Term 2 Week 2 2022

Principal's Message

‘We do whatever it takes to lead the way in Love, Learning, Faith, School Spirit, Sport & Community’.

Dear families and friends,

Staff Shortages:  We are experiencing a staff shortage and relief teacher shortage at the moment due to illness.  Staff and I have canceled any off site professional learning to ensure we have all hands on deck.

SMP 2022 Beef Week Theme:  We celebrate 40 years of Beef Week in 2022. The Beef Week theme is open this year from the last 40 years of themes. This includes:  Create Your Own Theme, An Australian Event and Local Heroes. So our school has taken from  a mix of these:

                          ‘A tribute to those that helped during the devastation of the recent flooding’ 

The students can choose from the following to dress up as:

• The Tinnie Brigade
• The Australian Defense Force
• The Hay Truckers
• The Helicopter Pilots
• The Rural Fire Service
• SES
• The Vets
• BlazeAid

The students will dress up in this theme on Friday, 27 May. We will have a big assembly at the Relihan Centre from 9.00am onwards.  You are all welcome.  The students are then very welcome to wear their costume for the Beef Week Parade on Saturday 28 May.

Thank you:  It was another great turnout to pay our respect and gratitude on ANZAC Day. Thank you for instilling the importance of this in your children. We will never forget them! Big thank you to the Harris Family, Willow and Jan Andrews for helping set up our lanterns

Open Night: Open Night was also a successful night in which you got to see what your child has been up to. Thank you for celebrating this with us.

Student Led Conferences: This is a great opportunity to know exactly how your child is doing at school discussing areas of strength and goal in further developing their academic growth. These take place next Monday and Tuesday nights.

My Principal Goal for 2022:  To ensure our Focus Areas & Vision drives me and our school - continue to create Structures & Practices that will enable success.

Desired Results:

• Learning Results Improve in English & Mathematics
• Community Deeply Value Us
• Staff grow in their roles
• Kids love our school

Take care

John O’Brien

Assistant Principal's News - Mission

For the Diary:

Beef Week Cup - Thursday 26 May

Beef Week Friday - Friday 27 May

Student Led Conferences - Monday 9 & Tuesday 10 May

Student of the Month Assemblies - Friday 3 June & Thursday 30 June

Sacrament of Confirmation (Year 3) - Tuesday 7 June

Athletics Carnival - Friday 17 June

“Toolkit” Lessons

During Weeks 1-7 in Term 2, our whole school will be focusing on building their personal toolkits by learning about resilience and strategies to support them with being resilient. It would be great if you could follow up with your children at home and ask them about this as well as building on some of the strategies the kids have learnt at home.  All of our teachers adjust and differentiate the language and learning content to make it age appropriate and relevant to their mandated curriculum they have to teach.

The focus areas will be:

Week 1 - What is resilience? 

The first lesson in the curriculum helps students to explore what resilience is and isn’t, and to arrive at an understanding of resilience that is personally relevant and meaningful.

Week 2 - Helpful and Unhelpful thinking

A core objective is for students to understand that sometimes their thinking supports resilience, helping them to pursue their goals with courage and determination, and sometimes it undermines resilience, preventing them from acting in ways that are important to them.

Week 3 - Mind Hooks (Me, Them, Always and Everything) 

Week 4 - Defusion 

Week 5 - Committed action (because it is worth it) 

Week 6 - Acceptance (As I am)  

Week 7 - Hope for future pathways 

Sacrament of Confirmation

Year 3 - Tuesday 7 June.  Notes detailing important dates etc will be sent home early next week. 

Sacrament of First Communion

Year 4 - Sunday 19 June. Notes for those children involved will be sent home in the next few weeks.

Youth Group - ‘ThreeSixTeen’

This term, St Mary’s Catholic College has offered to run an after school youth group at the church for our Years 3-6 students that focuses on bringing kids together for fun, food and understanding about God in their lives. The program is called “Three SixTeen” and will be coordinated by College teacher Mahaila Day and supported by youth ministry officers and high school students. The idea of the session is for students to have lots of fun and participate in enjoyable activities. 

ThreeSixTeen will be held 3 times in Term 2 after school from 3:30pm - 5:00pm on Friday 13 May, Friday 3 June and Friday 24 June.  To support the running of this program, a teacher from our school would collect the students after school on the Friday, walk them to the church and stay until the end of the session. Parents would be required to pick their child up from the church at 5.00pm.

If your child would like to participate in this program, please send Mr Irvine an email. sam.irvine@lism.catholic.edu.au 

Student Led Conferences

A reminder to make your booking via the website https://www.schoolinterviews.com.au. Please check the school app and the note that went home for additional details. 

SMP Casino RSM Sporting Scholarships

Once again with the support of the Casino RSM Club, we would like to offer our students the opportunity to apply for a sporting scholarship for 2022. These sporting scholarships would provide a selected number of students with financial assistance to achieve higher representative selection and honours. These sporting scholarships are exclusive to St.Mary’s Primary School and only available to students attending the school in Years 3-6.  Application forms are available on the app and school website.  Applications are due by Friday 13 May.

Sam Irvine
Assistant Principal Mission

Assistant Principal's News Teaching & Learning

Student Led Conferences

A Student Led Conference is a meeting where a student shares their current learning with their family members and identifies the next step in their learning. The structure of these conferences builds students’ sense of responsibility and accountability for their own learning, and helps to build a strong relationship between home and school. 

We will be holding Student Led Conferences this year, in line with a focus at SMP around ensuring students understand what they are learning, how they are going with this, how they know they have been successful and what they need to do to continue their learning journey. 

We have also asked parents to identify “2 Stars and a Wish” for each child, to assist in building a strong relationship between home and school, and to facilitate strong learning conversations between parents and children. Please have these completed and returned to school BEFORE the conference. 

You should have received a note oultining the booking process for these conferences. If you are yet to receive this, please contact the school for a replacement. Thank you

NAPLAN

Next week our Year 3 and Year 5 students will be taking part in the NAPLAN assessments. NAPLAN will assess our students skills in Writing, Numeracy, Grammar and Punctuation, Reading and Spelling. These will occur across three days, with catch up assessments available in the following week for any students who have missed a test.  

All of Year 5 Assessments will be completed online using school Chromebooks. Year 3 Writing will be competed on paper, with the rest being online assessments. 

Our testing timetable is: 

Tuesday 10/5 - 9.20am:  Writing:   Year 3 for 40 minutes + Year 5 for 42 minutes 

Wednesday 11/5 - 9.20am:  Reading:  Year 3 for 40 minutes + Year 5 for 42 minutes

 Wednesday 11/5 - 12.00pm:  Conventions of Language:  Yr 3 for 45 minutes + Yr 5 for 45 minutes

Thursday 12/5 - 9.20am:  Numeracy:  Year 3 for 45 minutes + Year 5 for 50 minutes

Friday 13/5:  Catch Up Day

Please see the below attached flyer for more information.

Felicity Wilde

AP Teaching & Learning

Sport News

All Stars Race

Save the Date! After being postponed last term we are going to hold our All Stars Race on the 20 May at 1.45pm in our school grounds.  All students who finished first in their age race at our school cross country automatically qualify for our All Stars Race.  Parents are more than welcome to come and cheer on their children.

Sporting Scholarships

We would like to offer our students the opportunity to gain school sporting scholarships for 2022 valued at $500 each. These have been kindly donated once again from the Casino RSM Club.

Please find the relevant forms on our school app to complete.  The completed forms and supported documentation are to be lodged by Friday 13 May.  Please return via email to Sam Irvine - sam.irvine@lism.catholic.edu.au

Zone Cross Country

Congratulations to all the students who participated in the Zone Cross Country in Alstonville. After several false starts we managed to have it run, in which all St Mary’s students did an extremely good job in competing. 

NSWCPS Swimming

A huge congratulations to Tom McCormack, Harper Myers, Emma Green, Kayla Patch and Laura Lockwood, who participated in the NSWCPS Swimming Carnival last term. It is such an amazing result to have 5 swimmers from SMP representing Polding on the big stage! This is an incredible achievement, well done to you all!

Athletics Carnival

Friday, 17 June at QEII.  Any parent who would like to assist on the day can email their availability to brendan.mitchell@lism.catholic.edu.au 

From Week 2 this term our main focus is the preparation and running of the Athletics Carnival which will be held on Friday, 17  June (Week 8). The Field Event Finals (long jump and shot put) will be held at the carnival, like previous years. 

Term 2 Sport Days  

• Kindergarten: Thursday 12.45pm – 1.45pm
• Stage 1 - Years 1 + 2: Friday 11.45am – 12.45pm 
• Stage 2 - Years 3 + 4 : Thursday 2.10pm – 3.10pm 
• Stage 3 - Years 5 + 6: Friday 12.45pm – 1.45pm
• Beef Week (Week 5)
  

Brendan Mitchell

Sports Co-ordinator 

Birthdays

Happy birthday to Jay Urquhart Purdon  Amaya Ind Ian Dias Mila Farr Laleena Mason-Fry Stella Bahadori Angelina Nuccio Rocco Smith Dustin Gill Audrey Cameron Florence Cameron Cooper Westbury Samantha Bernal Jazmin Henderson      Kobie Moore Annabelle Dean Finnan Martin Anna Auckram Olivia Bunker Jed Handford Popi McLennan Harvey Llewellyn Lucas Myers Allora Gould Bryson McElwaine Henry Serone Indiana Shephard Payten McCormick-Stephen Cody Morgan Charlotte Metcalfe  Samuel Abnett  Raylan Botfield  Joshua Keen  Makaylah Morgan      Dominic Castle Charlotte Russo Emilia Melindo Marcos Barber Mitchell Cooling      Damian Keating and Jack Richards who celebrated their birthday in April.   Happy birthday to James Murray Rachael Johnston Indigo McClelland Xavier Opryszko Leo Campbell Henry Flynn Riley Formaggin Darcie Reddell Alissa Benn Macie Cummins Nicholas Ewart and Lachlan Rippon who recently celebrated their birthday, and to Ashton Leadley and Jett Scherf who celebrate tomorrow.

Open Night

Please take a look around our classrooms to see the hard work we have been doing over the last term. 

These 360° images are interactive, you are able to move them around to see the entire classroom. 

Click here to see these pictures.