Sacred Heart Primary School, Cunnamulla eNewsletter

Homework Centre

There is NO HOMEWORK CENTRE NEXT TUESDAY 13th JUNE due to all staff PD.

Music

Next Thursday 15th June our new music teacher Mrs Leia Jensen will be here in person. Students will have music lessons as normal during the day and then there will be a music performance @ 3pm and a meet and greet afterwards. All parents are welcome to come to the performance and then meet Mrs Jensen.

Important Dates

Community News

Cunnamulla Fella Roundup along with Paroo Shire Council is hosting a free Rodeo School as part of the 2023 Cunnamulla Roundup.

The rodeo school is designed for children from 4 years and up to have fun and learn some basic rodeo skills. No experience is necessary!!! It will be run on both Thursday 29^th June and Friday 30^th June during the QLD school holidays at the Cunnamulla Show Grounds.

It will be run by Shaun Ahern and Angus Mitchell, the school will cover basic horsemanship all the way to bareback and bronc riding skills. For those who prefer the adrenaline to the buck, a barrel racing clinic will be run by Jaime-Lee Prow.

Junior School participants need to bring their own water bottle, lunch and snacks, wear boots or enclosed shoes, bring a hat, sunscreen, a smile and a great attitude! The school session will be supervised at all times.

Participants do need to register at https://tickets.outbacktickets.com.au/outlet/event/7fa769e6-6a34-4e9d-93f9-1bc6dee36a6c (Registration is free)

Sacred Heart Parish

Church Times

Saturday 10th June - Mass @ 5.30pm
Sunday 18th June - Mass @ 9am
Sunday 25th June - Mass @ 9am
Sunday 2nd July - Mass @ 9am
Saturday 8th July - Mass @ 5.30pm
Sunday 16th July - Mass @ 9am

School Tuition Fees

School Accounts have been sent out. Can these please be paid by Friday 16th June 2023. 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.

Tuckshop

We are still looking for volunteers and cake cookers to run tuckshop on a Friday. If you can spare one Friday a term, can you please let Mrs Crick know at the office. Tuckshop runs from 9am – 1.30pm

Flexischools App

The tuckshop uses the App called Flexischools. This will make ordering and paying for Tuckshop easier. Attached are the instructions to download and use the App. Make sure you update your child's class name.

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 a number of specific child protection reporting obligations that are detailed in our Student Protection Processes and Guidelines.

It is a legislative requirement that all non-state schools have at least two nominated staff members to whom a student can report the behaviour of another staff member that the student considers inappropriate. We call these specially trained staff members School Student Protection Contacts, or SSPCs. Each SSPC has been nominated by the principal in recognition of their integrity, approachability and knowledge in the area of student protection. Whilst students are encouraged to speak up to any trusted adult in the school community, it is important that they know they can access these specific staff members at any time should they have worries, queries or concerns. You will have noticed posters throughout the school depicting our current SSPCs. The SSPCs are also published on our school website along with information about our student protection processes. In everything we do at Sacred Heart Primary School student safety is our highest priority, therefore the SSPCs at our school are key personnel in our overall safeguarding processes.

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:

Embed Link - https://www.twb.catholic.edu.au/parents-and-community/student-protection/

Our Schools Student Protection Contacts are:

Miss Ailie Lewis (APRE)
Mrs Carolyn Crick (Administration Officer)
Mrs Cara Haig (Principal)

Uniform Policy

Uniform and Hair

A gentle reminder that school uniform is very important to us at Sacred Heart. It shows pride and helps us all feel that we belong. Please make sure that students are wearing correct uniform (including white socks and plain black shoes) and that their hair is neat and tidy. We have noticed a number of students with hair below the collar that is not tied up and a number of rats tails that do not look neat and tidy. It is preferable that no rats tails or long mullet hair styles are seen at school, they are more suited to holiday time. Your child’s teacher may contact you to discuss hair styles.

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.

Absenteeism

A recent study by Andrew Forrest, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, identified that if a child’s school attendance falls below 90% (ie they frequently miss more than half a day of school a week) their education is considered at risk. If attendance falls below 80% (ie they miss a day of school every week) their education is significantly diminished. In other words...

less than 80% attendance - no better than no schooling at all
90% attendance is required for a child to receive the education needed for job readiness
attendance is even more important than the quality of the school.

This research is powerful stuff that really quantifies what teachers and principals have known for years.

A recent State of the Sector Report from the Queensland Catholic Education Commission identified that in 2022, the Semester 1 attendance rate for Queensland Catholic schools was 88%.

Sport

Regional Netball and Cross Country

Best wishes to Penny Schmidt and Amy King who will be representing our region at the Regional Netball trials in Roma. We are very proud of you both and wish you all the best. Congratulations to Penny for being selected in the Regional Cross Country team to compete at the State Trials in Hervey Bay from 15th - 17th July.

Birthdays

Class Awards

Year 5/6

This past fortnight has been a busy one for the 5/6 students as they began assessments and participated in many extra-curricular activities. The students were lucky enough to be invited to Wolfgang’s Magical Musical Circus Workshop on 22^nd of May. They learnt basic acrobatic and artistic movement skills. The highlight of the workshop was building a human pyramid.

On the 1^st of June the Vinnies Roadshow came to Sacred Heart and taught the students about the ups and downs in life. Through a variety of games, the students learnt how being a part of strong communities can support them in life. It was great to see the students coming up with ideas on how to strengthen their communities.

In Mathematics, the year 5’s reviewed converting 12-hour to 24-hour time while the year 6’s worked on reading timetables and calculating the time elapsed between activities. The students also added the lattice method to their ever-growing toolkit of multiplication strategies.

In English, students put all the pieces of the ‘narrative puzzle’ together as they began to draft and write their own historical narratives. Through the drafting process I have caught a glimpse of the wide array of stories that are being written and I am excited to read them all next week. Please ask your child about their story. I have read about time travellers, explorers, escaped sheep who find gold and farmers living in the 1800s.

History studies focussed on colonial life and the viewing of My Place episodes has become a class favourite. Students are now showcasing their knowledge of colonial Australia through their stories and stop motions.

In Religion, students completed their assessment on Mary, Mother of Jesus. This week students will be learning about the significance of prayers and how to write prayers addressed to Mary.

In Health, students have been learning how to manage their emotions. Last week students were given a scenario which they had to act out 2 ways. They first showed someone who did not manage emotions and the second clip showed someone who did. This led to discussion around strategies that can support students in de-escalating when in an emotional state. Students created posters and this week will create an accompanying advertisement to teach younger students about managing emotions.

I wish all students best of luck with their upcoming assessments.

Miss Abby Davidson

Year 5/6 Teacher

Welcome to Week 8! The Year 3/4 Students have been busy bees – completing assessment, reading testing and using feedback strategies. I want to congratulate all Students on their reading growth this term – their hard work in class and at home is paying off!

This week, Students will be adding persuasive devices to their opinion text. Students will begin to practise their presenting skills as they share their opinion text with the class. Students will also be starting their Drama assessment, where they will be creating a performance linked to morality. In Health, Students will be designing a game with a scoring system and teaching the rest of the class. In Mathematics, students will learn to use algorithms when working with patterns. Students will be practising this for their homework.

With only a few more weeks left of Term, it is super important that your child attends school to finalise their learning and assessment. Have a great week!

Miss Lilly Daly

Year 3/4 Teacher

Year 2

Our classroom has been a hive of activity, as we work towards finishing our units of work and assessing. We have also celebrated a couple of birthdays and enjoyed sharing cakes.

In English, we’ve completed our reading testing and I am delighted to report that the children have made pleasing progress this semester. Several have recorded high growth but all are to be congratulated on their commitment to daily reading and sight word practice. We have completed our literature unit on Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley, where we have studied how both the illustrations and the language are used to describe the characters. We are now going to use the stick puppets we made to give our own version of the all-time favourite.

During maths lessons, we have concentrated on addition strategies, which has required us to partition numbers. Our goal is for the children to be able to recall addition facts automatically, making connections to prior knowledge of number. This requires them to be able to explain their thought processes, which we are spending considerable time on developing.

We have explored being stewards of Creation during religion lessons and have explored ways in which we can care for the earth because we have been given a wonderful gift; one we want others to be able to enjoy in years to come. We have discussed various ways we can reduce, reuse, and recycle and created a poster of ourselves doing one or more of those things.

Science has seen us continue our study of day and night and extended it to learning about the phases of the moon and how the seasons come to be. We are currently tracking the phases of the moon at home each night and enjoyed creating them using Oreo cookies ! We will complete our unit with an investigation of shadows, conducting experiments using a shadow stick, to observe how they change during the day and drawing conclusions as to why this is so.

We also enjoyed spending time with Sammy Meurant making people and leaves to go on the very creative piece that will accompany the children to the Arts Festival in Toowoomba in week 10.

Mrs Jenny Shellshear

Year 2 Teacher

Year 1

Welcome to week 8! With only 2 weeks until the end of the term, the Year 1’s have been hard at work completing their assessments and units of work.

In English, we have completed our reading testing and it is with great pleasure that I can share all students have shown growth in at least one area of their learning. We have continued reading a variety of texts, exploring the characters, settings and plot in each. The students have continued learning how to make personal connections to texts and have begun looking at how we can make connections between texts by looking at the characters, setting and plot. We have also continued our writing stamina and the students have shown improvement in their ability to record their thoughts in written form- I have to say the students have become quite interested in this part of their day and look forward to it.

In Maths, we have continued looking at place value and how numbers can be partitioned in different ways. We have counted out the individual sticks for our chosen number and are beginning to understand that the loose individual sticks represent the value of ones. After this, we counted groups of tens and created bundles to represent the value of tens in the number. The students have begun to partition different numbers into tens and ones, discussing how the values of these help us to identify and represent them.

In our connected curriculum unit, the students have continued their exploration of aspects of daily life from the past and the present. To assist in their exploration of this topic, students developed questions about aspects of daily life from the past. Students used these questions to interview people who had grown up in the past. The interviews went very well and we enjoyed them very much.

I wish all students the best with the last of their assessments.

Miss Ellie Charlton

Year 1 Teacher

Happy Week 8! With only two weeks to go for Term 2, the Preps are hard at work completing assessments. We are definitely on the countdown for school holidays!

The students are beginning to complete their Julia Donaldson unit by writing sentences and descriptions about the Troll from the book. This was a great activity and students should be very proud of their writing. We are continuing to write a final character description about the Witch from ‘Room on the Broom’. This has been a very interesting unit and students have loved learning about the very special author, Julia Donaldson.

For Maths this past fortnight, students have ventured outside to continue looking for and creating shapes. Students were challenged to create different familiar 2D shapes either by themselves or with friends. The Preps were very creative with how they created their shapes! Students have also been learning about position and location in relation to themselves or objects, and following directions using the appropriate language. We have been practicing the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ in the classroom, as this helps us to follow directions and practice position.

In our Connected Curriculum unit, we began discussing our new superheroes, the PJ Masks. The students were very excited to begin discussing some very familiar and popular superheroes for them. After discussing the ‘Geckomobile’ and how it moves, the students were challenged to create their own Geckomobile using either LEGO or Mobilo. Over the next fortnight, the students will begin creating their own superhero. They will be asked to create a name, choose a superpower, design a superhero outfit and deisgn and create their own superhero vehicle. This has been a very interesting and engaging unit for the students and we are excited to become superheroes ourselves!

I also wanted to give a special shoutout to all the Prep students! Over the past fortnight, I have been completing our termly reading testing. I am extremely happy to share that all students have shown significant improvement and growth in all areas of the reading testing! I am so proud of how hard the students have worked this term and all their efforts are paying off! Thank you to all the parents for your continued support and hard work at home with your children, this does not go unnoticed!

With only 2 weeks to go, we are hard at work and getting ready for a holiday! Have a great week!

Miss Aimee Bretherton

Prep Teacher

We have had a particularly busy fortnight- working hard in class, creating our Arts Fest Artwork with Sammy Meurant, having professional marketing photos taken and preparing for the local show! We also had a number of visitors to our school including Mrs Kimmorley and Mr Russell, with more visitors coming to see us this week – our OT Mrs Crooke and our SLP Miss Borlei. Sacred Heart sure is the place to be!

I hope you had a chance to look at some of the artwork, handwriting and stories that the students entered in the show but if you didn’t get a chance to see them there, come and check out the classroom doors! Our Arts Fest Artwork is also pretty much complete thanks to the artistic expertise of Mrs Sammy Meurant who generously gave up her time to come and help us create this piece which we will display during the Inaugural Belief in the Arts Fest being held in Tooowoomba in a couple of weeks. If you’d like a sneak peek of the art piece, please ask a staff member to show you inside the library. We couldn’t have done it without Sammy’s help and we are very grateful to her for sharing her talents with us.

Our marketing photo shoot also went very well with some lovely photos taken of our extremely photogenic students. Thank you to Andrew from Salt Studios and TCS who facilitate this and allow us to use the images for a range of purposes. I hope to get a chance to show you all a few of the photos soon.

Mrs Kimmorley had the teachers thinking hard during her visit. We spent some time looking at the different concepts and skills that the V9 Australian Curriculum has in mathematics. The teachers worked hard to unpack the curriculum and devise learning intentions and success criteria so that the students know exactly what it is they need to learn and how they will be successful. Following on from this, I introduced students to the SOLO taxonomy (structure of observed learning outcomes) during Monday morning briefing. I showed them an example of SOLO using Lego blocks as examples. The SOLO taxonomy shows us how we move through the phases of learning, from having no idea, one idea, many ideas (surface learning) to connected ideas (deep learning) and extended ideas (transfer learning). We will be continuing to work on this in the classrooms to help students take more control over their own learning. Mrs Tolete has taught the students the AUSLAN signs that go with each phase of learning – ask your child to show you these!

It is well and truly assessment and reporting time so please ensure students are attending school every day.

See you at assembly on Friday.

Cara Haig

Principal