Dear Parents,

Last weekend our Parish Priest the Very Reverend Fr. Peter Slater officially retired. Fr. Peter has served for many years in the Diocese of Sale and was instrumental in the initial stages and naming of our school ‘St Angela of the Cross’.

On behalf of the school community we wish Fr. Peter all the best for the future and thank him for his contribution to our school.

Connie McKinley

Connie Mckinley, one of our Education Support staff members has recently been diagnosed with a serious illness. Our thoughts and prayers are with Connie as she takes some leave from work to begin treatment. We ask that you please respect Connie’s privacy during this time.

2023 Preparation

Shortly we will also begin the process of planning our class lists for the 2023 school year. Whilst this is a difficult and time-consuming task, we are blessed to have such a knowledgeable staff who are aware of student needs and work collaboratively to make professional judgements in relation to class planning and student placement.

In 2023 we will have a seven-grade structure;

Foundation
Foundation
1/2
1/2
1/2
3/4
5/6 

If your child has a particular need or there is important information that we should be aware of when considering class placements for the F-2 classes for 2023 school year, we ask that parents put this information in writing and submit it via email to principal@stangelawarragul.catholic.edu.au by Friday 11^th November

Please note we do not accommodate requests for particular teachers and all requests will be considered on merit but there are no guarantees. Any requests received after the above date will not be taken into consideration and once grades have been set there will be no changes.

We are still finalising our staffing for the 2023 school year and teachers for each of these grades will be announced in due course. Students will find out who their 2023 teacher is on Monday 13^th December, the morning of our ‘Meet the Teacher’ session. Foundation students for 2023 will be notified by a letter to families in early December

School Attendance and Holiday Approval

The Education and Training Reform Amendment (School Attendance) Act 2013 came into effect on 1 March 2014.  This legislation reinforced the existing Education and Training Reform Act 2006 in relation to compulsory enrolment and attendance at school.

In accordance with the legislation, parents are required to enrol their child at a registered school and ensure that their child attends school on a regular basis.  There must also be a reasonable explanation for any absence from school.  Parents can now be fined for not sending students to school without an acceptable reason.

It is the responsibility of the school to record student attendance twice per day; all reasons for non-attendance must be documented and unexplained absences must also be noted. 

All absences require a written note signed by a parent even when the parent has already advised the classroom teacher or school admin staff in person or by telephone.  A notification sent through PAM is sufficient.

Where an extended absence is planned in advance (eg a family holiday), you should obtain permission for that absence from the school principal.  Such a request must be in writing and once permission has been granted, that correspondence will be treated as notification for the purposes of our attendance records.

End of School | Students

The final date for all students for the 2022 school year will be Thursday 15^th December.

Recently, we have been notified of a case of head lice at our school.
Whilst head lice are nothing more than a nuisance, it is important that children are checked regularly to ensure that any head lice can be dealt with quickly.

I seek your cooperation in checking your child's hair and in those instances where head lice or eggs are found, treating your child's hair. Please visit www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au and search for “head lice (nits)” for advice on finding, treating and preventing head lice.

Children should not return to school until the day after treatment has commenced, as set out in the Public Health and Well-being Regulations 2019, School Exclusion Table — refer to the health.vic website https://www.health.vic.gov.au/infectious-diseases/school-exclusion-table

St Angela of the Cross is aware that head lice can be a sensitive issue and is committed to maintaining your confidentiality.

St Angela of the Cross is proud to be a registered member of Cancer Council Victoria’s SunSmart Program.

We aim to protect children and staff by reducing their UV exposure. We recognise that over exposure to Ultra Violet (UV) Radiation presents a serious health risk and a determining factor in future skin damage.

We strive to continually educate our community on sun protection safety and SunSmart behaviours are regularly reinforced and promoted.

We are pleased to announce that we now have a SunSquirt Lite machine to help us on our SunSmart mission.

The sunsquirt machine dispenses single measures of the highest quality, specially-engineered SPF50+ Ultra Cancer Council sunscreen. SunSquirt is the only solution officially partnered with the Cancer Council Australia. 

Young skin is particularly vulnerable to the effects of the harsh Australian sunshine, and Sunsquirt kiosk is the perfect way to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the safety of our community and our SunSmart Program.

Congratulations to Oliver F who represented St Angela of the Cross at the recent SSV Gippsland Regional Athlectics in Newborough. 

Oliver competed in the 800m race and hurdles.

Well done to Oliver we are very proud of your sporting acheievemnts, A fantastic effort!

This term we will be supporting Catholic Missions through their educational social justice program, Socktober. Through the Socktober approach, students will learn to embrace and understand that mission can be, and is, everyone’s responsibility through prayer, advocacy and fundraising. 

Icy Pole Thursdays

The Social Justice Leaders will be selling icy poles for 50 cents every Thursday during Term 4. All fundraised money will go towards the Emdibir Goat Farm in Ethiopia, providing ongoing sustainable resources for Ethiopian communities.

Feedback from parents in the school community has indicated that many are confused and worried about different apps and games that their children may be accessing or may request to access in the near future. To help parents to gain some information about these apps and games and how to keep their children safe while using them, we will be focusing on one app/game per newsletter for the next few weeks.The information is intended for informational purposes only. Parents and Guardians need to weigh the risks and benefits and make their own decisions about what is right for their family and child/ren. 

This week we will be looking at “Kids Messenger”.

Online Gaming

Games are an integral part of human behaviour. It is normal and healthy for young people to engage in play as a part of their daily lives, including playing games online. And like most activities, online gaming can have both positive and negative outcomes. It can be intimidating and confusing for carers trying to understand a young person’s online experiences with many considering that staring at a screen is an unhealthy habit. However, the World Health Organisation does believe that as well as the risks, there are also many positive benefits associated with online gaming and these could be key in nurturing bonds with others.

During the pandemic, there was an explosive growth of gaming as people sought much needed connection during isolation. In the media, gaming often gets bad publicity because most coverage tends to concentrate on the minority of gamers who play to such an extent that it compromises all other areas of their life. However, online gaming can teach young people many skills including teamwork, concentration, communication and problem-solving. It requires a level of interaction and skill from the player; unlike watching television, which is more passive.

Online communities provide opportunities for young people to feel socially connected and have a sense of belonging. At healthy levels, gaming can increase their self-esteem and social acceptance. However, any behaviour, when taken to extreme, can also have a negative impact on a young person’s everyday life. Understanding what your young person experiences online and knowing the warning signs if they are at risk, will help nurture a more positive relationship with online gaming and help your family find the right balance.

If you are concerned about your young person’s online gaming habits, it’s important to consider a number of factors. This edition of SchoolTV will provide strategies on how to deal with any issues you may be experiencing. 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:

Intimate with God

Teresa of Avila, the great Doctor of the Church, who lived in sixteenth century Spain and whose feast day we celebrated on Saturday, was thrown off her horse while crossing a river and, soaked to the skin, looked up to heaven and supposedly said to God, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!”

Prayer (talking to God) was St Teresa’s speciality. Her relationship with God was intimate and total. She knew Him as our almighty, all loving God; interested and intimately connected with each of us. So close and so accepting of God’s will for her was she that she could even be a bit cheeky.

How different from the world’s common message that tells us we are alone in our own little universe bubble and everything else orbits around us!  If there is a problem in our lives, then there is a product, plan or technique to fix it. We are urged to take control of our lives, as though only we can do so. Sometimes even our prayer seems more intended to get God on board with our program rather than to lay ourselves humbly at His feet!

Jesus tells a parable in this week’s gospel (Luke 18:1-8) about the need to pray always and to not lose heart. It speaks to us if we’ve ever felt discouraged in our prayer or if our prayers seem to be unanswered. Rather than give up, Jesus encourages us to be persistent. It is fine to pray for specific healing, assistance or even material things as long as we humbly recognise that God knows best. Praying to change God is a forlorn hope but when we pray to change ourselves, to understand His will, then the exciting and unexpected possibilities are infinite.

Deacon Mark Kelly    

Over the past two weeks our Foundation students have been very busy learning about the reading strategy ‘Visualising’.

Visualising is a strategy that good readers use to help create mental images or movies in their minds, to represent the ideas that they read in a text. Visualisation requires students to weave together their own background knowledge, text evidence and creativity to make an image. These images then help us understand what we are reading at a deeper level. We have been using our senses of sight, smell and sound to help us visualise.

What clever little Foundation students we have!

This term we will be focusing on narrative writing. We will be looking at the structure of stories and discussing how each story needs a great problem and an interesting solution in a logical order. We are learning how to engage our audience by using a sizzling start and finding alternative words to ensure our work isn’t boring. We are starting off our narrative writing by creating a story map to plan out our ideas. 

Homegroup B will be looking to include characters, a problem and solution in our writing and experimenting with our word choice. 

Homegroup TP will be revising quotation marks for character speech and also thinking about different words we could use instead of ‘said’ to enable the reader to understand the feelings or mood of the character who is speaking.

Homegroup L will be using key elements such as pacing, atmosphere and foreshadowing to build suspense in our writing. Hinting at future events will keep readers at the edge of their seats waiting to see how our story ends.