Term 2 Issue 1 6th May 2022

Principal's News

Dear Families,

What a wonderful start it has been for Term 2. I always enjoy the first week back after school holdays because the students have so many stories to share about their holiday adventures. Many of our students enjoyed the break and had some super fun adventures to share.

School Expectations

During our recent pupil free day staff reviewed our Behaviour Support Plan and our whole school expectations, the wording of our expectations have been slightly altered. They were shared at our recent PPF meeting and they have been shared with our students. Each week we will be focusing on one expectation and one rule.

Our school expectations are:

• We are respectful
• We allow learning to occur 
• We are safe

School Review

A reminder to our families that our school review will occur this term. School reviews are a great opportunity to focus on what our school is doing well and what our next steps could be for the following four years. Thank you to families who have returned their forms and have booked in for a time to meet with our review team. In the coming weeks, a note will go home to families with the date and time of your meeting. If you have any questions, please contact Miss Millar. If any families or community members would like to be a part of the review please let the school office know.

Cross Country

On Friday 22^nd March our students participated in the Mitchell combined schools cross country event. Thank you to Mitchell State School for hosting and organising the event. Our students enjoyed the day and participated with great enthusiasm. Congratulations to McKenzie and Hallie who both qualified to attend the Roma and District cross country event in Injune.

Anzac Day

On Monday 25^th April many of our students proudly marched in the Mitchell Anzac march. Our students did an amazing performance reciting the words to Amazing Grace in Gunggari. Thank you to Mrs Silvester and Miss Sonya for working with our students and teaching them the words. We were all very proud of their achievements.

PPF News

Last week our PPF met on Wednesday evening. We have our next meeting on Tuesday 17^th May at 5:15pm. An email was sent to parents late last week with an invitation to join our PPF meeting via an app called ‘Teams’. This app is similar to Zoom and it will allow families to participate in our PPF meeting via a device if they are unable to attend in person. We hope to see many of you at our next PPF as we have several exciting items to discuss.

PPF Meeting

On Wednesday night during our PPF meeting we had a discussion around our assemblies and our wonderful Peace Garden. A suggestion was put forward to alternate having an assembly one week and a student led ceremony in our Peace Garden the next week. This suggestion was discussed, and a decision was made to go ahead with this idea.

Assembly and Peace Garden Ceremony Fridays at 2:40pm

Assemblies

Our year 3 – 6 class will continue to be responsible for running our fortnightly whole school (P-6) assemblies. Staff will ensure that parents are notified in advance if their child will be receiving an award so that parents can attend. We warmly welcome all of our families to attend our assemblies each fortnight.

Peace Garden Ceremony

Each alternate fortnight we will hold a Peace Garden Ceremony for the whole school (P-6) and our families and community members.  P-2 and 3-6 will take turns to run the ceremony each alternate fortnight. Our Peace Garden ceremonies will provide students with an opportunity to share their Religious Education learning  with their peers and with families/community members who attend.

We warmly invite and encourage families to attend and be a part of Peace Garden ceremony.

Mother’s Day Raffle

Thank you to all families and community members who have been selling raffle tickets for our Mother’s Day raffle. Our raffle will be drawn on Friday 6^th May. All money raised will be going towards the construction of a new school fence on Alice Street.

New Playground

Our new playground was installed over the school holidays and the students (and staff) have very much enjoyed using it. A big shout out to the PPF committee, families and staff who have all made the new playground possible. A special thank you to our local workers, Jayden and Grant for assisting with getting the space prepared and to Mr Darryl who ensured everything ran smoothly. The PPF applied for and received a grant of $50,000.00 from the Foundation for Rural Regional Renewal to enable the purchase the playground. Thank you everyone involved in the application. 

Winter is coming

Winter is just around the corner. Please pop in and see Trish if you need to purchase any warm winter uniforms as the mornings are already becoming quite cool.

Warm regards,

Kylie

St Columba's Parish Mass Dates

Student Protection

At St Patrick’s School the safety and wellbeing of our students is our highest priority. All children should grow up free of violence or exploitation and be able to learn in a safe and supported environment. Schools have a number of specific child protection reporting obligations that are detailed in our Student Protection Processes and Guidelines.

If a student wants to talk to someone about harm, abuse or inappropriate behaviour toward themselves or others, they can speak to a trusted staff member or one of our School Student Protection Contacts (SSPCs).  The SSPCs receive additional training and are identified in the student protection posters displayed around the school.

Felicity Ray, Jenny Bye and Kylie Millar are the Student Protection Contacts for St Patrick's School.

Summary documents have been developed for parents and caregivers about our student protection obligations and our broader strategy for maintaining safe school environments.

Further information on all of the above topics can be found on the Toowoomba Catholic Schools website at https://www.twb.catholic.edu.au/parents-and-community/student-protection/

Student Protection Contacts

Class News : Years 3, 4, 5 and 6

Welcome to Week 3!

Thank you to everyone who booked in and made the time to meet with me for parent teacher interviews. I really enjoyed chatting with you all about your child’s work during Term 1 and goals that we are working on.

English

We are reading the text ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ and identifying the many persuasive techniques that the author and the illustrator use to help the crayons persuade Duncan to see their side. We are also learning about how we can be persuasive in our own writing using PEEL paragraphs.

Maths

Year 3 and 4 students have begun the term by investigating number sentences and how different number sentences can have the same answer, making them equal. They have also been looking at number sequences and how they can identify the rule of the sequence. They have then used this rule to fill in the missing numbers within the sequence. Year 5 students have enjoyed working on revision tasks from last term around using different multiplication and division strategies. Year 6 students learnt about the ‘powers of 10’ rule and how they can easily multiply and divide whole numbers and decimals by 10, 100 and 1000.

Religion

We have been learning about Easter and Lent. We have also been investigating how Jesus celebrated traditional Jewish festivals and how these relate to The Last Supper

HASS

We have really enjoyed learning all about Australia. We have investigated the country’s natural and man-made features, the states, territories and capital cities and the countries who are considered to be our neighbours.

Health

We have been learning about our friendship groups and how these friendships affect who we are as people.

Gunggari

We continued practicing ‘Amazing Grace’ in preparation for ANZAC Day. The students all did such a wonderful job of presenting this last Monday at the ANZAC Day commemoration at the cenotaph.

Library

Just a reminder that we borrow from the library on Thursdays, so please remember to return library books and bags each week.

Homework

So many students did such a great job at completing their homework each week last term. I hope it continues this term! Homework is due each Friday and students receive rewards for completing their weekly homework and nightly reading. If there are any issues completing homework, please do not hesitate to contact me. Students are welcome to ask questions throughout the week if they are unsure of how to complete an activity.

Class Awards

Congratulations to Wyatt and Kylah who both received class awards at the end of last term and Kyemma and Montana who both received class awards last week for their great work!

Birthdays

We celebrated Paitence’s birthday this week with a birthday circle.

Please do not hesitate to contact me through email at amy.silvester@twb.catholic.edu.au and I will endeavour to respond to you within 24 hours.

God bless,

Mrs Silvester

Class News: Prep to Year 2

Welcome to Term 2! It already feels like the Term is flying by with all of these long weekends at the start of the Term.  

English 

This Term we are doing an author study in English. We will be looking at some of the wonderful books that Julia Donaldson has written. Through her stories such as Monkey Puzzle, Troll and some plays, we will be exploring the characters. This includes describing what the character looks like on the outside and what they are like on the inside (how they are feeling, are they kind, bossy etc.). We have also been revising how to do a retell of a story using the five finger retell. At the end of this unit the students will be creating a character description of the Troll (the main character from ‘Troll’) including actions, feelings and traits. The Preps will describe by talking and draw a labelled picture of the Troll, whereas the Year 1 and 2 students will write their character description. The class will then be using the Julia Donaldson play books to rehearse the play (by reading) and then present the play with their group in front of the P-2 class.  

Maths 

The P-2 Class started this term off with patterns. The Preps and Year 1 students looked at copying, continuing and creating patterns with objects and drawings. The Year 1 and 2 students were exploring number patterns (e.g. skip counting) and the Year 2 students were using their problem solving skills to figure out the number pattern to then be able to identify missing number/s in a number sequence. Term 2 will also see us diving into chance and data ask questions to gather and check our data before deciding on the best way to display data e.g. bar graphs/picture graphs, tallies. Preps and Year 1 students will look at the duration of events, subitising and addition while the Year 2 students learn about division by grouping into equal sets and multiplication through repeated addition, groups and arrays. We will end the term with measurement, which is always a fun, hands on way to end the Term. We will head outside to visit the sandpit as we measure the capacity of objects. The students will use informal units to measure the length of objects – they always enjoy measuring each other – one student lying on the floor and the other measuring with things such as paddle pop sticks, blocks or their feet! 

Religion  

The Easter story started off Term 2 for the P-2 Class in Religion. The whole class were very interested in Jesus’s story during Easter. There were many rich whole class discussions around what happened to Jesus and why it happened. We have now moved into our big unit for this Term, How the stories of Jesus challenge me today? where we will explore what we know about Jesus, what stories in the New Testament such as The Forgiving Father (Prodigal Son) and Jesus Walking on Water teach us about Jesus and how these stories are lived in the church today.   

Digital Technology  

What we are learning in Digital Technology this term links into Maths with data collection. In our unit Data is all Around Us we will explore what data is and where we can get it from. From what colour eyes everyone in our class has, to how many people are in our families. The students will learn to use software on iPads to represent the data they have collected.   

Science 

We have started to learn about light and sounds that are around us in Science through our Look! Listen! unit. We will be conducting lots of hands-on experiences to understand how vibrations can cause sound through balloons and how sounds can travel through materials such as our bodies or string telephone as well as how light is needed to see things using boxes. The students might be asking you to bring in items to help us make things for our experiments such as a cereal or shoe box.  

HASS 

We have a Geography focus in HASS this term. We will be exploring how people use places and spaces. We will be exploring the features of our school and local area of Mitchell and discovering why places are used for different purposes. The students will also be using their positional and directional language from Maths to help them describe where features are on a pictorial map and how to get from point A to point B.      

I’m sure we will have a wonderful term learning and growing together in the P-2 Classroom. I can’t wait to see what we can achieve!  

Miss Ray  

P-2 Class  

Principal's Awards

Montana Morris, Zoe Edgley, Kylah Kinsley, Judd Henricks, Patience Ehrlich, Kyemma McKane, Zoe Wise, Keelie Moody, Archee Turner-Irwin, Maya Page, Nysa Maddhu, Torah Lewis, Brayden Wise, Ram Maddhu, Vin Henricks and Nate Mathews

For participation in the Anzac Day March

Mercy Awards

Montana Morris

For being such a supportive older buddy to the younger students. I loved the way that you invited a younger student to sit and have lunch with you yesterday. Keep following in the footsteps of Catherine McAuley. 

Jiyaanram Maddhu

Demonstrating the Mercy Values of Hospitality and Service. This week, you welcomed Miss Renee into our classroom by kindly offering to show her where things belong in our classroom. You have also displayed your leadership skills in the classroom through asking the Prep students if they would like help with their learning.    

Continue to let the Mercy Values shine through in everything you do!

Awesome Achiever Awards

Kyemma McKane

For a great start to Term 2! You have been so focused, especially in HASS and have been determined to complete your work to the best of your ability. Keep up the great work! 

Archee Turner-Irwin

Using the Learning Power of Curiosity. During Maths this week you showed excitement and enthusiasm when learning about patterns through asking questions and explaining that patterns have a part that repeats. 

Keep up the great work! 

Important Dates for 2022