Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you for your wonderful support of the Parent Information sessions and Pancake Tuesday events. Your positive attendance demonstrated your willingness and enthusiasm to work with our staff and ensure your child receives the best possible outcomes from the partnerships we develop.

The Lenten Season has commenced, and during this time, Catholics are called into prayer, fasting and almsgiving; building our relationship with God through thinking about our own actions and how we can contribute to the lives of others. 

Our Welcome & Investiture Mass was an opportunity to gather and acknowledge the journey and commitment of our Year 6 leaders as they accept their Student Leadership roles for 2024. We are looking forward to working with this group to ensure they grow in their capacity to lead among their fellow students.

Teachers will soon be recording the Reading, Writing and Maths goals for your child in Compass Insights and inviting you to a 15minute Parent, Student & Teacher Goal Setting Conversation through Compass Conferences. During the conversation you will discuss the evidence that led to the development of the goal, why the student and teacher believe this goal is important, and make a commitment to the strategy or strategies that will be used to support your child to achieve the goal over the next 10 weeks. Where the strategy is not working, the teacher and student may revisit other ideas that came up through your conversation and the change will be recorded in Compass for your information. Sometimes, the goal is achieved early and a new goal might be set. Your knowledge and engagement in this process is supportive of your child's academic achievement. The goal and teacher feedback is then recorded in Compass Insights midway through Term 2 and appears at the end of your child's Semester 1 Student Report. 

Road safety is important all of the time but I think that the start of every year, it is a good time to think about the way we move around the school zones. You know your children and what they are capable of, and therefore make decisions about how they travel to and from school. Please make sure your child's teacher is aware in writing of your wishes. For example, if your child is allowed to walk or ride home on their own, please send a note or email to your child's teacher advising them of this fact. Our staff do their best to ensure students are leaving the school safely and we roster a member of staff to walk the students across the Cross Street roundabout to the YMCA side of the road. This is an extremely busy time and we ask that you remind your child to stay behind the teacher at all times to avoid an accident. Parents are required to get out of their cars to collect students from our school in the afternoon and we prefer if this happens from the back Carawa Street gate due to the traffic on Lake Street. It is all about keeping your children safe.

Hope the coming fortnight is filled with blessings,

Brooke Stephens

St Clare’s High School is hosting our Year 7, 2025 Open Afternoon on 6 March 2024.  Registration will be from 3.45pm and school tours will commence at 4pm. 

The afternoon begins with student led tours of the school facilities and you will have an opportunity to meet with members of staff.

Please join us at the Open Afternoon if you are interested in enrolling your child at St Clare’s.

Thank you

Tony McCudden

Principal - St Clare’s High School

NAPLAN

NAPLAN testing will be held across the nation from Wednesday March 13th to Friday March 22nd. HNS students in years 3 and 5 will sit the tests during this time.

An information letter was distributed on COMPASS earlier this week.

Dio Swimming

On Tuesday, Ms McKinnon and I will head to Newcastle as Team Managers for the Manning Region team at the Diocesan Carnival at the Forum pool. Goiod luck to all our HNS competitors!

SRC

Yesterday, we held our first SRC meeting for 2024.

We started with an Acknowledgement to Country, a prayer and worked on our meeting norms. The students will create posters of these over the next fortnight.

The children were asked to reflect on the promises they made in their election speeches in 2023. We then completed an activity called "My Perfect School." Students had to draw or list all the things that would make their time at HNS perfect. The conversation had to be steered towards the fact that as students, the job is to learn. 

We began to look at some focus areas for our work in 2024 and discussed how the Teams model will look for 2024. Our next meeting will be in Week 6.

PBL

Our focus behaviour for the past fortnight iwas "I Wear my School Uniform with Pride." Students wear given surfboard tokens when "caught" wearing the correct uniform.

The Class Awards for this week went to:

Edie Loy in 4Q received her 60 surfboard tokens and was awarded a Principal's Award and a silver badge. Congratulations Edie!

Our focus for the next fortnight will be "I can Listen to the Teacher."

The Season of Lent

The season of Lent began last Wednesday and concludes on Easter Sunday, with the resurrection of Jesus. Fr John encouraged all our students over the next 40 days to pray more, give up something or take on acts of daily kindeness and to almsgive (donate money to Project Compassion).

Project Compassion Boxes are in each classroom. If your child suggests they go without a treat but offer the money that would have been spent for the treat to go to Project Compssion can you support them. Any coin value would be appreciated.

Caritas Australia deeply appreciates our school's generous contributions, along with our staff and students dedicating time and energy to support Project Compassion 2024. During whole school assemblies in the hall of a Friday, children watch clips of people who are being aided across the world by Caritas Australia with the money raised by Project Compassion. Our students in these assemblies and in their classrooms once informed of the world's most vunerable people, want to address the challenges of poverty- driving lasting change for a better tomorrow. Thank you for your support to make a better tomorrow for those in vunerable communities in Australia and overseas. 

To find out more about Project Compassion go to:

Welcoming Mass/ Commissioning and Investiture of Leaders

Thank you to parents, carers and friends who joined with Holy Name staff and students to celebrate our opening Welcome School Mass for 2024. This was Fr John's first opportunity to celebrate mass with the whole school. Thank you Fr John for your warm welcome and inclusion of students and staff to the Forster Tuncurry Parish community. 

Congratulations to our Yr 6 student leaders, who pledged their commitment to Belonging, Learning and Serving in His Holy Name. We are very proud of our student leadership team and look forward to seeing and hearing from them in the newsletters to come.

Staff Religious Education and Spiritual Formation

Staff at Holy Name each year are invited to take up the opportunity to engage in ongoing learning in the Religious Education Encounter pegagogy and Faith and Spiritual formation. The Catholic Schools Office's Work, Teach and Lead Policy, aims to assist empoyees to access programs which will enable staff to achieve and maintain their appropriate accreditation. Throughout the year teachers will attend a School Formation day, specific programs such as The Catholic Educator and Retreats to maintain ongoing currency of accrediatation for the level appropriate to their position. 

I will keep you up to date as our staff prepare and participate in this ongoing professional and spiritual formation.

Genevieve Williamson

Religious Education Coordinator

We hope that you enjoy learning a few fun facts about our staff members and encourage you say hello and welcome Mrs Harrison, Mrs Allport and Mrs Went if you see them at school or out in community. 

Enjoy the last week of Summer!

Mrs Suzie Monks

Primary Coordinator

Breakfast Club

Breakfast Club is always a wonderful hive of activity. Running twice a week, Monday’s is toast and milo and Wednesday’s we have beautiful fresh fruit to offer to our students. A huge shout out and thank you to Catholic Care who support both mornings by providing bread and fruit for our students. Our Mini Vinnies team are also a fantastic support and many of them are already doing ‘good works’ by serving the students. 

Tobwabba Breakfast Club

Tobwabba Breakfast Club is a great community initiative supported by Catholic Care, PCYC , Manning Great Lakes Police and Home and Place. It runs every fortnight and the next breakfast is Friday March 1st from 7.30am. It has been wonderful to see some of our Holy Name students having a yummy breakfast and packing their lunchboxes for school. 

Mini Vinnies 

Our Mini Vinnies team met this week and once again our meeting was full of action. Mrs Banham taught students to make palm crosses. These will be delivered to classroom prayer spaces and will become next year’s ashes for Ash Wednesday. The students worked together and listened carefully to make the crosses. 

Our Mini Vinnies team also started planning for Wellbeing Week, traditionally our Mini Vinnies team wow the school with some Flash Mobs in Wellbeing Week, there was much excitement and discussion around this at our meeting which is exciting to see. Our team have also set to work making and creating some secret squirrel business for Wellbeing Week, more on that soon! 

Art Club

This term Art Club is open every first lunch for students to come and create. Students have been making. Art Club is a quieter space for students to still enjoy outside time and a creative environment. Art Club has been beading over the past two weeks, with students making bracelets. Beading is a great activity to encourage fine motor skills, its is also a lovely mindfulness practice. Students have been also practicing patience and persistence as they learn the beads can slip and spill very quickly. We love incidental learning, patience and persistence are lifelong skills and beading has been teaching us this week! 

Heart to Heart 

Heart to Heart has begun again at Holy Name. This term our Heart to Heart program is being led by Master Artist Lara Went. Lara has designed the spectacular Aboriginal artwork that our Year 5 girls will be creating. Lots of excitement, and a few nerves, were bouncing around last week as our Year 5 girls commenced their Heart to Heart journey.  Once we settled into our art space Lara, Crystal and Mrs Banham guided the girls through an afternoon of mindful art making. We are already so proud of their creativity and their artworks. This week we started by covering the canvas in shades of blue and aqua. We also spent some time chatting, getting to know each other, participating in a mindfulness activity and making a heart bracelet to signify the beginning of our Heart to Heart journey together. We are so excited to be able to offer this program at Holy Name once again. This term the program runs in and after school so that students maximise their learning in class time but also participate in a creative extracurricular activity. We are looking forward to sharing the girls artworks with you as they progress. 

Wellbeing - https://about.au.reachout.com/home

Anonymous and confidential, ReachOut is a safe place where young people can openly express themselves, get a deeper understanding and perspective on what’s happening in their lives, connect with people who will provide judgement-free support, and build the resilience to manage their challenges now and in the future.

Designed with – and specifically for – young people, ReachOut is 100% online, anonymous and confidential, and lets young people connect on their terms. From one-to-one peer support and moderated online communities, to tips, stories and resources, ReachOut offers a wide range of support options that allow young people to engage in the ways they want to, when they want to.

Kristie Banham

Pastoral Care Worker