Dear Parents and Carers,

I am a nana! Natasha and Josh had a baby girl on Thursday morning and mum and Juni are doing really well. Juni is calm and settled so far; let's hope this continues. Everyone told me that I would love being a nana and they were right, there's a special place in our hearts for grandchildren.

P & F Trivia night

The other big event on the calendar is the Parents & Friends Trivia Night in our school hall on Friday 28th June. Be sure to grab some friends for a table or just buy a ticket for yourself and join what promises to be a fun-filled evening.

Tell Them From Me Survey

Don't forget to complete the Tell Them From Me Survey for our school. The links and reminders have been sent home via Compass and See-Saw. If you need the link, please ocntact the school. The information we gain from this survey provides the feedback we need from a parent perspective to continue to improve Holy Name School.

Aspire...and in the Manning

I'm not sure how many families have ever been to see the annual ASPIRE production in Newcastle but if you ever get the chance, make the effort because it is worth it! We generally take a busload of interested primary students to one of the matinees during the week as a way of inspiring them to participate and to showcase the talent that exists within our Diocese of Maitland Catholic schools. This year, we are also fortunate to have one of our own, Nanma Joy, in the cast, and are looking forward to celebrating her talent on our visit.

For a number of years, the Manning Principals have invited the ASPIRE Team to share their gifts with our students in two days of Creative Arts Workshops at St Clare's. This year, we will host the ASPIRE team for 4 days, and from 2025, a full week, providing an opportunity for our students to participate in a mini production at the Manning Entertainment Centre in Taree. This year, students will participate in this event between November 11-14. As in previous years, students will be nominated from each of the Manning schools in Visual Arts, Vocal, Instrumental and Drama. We are very grateful for the supoprt of our Catholic Schools Office in providing this resource for our communities.

Regional Athletics Carnival

Thank you for your support at this week's Regional Athletics Carnival. I was called to be with my daughter, however I hear it was a great day and a wonderful celebration of the sporting talents across our region. Thank you to everyone, especially Shantelle McKinnon, for her leadership of this event.

Student Attendance

Thank you to the families who have responded Mrs Loring's work in improving the attendance of students across the school. We cannot reinforce enough how important student attendance is to getting the best value out of the education we provide at Holy Name. Arriving late to school causes such disruption to a child's acheivement of academic outcomes and puts them on the back foot to positively engage as a learner. I appreciate the work of Mrs Loring and am grateful to the families who have responded to her requests.

Principal role

After drafting this article, the news about the appointment of Niamh Marzol to the role of Principal at Holy Name for the remainder of the year went out to families. Naimh has been a colleague of mine for many years and will be an awesome support during this time. Mrs Marzol will take on the role of principal at St Patrick's Lochinvar in 2025. I am sad that I have moved a step closer to ending my time at Holy Name but happy that I remain in my current role to be part of some of the special Holy Name moments during the latter part of the year. Thank you for your support along the way, and for your willingness to support Mrs Marzol and Mrs Loring for the remainder of 2024. 

Yours sincerely,

Brooke Stephens 

It's been another action packed fortnight at Holy Name. We have commemorated National Reconciliation Week and Wear it Yellow Day. The children donated gold coins to support the education of Indigenous students through The Children's Ground foundation and, along with online donations, raised over $300! Yesterday, many of our students participated in the Manning Region Athletics carnival at Tuncurry and we will have a full report in the next newsletter. Thanks to Ms McKinnon, Mrs Monkley and Mrs Bowie for setting up and running the carnival and also to our volunteers that assisted from the local Little Athletics Club.

Winter is upon us and that means so is cold and flu season. We have had a very high number of students and staff unwell over the past 3 weeks. Please ensure hand hygiene is a priority and children are kept at home if they are unwell.

I hope you have a great Long Weekend over the next few days and a reminder HNS has a PUPIL FREE DAY on Tuesday, June 11th, where our staff will participate in an Religious Formation Day.

Tell Them From Me

Thank you to all parents and carers that have taken the time to complete the Tell Them From Me survey online. If you haven't had a chance to complete the survey it is available by clicking here: http://tellthemfromme.com/24hnf This survey gives us valuable information when we are strategically planning for the future.

Garden

Our school garden is blossoming at the moment, even with the colder weather setting in. The garden is just in the right space in the school where it receives sun all day and is protected from the wind. Mrs Amato and her band of happy helpers work in the garden at second lunch breaks to weed, mulch, plant and harvest produce which is then taken over to the Parish Community Kitchen to be used in meals for those in need.

Attendance

Attendance is a focus from our Diocese this year. It is essential (and a legal requirement) that students attend school each day. If your child is unwell you can notify the school through the Compass app or by calling or emailing the school office. Illnesses that keep a child away from school for several days may require you to send us a doctor's certificate.

Attendance reports are generated each fortnight and I follow up with parents who have provided no explanation regarding their child's absence. I f you are planning that students are going to be absent for 10 days or more, you must contact the office for an an Application For Extended Leave. 

Our first bell goes each day at 8.45am and learning starts in all classrooms at 8.50. This is the Reading block for all grades and it is vital that students are here for the beginning of the lesson. Non attendance affects your child's academic learning as well as their relationships with peers.

Safety

A reminder to families that Carawa street is the preferred drop off and collection point for the children. Lake street is a very busy road, with limited parking available, so please use Carawa street if you can.

Positive Behaviour for Learning

Our PBL focus for the past fortnight has again been Listening to the Teacher.This focus has been repeated many times as we still have lots of students who find sitting quietly and listening hard to do.

Listening is a skill that has to be learned and practiced. Our staff spend a lot of time asking children to listen or trying to gain their attention. Working at home to reinforce listening skills is really helpful. Asking your child to wait their turn when talking to adults, reinforcing instructions and ensuring children understand them and encouraging some quiet time each day are a couple of simple strategies that can immprove this important skill.

Our Class Award winners for this week were:

We will give our Year 5 students their awards next week as both their teachers were away today. 

Principal Awards were presented to:

Congratulations to all these award winners, particularly, Georgie, Edie and Astyn for receiving 80 surfboards and Amelia who has reached 100 surfboards and a disco party for her class this afternoon.

Confirmation

Last night Bishop Michael Kennedy confirmed 26 students. Congratulations to Sophia Sleiman, Aaron Huynh, Abby Levick, Georgia Levick, Alessandra Devescovi, Noah Bergagnin, Arielle Bergagnin, Anna Brooks, Aria Tull, Alex Naughton, Will Naughton, Arty Cooper, Dakota Bowen, Ryan Matlawski, Edie Loy, James Chisholm, Jasper Waters, Jordan Clubb, Kirra Nadin, Matthew Malferrari, Skye Brennan, Sophia Clifton, Sienna Sorbello.

Bishop Michael praised the children on their preparation to receive the sacrament. In the Sacrament of Confirmation, the baptised candidate is "sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit". Bishop Michael said its not like a graduation where you are congratulated on finishing. This is a welcome, a begining ceremony to a life long journey of faith in God having been strengthened by the Holy Spirit within them.

The Church was filled with the candidates family, friends, teachers and parishoners of Holy Name of Jesus Church Forster. As the choir sang the energy of all filled the room. Looking around you could see smiles of excitment and also nervousness. During the annointing of Chrism in the ceremony, that energy you could feel was the Holy Spirit alive in each of our candidates and in one another. It was a joyous and memorable occasion.

A sacrament is God's grace being given and the grace given in the Sacrament of Confirmation to our children were the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit and 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are: wisdom, courage, understanding, knowledge, right judgement, reverence, wonder and awe. These 7 gifts help the children make good choices, and serve God and others. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are: love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Year 4 in the Spotlight!

This fortnight I have enlisted the help of some of our clever Year 4 friends to report to you about what they have been learning over the past few weeks. It was so lovely to see the enthusiasm at which they jumped at the idea to share their Year 4 learning experiences.

From Hafsa Omar 4H and Piper Webb 4H

 In reading lessons this fortnight, we have been learning to identify the ‘schwa’ sounds in words so that we can learn how to spell them correctly. We made a table of 5 different ‘schwa’ sounds: er, ir, ur, or, ar but we haven’t learnt ‘a’ yet, but we think we will in our next lesson. After that we need to record it, we then wrote a sentence or a paragraph with different ‘schwa’ sounds in it. We have also learnt heaps more in reading such as tier 2 and tier 3 words every Monday. We usually find a text to look for hard or difficult words, then we have to write the meaning and the synonym and then we write a sentence that includes our new word and draw a picture to match.

We also do perspectives (aka) point of view. We read a book and find the characters point of view, for example first person, second person and third person. In other reading lessons we do predictions on what a book is about based on the title and the front cover.

In writing, we are learning to write a persuasive text, so that we can have stronger arguments that can convince people of our opinions. We had to do individual planning sheets so that we could plan how we set up our persuasive texts and we also added connectives such as: firstly, secondly thirdly and finally this helps us structure and improve our persuasive writing.

From Abby Moelker 4Q and Charlotte Allan 4Q

This term in Maths we have been learning about decimals and doing long jump to learn how to convert decimals from what you jump and to see long 5 metres and 15 metres was and 25 metres was and to estimate which length will make us jump the longest. We also finished the ‘Lengthy Leap’ investigation by learning how to do graphs like pie graphs, line graphs and column graphs. 

In Religion we have been learning about the parts of a Mass. We started with the Seven Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the sick, Marriage and Holy Orders. A week or two later we learned the first is the Introductory Rite, the second is the Liturgy of the Word, the third is the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the fourth is the concluding Rite. We learnt why the structure of the Mass happens this way and shared experiences of when we

We asked lots of questions about the different parts of the Mass and we were interested in the fact that the bread is representing Jesus’ body and the wine is representing Jesus’ blood. We also learnt that people have to have been Baptised and made their Communion in order to receive the Eucharist at Mass. Finally we learnt that the four places to acknowledge Jesus’ presence is through the Word, through people, receiving the Eucharist and through a priest.

Thank you to Piper Webb, Abby Moelker, Hafsa Omar and Charlotte Allan for your amazing report. Year 4 are certainly working hard and challenging themselves to be assessment capable learners! It was lovely to see that the students in Year 4 were able to spend some time sketching during well-being week, we defitely have some talented artists in Year 4!

Mrs Suzie Monks

Primary Coordinator

Wellbeing Week 

Did you know that you can access School TV? Because parenting doesn’t come with instructions, SchoolTV is a wellbeing resource that can support you in the challenges relating to modern-day parenting.

This award-winning resource helps build relationships, foster connections, enable understanding and break down barriers to navigate a pathway towards better mental health and wellbeing for young people. It can assist in starting conversations on topics that are sometimes awkward or difficult to tackle. 

SchoolTV topics are conveniently arranged into a number of  series. Topics feature interviews with leading youth wellbeing experts and researchers from around the world offering hours of relevant and practical information. Additionally, each topic includes a compilation of related resources from key organisations providing a comprehensive stream of content. Resources include informative fact sheets, articles, apps, books, podcasts, websites, and other videos - all related to a single topic, in one place for easy access!

This resource may be beneficial in supporting parents, carers and students, especially during Wellbeing Week. 

https://forster.catholic.schooltv.me

Mini Vinnies 

Mini Vinnies are very excited to announce that together our school has raised $421.20 hosting Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea. This money helps the Cancer Council and lots of Australians who have or are receiving treatment for Cancer.

This is an amazing effort for our school. We want to say thank you to all the families who sent in donations so that we could sell them. We’d like to thank everyone who purchased some yummy treats. A special shout out to the wonderful Mini Vinnies girls who helped at different times all day. We appreciate the efforts of everyone and thankyou for your support. This is all of us showing our school motto “Concern for Others” This money will help people in regional towns like Forster, who have to travel to receive  treatment and to stay in accommodation.

Mini Vinnies delivered gifts to our staff for Wellbeing Week on Monday, its always lovely to see how a little token of appreciation can have a beautiful effect for not only the person receiving the gift but for the children giving the gift as well. This supports the wellbeing of our staff, the wellbeing of our team giving the gifts and the wellbeing of all the students within the classrooms who witness these special moments. We love the ripple of joy that this spreads across the school.

Mini Vinnies love to finish Wellbeing Week with a flash mob! Dancing their way through both playgroups lots of children join in for some fun dances like the Nutbush and the Macarena and the YMCA.

Breakfast Club

As the weather has started to turn colder, Monday mornings will now have warm Milo at Breakfast Club, along with our usual toast! We love seeing lots of happy faces at Breakfast Club and students always have lovely manners for Mrs Banham and the Mini Vinnies helpers. We usually serve 9 litres of Milo and at least two loaves of toast! It’s a busy morning but we love hearing about everyone’s weekends. 

On Wednesday mornings students are able to munch on some yummy cut up fruit donated by Catholic Care. This is a beautiful partnership as Catholic Care donate to our breakfast clubs and our wonderful garden club, led by Mrs Amato reciprocates by donating fresh produce back to Catholic Care. 

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 breakfasts are Friday June 14, June 28 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. 

Art Club

During Wellbeing Week Art Club friends have been able to make ‘grateful flowers’ and ‘kindness chatterboxes’ which have been lovely ways for students to affirm what they are grateful for. Mrs Banham has been adding the grateful flowers to the pin board. Our kindness chatterboxes offer students positive affirmations so that their self talk is positive while playing a fun game with friends.  

Playgroup

Playgroup has been a hive of activity and we have been welcoming new and known families to our Thursday mornings. This week we had 17 early learners and their carers who can be mums, dads, grandparents and friends! Playgroup is such a great way for our early learners to become familiar with HNS and for parents and friends to meet other families. 

Lots of art and craft happens, playtime, a story, morning teas and a little dance before leaving. Playgroup runs Thursdays in our school hall between 9-10am. Everyone is welcome! 

Wellbeing The eSafety Website 

https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents

The eSafety website is a great resource for all parents and carers, it is also really helpful for kids too! The purpose of eSafety is to help safeguard all Australians from online harms and to promote safer, more positive online experiences.

They use research, evidence and experience to lead and advise on online safety issues. This is how they deliver comprehensive services that are compassionate and focused on people.

Their approach is to work through the three lenses of prevention, protection, and proactive and systemic change:

• prevention – through research, education programs and raising awareness
• protection – through regulatory schemes and investigations, under the Online Safety Act
• proactive and systemic change – by staying ahead of technology trends, supporting industry to improve user safety standards, and strengthening our impact across borders.

They have substantial powers to protect all Australians – adults now as well as children – across most online platforms and forums where people experience abuse or harm.

They underpin their work and increase their impact by building and maintaining strategic partnerships in Australia and around the world.

They move quickly to protect people from online abuse and act as a safety net across our four reporting schemes:

• an Adult Cyber Abuse Scheme
• a Cyberbullying Scheme for Australian children
• an Image-Based Abuse Scheme 
• an Online Content Scheme for illegal and restricted content.

In this rapidly ever changing landscape of the internet and social media it is  important that we remain educated so that we are able to support our young people in navigating this space. 

Kristie Banham

Pastoral Care Worker 

It's always good to keep up with the news from our high school, St Clare's. You can check out their newsletter here!