Newsletter 2022/22 ~ 5 August 2022

As partners in Catholic Education and open to God’s presence, we pursue the fullness of life for all.

St. Patrick’s School is committed to the safety and wellbeing of all students.

We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Victoria and pay respect to the ongoing living cultures of First Peoples. 

This newsletter comes to you from the lands of the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagalk Nations.

From the Principal

It has been a very big two weeks since our last newsletter.  We’ve had the highs of our Grandparents & Elderly People’s Day, combined with our visit from Meerkat Productions and their presentation of the story Stellarphant, to the lows of illnesses, coughs and colds, and positive COVID tests amongst staff and students.

Once again I thank everyone for their vigilance in continuing to conduct Rapid Antigen Tests at home.  As you would be aware, the next lot of kits were sent home this week.  The Government has stated that they will continue to provide these for students three times per term and so the next round of kits will be sent home later this month.  As has been previously stated, if families require extra kits between cycles, please feel free to contact us at school. 

I have received some lovely feedback from some of our visitors from last week following our Grandparents & Elderly People’s Day.

“The production was so good.  Had all the children and grandparents engaged.  Was a lovely morning.”   Coralie Koop

“It was really good.  Very engaging.  The kids were responsive too.  Never give up on your dreams was the theme but they also spoke to the kids afterwards.  Lovely morning, the school does such a good job to inspire kids.”  Wendy Harvey

“We were so thrilled to be invited to share the Grandparents Day with all the well behaved St Pats students, the welcome hugs on arrival made us feel welcome & wanted. The number present emphasised the love & interest, we as grandparents have for our grandies. We couldn’t help but be swept up in the story, by the enthusiasm of the actors presenting the show, and nor could the kids as they listened in an attentive & respectful manner throughout. Many enjoyed participating in it as well which added to their interest. It wasn’t long before we too were lost in the story of ‘how to send an elephant into space’.  The play was not simply an entertaining fill in for the kids, but the story conveyed an important message for young & old. Anything is possible if you try hard enough, believe in yourself & never give up.

After the play we wandered over to the school where the kids proudly showed off their school spaces, so beautifully presented, and considerably different to our school days. They were also keen to share their ‘space’ research with us which was an ongoing theme around the play. This, of course, all done on their laptops (tablets??) . A very generous morning tea was then shared by all. Thank you to all at St Patrick’s for allowing us to share such an enjoyable, insightful day with you all!”   John and Margaret Millington

I also met up with Kim Gibson from The Gallery and she is very impressed with the efforts of our children with the decorated doors that are on display in the main street window.  Well done to everyone on your efforts with these.

I also wish to publicly thank the staff who did an excellent job of looking after the school and our children during my absence last week.  Their ongoing support and professionalism is always greatly appreciated.

CURRENT & RECENT EVENTS

Meerkat Performance & Grandparents Day

Last Monday Meerkat Productions visited the school and performed their adaptation of Stellarphant to a captive audience of students, staff and grandparents/special people. Meerkat Productions specialise in adapting children’s literature for the stage; creating fresh and vibrant productions which prompt discussion and debate with students. Stellarphant is a CBCA short-listed book of the year in the Picture Book category. The performance was thoroughly entertaining and enjoyed by all. We are grateful that this company is able to visit Nhill annually to entertain us, with many important themes and messages and opportunities to participate. After the performance our visitors spent some time in the classroom creating rockets, and enjoyed a cuppa and chat.

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Our Diocesan Community

Edition 67 July 2022 - The aim of Our Diocesan Community is to provide a selection of initiatives, stories and pictures showing the richness and diversity of life in the communities of the parishes, schools and agencies of the diocese.

St Pat’s Nhill features on page 16.

A hardcopy is available in the school foyer, or click this link to read it online.

Gallery Central - Doors Exhibition

Call into Gallery Central during August to view their Doors exhibition - including the four doors created by St Patrick’s students and staff.

Revised CECV Statement of Commitment to Child Safety

A revised CECV Statement of Commitment to Child Safety, to reflect the new Child Safe Standards and Ministerial Order No. 1359, has been published on the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria Ltd (CECV) website www.cecv.catholic.edu.au under Our Schools / Child Safety.  This document is also published on the school website.

Welcome Fr Matthew Restall

Following the recent ordination to the Priesthood of Fr. Matt Restall, Bishop Paul announced that Fr Jim has been appointed to the Cathedral in Ballarat and Fr Matt to our St Paul VI Parish.

We warmly welcome Fr Matt in his appointment to St Paul VI Parish and to St Patrick’s School.  We look forward to seeing him at our school in the next few weeks and we pray that it will be a journey of blessing and joy for Fr Matt amongst us.

SWPBS

During play times, staff have been monitoring for students demonstrating aspects of Respect, Responsibility and Safety within the school yard.  Names were collated and shared during yesterday’s assembly.  A draw then took place from the names within each category and that student’s House received a token for their House jar.  The House with the most tokens later in the year will be rewarded.

Congratulations to the following children who were recognised for their actions around the school over the past week.

Tessa (MacKillop), Kaw Mu (MacKillop) and Claire (Joseph) were drawn out of the names for Respect, Responsibility and Safety respectively.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Social Justice Sunday

Each year, the Australian Catholic Bishops release a major social justice statement for Social Justice Sunday. The statements encourage the Catholic community to reflect and act on social, economic and ecological issues. They remind us of the social dimension of the mission of the Church.

The Church in Australia marks Social Justice Sunday on August 28.

The title of the 2022-23 Statement is Respect: Confronting Violence and Abuse. It addresses the scourge of family and domestic violence in Australian society and the impact it has on our communities. It invites us all to nurture relationships marked by equality and reciprocity rather than domination and violence, respect and freedom rather than coercion and control.

The Statement can be found online at www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au.

Circuit Breaker Long Weekend

A reminder that we have School Closure Days on Friday 12 August and Monday 15 August.  You will recall that a letter from the Executive Director of Catholic Education Ballarat, Mr Tom Sexton, was distributed with the students’ reports at the end of Term 2.

In part, the letter stated,

We continue to experience high levels of COVID in Victoria, with cases currently around 8000 per day. Influenza cases are also rising rapidly and are greater than pre-pandemic levels.  Schools continue to face high levels of illness as winter progresses. School communities face the possibility of peak influenza and COVID infections occurring in late winter or early spring - with the August and September period being the historical time of greatest illness within the community (Doherty Institute and FluTracking). 

 As we move into the second half of the year, we are seeking to be proactive in the interests of students, families and staff by creating a planned opportunity to pause next term. We appreciate that there may be some concern about lost learning time with the inclusion of a brief pause in Term 3, but we know that healthy educational communities optimise learning by being deliberate about wellbeing and planning proactively.  

We are currently seeing the effects of these illnesses within our own community and it is hoped that this upcoming Circuit Breaker weekend will provide an opportunity to ‘recharge the batteries’ for students and staff alike.

Sunday's Gospel Reflection

Luke: 12:13-21

In the Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus tells a parable about human greed and what God thinks about that. Jesus says that what we have on Earth is not important. We must make our souls rich in the judgement of God.

It means that our money and possessions are not important. We must never be greedy.  We must be thankful and share what we have. Only then will our souls be judged good enough, so that we might be able to get to Heaven.

Our Josephite Heritage

The Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, often called the "Josephites" or "Brown Joeys", were founded in Penola, South Australia, in 1866 by Mary MacKillop and the Rev. Julian Tenison Woods. In 1949, three Josephite sisters arrived in Nhill to open St Patrick’s School. In 1978, the Sisters of St Joseph informed the Nhill Parish that they would no longer be able to maintain their role within the school.

We endeavour to honour our Josephite heritage through the regular presentation of the Little Joey awards at our assemblies. In support of this we also include a reflection from Mary MacKillop on our newsletter each week.

Classroom and Student News

Junior Class

Week 3

What an exciting start to the week we enjoyed with grandparents enjoying the Meerkat play performance of Stellarphant. The students came back into class and constructed space rockets with Ello. They have lots of imagination. Our shared story focus continues the theme of fairy tales with Little Red Riding Hood. And our patterned writing connects us to the story Hunwick’s Egg by Mem Fox. Even though Hunwick had guessed it was not an egg but a beautiful stone, he still found it to be a friend. In Religion, we are following the life of Jesus as a young boy. Jesus was able to pray and be with his parents as they travelled to Jerusalem for special times. They heard the stories told there of the people of God in the synagogue (like a church).

Week 4

This week is the first of our information texts as a shared big book weekly focus. It is titled My Healthy Body by Mike Ingram. Each page describes how our body functions, from our brain to bones, helping us to think and act. It has provided us with varied points to discuss.  As this is also our time to explore graphs and gather data in mathematics, we created data on our food choices for growing healthy bones, such as milk, yoghurt, cereal as well as fish. A class favourite song has been Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. We have used Godly play with our flannelette scenes and figures to experience how Jesus as a young boy went to Jerusalem for the Passover. At this early age, he was about his Father’s business, spending time in the temple with the priests.

Middle Class

Week 3

We had a wonderful time on Monday getting to view Meerkat production’s adaptation of Stellarphant by James Foley. Nile was lucky and got chosen to join in the play and help out the actors Steve and Crystal. Miss Williams even got a role as Big Scary Boss and she tried to play her role all day even though no one in the class thought she was scary! When we returned to class we were excited to have grandparents come through and show them what we have been working on and work on Lego rockets with them.

In reading and writing we are once again following a scaffolding literacy cycle with the book How to Make a Bird. We have been looking at how we can use technical language to inform readers and writers and how we can use this technical language in a narrative way. This will inform us and help us with writing scripts for play which we are putting together for the end of the term.

In Maths we are on our last week of subtraction. We have been working hard to get our knowledge shining through and showing how we can complete subtraction problems in different ways.

This week in Art we reflected on what we saw from Meerkat Productions and brainstormed all the things we can put together to create our own play. We are very excited to put something of our own together. We will be having a focus on Robot in our play to link our learning from Integrated Studies and Science with Mrs Bell into our reading, writing and art lessons. This week we designed some robot props and will be putting them together in the next two weeks. 

Week 4

This week the students in the Middle class have been busy in the absence of Miss Williams. They are very excited for their writing this week looking at procedural texts. The Middle class has been writing how to make fairy bread and have been reminiscing about the time they did the same unit  in the Junior class. Let’s all hope that when making their fairy bread on Friday with a different teacher that their instructions have vastly improved and it’s not as chaotic as two years ago.

In Reading we are focusing on a procedural text Recycling Paper. We have been looking at how to use glossaries, table of contents, chapters, index and pictures and diagrams. Through looking at these we are learning how to more effectively use different types of books and to also understand and use technical language from books as well. The reading this week will hopefully inspire us to work towards completing some recycling as we make our props, costumes and backdrops for our art production.

In Maths, we are spending the week quickly recapping shapes and their features using faces, edges and corners. Next week we will work towards chance and data which will be very useful in gathering opinions about our production to come and working together to make the decisions.

In Art we are continuing to design some robot props and will be putting them together in the next two weeks. We would love to have some donations of cardboard boxes or other recycled items that could be used by the 2/3s to put together their robot.

Senior Class

By Stella and Olive!

This week the Senior Class has been very busy focusing on area and perimeter in Mathematics, Hospitality in Religious Education, and for Art we have been working on the Gallery Central Door Exhibition.  

In Reading and Writing we have been working on the book “Flood”. We have also been learning about similes and metaphors. We learnt that similes use like or as and metaphors are  used to describe things.

In Science  we have been learning about the strength  of paper shapes. We were looking at how many books the shapes could hold.

In sport we had a game of soccer and we all really enjoyed it.

All in all we have had an amazing time, and we would like to thank all the different teachers we have had this week.

Little Joey Awards

This week we continue to acknowledge the significant role of the "Brown Joeys" in the establishment of St Patrick's School, and recognised Hannah E., Hannah G. and Xavier with Little Joey awards.

Our Little Joeys receive a certificate, sticker and a voucher/goods donated by a local business.  We are very grateful for the contributions from our local businesses. 

Reading Achievements

The following students were recognised this week for their reading achievements:

25 nights - Declan, Georgia

50 nights - Declan

 75 nights - Tegan

100 nights - Daniel

150 nights - Olive

175 nights - Lexi, Kelsey, Stella

Important Dates and Reminders

Term Dates

Term 3 11 July to 16 September

Term 4   3 October to 20 December

School Calendar

AUGUST

Friday 12

School Closure (Circuit Breaker Long Weekend)

Monday 15

School Closure (Circuit Breaker Long Weekend)

Thursday 18

West Wimmera Athletics Sports in Warracknabeal

SEPTEMBER

Mon 12

F-2 Athletics

Fri 16

Last Day Term 3 - dismissal time 2.15pm

Reminders

Lunch Orders

Lunch orders should be written onto an envelope with correct money sealed inside.  Please don’t use plastic bags or waxed bags.  The writing wipes off these and the staff at the bakery find it hard to read.

Wimmera Bakery has advised that they have recently reviewed their prices, and the price of some items will increase in the near future.  We will provide an updated price list when this happens.

Parent Access Module (PAM)

We strongly encourage parents to use the Parent Access Module PAM (SIMON Everywhere) to inform us of student absences. These notes can be set in advance (if, for example, you know that your child will be absent a week in the future). Notes written in the diary are for communicating with teachers. Absent notes need to be directed to the office.

Please speak with office staff if you have any questions about PAM.

Simon Everywhere

The Simon Everywhere app delivers instant notifications to parents' mobile phones, delivering the functionality of PAM (SIMON Parent Access Module) in an easy to navigate app.  

We request that all parents please download the Simon Everywhere app, add St Patrick's School, Nhill and login using your existing PAM credentials.  

We will use Simon Everywhere for all important notifications.  

You will be able to manage all your day-to-day school needs from the Simon Everywhere app - notify us of absences, view the lunch orders menu, read the newsletter ...

Please contact the office with any questions.

Bus notes

Parents of bus travelling students please note that Nhill College has requested that any changes to travel arrangements (e.g. if you are picking up your child after school) be notified before 3.00pm on that day.  You can do this by -

• calling our school office 53911575
• sending an email to principal@spnhill.catholic.edu.au or krintoule@spnhill.catholic.edu.au
• use the Bus Change Notification Form on their website - this is a quick and easy process on your mobile phone (hint: add this as a quick link on your phone's home screen)

Remember to follow us on Facebook

Those who are on Facebook are encouraged to follow our page at St Patrick's School, Nhill.  'Like' our page, enjoy our posts, and share them with your friends.  Stay connected through our Social Media page.

Coronavirus information - Term 3 update

Rapid antigen testing

• The Victorian Government is providing up to three further deliveries of rapid antigen tests in Term 3 and again in Term 4 to schools.
• It is recommended that rapid antigen tests are used by students and staff when symptomatic.
• Household contacts are required to test negative using a rapid antigen test on at least 5 out of 7 days if they are attending or working at a school onsite.
• If staff or students receive a positive test result at any time, they must report this through the Department of Health system (a link is provided below) or via the coronavirus hotline at 1800 675 398.
• Students (or their parents) must also report a positive result to their school by phone or written notification; this is so the school can support them, record that they will be absent while in 7-day isolation, and let the rest of the school community know there has been a positive case onsite and that they should monitor for symptoms.
• Students and staff who have tested positive for COVID-19, have completed their 7-day isolation period and are subsequently asymptomatic do not need to undertake surveillance testing for four weeks.

Face masks

• Current advice from the Victorian Government on the wearing of face masks is available (see the link provided below)
• Wearing a face mask can help protect you and those around you. Face masks stop droplets spreading when you talk, cough, sneeze and laugh, which lowers your chance of spreading or catching the virus.
• The advice also strongly recommends the wearing of face masks in indoor settings (noting that exceptions to the recommendation apply to teaching circumstances when clear enunciation or visibility of the mouth is essential).  Further, the Victorian Government is recommending that, through to the end of winter, students aged 8 and over and staff will wear masks when in class.
• Household contacts attending school who are over 8 years of age are required to wear face masks indoors unless they have a valid exception. 
• Everyone including students aged 8 years and above must wear a face mask when travelling on school buses, public transport, taxis or rideshare vehicles.
• If face masks are required, they should be worn for up to four hours and replaced after this time.

Practise good hygiene

• All staff, students and visitors to schools should undertake regular hand hygiene, particularly on arrival to school, before and after eating, after blowing their nose, coughing, sneezing or using the toilet.
• Hand sanitiser is available at entry points to classrooms.
• Sharing of food is not permitted.

Stay home if unwell

• The most important action school communities can take to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19 is to ensure that any unwell staff, parents / carers and students do not attend school sites even with the mildest of symptoms and get tested.

School Advisory Council

Parent Representatives

Helen Cannell

Moo Khu James

Zanther McEldrew

Emily Gladdis

Nathan Wheeler

Appointed Representatives

Ann Munro - Parish

Ex Officio

Mons. Glynn Murphy - Parish Priest

Kingsley Dalgleish - Principal

Next Meeting

Postponed - new date to be confirmed

Our Mission