Dear Parents and Carers,

Spring has sprung and we have been blessed with glorious warm weather. The children have had a magical 2 weeks with Book Week celebrations in abundance last week and Father’s Day celebrations today. Thank you for the fine effort that was made with costuming and support of the book fair. Please see the gallery in this newsletter for extra photos that have not been posted on Facebook. Our library is well stocked and much loved by the students as there is something for everyone. The money raised by the book fair allows us to buy more beautiful resources and keep up to date with new releases from the children’s favourite authors. Thank you Mrs Arrow and Mrs Harris for your work in making this a beautiful area of our school.

Last week the school underwent an annual visit (aka – audit) from the Diocesan heads of services. A full day was spent looking at Holy Name’s progress and data since the visit last year. May I congratulate all staff and Brooke Stephens who led the school and who have kept up the terrific learning agenda which made for a very positive visit/review.

We will be embarking on a school improvement plan for 2025 next term. We are pleased to be celebrating our success in this space. Teachers will undergo professional learning on Monday to capture the work of Michael Mc Dowell in the quest to provide a richer learning environment for all. LSAs will also be provided with professional learning to help assist teachers to differentiate learning to meet the needs of all learners. We hope you enjoy the pupil free day on Monday which will accommodate this PL.

Our Yarning Circle is well under way at the Carawa street entrance to the school. We will be adding some native bush tucker and medicinal plants to the garden boxes and the Year 6 students and Lara Went will be adding some art to the space. Thanks to David Mills for his wonderful work in this space.

Happy Father’s Day weekend to all dad’s and father figures. Thank you to the staff for putting on a fabulous breakfast for everyone this morning. It was delightful to see so many families take part and enjoy a game or two with their children before heading off to work. I hope your children spoil you on Sunday. Thank you to the P&F who organised the Father’s Day stall and lovingly wrapped special gifts for your child to choose just the right one for you.

Teachers will be having a twilight session on Wednesday evening on Trauma Informed Practices with Craig Moore which we hope will give us greater insight and strategies to use in this increasingly fragile space. I will be attending the Manning mini-Muster with all Manning principals at the end of next week which I am looking forward to. It will be a retreat style day with Adam Frost from the Diocesan RE & Spirituality team. I look forward to my first P&F meeting on Tuesday evening and hearing all about the plans for the rest of the year – including the school disco. All are welcome.

Thank you for your support of the school photo opportunity again this year. We are grateful to MSP for their support of our school and the skill with which they take our photos. I hope that you were able to organise these special mementos of your child’s time at school.

Lastly, I am in awe of the creativity of the students at Holy Name. This week I have had the very great privilege of attending the Heart-to-Heart exhibition and wow, what beautiful artworks were created this term. Congratulations to all students who took part in the program and special thanks to Mrs Went and Mrs Banham, their teachers. This is an amazing program, and I look forward to seeing what the boys who are involved next term glean from it. I was also very happy to watch the performance of the students who took part in the after-school drama club activity with Mrs Mc Carthy and was very impressed with their acting skills and courageous use of the stage. Well done everyone.

Until next newsletter,

God Bless,

Niamh

PUPIL FREE DAY

Just a reminder that HNS has a Pupil Free Day this coming Monday, September 2nd. The staff will be taking part in professional learning around the work of Michael McDowell. The PL will involve teaching our students to take part in rigourous learning habits to increase their engagement, understanding and motivation.

Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L)

Our PB4L focus for the pat fortnight has been "Playing by the rules." This is a really important life skill and very pertinent with the resurgence of handball at school. Handball is a very simple game but can cause social issues when children refuse to take it when out. Several grades have been taught the rules of handball this Term and children have been receiving surfboards when they are caught playing by the rules.

Class Award Winners:

The following students received Principal's Awards:

Our focus for the next fortnight will return to Listening to the Teachers. It is a skill we focus on at least once per term as students seem to have trouble in this area. Parents can help us by encouraging your children to have some quiet time each day, to wait their turn when speaking at home and to speak to their children about the importance of being an active listener.

Our PB4L committee will meet again in week 8 to move forward with some decisions regarding aligning our PB4L pillars with our school vision statement of Belonging, Learning and Serving in His Holy Name. We will also put a proposal through to our comms team at the CSO regarding some focused signage around the school and hope this will be in place by the end of the school year.

Australia's Biggest Online Safety lesson

On Tuesday, September 3rd, all students will engage with a live session called Australia's Biggest Online Safety lesson. This year's sessions, supported by the Daniel Morcombe Foundation, are around the topic of consent delivered at an age appropriate level.

Safety

Carawa street is the preferred drop off and pick up area for all students. A Kiss and Ride zone operates in the morning and there is much more parking at the back of the school. The Lake st entrance gets particularly busy in the afternoons with buses coming and going.

ICAS

All ICAS testing for 2025 is now complete. Parents of children who participated in these tests will be able to view the results through the online portal as they come to hand.

Here's what's happening at HNS over the next fortnight:

Father's Day Breakfast

On Thursday we celebrated Father's Day with our father's and father figures. It was a wonderful spring morning, and great sight to behold as dads and children could be seen playing together across our primary playground, on the stage at lego club creating imaginative figures and at art club designing pictures for their dads. To top off a scrumptious breakie roll, fathers ordered themselves a coffee from our visting coffee van. Both our staff and families have said this was a great initiative. Thank you Mrs Loring for organising this.

We celebrate Father's and Mother's Day at Holy Name because we want to ensure we are developing a social environment in which parents are valued and know they are valued as persons of worth and dignity, created in the image and likeness of God.

Catholic Social Teaching- Preferiential Care for the Poor

Socktober Launch for Mongolia- Every Child has the right to grow up in a safe and stable environment

Year 3 students are begining to learn more about children who live in Mongolia and are asking the question- Can you help abandoned children in Mongolia?

They are understanding that many of the children live without permanent shelter, daily food and water and education. In the upcoming weeks, Year 3 will be sharing stories with Holy Name students, about the Don Bosc Caring Centre in Ulaanbaatar, the Capital of Mongolia. This centre is a beacon of hope for children.

Great Learning Happening in Year Two!

Each fortnight we like to put a spotlight on the great learning happening in a particular grade in our school. In this report the spotlight is on Year 2 and I have enlisted the help of a few of our Year 2 friends to explain what they have been learning about recently and how they are going with their progress.

During reading group sessions, Year 2 have continued to focus on improving their oral reading which has included self-correctly and rereading to maintain meaning, paying attention to sentence punctuation, reading with expression, fluency and accuracy. In each session students are asked to identify the author’s purpose of a text using the 'PIE' acronym. The students will identify and explain if the author is trying to persuade, inform or entertain the reader. Once a week student’s practice using the 5-finger strategy when retelling the story which is: characters, setting, problem, events and resolution. 

 The students have been working hard to develop the skill of being able to make connections to find ways that students can personally relate to a text.  Text-to-self connections is where we connect the text with our own experiences. Ask students to think about the following questions. 

I asked some of our clever Year 2 friends what their favourite part of reading groups is-

Franky -  “I like learning about noun groups and finding examples in my reader and in the class text”.

Jarley – “I like reading aloud in groups and practising my fluency and my expression”

Arden – “I enjoy reading new interesting words and finding new vocabulary in our text in Rowan of Rin”

Luca – “I like finding noun groups and using the computers to find the meaning of new vocabulary words”

Novah – “I like practising my reading with my group and working on my fluency”

 In writing, Year 2 have been learning how to write informative texts on a chosen animal. They were given a planning template to help organise the information they collected under the headings: Introduction, Size and Appearance, Habitat and Lifestyle, Diet and Eating Habits and Conclusion. The students then had time to research their chosen animal using the laptops and iPads and had to identify facts they found from books or websites, jot down key points and the most important information into a template. They will now be begin writing their information reports using the information on their planning template to turn dot points / key information into sentences.

The students have also been writing speeches in preparation for the Public Speaking Competition. There were 6 topics students could choose from eg. My favourite season, My favourite superhero, My dream holiday, The best pet or My favourite birthday wish. Students then had an opportunity to deliver their speeches to their peers or class and it will now go to a selection process based on a public speaking criteria, as to who will go to the finals.

 In Maths, Year 2 are learning about fractions and have been focusing on doubling and halving groups and the relation between the processes. They have used dot arrays as an effective way to half and double the total number of dots in an efficient way. Students have had to work hard on their addition and multiplication skills to solve and explain their thinking. The focus this week has been transferring the students understanding of halving and doubling to problem-solving process by introducing the CUBES Strategy which is: C – circle the numbers, U – underline the question; B – box key words; E – eliminate unnecessary information; S – solve and check. Students are have been working in pairs to apply the CUBES strategy to several worded problems. They finished well-being week with a fun fractions activity where they were able to use different materials around the room to represent a fraction of a whole.

In Science, the Year 2 students have had lots of fun engaging in great hands on experiments and investigations. The unit is titled ‘Living Things’. The students have been learning how living things change and reproduce. The students have observed the patterns of growth and change in living things and described patterns and made predictions. There is Fairy Tale focus in the unit which has enabled the students to work scientifically with a focus on literature.  

In Visual art the students have been working on creating their own self portraits using a range of different materials. Students first drew their portrait in sharpie and then went over the top of the sharpie with black glue and waited for that to dry. They then used chalk pastels using colours next to each other on the colour wheel to colour their artwork. They look amazing! Check out some of their awesome designs.

Well done Year Two students, I know your teachers are very proud of you all!

Mrs Suzie Monks

Primary Coordinator

Please see the following flyers regarding auditions for ASPIRE initiatives in 2025.