22 July 2020

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

Welcome back for Term 3. I hope all students had a restful and enjoyable break. It is great to see all students getting stuck into learning from day 1 of term. We have lots of exciting things happening this term so make sure you keep updated by reading through the newsletter and checking the School App.

Catholic Education Week

Next week, we celebrate Catholic Education Week along with 306 other Catholic schools in Queensland. During this week, we celebrate and promote our distinctive mission and ethos. Catholic Education strives to make a difference in the lives of those in our schools and wider community by challenging young people to live out the message of Jesus and reach their full potential as compassionate, contributing, life-giving members of society.

Even though official events for Catholic Education Week have been cancelled, Sacred Heart will still celebrate this special week. As part of the week, all students receive a pupil free day on Monday 27th July. On this day, all Sacred Heart staff will be participating in a religious retreat along with Bishop Robert McGukin, Dr Pat Coughlan (Executive Director), Kathy Doherty (EO Formation and Identity), Marty Savage (SEL) and the staff from St Finbarr’s Quilpie and St Mary’s Charleville.

We will also celebrate the week with a liturgy on Friday 31st July at 2pm. Parents are welcome to attend as long as they social distance.

Staffing 2021

The staffing process for 2021 has begun. Unfortunately, we will farewell Miss Emily Conlin and Miss Shae Sor’e at the end of this year. Miss Conlin will be relocating to Cairns and Miss Sor’e to Toowoomba. They have been a wonderful asset to our school over the past two years and we sincerely thank them for their wonderful contributions to the teaching and learning at Sacred Heart.

Two new teachers have been appointed contracts for next year, Aimee Bretherton and Lilly Daly. Miss Bretherton and Miss Daly both join us from Brisbane and are very excited about their appointments to Cunnamulla. We look forward to welcoming them to our wonderful school community. We are fortunate to be able to meet Miss Bretherton and Miss Daly in person on Monday when we host the Western Bishop’s Inservice Day.

Prep Enrolments 2021

If your child born between 1st July 2015 and 30th June 2016 they are eligible to be enrolled in Prep for 2021. Prep Enrolment packages are available at the front office or if you know of a child please come and collect a package. Prep interviews will be conducted from Monday 3rd August. Please contact the office to make an appointment. Transition days will be held in Term 4.

Miss Polly Crawford
Principal

Guidance Officer Report

Connect to the right support and get back on track

For children to develop and grow in healthy and positive ways, they need life to be stable, even when their family faces tough times.

If you feel that you’ve lost your way, Family and Child Connect can give you a hand to get back on track.

Family and Child Connect can connect you to local services that can help with:

• managing your child’s behaviour
• building better family relationships
• stopping any violence at home
• budgeting and managing money
• alcohol, drug or gambling problems
• housing, health care or other community or government services.

Family and Child Connect services are provided by trusted, local organisations who are experienced in working with families.

You can use this service as often as you need. There is no limit and no cost.

Call 13 FAMILY (13 32 64), it’s confidential, free and worth the call, or visit the link below.

WellMob – The one-stop website to enhance Indigenous wellbeing

Until now, looking for wellbeing resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the Internet has been like looking for needles in haystacks. With the launch today of a new website, called WellMob, this problem is now solved!

The inspiration for the WellMob website came from frontline health and wellbeing workers, who said they needed a one-stop-shop to easily access culturally relevant resources to use with their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients. WellMob brings together over 200 videos, apps, podcasts and other websites in the one place and is free to access.

The website was developed by eMHPrac (e-mental health in practice) in partnership with the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet. The easy to use visual format will support those who work in mental health, family support, education and youth services.

David Edwards, a Worimi man who project managed the website for eMHPrac, said” Input from around the country has ensured WellMob was created for and by our mob. Reference groups of Indigenous health workers were set up in Larrakia (Darwin), Kaurna (Adelaide) and Bundjalung (Lismore NSW) country. They guided website development every step of the way”.

HealthInfoNet Director, Professor Neil Drew, said of the collaboration “It has resulted in a holistic website which will support mental as well as physical, cultural and spiritual health. It will allow health and community workers to confidently share useful online resources with their clients and communities”.

The new WellMob website is now available via the link below.

Mike Thomason
School Guidance Counsellor
Mike.Thomason@twb.catholic.edu.au
Ph: 4637 1453

Prep/1 News

Welcome to Term 3. I hope both students and parents had a restful holiday and that students are ready to go for a brand-new term. Students have jumped straight into the swing of things engaging in some really fun and exciting units.

In Science, students will enjoy the responsibilities and excitement of looking after and learning about a new classroom pet. This classroom pet will be integrated with our English unit on Information texts about rivers and creeks. Our classroom pet will be none another than an Axolotl which is in fact a water animal and then becomes a land animal when it transforms into a Salamander.

In Religion this term, students will be learning about the topic of Baptisms and Eucharists. We will be using a new interactive website which includes an array of interactive games and activities to engage students on selected topics.

In Art, students will be learning about the conventions of visual art and will design a variety of different visual art pieces throughout the term.

In HASS, students will be learning about connection to country. Students will engage in a variety of different ATSI activities and art activities to show their knowledge and understanding on the topic.

In HPE, students will be learning about fundamental movement skills and applying these skills to a different sport every week.

In Maths, students remain working hard engaging in a range of hands on activities learning 2 topics a week and showing their understanding of these topics every Friday. I encourage students to immerse themselves in Maths at home. Students can help count groceries when putting things away, help measure different amounts when cooking or solve addition and subtraction problems when adding or taking things away around the house.

Students are reminded that if they would like to participate in dance and gymnastics with Miss Sore on a Monday afternoon, to please bring back their parent permission form. Lots of students from Prep/1 will be participating. Also, a reminder that Homework and Guided Reading Groups will go back to normal next week. Students are encouraged to read whenever possible at home. Parents might like ask to be read to at bedtime or before or after homework time.

I am looking forward to another great Term with lots of exciting things happening.

Miss Cornelius
Prep/1 Teacher

Year 2 News

Lovely to be back again and into work straight away. From the smiles on faces, it would seem that we all had a wonderful holiday with family and friends and are ready to embrace a new term. We are already halfway through our school year, with a lot of teaching and learning time to go, which makes it very important for the children to be present each day, except of course, during times of illness.

We started the week revising our counting patterns, place value before covering telling the time. We are studying both analogue and digital time, learning o’clock and half past, with a few already able to do a quarter past the hour as well. Each Friday, the children enjoy working on the iPads doing Mathletics. This programme reinforces concepts covered during the week and the children really look forward to it. You may have noticed from homework that we have also revised days of the week and the children did a wonderful job learning the rhyme for how many days in each month. Well done.

We are doing a unit on Machines this term, incorporating English, HASS, Technology and The Arts, so you will be hearing more about this as the term progresses. We’ve also begun movement skills and while most are proficient, we have a few areas in need of practise. All in all, a happy week with lots of learning concluding with National Pyjama Day.

Mrs Shellshear
Year 2 Teacher

Year 3/4 News

Terrific Term 3! The Year 3-4 class are happy to be back at school as we have a lot of exciting things planned! English, Hass, drama and media will have a focus on World Navigators and the First fleet! The students will be exploring rich historical events and explaining their knowledge and understanding through process dramas, informative texts, persuasive texts and film producing. During, science and design technology the students will be taking on the role of engineers and building a design solution which requires force to move and Math will be focused around Fractions, decimals and Money. We are looking forward to spending another fantastic term together learning and growing!

Miss Sore
Year 3/4 Teacher

Year 5/6 News

We have kicked off Term 3 with a bang! We have started our science topic – states of matter – we have investigated the properties of lots of different materials including slime, toothpaste, tomato ketchup and shampoo. Strangely enough, sand has all the properties of a liquid, you can pour it, it takes the shape of a container, but it is actually a solid… lots of tiny little solids!

We also dived head first into shape, space and measurement. We used hands on materials to calculate the perimeter, area and volume of different 2D and 3D objects.

Great work team! Dojos are flying out left, right and centre and we are trading them in for lots of fun activities.

Miss Conlin
Year 5/6 Teacher

Class and Uniform Awards

This fortnight’s focus:

Habit of the Heart: Belonging
Habit of the Mind: Communication

Happy Birthday

Sacred Heart Dance and Acro Lessons!

Miss Sor’e is holding dance lessons as an extra-curricular activity after school on Mondays and Wednesdays. To participate in the lessons, students need to return their permission slips to the school office. Please see the timetable below for lesson times.

MS Readathon

Do you remember the MS Readathon from your own school days? The concept hasn’t changed - read whatever you like, as much as you can, throughout August. But after 40 years, we’re starting a fun new chapter, with amazing features. We have a brand new interactive website where kids can rate and review the books they read! Check out the link below for more information and to see how much the students have raised by reading!

From the Library

This term the Library is going to be super busy!! We have officially moved into our temporary library (The classroom beside the Church) until our new library is built. The plans are looking very exciting! This term library borrowing will take place on a FRIDAY. So, remember every Friday to bring your library books back. Also, this term we will have our Book Fair, due to COVID 19 we had to postpone our Book Fair. This term it will take place on the 12th – 14th August. Please watch this space for more information on Book Fair.

Wear your Pyjama’s to School Day Fundraiser

Last Friday 17th July Students and Staff came to school in their Pyjamas to raise money for children in need.

Effective Hand Hygiene is Vital

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to evolve, it is important to remember that effective hand and sneeze/cough hygiene is the best defence against viruses and can help prevent the spread of illness.

Lead by example and encourage your children to:

• wash their hands regularly with soap and water, before and after eating, and after going to the toilet
• use alcohol-based hand sanitiser if soap is not available
• cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue or the inside of their elbow
• dispose of tissues in the bin immediately
• remind students not to share food
• if they’re unwell, stay at home and avoid contact with others such as touching, kissing or hugging.

Check out the 20 second routine video for effective handwashing.

Student Protection

At Sacred Heart 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 several 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.

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 the link below:

Our Schools Student Protection Contacts are:

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

School Tuition 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

We are in desperate need of helpers for Tuckshop this term, so if you are interested please contact Carla Mills on 0448130067, facebook or ring the school office. Tuckshop runs on Fridays 9am – 1.30pm during Term. If we are unable to get enough volunteers we may have to shut the Tuckshop. We just ask that cars be parked outside the school grounds to ensure student safety. Thank you to all the parents who volunteer in our school tuckshop.

REMINDER: CHICKEN NUGGETS ARE NOT AVAILABLE AT LITTLE LUNCH

Tuckshop Roster

Sacred Heart Parish

The Sacred Heart Parish church has received approval from Bishop Robert McGuckin to open again for weekend Eucharistic Service. A Covid-19 Plan has been developed and will be implemented to ensure effective hygiene practices are in place as well as social distancing measures. We look forward to meeting as a Parish again very soon.

Sacred Heart Op Shop on the Verandah of the Convent

Opening Days and Times

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday

9am – 12pm

They have loads of School Winter Track Tops and Pants for $3 each. They have sizes 4-16. They also have loads of new and pre-loved items available for purchase. Come in and browse around. I’m sure you will find a bargain!!!!

Church Times

Sunday 19th July – Eucharistic Service @ 9.00am
Saturday 25th July – Mass @ 5.30pm
Sunday 26th July – Eulo Mass @ 9am
Sunday 2nd August – Eucharistic Service @ 9.00am
Sunday 9th August – Eucharistic Service @ 9.00am

Term 3 Important Dates