Dear Parents and Carers, 

This time last term I was packing my bags and getting ready to move to Forster. I can barely believe I have been here for 3 months. The warm welcome from staff, students and families has made my time here very enjoyable and I truly feel like I’ve been here much longer. I have made lovely connections with this community and am delighted to be here for Term 4. 

I attended the P&F meeting last week which highlighted the dedication of the parent body to want to make a difference. Tonight’s spooky school disco is a great friend-raising initiative, and I highly commend the work of the P&F as they are not just thinking about fundraising. Having said that, the money they have raised over the last two years will be put to very good use in the Primary playground later in the year. My introduction to the school last term at the Trivia Night was one of the best I’ve ever had, and I look forward to spending tonight with the students at the disco. Happy Haunted Friday 13…. 

Last week I had the very great privilege of adjudicating for the school’s Public Speaking Competition. The students all spoke with confidence and poise. I was very proud of their efforts, especially those students that have never spoken to an audience before. Obviously, the level of sophistication increased with each grade, but the content and manner displayed was at a very high standard throughout. Thank you to Mrs Quilter for organising the event and Mrs Loring who was MC and kept the competition flowing. Congratulations to our stage winners and all the best at the Regional competition in Taree next Thursday. 

Last week we also had a team of students from each of the Regional schools attend a workshop for Aspire Young Scriptwriters, hosted at Holy Name. Aspire Director, Anna Kerrigan was pleased with the way the students engaged in the activities and is looking forward to putting their ideas into a script to be performed regionally next term. Anna will also host a week for students in the Manning during Term 4. We are able to send 32 students from Years 4-6 who will be part of the drama, music, singing and design ensembles. We look forward to selecting these students and watching their growth and performance on November 14. 

Under the Charism of the Sister’s of St Joseph who are responsible for founding our Manning schools, I attended a mini muster with the Manning principals last Thursday evening and Friday at Diamond Beach. The retreat style muster was led by Adam Frost from the Diocese and focused on the teachings of Mary MacKillop. Having spent the last 6 years in a Mercy charism setting, it was lovely to reconnect with the Josephite teachings which were a big part of my early career in leadership. Mary’s foundational beliefs resonate with me and her personal attributes are what leaders in Josephite schools try to emulate. The main takeaways from the muster for me would be that ‘God will provide strength in the face of opposition’, ‘Reject no-one; you never know what grace can do’ and ‘The most needy in our world come first’. The biggest affirmation for me was the idea of ‘feeling fear, yet choosing to act’- by persevering and standing up for what is right and doing so with a genuine desire to relieve suffering and bring hope. That may sound melodramatic, and in comparison to working in a war zone, ghetto or slum working in the beautiful Manning area should be easy, but no matter where you are you need to seek out the vulnerable and the marginalised of society by being inclusive and offering hospitality and by seeing the good and potential in every person. Treating people fairly and equally is a Catholic social teaching and one that we take seriously at Holy Name.   

Culturally, we are called to celebrate the key moments in the lives of those with whom we work and to improve the lives of others and make the working environment a pleasure to be part of. Our Josephite culture also calls us to a sense of justice in decision making so that we can truly “never see a need without doing something about it”. I would like to report that I see this in action every day at Holy Name. The staff are a testament to a charism that is alive and working to support all that promotes the Gospel and oppose all that negates it. You have a wonderful school community that I know you support and are proud of. I know it is my temporary home but I am proud to be working here too. 

Next weekend a number of our students will receive their First Holy Communion at Holy Name Parish. Mrs Williams has been preparing the students and we are excited for them to be completing their Sacraments of Initiation and becoming full members of the Catholic Faith. Holy Communion will be celebrated over the three Masses on this weekend if you would like to come to support the children. 

I trust you have made yourselves available for the goal setting meetings with your child’s teacher this term and are happy with your child’s growth and progress. This initiative is quite unique to Holy Name, and I will certainly be bringing this concept to my new school in 2025. I think the involvement of the students and parents in the initial meeting in Term 1 and the check in and follow-up meeting in Term 3 is a great way to keep the lines of communication open and individualise each child’s learning journey. I would like to the teachers, for making themselves available across this period to accommodate the availability of your families. 

R U OK? Day was celebrated nationally yesterday with much media attention. At Holy Name we hope that every day is R U OK? Day and so we marked the day with posters and art club activities. Teachers will always stop and ask if a child is OK if they see they are upset or behaving unusually. Sometimes it a simple fix, other times not so simple but we will work with you to find a solution.  We have a fabulous Pastoral Care Worker, Kristie Banham, who we call upon to assist at such times, as well as our counsellor, Larissa, if needed. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have concerns about your child in this regard. 

I have noted on a few occasions some hands-on behaviour in the playground that has escalated to a kick or a punch. Violent outbursts or physical assault is never condoned, even if in retaliation to a taunt or tease or a physical threat. We will be working with all students in Term 4 to highlight ways that we can better manage complications on the playground by giving students more strategies to deal with issues so that they do not escalate to this point. Consequences for such physical altercations will result in a suspension from class/school depending on the situation. If your child tends to lash out when provoked or instead of verbally working through a tricky situation, please talk to them about how they can make a better choice and how that action can be viewed when they are an adolescent or an adult. In a world where violence is prevalent, we need to start early with our messaging and appropriate consequences to give our children the tools to manage conflict in a safe manner.       

I read an article earlier in the week and thought I’d share a quick summary with you – More than 50 years ago, Alvin Toffler, American businessman and futurist, said 'The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn'.  We as educators are in the business of learning, that's our specialty, our focus and our gift to our students, our 'learners'. We are teaching them to learn and to love to learn. I wonder if we should also call them our 'unlearners' and our 'relearners', as we should also call ourselves.

Is a mistake a learning? Yes. Does it involve 'unlearning'? Yes. Does it require relearning? Yes.

Do we allow ourselves the time or the privilege of reflection to examine our mistakes? To identify what needs to be unlearned and what needs to be relearned? Do we consciously move forward from our mistake and find the benefit/learning from the mistake? Note to self – mistakes can be of benefit and we should never judge someone by them – perhaps a better measure of judgement is if they learn from their mistake and don’t make the same mistake again and again… 

We encourage our students to not focus on perfection. By all means aim high and have high standards but perfection is just not always attainable, or even desirable. This should be the same for what we do in our work. If we keep aiming for perfection, where it is not needed, the important things won't get done, because we are too busy working on the finer details, the iterations, the tweaks, to get it perfect. Sometimes, it's just time to move on. Mistakes are important for development, for growth, so long as we give ourselves the time to find the learning from the mistake and what needs to be different next time. Children can get caught up on perfection and we need to make it OK to not get it right the first time or even the second or third, as long as they keep trying. 

So what was your mistake this week?

As a Principal I have been unlearning and relearning about how to be a better leader for the last 19 years. I haven’t reached a state of perfection yet and I’m not likely to as there is always room for improvement. How we lead impacts how we carry out our role, how we influence our team, how we add value to our organisation and ultimately for me this impacts my students, my staff, my career and therefore our future and the future of education. There is no pressure to get it right! I appreciate your support on this learning journey.

Family homework for the next two weeks…
Ask yourselves these questions:
What is my recent mistake?
What have I learnt from it? What did I need to unlearn or perhaps let go?
What did I relearn so I could move forward? 

Have a great weekend,

God Bless,

Niamh

Uniform

We will stay in Winter uniform for the remainder of Term 3 and return in Term 4 in Summer uniform. Please ensure that your children are dressed according to the HNS Uniform policy. The main things to remember are all black socks and shoes (no logos or coloured laces), a school hat that is compulsory to wear to play, and sleepers or studs for earrings. All hair that is longer than shoulder length (girls and boys) must be tied back when at school.

Thanks for your support in this area.

Garden

Our school garden continues to flourish under the guidance of Mrs Amato and the work of our wondeful student gardeners. Fresh produce is being taken over to the community kitchen each week and is really appreciated by the volunteers who cook meals for the guests that go to the kitchen for meals.

Polding Athletics

Three of our students travelled to Newcastle oday for the Polding Athletics carnival. Harrison Mills in Year 5 competed in the 11yrs shot put, Charlotte Allan from 5H competed in Junior Long Jump and High Jump and Scarlett Garrard from Year 5 competed in the 200m sprint.

A huge congratulations to these students for their dedication and proud representation of our school.

PB4L

Our PB4L focus for the past fortnight has been Listening to the Teacher.

Class Award Winners:

Principal Award Winners:

Lots of children received Principal Awards this morning. Two students, Amelia Moelker in 4Q and Sophia Whitehouse-Miotto were presented our first ever GOLD badges for receiving 120 surfboards. Congratulations Girls!

Public Speaking

Young Scriptwriter's Workshops

Some of our Year 6 students: Chase Brooks, Sophia Whitehouse- Miotto, Amna Omar and Max Isbel have been part of a Young Scriptwriter's initiative over the past 2 terms. They have been working with the amazingly creative Anna Kerrigan from the Dio ASPIRE team to create scripts for the Manning Creative Arts performance in Term 4. This showcase will occur at the mManning Entertainment Centre on October 17th.

Here is a sample of Max's script:

Scene 1: the three characters are introduced, and they are playing a dnd game. Their names are John, Joe, and Jeff. They are talking about how they should advance in their game and on the other side of the stage their dnd counterparts are playing the game as they say their ideas, they still have not decided what they are going to do as they go home for the night.

John: come on guys! We need to find a way out of this!

Joe: we can’t!

Jeff: we don’t know how!

Joe: well, we need to think of something!

John: what about we run away from the dragon?

Joe: no good it has AMAZING reach

Jeff: what about I use fireball?

John: nope, it has fire immunity

Joe: ride the dragon?

Jeff: what?

John: we’re out of time, we need to go home now.

Joe: but we’ve only been doing it for 2 hours!

John: exactly. Now, we have that imaginative story creation tomorrow that we have not practiced. At all.

Joe: right, but what are we going to do about the dragon?

Jeff: we can leave it until the next session.

Joe: ok, but can we at least make the idea for how to kill this dragon?

Jeff: sorry, but I can’t, I have to get home for dinner!

John: me two.

Joe: me three.

Jeff: see you later.

They all wave at each other and leave as the dnd counterparts hi-five the prop dragon and leave too.

Joe walks back and looks at the dragon meanly before leaving again.

Little Athletics

Little Athletics begins on September 16th and will run on Monday afternoons from 5pm at Tuncurry Oval. Up to 2 weeks trial is offered before registration. Ages from Tiny Tots (turning 4 in 2025) to Open. All abilities and all welcome. Click on link to register.

The Formation and Discernment Process embedded in the new RE curriculum

Great Learning Happening in Year Three!

Each fortnight we like to put a spotlight on the great learning happening in a particular grade in our wonderful school. In this report the spotlight is on Year 3. I have been lucky enough to have a number of our clever Year 3 students come together to write this report, which will give you a close look into what has been happening in the 3M and 3W classrooms! 

Reading Report by Ezra Lea and Anna Brooks

Hello parents and carers, today me and my friend Ezra will be telling you about what Year 3 have been learning about in reading. First, there are different levels of reading groups, two of them (blue and yellow group) do a thing called book club because they are above the standard of year 3. Book club is a task that you must do at home in time for your meeting with your group. For the blue group, their meeting day is Tuesday and the yellow groups meeting day is on Wednesday. The other groups orange, green, red, and purple do the main task. But sometimes the teacher’s read with a reading group and do fluency practice with them. The teacher checks their reading goals and helps them try to improve. We have been learning to use our readers to look for tricky words we don't know or words we think people should know the definition of and we define them. We also do Freyer models on the words we find in our readers. Mr Mackay and Mrs Williamson are also teaching us how to use plurals and apostrophes and know what they are used for. Reading in Year 3 is awesome!

Writing and Science Report by William Duffy and Tane Te Raki-Pitfield 

In Writing we’ve been learning to plan and brainstorm our informative texts. We had a brainstorming sheet to plan our writing. We researched on our computers about our topics to gather the information we needed. Today we are researching our topic and doing our introduction. We’ve been ticking off our success criteria to learn and do better writing. We have been watching some short videos to improve our knowledge about our topic. Today we learnt that if you want to make your text more interesting you can start with a fact/question.

Science

For the past few weeks, we’ve been learning about the sun, earth and the moon. Also, we’ve been learning about how the sun changes earth, and the sun light and its energy. We’ve been learning about how the earth orbits around the sun and how it takes a year to make a full lap around the sun. We have also been learning how long the sun must last and some other interesting fun facts. Yesterday we had tonic water and tap water, and we put it outside for a few minutes. When we came back in, we made the room dark, then we put them on a bench where we used a UV flashlight, and we put it next to the cups. The tonic water turned blue due to a chemical reaction. We illustrated our observations and wrote about what we saw. It was very cool to see the chemical reaction!

 Maths and Religion report by Sophia Clifton and Georgia Levick

Hi, our names are Sophia and Georgia. In year 3 we love our learning in Maths! In the past two weeks we have been learning about data and focusing on times tables. In data, we have been learning about bar graphs on Excel and special tricks to make other graphs. We have been collecting data about the topic: Rubbish in our school. When all the classes are in, we have been collecting rubbish for 8 mins after and before break. We all go on excel and use special codes to use certain tools that add the totals. We are also focusing on times tables from 2’s to 12’s. Some students have finished our times tables goals and have moved onto division. During the tests our teachers call out random times tables which we have to solve them super fast! This is fun and tricky at the same time!

Now onto our learning in Religion. So, what are Year 3 doing for Religion? We are so glad you asked! We are learning about healing, forgiving and some stories about healing and forgiving like, Jesus and the 10 Lepers, Jesus and the Blind Beggar and Zacchaeus. Do you know what they have in common? They are all healing stories in their own way. Even Zacchaeus, he healed all the bad things that he did. We need Jesus to teach us what’s right in the world. We would probably be horrible to each other without Jesus teaching us to be kind. As well as forgiveness, which is being sorry and saying sorry but, you can’t just say sorry, you need to show it!

Keep up the great work Year 3, we are so proud of you all.

Have a great last two weeks of term!

Mrs Suzie Monks

Primary Coordinator