2022 Newsletter #23 27 July
Principal News
Dear St Paul's families,
Welcome to the weekly update.
The weather continues to surprise us with the sun shining through briefly and providing some warmth only for the temperature to drop again. This also means our lost property basket is overflowing once more with jumpers, and unfortunately, the majority of them are unnamed. Please check your child's clothing to ensure it is clearly labelled.
100 DAYS JUNIOR UNIT- The Junior Unit are celebrating 100 days of school today. I am very interested to see all the photos of the children and staff dressed up and participating in numerous activities focussed on the number 100. Fun for all!
100 DAYS FOUNDATION UNIT- The Foundation unit will celebrate 100 days this Friday.
SCHOOL SPORTS DAY- Don't forget the date has been changed to Friday 5th August for our annual sports day. We will be hosting it at school this year again and not at the Aero ovals as originally planned.
COVID UPDATE- You may have noticed that we are seeing an increase once again in COVID Positive cases. I strongly encourage you to call in and collect the Rapid Antigen test kits from the office. More importantly, please test immediately when any signs or symptoms are present. Unfortunately, the flu, common cold and bouts of gastro are also circulating at the moment as well. If your child/ren are unwell, please keep them home. We are trying to minimise the risk of spread of infection. As covid continues to spread, it places an enormous strain on our resources, particularly staffing, which in turn impacts the learning and teaching provided for your children. Masks are not compulsory at this but are strongly recommended when indoors.
GUIDED LEARNING WALK- Last week I mentioned a proposed Learning Walk for parents interested in understanding how we teach and how your children learn. The proposed date was for Thursday 11th August in week 5. If you are interested please email office@spmildura.catholic.edu.au. Please note that this may be impacted by the continued rise in covid cases. If so an alternative date will be arranged.
SCHOOL ADVISORY COUNCIL- Next Tuesday evening, at 7.00pm, the School Advisory Council will host their August meeting at school. The main focus of the evening will be the new Child Safe standards that came into force on July 1 and the updated capital developments plans for St Paul's.
This week's Gotcha Awards will appear in next week's news as there has been an upgrade to the system and I am still working my way through the new format.
As always, have a great week everyone, and
Keep the Faith!
Vince Muscatello.
Mini Olympics Athletics Carnival
The St Paul’s Mini Olympics will be held on Friday 5th August. This year the event will be held onsite at St Paul’s. To add to the festivities of the day, students are encouraged to wear their house colours, otherwise they are to wear their PE uniform.
Students should bring a drink bottle and their lunch and snacks.
Please note that there will be no canteen operating for students on the day.
Parents are welcome to come along and enjoy the day. If, as a parent, you are willing and able to assist on any events, that would be appreciated.
The day will operate within normal school hours. Some key times are listed below:
- 9am - 9-12 year old events begin (Middle & Seniors).
- 9:30am - 5-8 year old events begin (Foundation & Juniors).
- 10:55am-11:40am - Lunch
- 1:40pm - Senior and Junior field events end
- 2:15pm - Sprint Finals and Relays
- 3:00pm - Presentations
- 3:25pm - Students dismissed
The students have been working extremely hard in PE practicing for each event and we look forward to celebrating their efforts at the Mini Olympics.
Learning Diversity - Term 3 PSG Meetings
Term Three Program Support Group (PSG) Meetings have been scheduled for students receiving additional support and adjustments with their learning program.
Parents/Carers of students requiring a PSG Meeting this term have been sent an SMS alert and have a time booked for this meeting in the coming weeks. Please check the Parent Teacher Interview tab on your SIMON Everywhere App for the details regarding the date and time.
St Paul’s highly values parent's and carer's contributions about their child’s learning needs at school and it is important for parents/carers to attend these meetings either in person, via telephone or video conference.
Thank you for your support.
Lauren Gibson
Foundation Unit News
Welcome to Week 3!
This week, on Friday we have our celebration for '100 days of school'. Don't forget to come dressed up as an 'old' person. We will be participating in many fun activities.
In Maths, we are learning about 2D and 3D shapes. The children have been identifying and learning about the features of the following shapes: circle, square, rectangle, triangle, cube and sphere. We have also been locating these shapes in our environment.
In Literacy, we are learning about the grapheme (letter) and phoneme (sound) - Gg and Ll. We have also been writing some amazing sentences.
In Religion, our concept is story. We have learnt that stories are enjoyable and help us to make sense of the world and ourselves. We have looked at the Bible and talked about the collection of stories about God, Jesus and people that make up the Bible. I would like to thank all of the people who returned their forms about their child's name. We had a lot of fun listening to where their name comes from.
Junior Unit News
What a fun Friday we had last week! It was lovely to spend a cosy winter day in our PJs, oodies and onesies. Today we have celebrated our 100th day of school and look forward to sharing some fun photos on the school Facebook page. We asked the children to reflect on the past 100 days and share some highlights:
Manny - J4: I love doing Art and Technology and making shadow puppets on sticks.
Lola - J5: It's been good learning how to write and spell properly.
Chloe - J7: I like making new friends and getting to know Mrs Brouwers.
Fetongi - J8: My favourite thing is reading stories like 'The Black Rabbit'.
Whilst we all enjoy sharing special dress-up days, it is very important that on the other days, all children are in the correct winter uniform. If, for some reason, your child needs to be out of uniform, please let their teacher know.
We are about to end our unit on telling the time using digital and analogue clocks. Most of the Year 1 children can now tell the time to the half hour, and many of our Year 2 children can tell time to the quarter hour. We're very proud of the progress they've made. Our next Maths unit is about multiplication, so you might like to help your child practice skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s.
Please remember to pack a spoon or fork if your child requires one to eat their snack or lunch. We do not have these items available in the classrooms. Thank you.
Middle Unit News
This week in Literacy the Middle Unit is exploring the text, 'Little People Big Dreams' - Steve Jobs. It has been lovely to learn how these successful people were once just little people with big dreams. To demonstrate their understanding of the text and to further enhance our ability to write strong sentences we have been using the writing strategy 'Sentence Expansion'. Students are given a short sentence and asked to expand it using key questions such and when and why. The students are then using these sentences to come up with their own little biography. We would love for parents to pop in and read them when we are finished.
This week in sport we have been practising some of the events to prepare us for our Mini Olympics next week. This week we have focused on triple jump and discus. The students have used their persistence to learn new skills and we can’t wait to see them in action next week.
In Numeracy we continue our learning of Fractions and Decimals. Students are learning how to identify a fraction of a group and a fraction of an object. Some of our students are extending their thinking by learning about equivalent fractions.
If at any point you would like to come in to see your child’s learning please don’t hesitate to pop in and your child is welcome to show you around.
Senior Unit News
Last week, as part of our relationships and sexuality unit, we focussed on relationships and friendships. We have explored the characteristics of healthy relationships, communication skills for positive and healthy relationships, using technology and social media and getting help if relationships are not positive and healthy. One of the tasks was to create a recipe for your ideal friend. You will see some of S13's work in the gallery below.
Next week we are looking forward to our next Police in Schools session (Thursday), Maths Competition and the Mini Olympics. All great opportunities to be challenged and extend our understandings.
My New Gallery
Arts news
During Term Two our main focus was Media Arts. The middle unit students spent many lessons watching, examining and planning for their own TV advertisments, before working together in teams to create an original ad. They had to plan it out on a story board, including things like camera shots, voice overs and audio. They then filmed their ads and worked together to use iMovie to edit their finished piece.
The children had a lot of fun and showed a lot of creativity, talent and teamwork throughout this project. Here are the finished products! Enjoy :)
Technology News
It's been a very busy and fun filled start to the term in the Technology Room.
Foundation students began a coding unit this week. The focussed for students was giving and following a sequence of instructions. Firstly students took turns to give instructions to Mrs Simms, so she could make fairy bread. Afterwards, they swapped roles and students practiced following instructions to make their own fairy bread. By all reports the fairy bread was delicious.
In the Junior Unit it's all about forces and motion this term. So far, students have identified push and pull forces and experimented to determine how push and pull forces create motion. Last week, students created a push rocket and by experimenting discovered; the greater the push force applied, the greater the motion created.
Middle Unit students have begun the term by exploring a new coding language, block coding. Last week students first built a maze from lego, then creating their own block codes created an algorithm to direct movement through a lego maze.
The Senior Unit have also been exploring the use of block coding to program a Sphero to complete a series of challenges or movements.
Socialising online can be a great way for children to build friendships, but it can also put them at risk.
Unwanted contact is any type of online communication that your child finds unpleasant or upsetting, or that leads them into a situation where they may be unsafe. This can happen even if they initially welcomed the contact. It can come from strangers, online ‘friends’ your child has not met face-to-face, or from someone they actually know.
The worst danger is ‘grooming’ — someone building a relationship with a child in order to sexually abuse them. This abuse can happen in a physical meeting, but it increasingly happens online when children or young people are tricked or persuaded into sexual activity on webcams or into sending sexual images.
How to deal with unwanted contact
If someone is contacting your child and this contact is unwanted or makes them feel uncomfortable, here are some things you can do to help.
Make their accounts private
For younger children, ensure their social media accounts are not publicly available and establish rules around what types of content they should share online.
For older children, suggest they make their social media accounts private, or revise their privacy settings so they can control who can look at their photos and posts. By adjusting their privacy settings, they can stay in control of who sees what they post online and who can contact them directly. For more information on privacy settings see the eSafety Guide.
Delete contacts they don’t really know
Encourage your child to delete contacts they don’t know actually know in person. Ask them to go through all the people who follow them or they are friends with on social media and check that they actually know them. If not, it is probably a good idea to delete them.
Report and block
Let your child know that they can talk to you at any time if they receive any contact that is inappropriate or makes them feel uncomfortable — and there are steps you can take together.
If you child receives any unwanted contact from someone they know or a stranger, encourage them to report and block this person on the site or service used to contact them. The Safety Guide has online safety information and direct reporting links. If the contact persists, or it becomes aggressive or threatening contact your local police.
Delete requests from strangers
Encourage your child to delete friend or follow requests from people they don’t know. A good tip is to get them to check whether new requests share mutual friends. If they feel unsure about someone, encourage them to delete the request.
How can I protect my child?
Stay involved in your child’s digital world
- Keep up-to-date with the sites, apps and online chat services they are using, and explore them together.
- Consider whether you are comfortable with the content of these sites and the potential for contact with others, including adults.
- If you are concerned they are visiting sites they have not told you about, talk to them about your concern. As a backup, you could look at your child’s internet browsing history — but this should be a last resort. The aim is to establish trust and open dialogue.
- Try to be aware of who they socialise with in the real world and who they know only in the virtual world.
Build an open trusting relationship
- Keep communication open and calm so they know they can come to you when someone is asking them to do something that does not feel right.
- They especially need to feel comfortable about telling you if they have done something they regret and someone is pressuring them as a result.
Help your child to protect their privacy
- Guide your child to use their privacy settings on social media sites to restrict their online information to known friends only. Advice on privacy settings is available in the eSafety Guide.
- Encourage them to use only a first name or nickname to identify themselves in online chat and on social media, and never to disclose their phone number, address or school.
- Explain that they should not send photographs of themselves that clearly show their identity.
- For younger children, ask them not to post or text images or videos without your permission.
- Explore our guide to privacy for parents and carers.
Teach your child to be alert to signs of inappropriate contact
- Help your child recognise signs that an ‘online friend’ may be trying to develop an inappropriate relationship, even if they initially welcomed the contact. See warning signs for your child below.
- Young people may be particularly vulnerable if they are starting to explore their sexuality through their online activities. Check out our advice for parents about online pornography and the hard-to-have conversations.
For more information and advice, included warning signs to look for and what to do if your child is receiving unwanted or inappropriate contact online, visit the eSafety Commissioners page for parents linked HERE.
Until next week, remember; "technology should improve your life...not become your life." - Billy Cox
Cheers, Mrs Simms
Uniform Shop News
The Uniform Shop is fully stocked with Winter Uniforms. Opening times are Tuesday 8.30 to 9.15am & Thursday 3.00 to 3.45pm.
If preferred you can complete an order form and either send in or email to office@spmildura.catholic.edu.au or phone the office 5023 4567. Maria will send home your order with your child.
Hands Up Mallee
Unfortunately, next week (Monday 1st – Friday 5th August), there will be no Walking Club or Breakfast Club for the whole week. For the next couple of weeks (Friday 29th July & Friday 5th August), the lunchtime riding of bikes/scooters on the basketball court will not be available. We would still love to see the students riding/scooting to school though to assist them reach their target of 60 minutes physical activity a day.
Apologies for any inconvenience that this may cause.
This week during Breakfast Club, the students have had the opportunity to try some yummy new savoury muffins that have been baked in our new oven. They came straight out of the oven in time for Breakfast Club and were a nice warm treat for the students and were very well received by the students!
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