Newsletter 2022/24 ~ 19 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

On Monday, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  On this Feast, Catholics traditionally celebrate Mary going to heaven. The tradition is that 'God took Mary, body and soul, to heaven after her life on earth had come to an end'.

Father in heaven, all creation rightly gives you praise,

for all life and all holiness come from you.

In the plan of your wisdom she who bore the Christ in her womb

was raised body and soul in glory to be with him in heaven.

May we follow her example in reflecting your holiness

and join in her hymn of endless love and praise.

We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen

Following our Circuit Breaker Long Weekend, it was wonderful to have almost 100% of children back at school this week. Given the number of absences over the previous two weeks, to have full classes again has certainly been something worth celebrating.

Whilst it was disappointing that the athletics had to be postponed yesterday, we now look forward to our students competing next Thursday instead.

I’m also looking forward to our Book Week celebrations next week. Please note that we have changed the day from Thursday 25 to Tuesday 23 August due to the change of day for the Athletics.  More details below.

It has been very disturbing to be made aware of ill-informed and incorrect negative commentary in the public arena recently, including on social media, regarding our school.  Collectively we have been working together to grow our school and it is disheartening to us all if some have their own agendas which damage the standing we have been establishing in the local community.

I encourage members of our school community to contact me if they have any concerns regarding school-related issues to ensure that they have the facts, rather than spreading false innuendo.  As always, parents are most welcome to come in and speak with me at a mutually convenient time.

CURRENT & RECENT EVENTS

School Wide Positive Behaviour 

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.

Kaw Mu (MacKillop) and Marnie (Joseph) were randomly drawn from the names listed for Respect and Responsibility respectively.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Book Week

Book Week will be celebrated next week.  This year’s theme is Dreaming with eyes open.  Children are invited to come to school dressed in their pyjamas or something related to the Book Week theme on Tuesday 23 August.

Please note that this date has changed due to the Athletics on Thursday.

Soccer

Students in Years 3 & 4 have been invited to participate in a game of soccer with the Nhill Lutheran School Year 3 & 4 students next Wednesday, 24 August.  We will be leaving straight after lunch and will return by 3 o’clock.  Permission notes have been issued through PAM, and are due by next Monday.

Athletics

Next Thursday our athletics team will compete in the WWSSA Athletics at Warracknabeal.  This is the re-scheduled date, following postponement of yesterday’s event due to the wet course.

Father's Day

We will be celebrating our dads on Friday 2 September with a hot dog lunch and a game of Tee-Ball involving dads and students.  Dads and father-figures will be invited to come along for the afternoon's activities. 

Invitations will be forwarded next week.

Book Club Issue 6 OUT NOW!

This is the last issue before Term 3 ends.  Orders are due by the end of August.

Catholic School Parents Victoria

The CSPV Connect newsletter and CSPV Parent Connect flyers are provided so parents can access the information via the links easily.

In this August issue we have included:

• An invitation for Catholic school parents to a webinar 'Many Talents, One VCE' to be hosted by VCAA/Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority to share the changes to the VCE and senior secondary pathways. CSPV have partnered with VCAA and DET to bring this webinar to Catholic school parent exclusively on 25th and 30th August. We would love to see as many parents on the webinar as possible for this important free event. A full page flyer for your newsletter is also attached to this email.
• access to a free video from SchoolTV on building children's confidence and resilience
• final opportunity to contribute to the national Catholic education parent voice for the CSPA Wellbeing Survey closing on 31st August
• Parent toolkits from the Allannah and Madeleine Foundation to support children who are impacted by bullying online to continue to educate them at home to speak up about bullying
• invitation for you to nominate a CSPV parent representative for your school or a parent member for CSPV in your diocese
• invitation to share stories related to 'Cry of the Earth' and parent engagement in children's learning about the environment in our Catholic learning communities.

We hope you enjoy the information we share.

Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project

The Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project, a project lead by Sr Brigid Arthur, is currently collecting donations of small toiletry items that have been collected from hotels (shampoo, conditioner, soap, body wash).  These items are then provided to refugees and asylum seekers.

If you have items that you are happy to donate, these can be dropped in to the box in the front foyer at school.

Something so little to us can make a big difference to someone else.

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

Mrs Creek

It is great to welcome back most of my class this week. I am revising a few elements this week along with our new mathematics focus of multiplication. By the end of this week, we will have discussed how skip counting is linked to multiplication. If you can skip count by 2’s, 5’s or 10’s then you can start to understand multiplication. Our patterned writing story for this week is called ‘Jeremy’ by Chris Faille. As we ‘tuned in to the topic’, the students had lots to say about ‘kookaburras’, especially being able to mimic their sounds. A few remembered the song, ‘kookaburra sits in the old gum tree’. You might too! Keep up your daily reading routines, as all students are showing more confidence.

Middle Class

Miss Williams

This week in Art we began to make our robots. There was lots of glueing and sticking happening and a giant mess of cardboard throughout the classroom. We were even lucky enough to have time in Integrated Studies to begin to paint them and get extra features put on.

In Reading this week we have been working on the book ‘Robot Explorers.’ It’s a wonderful non-fiction book about all the different ways robots are used in space. We have been looking at the words in the text and how they are written to create interest rather than repeating the same sentence structure over and over again.

In Writing this week we have been imitating and creating sentences and paragraphs about different animals and people to create our own information texts. We are working on improving the information texts that we created last term to create engaging and interesting pieces of work that people want to read. We had discussions about the ways in which we can achieve this and students have used some great sentence starters.

For Maths we continued to work on data collection and interpretation, by collecting data (asking questions), creating tally marks, and then using this data to create different types of graphs. The graphs enable us to answer questions about the data such as ‘What is the most popular?’ or ‘What is the least popular?’.

In Religion we have been learning about parables from the bible which show different ways that people have been called. We also spent some time with the Junior class teaching them about Mary MacKillop and her importance for our school.

Senior Class

by Declan

On Thursday I played on the playground on the flying fox. It rained so we went inside, we played bobs and statues and almost everyone joined in. 

by Sophie

I’m going to Warracknabeal for athletics and I will compete in the 200m, 100m, long jump, discus and the relay. It got postponed to next Thursday due to the wet oval. Let’s hope it’s dry next Thursday.  

by Jody

In Science we are working on our Science Week experiments. My group is doing invisible glass. We are learning about refraction which makes glass invisible. 

by AJ

In Maths we’ve been learning fractions which are very hard. 

by Stella, Sienna and Jet

We have been learning about poverty in Integrated Studies. We have learned that many people live in poverty. In Writing we have been researching and writing a report on bad habits like alcohol, smoking and drugs. They are bad for our health.

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 Xavier with a Little Joey award.

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 - Tom

 75 nights - Declan, Hser Wah, Isabella

100 nights - David, Hannah G.

125 nights - Xavier

150 nights - Claire

175 nights - Olive, Lexi

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Important Dates and Reminders

Term Dates

Term 3 11 July to 16 September

Term 4   3 October to 20 December

School Calendar

*new/changed information

AUGUST

Mon-Fri 22-16

Book Week

Tuesday 23

Dress Up Day

Wednesday 24

Yrs 3 & 4 Soccer versus Nhill Lutheran School

Thursday 25

WWSSA Athletics Warracknabeal 

SEPTEMBER

Friday 2

Father's Day celebrations - tbc

Monday 12

F-2 Athletics

Wednesday 15

Last Day Term 3 for students- dismissal time 3.15pm

Thursday 16

Student free day - staff professional development

Friday 17

Student free day - staff professional development

OCTOBER

Monday 3

First day Term 4

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

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