Newsletter #14 May 19
Principal's News
Dear St Paul's families,
Welcome to this week's update.
MAPPEN WEEK: Believe it or not we are already halfway through the term and we get to celebrate it it with MAPPEN WEEK, which is an added bonus with the students from F- 4 showcasing their learning on Friday between 1.00pm-2.00pm. Hopefully you can come along and see the wonderful learning that has taken place.
SACRAMENT OF CONFIRMATION: This weekend is a special weekend as we have a number of our ST Paul's students celebrating the sacrament of Confirmation. This Sunday is also Pentecost Sunday. This Friday will see the children from our schools across the district participate in a retreat in our school hall as a part of their sacramental program. I am looking forward to attending mass this weekend o help celebrate with the children.
ENROLMENTS 2022: Over the last two weeks I have been conducting enrolment interviews for our Foundation 2022 children. For any existing families who have not made an interview time, please do so ASAP as we will be finalising our enrolments in the coming weeks.
ST JOSEPH'S COLLEGE YR 7 ENROLMENTS: Families of Grade 6 students are reminded that enrolments are still being accepted for 2022 at St Joseph’s College. Please contact the Admissions and Communications Manager, Mrs Tracy Aston on 5018 8034 or via email taston@sjcmda.vic.edu.au for further information and an application package.
GRADE 6 VISIT TO ST JOSEPH'S COLLEGE: Save the date Wednesday 9th June. More details to come
CONGRATULATIONS TO THIS WEEK'S MILESTONE WINNERS
BEE MILESTONE AWARDS:Nayte Yates, Harry Williams, Akesa Toto, Macki Tickle, Mischa Pascale, Vienna Panagiotopoulos, Tyler O'Rielly, Levi Morton, Sophia Moala, Max Mangan, Zoe Keir, Noah Hunt, Antonio Holani, Zander Hately, Christian Fidura, Ava Dunn, Abby Dunn, Rubi Barila, Liam Aranas
HIVE MILESTONE AWARDS:Jenny Tran, Jack O'Callaghan, Skylar Humphrey, Oliver Harradine, Nimrat Dahliwal, Bridie Cranston, Taylor Burns
CATHOLIC EDUCATION WEEK 2021: As a part of Catholic Education in the Sunraysia area, we will be celebrating a combined schools event later in the year, especially as we acknowledge 200 years of Catholic Education in Australia.
Have a great week and congratulations to our children receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation this weekend.
Keep the Faith!
Vince Muscatello
MAPPEN EXPO - FRIDAY 21st MAY, 1-2pm
Students in the Foundations, Juniors & Middles will open their classrooms again on Friday 21st May from 1pm-2pm.
SENIOR students WILL NOT be having an expo this time, however they will be developing website that can be shared with their families.
Senior News
The students have participated in the Senior Unit Liturgy on Friday. The theme matched what we are teaching in class with the topic 'Journey'.
Celebrating Education Support Officers Day
On Monday we celebrated Education Support Officers Day. We could not live without Meagan, Narelle and Elise. We appreciate everything they do to help us with our learning.
MAPPEN Week - Democracy
This week we started our MAPPEN learning on Democracy with a visit from Ali Cupper. It was great to have a local member of parliament address the students and speak about issues that concern people that live in Mildura.
On Wednesday we will have an incursion with the Victorian Electoral Commission via google meet. In this session the students will learn about preferential voting & counting along with a mock election.
Junior Unit News
Hi Junior Families! Welcome to Week 5 - Mappen Week!
This week the students have been immersed in local geography engaging in a unit of learning about places and spaces.
We have begun our week exploring our place in space, learning our town and state’s name and locating where we live on an Australian map. We have created our own map of Australia and learnt the names of other states and territories.
We have begun exploring what our community has to offer and learnt about the various services we need. We were very lucky to have Georgie offer to bring an ambulance to school. Georgie usually works in the Foundation Unit here at school but is also a volunteer first aid provider for St. John’s Ambulance. She spoke to us about what service she provides to Mildura and about other volunteer services we have in our community. The students were very engaged and loved having a look inside the ambulance! Thank you Georgie for a wonderful morning of learning!
After Georgie's visit, we spoke about all the services we know that are available in Mildura. The students really enjoyed creating a poster for a service of their choice.
On Friday, we are looking forward to hosting our Mappen Expo! This will be held in our normal classrooms between 1 and 2pm.
Finally, the Junior Unit teachers and students would like to extend a big thank you to our lovely, hard-working Learning Support Officers (LSO's). On Monday we celebrated 'Education Support People' day with the students presenting Michelle, Vicki, Louise and Anne-Marie a small gift of appreciation - a jar of lifesavers! To us, our LSO's truly are 'lifesavers!'
MIDDLE UNIT NEWS
Please remember to send in any recyclable materials (especially cardboard boxes) for our Mappen projects on Thursday.
The Middle Unit teachers and students celebrated our Middle Unit Learning Support Officers (LSOs) on Monday for Education Support People day. Students presented Bel, Denise, Carl, Claire and Shona with a little gift each: a jar of little donuts with a card saying 'We donut know what we would do without you!'.
L-R Carl, Denise, Shona, Bel, Claire
On Thursday, we tried a different type of Literacy block to break up the NAPLAN week. It involved the children watching a very special play, based on Harry Potter characters, put on by Mr Freeman and Mrs Baker. Students were then tasked with writing a recount text type about the play. Recounts are written in the past tense and tell a sequence of events. You can watch an edited version of the play below (thanks for recording it Miss Rhia!).
We continued our experimental Literacy block on Friday, with students learning all about emails, including:
- the history of emails
- how to structure emails, and
- what is appropriate for school-based emails.
Students showed their learning at the end of the lesson by participating in an interactive online 'Kahoot' quiz about the information we had learned. You can watch a short video of the Middle Unit classes participating in the quiz below:
As we wrapped up our Maths unit on Subtraction, students in Mr Freeman's group showcased their preferred strategies for working out subtraction problems. Below, you can see their whiteboard with four different strategies being used to work out the same question. Denim proudly shows off his learning of the subtraction algorithm with regrouping to the class.
Foundation Unit News
This week in Maths the Foundation children have been learning about the Ordinal Numbers from 1st to 10th. We have been putting a lot of things in order and learning the correct language to use when talking about the postion of an object. Below are some photos of the children putting scoops of icecream in order on a cone and then colouring them in their favourite icecream flavour.
We have also been having a focus on Science. We have been learning about many different animals. We have learnt the following things:
* the common features of animals
* that different animals live in different places eg land & water
* the life cycle of different things.
Next week we will have some photos of the MAPPEN expo to share with you.
We would like to acknowledge our wonderful Learning Support Officers that work in the Foundation Unit for all of the work they put into making our area a supportive and welcoming place. Thank you Georgie and Cindy from all of us.
Library News
Today is National Simultaneous Storytime day. All students at St Paul's participated today by listening to the fantastic picture storybook "Give me some Space" by Phillip Bunting.
Recently we had a special day with visiting author Phil Kettle. Phil spoke to all students about how he writes his stories and how important it is to read stories together.
It has been lovely to see some families coming back into the Library to share stories before school. remember you are most welcome to come into the Library before school at 8.30 to red with your children Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.
We have quite a few overdue library loans at the moment , please encourage your children to look for these books and return them to our library ASAP.
Thanks Marg Pongrac
Religious Education News
Those children who will be attending the Confirmation Retreat Day this Friday are able to wear CASUAL CLOTHES.
These children are asked to bring along their Confirmation booklet that they have been working through at home and are able to order lunch from our school canteen if they wish.
Technology News
So far this term, students in year 3/4 have been investigating food and fibre production in both modern and traditional societies. They started their investigations by discovering where in Australia different plants and animals are farmed for food and what makes those regions suitable farming environments for those foods.
Students then conducted independent research to find out exactly how different plants and animals are farmed in modern times, what technologies have improved farming techniques and how farming has changed over time.
Last week, students were challenged to sustainably grow their own food. Student first investigated ways this could be achieved and drew a plan to grow their own food from food scraps. After planning, student set up their design to find out if they could in fact sustainably grow their own food. This week, students were amazed to see the results of their experiments. Some were quite stunned by just how much growth occured in one week when they utilised food scraps to grow new food plants.
Until next week, remember - technology is just a tool, what matters is how we use it.
Mrs Simms
Hands Up Mallee
A huge thank-you to all the parents who replied to our survey in regards to creating a Community Garden, your responses were overwhelmingly positive! As a result, we will begin to plan how that space will look and start to source some boxes for planting and sort out a few of the planning/logistical issues that are involved. Watch this space and we will keep you all updated on the progress.
Breakfast Club Roster | ||
Friday: 21st May Finn D Rorie E | Monday: 24th May Livinia F Jack H | Wednesday: 26th May Xander H Austin J |
Sunraysia Catholic Communities Bulletin
Parent Noticeboard
Continuous Raffle Draw
Congratulations to the following families who won at the Friday 14th May assembly.
- Sunbeam Pie Magic (donated by Silorio family) – won by Luo family.
- Tennis and soccer set (donated by Rebel sport) - won by Lucas Nguyen family
- Australian Map and football (donated by Moyle family & Rebel Sport) won by Fangatua family