Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the last newsletter for Term 3. You are now gifted a 2-week break from school routines and demands. Given that the weather is going to fine up, I hope that you will enjoy the beautiful outdoors and surrounds of the local area. Since our last newsletter we have had a number of significant events. I would like to congratulate all of our students who made their first Holy Communion last weekend and thanks Genevieve Williamson for her preparation of the children and organisation of the Sacrament celebration. Kindergarten had a very successful excursion to Oakvale Zoo and were very excited to take part in this extra-curricula event. Four of our students, Mae, Arden, Hafsa and Nanma represented each stage at the Regional Public Speaking competition in Taree last week. I was very happy to hear their speeches and very proud of their efforts and achievement. Hafsa and Arden will go through to the final round in Term 4 at Chisholm and look forward to seeing their progress as I will be organising the event. I commend all students who took part in the competition at all levels and encourage them to continue taking part again next year. Another way students were able to have their voice heard was at the student voice workshop held online last week. This initiative was for Stage 3 students all around the diocese. The results of this initiative will be made available at a later date.

This week staff have been heavily involved in Professional Learning with Lyn Sharratt, an international educational researcher. Her ‘Clarity’ framework has been used at Holy Name for the last five years with much improvement in student outcomes evidence of its success. On Thursday Holy Name hosted Lyn Sharratt and 20 visitors from Manning schools and St John Vianney, Morrisett. Our colleagues visited all classrooms to observe teachers and students in the Waterfall Learning and Assessment Cycle. What they saw was pedagogy at its best and students engaged in quality purposeful learning who were able to articulate their learning intentions and success criteria and how they were progressing towards the goals, as well as how they could improve and where they would go to for help. That might sound like a no brainer but often students do not engage in the ‘why’ of their learning – just the ‘what’ which can limit understanding and decrease engagement and drive to learn more. Knowing why you are doing a task makes it more meaningful and purposeful and being able to self-assess and know how to improve is the key to lifelong learning. I would like to congratulate all staff and Mrs Stephens on their noteworthy progress in using the 14 parameters of Sharratt’s Clarity. I would especially like to congratulate and thanks Suzie Monks and Sean Hassett on their focus work in this area as the Pedagogical Mentors for the school.   

The Diocese has embarked on a carpet, Autex and paint refurbishment of a percentage of classrooms in every school. Holy Name have been the happy recipients of 7 classrooms of new carpet this week, Students in Kinder, Yr1, Yr2 and 5H had a slight disruption to their routine and moved momentarily into the library whilst their rooms were being refurbished. Autex and painting will occur in Term 4.

We look forward to Having our new Kinders for 2025 join us for the first five Thursdays of Term 4. It was great to meet the students and parents of Pebbly Beach preschool this week and talk about school readiness. All new Kinder parents are welcome to join is for the parent evening on Tuesday 15 October at 5pm. This is a very exciting yet somewhat daunting time for students and families. We hope to alleviate your anxiety by answering any questions you may have during this session.

Next term we will be involved in a ‘Wellbeing’ pilot project for Years 3-6 called “Pivot”. This will involve a 20-minute survey to collect baseline data and then 5 x 2minute check-ins for the next three terms. Details and consent forms will be provided early next term. The purpose of the project is to better manage student needs by responding to the data and providing resources where they are needed. Students may not feel brave enough to speak up in person about issues but may find it easier to do so in a digital format. Capturing wellbeing data will better equip teachers to provide necessary care for all students.  

Please keep Sunday 27 October in your diary as we will be hosting the 10am Parish Mass in our school hall and we would love for your and your families to be able to join the Holy Name Parish community in this eucharistic celebration.  

Happy Term Break,

God Bless,

Niamh           

ICAS Tests

The following students received ICAS certificates this morning at assembly. Well done to everyone who participated! Notable mentions go to: Maike Mosambol, High Distinction Spelling, Max Isbel, Distinction Digital Technologies, Science and English, Matthew Jajo, Distinction Spelling, Arielle Bergagnin, Distinction Spelling.

PB4L

Our PB4L focus for the past fortnight has been "Being Organised and Ready to Learn." The following students received their class awards:

We had many children awarded Principal's Awards this morning:

Olivia Quilter and Matilda Harvie from 2L reached 80 surfboards this week and chose to have morning tea with me as their reward. Congratulations girls!

Prac Students

We have some prac students at HNS at present and they will return for 5 weeks in Term 4. Zenya Kropf is working with Miss Spinks and Mrs Howarth in Year 2 and Molly Connon is working with Mrs Tull in Kindergarten. It is a privilege having these students here and being able to support them as they study for the teaching career!

I hope you get some time to spend with those you love over the Spring holiday break. See you all back on Monday, October 14th, for our first day of Term 4.

Kind Regards,

Kyla 

First Holy Communion

On Saturday evening and Sunday morning students preparing to make their First Holy Communion received the blessed sacrament of Eucharist for the first time, in front of their family and parish community. We congratulate the following children: Noah Bergagnin, Arielle Bergagnin, Dakota Bowen, Skye Brennan, Isabella Sleiman, Olivia Sleiman, Jasper Waters, Abby Levik, Matthew Malferari, Edie Loy, Aria Tull and Alessandra Devescovi.

Great Learning Happening in Year Four!

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 4 and I have enlisted the help of a group of our Year 4 friends to explain what they have been learning about recently and how they are going with their progress.

 Year 4 Reading and Writing by Ayla and Hafsa

This term we have been focussing on suffixes and prefixes for example my base word could be run but my new word with a suffix would be running. We have also learnt about apostrophes and their purpose, we have also been working on transferring this learning to our writing. We have been enjoying our learning of Tier 2 and Tier 3 words. During Book Club sessions we have looked at features of an informative text such as: pictures, headings, subheadings. We enjoy identifying our prior knowledge with questions such as: ‘What do I know’ and ‘What do I want to know?’ and at the end of a focus ‘What did I learn?’ We have gotten much better at identifying what we have learnt and applying it to new skills!

 In writing we have been focussing on writing Informative texts. We completed a informative writing sample different countries that are competing in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. We have also been focussing on writing information reports on animals such as koalas, dolphins and many other that were of interest to the students in Year 4.

 Year 4 Religion By Edie Loy

This term in Religion we have been learning about the Liturgical objects and Justice. For example we have learnt about a chalice that holds the wine which is the blood of Christ. We have also learnt about a paten which is a small metal dish that holds the bread which is the Body of Christ. Another interesting liturgical object is a Ciborium which is a fancy metal vessel with a lid. It holds the bread for Communion. We learnt about all of these items to prepare the students who were making their First Holy Communion.

In Justice we have been learning about what is fair and what is unfair so that we know how people feel when they are treated unjustly. We were part of an experience where we were divided into 2 groups one group was given brand new textas and coloured paper, new scissors and fresh glue sticks. The other group got crumpled scrap paper, random pencils and scissors covered in glue. We discussed how each group felt and we identified that it can feel very upsetting when people are treated unfairly. It made us think about how we can promote fairness in our own lives.

 Year 4 Maths by Lola Went

This term in Year 4 we have been learning about equivalent fractions so that we can deepen our understanding of number relationships. We have also been learning about area models so that we can apply the area model to division. Year 4 have enjoyed learning how to answer missing number equations, we were able to use our knowledge of multiplication and division to solve some of the more difficult questions. Our Maths Investigation which was drawing up a sporting stadium and working out how many seats would be needed and how much money we would earn if the stadium was booked out. It has been so fun putting our learning into action!

Year 4 Art by Amelia Moelker and Grace Rinaldi 

In art we have been learning about sketching and shading which was inspired by the Olympics. The different techniques of shading are: scrambling, hatching and cross hatching. This can help us if we would like to make our illustrations more realistic or hyper realistic. This term we have also been creating Olympic art sculptures. We used foil and rolled and scrunched the foil into an Olympic figure playing an Olympic Sport. Some of the main sports that were represented were: swimming, gymnastics, surfing and basketball. We also got an A4 piece of paper and coloured it in different colours which made it look incredible when it was finished.

Year 4 Health by Brabham and Matthew

In Health we have been learning about healthy eating. We looked at the Five Food Groups to start. We then  categorised different foods into traffic light groups which are green - which are every day foods, orange – which are sometimes foods  and red which are treat foods. Over the past few weeks we have been working on a healthy eating campaign. We have created posters to encourage people to eat healthy. In PE we have been learning to strike a ball with a variety of different bats eg. Cricket bats, tennis rackets, baseball bats and hockey sticks.

Here are some happy snaps of Year 4 from the last day of term! Some playground fun and a group dance out the door for dismissal.

Wow great work Year 4! It sounds like you have had an amazing term of learning.

Mrs Suzie Monks

Primary Coordinator