6 August 2019

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

Catholic Education Week

Last week we celebrated Catholic Education Week along with 306 other Catholic schools in Queensland. We kick started the week off with a Pupil Free day, so staff could travel to Charleville for our annual Bishop’s In-service Day. We began the day with a Eucharistic service held in the St Mary’s Church followed by keynote addresses from the Executive Director of TCSO Dr Pat Coughlin and Br David Hall. Dr Pat highlighted 5 life giving beliefs (from the Catholic Identity Paper) that we encompass as a Catholic school. These included: educating the whole person, imbued with strong Catholic identity, animated by community, sustained by Gospel witness and powered by a more inspiring vision. Both speeches were thought provoking and very relevant to Catholic Schooling in the 21st Century.

We concluded Catholic Education Week with a school liturgy hosted by our Year 3/4 class. Below are some of the reasons why our students love being a part of the Sacred Heart school community.

I love Sacred Heart because I get to share my love with all the people around me. Year 2/3
I love Sacred Heart because the teachers are beautiful. Year 2/3 Student
I love Sacred Heart because I love praying. Prep/1 Student
I like Sacred Heart because we get to learn. Prep/1 Student
I like Sacred Heart because I get to play with my friends. Year 2/3 Student
I like Sacred Heart because we get to play a lot of cool sports. Year 3/4 Student
I like Sacred Heart because you get to go on cool camps. Year 3/4 Student
I like Sacred Heart because we get to learn about Jesus. Prep/1 Student
I like Sacred Heart because I get to learn Maths. Prep/1 Student
I like Sacred Heart because we get to have fun liturgies. Year 5/6 Student
I like being apart of at Sacred Heart because it is a positive and supportive community. Staff Member

School Improvement Survey

Each year we are provided with the opportunity to complete a School Review and Improvement Survey which is managed by Research Australia Development and Innovation Institute (RADII). This is a great way for our school to gather valuable data and feedback from students, parents and staff for future directions of our school.

The survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. You can complete the survey from anywhere you have access to the internet. The survey will close on Sunday, 11th August 2019 for parents.

Respondents should follow this procedure.

1. Go to https://surveys.radii.org/surveys/
2. Enter the relevant Survey ID as listed below.
3. Click SUBMIT.
4. Logoff to save and record the responses.

Parent Survey ID: 2367-zutZ
Closing Date: 11th August, 2019

If you have difficulty accessing the website parents are more then welcome to come to office and use a school computer.

Have a great week.

Polly Crawford
Principal

Guidance Counsellor’s Report

How was school today? “Good”

Asking your child about school can be frustrating if the answer is just a grunt or a single word. If this sounds familiar, try these tips to get the conversation flowing.

Try more interesting questions

If you ask your child the same question every day, you’re likely to get the same response. Try varying the conversation with some more interesting questions, such as:

What was the funniest thing that happened to you today?
What did you do today that made you proud?
Who did you play with today?
What games did you play with your friends?
What did you learn about that you found interesting?
What was the best part about today?
What happened today that you wish you could have changed?
What did you learn today that you did not know before?
What was the most boring thing that happened today?
Why are you looking forward to going to school tomorrow?

Note: some kids find questions about ‘the best / funniest / most boring’ thing difficult because they feel they have to work out which is the ‘correct’ answer. If this sounds like your child, try changing the phrasing – ‘a good part’ instead of ‘the best part’, ‘a funny thing’ instead of ‘the funniest thing’, ‘a boring lesson’ instead of ‘the most boring lesson’. It works for some!

Avoid interrogations

When you were a child, did talking with an adult about school sometimes feel like an interrogation? That can happen when the adult asks all the questions, and the child does all the answering. Make it a two-way conversation by first sharing something yourself, and then asking your child a related question, for example:

• tell your child something funny that you saw, then ask if anything funny happened to them today
• share something that you learned, then ask your child if they learned anything interesting they could teach you
• mention a new slang word or abbreviation that you’ve come across and ask your child what it means (most kids enjoy the chance to tease their parents about being out-of-date!).

It might take a little time, but this approach will help you to have much richer conversations with your child and develop a better understanding of each other’s lives!

Talk about the rest of life

Once our children start school, we can fall into the trap of focusing most of our conversations on school. We don’t know what our children have been doing all day (and how we can help), so naturally that’s what we want to ask about. Taking an interest in school is important, but we also need to remember that our kids still spend more time outside school than in it.

So, make sure you’re still having conversations that have nothing to do with school – eg about their interests, your plans, what’s happening in the family, what’s happening in the wider world. Conversations like these are important to your relationship, your child’s feeling of value, and their sense of place in the world. Sharing family stories and histories also builds your child’s sense of connection, culture and belonging.

Mike Thomason
Guidance Counsellor

Prep/1 News

Prep/1 students are off to a great start with their learning and positive attitude this term. We are well underway with our investigations of the weather in Science and Hass, understanding the four seasons throughout the year. Students are really enjoying the HPE unit for this term, learning how to play a variety of sports and complete weekly obstacle courses outside. Lucky we all have endless amounts of energy in this class.

For literacy, we have just begun our study of nursery rhymes. We will be singing rhymes and changing a classic nursery rhyme to one of our own.

Prep/1 would also like to welcome back our practicum student from USQ, Terrisha Mann. Miss Mann will be joining our class for the next 3 weeks as we delve into many new topics for the remainder of the term. We are sure to have some fun in Prep/1 in the coming weeks!

Mrs Standfield
Prep/1 Teacher

Year 2/3 News

This fortnight the Year 2/3 students have been reading and navigating through print and online texts. Students have been identifying titles, paragraphs, captions, subheadings, pictures, indexes, proper nouns and verbs in texts about toys. We especially loved reading about robots and how they can make our lives easier. In History we explored toys over time and presented them on a timeline.

It has been all about time in Mathematics as we learn to tell the time to the quarter hour and to the nearest minute on both analogue and digital clocks. We also began our HPE unit where we are investigating the different ways our body can move and how different games require different movements.

Year 2/3 Class.

Year 3/4 News

This fortnight year 3-4 have been hard at work practising their reading comprehension strategies and learning poetic devices. The students are also, enjoying using practical tools to measure length, width, temperature, capacity and mass. Some highlights for the week were that the students lead the Catholic Education Week Liturgy and have been learning lines for the school’s musical theatre performance.

Year 3-4 are focusing hard this term to meet all behaviour expectations to ensure they will be allowed to join us on sports camp in week 10. The students are fascinated about understanding what life was like in Australia before 1770, we look forward too many exciting weeks to come!

Miss Sor`e
Year 3/4 Teacher

Year 5/6 News

Last week the 5/6 class were delighted to have Mrs Gall in the classroom. During the week we did countless activities that were fun and interesting. The 5/6 class learned about the 9/11 tragedy in New York City and how shocking it was. During English we read and studied poems from World War 1 and explored the song “Treaty”. In science we discovered the change from liquids to gas and gas to liquids. Maths was a class favourite, we were measuring capacity and had multiple measuring cups filled with different levels of water. Captain Gall took us on a plane trip to remember until…..we crashed onto a deserted island, we had to brainstorm needs and wants and we even made a poster about it. Overall last week was a week to remember.

Paige Mills
Year 6 Student

Class and Uniform Awards

Happy Birthday

Calling For Prep Enrolments 2020

Is your child born between 1st July 2014 and 30th June 2015? If so, your child is eligible to be enrolled for 2020. Prep Enrolment packages are now available at the front office or if you know of a child please come and collect a package. Prep interviews will be conducted in Weeks 8, 9 and 10 of Term 3 (2nd September to 19th September). Please contact the office to make an appointment. Transition days will be held in Term 4.

Uniform Reminders

The school uniform represents the pride we have for our children and our school. A smart, neat and user-friendly uniform encourages the children to take pride in their appearance and in the school. The school uniform requirements:

Hats: Our school policy is ‘NO HAT – NO PLAY’. A green school hat must be worn and can be purchased form the office.

Jewellery: The only jewellery allowed is one set of fine studs or sleepers, a chain with some form of religious significance and watches.

Nail Polish: Nail polish is not to be worn.

Hair: Children’s hair must be neat and tidy. If hair is below the collar it needs to be tied back with appropriate white or green accessories. It is expected that hairstyles reflect the code of dress required by the school. The colouring of hair and unusual hairstyles are not acceptable.

Student Protection

Our Schools Student Protection Contacts are:

Mrs Cara Haig (Middle Leader/LST)
Mrs Carolyn Crick (Administration Officer)
Mr Mike Thomason (School Guidance Counsellor)
Miss Polly Crawford (Principal)

School Tuition Fees

Term 3 Fees. At Sacred Heart, we have several payment options for your convenience: Cash, Cheque, ETPOS, Direct Debit and Centrepay. For further details on these payment options please see the school office.

Direct Deposit Details

Tuckshop

This term Tuckshop will be held on FRIDAYS ONLY due to inability to source tuckshop volunteers. We are desperately looking for tuckshop volunteers! If you are interested in either Volunteering or Cake cooking, please contact Carla Mills on 0448130067 or Facebook.

Church Times

Sunday 11th – Eucharistic Service @ 9 am
Sunday 18th August – Mass @ 5.30pm
Saturday 24th August - Mass @ 5.30pm
Sunday 25th August – Mass @ Eulo

Community Events

Term 3 Important Dates