Dear Parents and Carers,

Flying Start

Two weeks into the term and we are already seeing what the restful holiday has meant for all our St Pat’s students. It is great to see students in all classes demonstrating what it means to be present, centred and ready to learn each day. Our daily 5 minute assembly at 8.55 is a time when we acknowledge students for how they are speaking and acting as St Patrick’s students each day. We are also referencing our new St Pat’s Kids Journal that was trialled last year and is being used across the grades this year. The teachers have all commented about students in their class showing good manners and behaviours for learning and engagement in class and at school. I have had a steady flow of visitors sharing great learning.

Horse Riding Champions

Congratulations to Sienna Jessop and Isabella Clifton-Collins on their great achievements at the Berry Interschool Competition in the Christmas holiday.

Sienna and Andolin Park Titanium (Ty) Year 3 Overall Champion

Isabella and Ironbark Grove Blue Moon (Becky) Year 1 Reserve Champion overall

  

Volunteers in school

All parents and carers who would like to volunteer in our school need to complete a VOLUNTEER INDUCTION session. Next week we will host two volunteer induction sessions for parents and carers of approximately 1hour in duration.

Monday 15^th at 9.30am

Thursday 18^th at 2.15pm

Please register your interest in attending in an induction session by emailing office.bega@cg.catholic.edu.au with your name and time you are attending. 

Staffing – New faces

We welcome Mrs Kim Stafford to a part time position for Term 1 in the classroom support assistant team at St Patrick’s.

As part of the professional learning into practice this year St Patrick’s, and the schools in our archdiocese will be focusing on several HITP’s - High Impact Teaching Practices. There are many authors and lists in this field. Our archdiocese is centring our planning on Rosenshine’s 10 Principles of Instruction. These principals are clear and succinct and most teachers, most of the time use these principles in their pedagogy. We are going to be refining our skills and use of these practices in our school.

At home when you are supporting your children with learning new things you can employ these principles and strategies too. Over coming weeks I will give a short summary of each of the 10 HITP’s.

Principle 1. Daily Review     Daily review is a process for activating prior learning in readiness to build on it during the lesson. You set a question or task that makes all of students think about ideas they've encountered before, related to today's lesson, so that they can start to make new links; to continue to build their understanding.

Blessings

Jo

At St Pat’s, our teachers have a desire to develop and teach a rigorous curriculum. The MAPPEN framework provides opportunities for students to explore content and skills through real world examples. MAPPEN has a strong focus on building students capacity to develop questions and to plan and conduct their own inquiry. It aligns with our belief that alongside the core literacy and numeracy skills, students in the 21st Century need to have opportunities to question, wonder and create.

The MAPPEN curriculum represents approximately three hours of teaching time each week. It covers the content and skills from the NSW curriculum; Science and Technology, Personal Development, Health and Physical Education, Geography and History. Where appropriate, there are links to content descriptions in English, Mathematics. 

This term our focus across the school is COMMUNITY. The rationale for each stage is related to the age and stage of the student.

 St Pat’s kids are learners….

This week I have been spending time in classrooms noticing how quickly students are settling into the routines and structures of school life. After our morning assembly the students are calm, centred and ready to learn.

Val

Upcoming events & dates

• Staff Commissioning Mass Sunday 14th February 9:30am
• 2021 Sacraments

Year 5 and 6 students will prepare for the Sacrament of Confirmation in Term 2. The Sacrament will take place on 17th June at 6pm. An information pack with further dates and information will be sent to families in the coming weeks. 

Growing a more sustainable St Pat’s in 2021

NCCD

Each week I will share information and/or tips from the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students With Disability.

WHAT IS THE NCCD?

The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD) takes place every year. 

The NCCD is a collection that counts:

• the number of school students receiving an adjustment or ‘help’ due to disability
• the level of adjustment they are receiving to access education on the same basis as other students.

Students are counted in the NCCD if they receive ongoing adjustments at school due to disability. This ‘help’ allows them to access education on the same basis as a child without disability. The NCCD uses the definition of disability in the Disability Discrimination Act

Noticing the calm atmosphere present already at St Pat’s I feel we are in for an AWESOME 2021. For those of you that are new to our community my name is Alicia Spicer and my role here at St Pat’s is Wellbeing, working with students, parents and teachers.  Some of the programs I facilitate and new initiatives are;

* Peer Mediation Program: a program offered to all grade 5 students where they learn how to “mediate” issues on the playground like friendship disputes, not telling the students what to do, but by actively listening to both sides of the story and getting the disputants to come up with a peaceful resolution.

* Passion clubs:  Students who have a passion that they would like to share are encouraged to run a club on Monday and Friday lunchtimes in the Cola.   So far the clubs that have been suggested are Art and Craft, book club, fitness, bay blade, Fix it, and  lego clubs.

* M.U.M.S  : This is an acronym for MOTHERS/MALES USING MINDFULNESS STRATEGIES  a group for St Pat’s parents to learn mindfulness strategies to build calm from within. If interested please contact me.

* Chair Yoga for Teachers:  Breathing and stretching techniques for calm held before school and after school.

Empowered

Empowered is in its fourth year at St Pats which offers a 10 week program using movement, music and mindfulness for every child in the school to learn strategies to help keep themselves in their “calm zone”.  Students attend the program in small groups of six students for 30 minutes once a week.  The feedback from the students is that they feel calm after attending Empowered and I am always excited to hear stories of how they have used some of the breathing techniques learnt in Empowered to stay calm and respond to life rather than react.  This year in Empowered I will be focusing on the 24 Character Strengths, my aim being that every child will know and live through one of their top Character Strengths.

Enjoy

Alicia Spicer

Alicia.spicer@cg.catholic.edu.au

Hello St Pat’s Parents and Carers,

The Scholastic book club catalogue went home yesterday with the students. 

We are not accepting cash payments for Book Club this year, all ordering has to be done through the Book Club Loop website or app. The app is available on Apple or Google Play.

https://mybookclubs.scholastic.com.au/Parent/Login.aspx 

Please see the video below that have I made to assist in navigating the site.

https://youtu.be/wBj0JwiNxlk 

Also please don’t hesitate to contact me stephanie.noack@cg.catholic.edu.au if you have any questions. The issue close date is 19/02/2021.

Kind Regards,

Stephanie Noack

Teacher /Librarian

Please find attached information regarding the collection of residential addresses from St Patrick's families for 2021. 

Please contact the school office on office.bega@cg.catholic.edu.au if you have any questions.