box for their donations to Caritas Australia.

A reminder to please return these boxes to Administration.

We have received many more books that need some contact covering. If you would like to help the school with this task, please see the office staff for a take home bundle. Any help big or small will be appreciated.

Congratulations to Oliver F who recently competed in the Division Athletics. Oliver placed 2nd in the Hurdles and 3rd in the 800m

Oliver will now advance to the regionals to be held in October.

Congratulations and Good Luck Oliver!

We warmly welcome our students and families back to Term 2! During Term 2, our Foundation students will be busily working on the following:

Literacy:

Phonics: Students will continue to participate in our daily Sounds-Write phonics lessons. Students will be exposed to the following sounds; o, p, b, c, g, h, d, e. They will engage in lessons such as Word Building, Sound Swap and Dictation to practise the skills of segmenting, blending and phoneme (units of sound) manipulation.

Reading: Our beginning readers will be introduced to the strategies of pointing to each word, segmenting sounds and recognising common sight words. Our independent readers will focus on strategies to comprehend and answer questions about the texts they have read. During Shared Reading, we will be listening to a variety of Narrative texts. We will focus on the structure, characters, setting and features of narrative texts, learning to complete a Five Finger Retell.

Writing:  Students are learning to hear and record the sounds they can hear in words. They will continue to regularly use the dotted thirds to help form and position letters correctly. Students will continue to write Recounts about past events and will experiment with different parts of a Narrative. We will begin to recognise some elements in familiar narratives, for example, characters, setting, problem and resolution and will learn to write a simple sentence to tell an imaginative story.

Numeracy:

Students will use manipulatives, drawings and numerals to solve addition and subtraction sums. They will learn vocabulary related to addition and subtraction and will explore the ‘Count All, Count On and Count Back’ strategies. Students will develop fluency with forwards and backwards counting. They will understand that numbers are said in a particular order and there are patterns in the way we say them. Students will collect, sort and display data gathered through a picture graph and will answer yes / no questions about data that we have gathered.

Inquiry:

Physical Science: ‘That’s my hat!’

Students will explore how we are surrounded by thousands of objects made out of different materials. They will learn that when we design objects we make choices based on the properties of different materials to suit the users.  Students will design and make their own party hat, considering the materials used and the weather it might be worn in.

Chemical Science: ‘What’s it made of?’

Students will investigate how materials will be part of the world in the future and will explore how existing materials might be used in new ways. They will learn what materials allow us to make and do. Students will have opportunities to explore what things are made of in the school environment and the properties of the materials used to make them.

Religion:

Students will learn about the difference between signs and symbols. They will explore how signs and symbols convey meaning and will investigate a variety of these, such as electronic, artistic, non-verbal and visual. Students will learn about some signs and symbols connected to the Catholic Church and their meaning.

During term 2, Homegroup B will be focusing on the following areas:

Literacy 

Through the Sounds Write program, students will continue to build their knowledge of sound patterns and how to segment and blend sounds to read and write words. In Reading, we will be focusing on exploring different authors and their books and explaining why we like a particular book better than another. In Writing, we will be focusing on creating narratives with a clear beginning, middle and end and a problem and solution. We will also begin forming opinions about different topics and explaining our opinions to try and change someone’s mind. 

Maths 

Our focus will be on continuing to develop our place value knowledge of reading, writing, ordering and making numbers. We will also be building on our knowledge of addition and subtraction strategies to help us solve a range of problems. Data and graphing will also provide opportunities to gather information and present it in a number of different ways.   

Religious Education

During our Religion Inquiry this term, students are learning about the purpose of signs and symbols in their lives and will transfer this knowledge to an understanding of the signs and symbols related to the Church. They will identify some symbols and actions that are part of the celebration of Baptism and the Sacrament of Penance.

Inquiry 

Students will be exploring how we can make physical changes to everyday objects and materials such as bending, stretching and twisting.  They will be learning about how to describe and compare the changes they can see through context specific vocabulary. 

Phonics

Through the Sounds Write program, students will continue to build their knowledge of sound patterns and how to segment and blend sounds to read and write words. During our phonics sessions, the students also practise their letter formations as well as building words and swapping sounds in and out to create new words. They practise holding words in their head and sounding them out before writing them during dictation activities.

Reading

The students will continue to explore different authors learning about what influences their writing and what are some common themes or characteristics of their stories. Students will also be working on inferencing or understanding implied information in texts. This involves drawing conclusions based on evidence that is not directly stated in the text. 

Writing

In writing, students are spending time discussing and developing their opinions on a range of topics and then structuring this into persuasive writing pieces. This includes persuasive letters, posters and leaflets and learning about the features of these types of writing that capture the reader's attention and convince them to think or act in the same way as the writer.

We will also be linking our Science unit to our writing by developing our procedural writing skills. In procedure writing, students will develop their skills in writing step by step instructions using a range of vocabulary to structure their writing correctly and include detail for the reader.

Maths

During Term 2, Homegroup TP and L will be focusing on addition and subtraction strategies, understanding data and money. Students will use a variety of strategies to solve problems and discuss which are the most efficient strategies to use. 

We are also continuing to work on representing numbers in different ways including using a range of concrete materials to ‘show’ their numbers as well as creating number sentences and partitioning numbers into parts.

Science

The students are very excited to be focusing on Science this term. Homegroup TP are investigating how to combine mixtures of solids and liquids and explaining the benefits and purposes of particular mixtures. They are also exploring how solids and liquids are influenced by temperature.

Homegroup L are exploring the properties of liquids, solids and gases, and will explore whether changes to materials are reversible or irreversible. 

Later in the term there will be a whole school excursion to the West Gippsland Arts Centre to experience The Alphabet of Awesome Science performance.

Religion

During our Religion Inquiry this term, students are learning about the purpose of signs and symbols in their lives and will transfer this knowledge to an understanding of the signs and symbols related to the Catholic Church. We will develop this through several familiar logos and symbols including AFL logos, emojis and symbols that we might see in the community.