Dear Parents,

Our school, along with the 44 other Catholic schools in the Diocese of Sale, will celebrate Catholic Education Week from 27 May to 3 June.

 The theme for this year’s celebrations is ‘Go out into the world and spread the Good News to all creation’, from the Gospel of Mark 16:15. As Catholic schools, we are called to do more than just promote faith: we are invited to translate our faith into actions to make present the Kingdom of God.

Catholic Education Week is an opportunity for all Catholic schools to celebrate our distinctive mission and share features that are special about our schools. Members of our staff will be attending the Leadership Mass and Dinner held in Traralgon on Friday, 27 May. Our school will also hold a number of activities including an excursion to the West Gippsland Arts Centre, a junior school Mass and multi age science activities.

At St Angela of the Cross we are extremely lucky to have teachers who are not only high quality but who are dedicated hardworking professionals who have your child’s best interest at heart. Despite all of our efforts, at times things will go wrong for students at school. It is only natural that all children will go through some learning difficulties, relationship issue or other grievances from time to time. This is where our avenues of communication and trust and support of each other as adults and professionals is important.

Concerns need to be directed to the school at all times, if we voice our concerns as carpark gossip or through social media forms with other parents, especially in the presence or knowledge of our children we often get a different version of the reality that has or is taking place. It can also place unfair negative talk on teachers, parents and students. Our children do not benefit from gossip or innuendo, the best piece of advice is talk to the person-not about them!

Please see the flowchart below on how to address concerns at our school.

As previously advised our school will be having a school concert at the end of term 3 on Wednesday 14^th September. Mrs Holly Hatch our Performing Arts teacher who is returning from maternity leave shortly is seeking support from our parent body to help with props, costumes etc. Any interested parents are asked to attend a meeting on Wednesday 22^nd June at 3:30pm for further detail. Please indicate your availability on the webform below.

We are seeking feedback in regard to suitable days and times to hold our Parents and Friends meetings.

If you are interested in being involved could you please fill in the attached web form. Once feedback is received a date/time for our next meeting will be announced.

At the end of week 6 of this term our current Visual and Performing Arts Teacher, Kasey Burrell, will be going on maternity leave. We wish Kasey and her husband Daniel all the best for the upcoming arrival of their second child.

Mrs Holly Hatch will return to from maternity leave to teach our Performing Arts Program and we welcome Mrs Sara Harris to St Angela of the Cross who will teach our Visual Arts classes. I’m sure you will join me in making Sara welcome to our St Angela of the Cross school community. 

It is with great regret that I need to inform you that our After-School Care Provider, Extend, will need to cease operation until further notice due to staff shortages. We are hopeful that this service will up and running again in the near future. If you know of anyone who may be interested in running this service please get in contact with the school and we can pass on your details to Extend.

Our week-long swimming program begins on Monday 6^th June and it is an expectation that all children will participate. If your child suffers from a medical condition and won’t be able to swim you will need to provide a written note to your child’s teacher. All children who are not swimming will remain at school in a neighbouring classroom.

Parents are welcome to watch their child(rens) lessons, however due to child safety, school and swimming complex regulations, parents are unable to enter the changerooms. If your child cannot dress themselves independently and they require additional support please contact your child’s teacher.

A reminder that we have 2 upcoming excursions

• The Alphabet of Awesome Science Excursion.
• Swimming

If you haven't already given consent, please log into your PAM account to complete these tasks.

If you need assistance with your PAM account please contact the office.

Get ready! Our boxes are almost here.

Laudate Si and the Ascension

Pope Francis’s seminal encyclical, “Laudate Si”, references Saint Francis eight centuries ago who sang, “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.” [St Francis of Assisi - Canticle of the Creatures]. While celebrating the glory of our Creator (Ephesians 1:17-23), we are reminded too of the Creator’s authority invested in Christ and his church and the awesome fullness of all creation. Pope Francis reproves us in Laudate Si because, “This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.” [Laudate Si 2]

Appropriately this Sunday, as we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus, related by Luke both in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:1-11) and in the Gospel (Luke 24:46-53), we also celebrate the culmination of Laudate Si Week in the Church. Jesus at his Ascension promises that the Holy Spirit will enable the disciples and the Church (his body according to Paul in Ephesians) to witness to him to the ends of the earth. It is that space, witnessing to our Creator - incarnate in creation, that our Ascension readings today point us to the church’s Laudate Si journey of greater love for our Creator, each other, and the home that we share.

Laudate Si Week events have highlighted Catholic teaching on biodiversity, response to the cry of the poor, divestment, education, eco-spirituality and the climate crisis. And our Australian Catholic Bishops have enthusiastically endorsed the Laudate Si Action Plan, engaging parishes, dioceses, religious orders, schools, businesses, farming communities, and organisations in utilising Australian church leadership, commitment, and imagination on the plan. (Bishop Vincent Long, May 2022).

Deacon Mark Kelly

Our fabulous Foundation students have begun participating in Reading Groups as part of our morning Literacy block. They have been so engaged and motivated to learn as they explore, invent, discover and create. These rotational activities provide targeted practice of taught literacy skills and are always designed with a specific purpose in mind. Some of our favourite activities have been; exploring the Sounds-Write app on the iPads, building and writing words using taught sounds, playing sight word games and working in small conference groups with our teachers!

We have been working very hard in Homegroup B during reading groups to improve our ability to segment and blend words, read our sight words quickly and accurately, read fluently and understand what we have been reading by answering questions about our books.

Here are some of the fun tasks that have been helping us: 

For the past few weeks in Homegroup TP and Homegroup L, we have been focussing on the genre of persuasive writing. This involves writing to convince the reader to agree with your opinion on a topic or act in a different way. To practise this, the students have been writing letters to Mr. Greenwood persuading him that they should be allowed to bring their pets to school and that school break times should be longer! They have included an introduction, reasons for their opinion with evidence to back it up, and a conclusion. The students have been exploring emotive language to encapsulate their audience as well as strong arguments backed up with evidence to persuade the reader to agree with them. They have been thinking about asking rhetorical questions which hook the reader and imply from the beginning that their opinion is the correct one. This is a really tricky skill!

In reading, we are beginning to focus on making inferences and how we need to sometimes ‘read between the lines’ of a text. Using clues within the text and their prior knowledge, students have been practising forming opinions and making inferences about what the author is trying to suggest.They are learning that pictures and photographs can be used to assume and guess what might be happening in a story or information text. Being able to make inferences is an important skill for students to develop to support them with their comprehension of the text. 

This week the students are planning and presenting an author profile using a Google Slide presentation which they will create later in the week. During our shared reading time, this term both Homegroups TP and L  have been investigating a variety of authors to find out where they get their ideas and inspiration from, what some of the common elements found in their books are and why they make the choices they do in their texts. 

The authors we have explored so far include:

• Alison Lester - Author of the Magic Beach, from the Fish Creek area
• Mem Fox - Author of Possum Magic
• Aaron Blabey - Author of the Pig the Pug series
• Julia Donaldson - Author of the Gruffalo series and,
• Aunty Fay Muir - Aboriginal Author from Boon Wurrung Country

Students will now choose one author to explore more closely and will write and present a report on their chosen author. 

Next week we will start our focus on procedure writing, which will link to our current Science topics on making mixtures and heating and cooling materials. We apologise in advance for the messy jumpers!

Minnasan (everyone) konnichiwa,

This term in Japanese we are working on 'counter classifiers'. Each time you count an object in Japanese, it is also classified. If I am counting tomatoes, apples, cakes, then the suffix ‘ko’ is added. If I am counting pencils, carrot sticks or construction sticks, then the suffix ‘hon’ is used. 

You might like to read these online books with your child, here is the link. Try book 1 to refresh numbers 1-10. Try book 2 to find out about some counter classifiers. Try book 3 when you are ready to add the object of the sentence. Students 3-6 are ready for book 3. Students F-2 are still getting used to book 2.

Here are … who used Japanese counter classifiers when they asked for the construction things, then used other Japanese they know as they worked together to build with them.