Dear Parents and Carers,

What a wonderful celebration of NAIDOC day we have had a St Patrick's today. Thank you to Mrs Franco and Mrs Stewart for their organisation of the day. Thank you to Mrs Ferris for organising, and Fr Adrian for celebrating the Mass this morning. Thank you to the Lumen Christi staff and aboriginal students, and Bega High and their aboriginal students who helped on the day. Finally, and most importantly thank you to the elders, especially Aunty Annette, and the parents and families of our Koori students for a great day of learning and celebrating.

We are working each day toward the achievement of the 3 goals in our school annual improvement plan. Our 2023 goals are

Toward goal one, we are well underway into the full implementation of Connecting Maths Concepts (K-6) and Reading Mastery (Yr3-6), and are starting to gather comparative through the progress monitoring tools that supports our silver and gold progress and achievement monitoring and awards. The InitiaLit program in K-2 is well established and we are seeing great student progress in English. 

Toward goal two, our teachers are keeping up to date with the changes in the NESA curriculum and the expectations in teaching and learning in the classroom. Also, we continue to work with our CogLearn coach Andrew, who will be at St Patrick's next week, to improve the delivery of the curriculum with Direct Instruction. Whilst our teacher's are implementing the 10 High Impact Teaching Practices the focus continues on implementing the Daily & Weekly & Monthly Reviews. 

Finally toward achieving one important aspect of goal three we want to focus more on ways to engage you, our parent community, fully in the life and learning at school. If you have some thinking about how you would like to be more fully engaged please email me, I'd welcome your suggestions to the bank of ideas!

You may like a review on the 10 HITP's.

Recognising Progress and Achievement We have decided the way we are sharing and presenting the gold and silver awards is not as effective as we would like. We are going to move to presenting these awards at school assembly rather than in the classrooms. Depending on the assessment cycle and timing of the data we may have an occasional assembly in the hall, however generally we will present the awards at COLA assembly. We will communicate on Compass when the next assembly for gold and silver awards will occur.

Blessings

Jo

Celebrating Learning in Direct Instruction at St Pat's - Quotes from Students  

Esme - I love counting to 20

Maddison - We are learning about letters, we are up to the diagraph ck

Supporting students - Dr Ross Green

At St Pat's in line with Ian Luscombe's BehaveAbility approach we follow Dr Ross Green's approach for Neurodiverse students. 

Religious Education

Chapel Mass - Week 3 - 1/2G 9.15am (Famillies Welcome)

Social Justice

During Term 3, students will be learning about social justice and how we can contribute to helping those less fortunate to us. With the themes of social justice and looking after each other in our thoughts, we will be beginning our Mini Vinnies sessions again in Week 4. During Week 3, students who wish to join Mini Vinnies will be asked to complete an expression of interest form, stating why they would like to become a member. They will be expected to read and agree to the charter below.

Mission 

Jesus calls us to share and witness to our Catholic Faith and Tradition.  We aspire to live the Gospel message, serving Christ in the poor with love, respect, justice and joy. We are the hands and feet of Christ in the world. 

Vision 

Our vision is to shape a more just and compassionate society.

Meetings

• Meetings will be held once a week during recess/lunch. 
• All meetings will have an agenda.
• Some meetings will focus just on prayer and meditation.  

Fundraising/ Helping in the community.

• Members will engage in fundraising or going out in the community.

Curriculum

At St Pat’s, we believe that student voice is essential for empowering and engaging students. Children need support to learn how to use their voice effectively, whether as an advocate for change or to express an opinion.  Every fortnight, students in Year 6 participate in school parliament sessions where they are developing and refining skills in communication, public speaking and debate.  These sessions are highly scaffolded and follow the protocols and agenda of an actual parliament sitting. Students from across K-6 put forth motions for Parliament Ministers to discuss at each sitting, followed by a vote to decide if the motion is to be passed and sent on to the Senate.

Every minute of learning counts at St Pat’s, but sometimes we need to have a short break to soak up the winter sun and enjoy a visit from a one-week-old lamb! Kinder & 12R loved spending time with their visitor and were sure to get lots of pats in.

The 2023 CBCA Book Week theme is Read, Grow, Inspire.
Our Book Week celebration will be on Friday 25^th August. Students are invited to dress as their favourite book character and bring along the book to share.

Italian Week

Pasta Bolognese & Pizza also available this week!

Please order on Qkr! Canteen helpers needed, please contact our canteen manager Nicole Collins nicole.collins1@cg.catholic.edu.au if you are able to help.

Volunteers needed, if you are able to help out

please contact Tam Prime on: 0429 599 941

Mountain Bike Schools Event - Rocky Trail Academy - North Stromlo.

Rocky Trail Entertainment are excited to be returning to the Mt Stromlo trail network again to run another round of our very popular Academy - Schools Mountain Bike Competition. This time the event is using the trails on the northern side of Mt Stromlo

WHEN: Friday 22nd September

WHERE: Stromlo Forest Park Western Carpark, Uriarra Road, Stromlo

CATEGORIES: Years 5 to 12

Geared towards secondary school students. These school events not only engage youth in healthy social and active recreation but brings a heightened appreciation of nature, the environment, self-reliance , self-learning and independence, all as part of riding a bike in the outdoors. By extension, this program also engages and educates teachers and parents.

It is all about encouraging students of all abilities to come and race with their mates in a safe and social environment. These events are sanctioned by AusCycling too.

3 Tracks have been selected to test a variety of skills, including endurance, speed and technical ability. Riders may ride each track up to 5 times with their fastest time from each track counting. Combined best times will be totalled for the overall result for each rider.

Prizes will be awarded for the top 3 riders in each category, and Champions school.

Some schools will bring bus loads of students, other schools may only be represented by 1 or 2 riders. 

Attached is a flyer about the event and all the details are on the website

https://rockytrailacademy.com/event/act-schools-comp-north-stromlo/

We have also prepared a teachers/parents guide you can download that contains all the event information.

http://rockytrailacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Teachers-and-Parents-Guide-230411.pdf

If you have further questions or would like to discuss Rocky Trail organsing more events for your school please reach out to me on 0413 386 249.

Hope to see you on the trails soon.

Regards

Ian Mortenson
Rocky Trail Crew
0413 386 249
ian@rockytrailentertainment.com