Dear Parents and Carers,

Many thanks to the students who sang as a choir and who performed the liturgical roles of the Mass during our Parish school Mass on Sunday 27th. The parishioners were very pleased to have our families participate and enjoyed the students singing and their tour of the classrooms after the service. The parish is keen to make these Masses a regular part of the Parish calendar so if you were not able to be there another opportunity will arise. Fr John was particularly heartened by the number of parishioners who chose the 10am Mass over other time slots so they could share the experience with us.

The term is well underway, and we are in the process of finalising assessments in readiness for Term 4 reports which will be available to you at the end of Week 9. Last week Yrs 5 and 6 presented a “Crooked Carnival” for younger students to enjoy. Students were exposed to the bias in games that they might find in ‘side show alley’ and responded in ways that were insightful. “I’ve been scammed” was a common uttering. There were some winners on the day and prizes were generously donated by the students and their families. Thank you for this support. Today Yr 6 attended their transition into Yr 7 at St Clare’s. I am confident they will have had a great day and experienced the secondary school differences with enthusiasm.

This week we were fortunate to have expert Mathematics teacher, author and lecturer Peter Sullivan visit our school to work with staff and students. Peter was a wealth of knowledge and walked teachers through his planning process before they were able to watch him in action before spending time to debrief after the lesson. Teachers were very appreciative of the experience and are excited to rewrite their future lessons to accommodate their new understanding of the open ended-ness of lesson content and how explicit teaching can be interweaved throughout the lesson with more wait time and less teacher demonstration so that students explore first and work out the patterns and solutions to problems guided and assisted by further questions and student explanation of their work samples. It was a rare opportunity, and one made possible by the Catholic School’s Office education officers who also attended the day and recorded lesson preparation and rollout for professional development purposes.

Week five will see us completing our 2025 Kinder transition with a teddy bear’s picnic. Yr 5 buddies will join Kindergarten on Thursday morning for their final transition. Stage 3 have been getting ready to commemorate Remembrance Day on Tuesday. Yr 6 will attend the service in Forster with Mrs Loring and Yr 5 will lead the service at school.

Over twenty students will spend 4 days next week with Anna Kerrigan, artistic director, rehearsing to perform in “The Election” a piece written specifically for Manning students. As we have been gifted with this amazing opportunity for our students, we will be taking students from Yr 2 to Yr 6 to be an audience for the Manning Aspire performance on Thursday, with buses departing at 10 am and returning by 1pm. If you have not granted permission for your child, please do so and your support of the $20 subsidised fee is greatly appreciated, as when we budgeted for 2024 expenditure, we were not unaware of this activity and so did not factor it into the resource fee. This is a most important activity and opportunity for our students, as participating in the Newcastle Aspire production is often unattainable due to the distance and time commitment. We look forward to seeing our students on stage and in the other roles, including music and back drops.

Stage 3 will be participating in the Manning debating competition on Friday. Week six will see Year 6 explore Australia’s Capital, Canberra and the many important government buildings, the war memorial and significant public spaces. We wish them an enjoyable learning experience. Thank you to Mrs McKinnon and Mrs Loring for their generosity in taking time away from their families to supervise the students over the five-day excursion.

I am excited to see the unveiling of the artworks from the group of students who have taken part in the Heart-to-Heart program this term. The boys spoke highly of the experience and were very comfortable with the discussions and sharing that the group were guided in each week. Their artwork will be sure to impress. Thank you to Kristie Banham and Lara Went who have guided the students over the last eight weeks.

Have a great weekend and if you would like to join us at the MEC on Thursday to see Aspire you can buy your tickets for the 11am or 6pm performances from the MEC ticket box.

Tickets are now on sale for next Thursday’s two performances of The Election at the Manning Entertainment Centre. 

Here is the link:  https://manning.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/141487

Take Care,

Niamh

Compass

Compass is the platform by which whole school information can be sent to families. You can also use Compass to inform if your child/ren is unwell and can't attend school. If you don't have the App, please download it and if you are having trouble connecting, come and see the girls in Administration.

Safety

The preferred place for morning drop off and afternoon pick up is our Carawa street entrance. A Kiss and Ride area operates in the mornings and in the afternoons, please come over to the gate to collect your children. We have had a couple of incidents where parents/carers have beckoned their children to cross the road by themselves which is very unsafe at this busy time.

Supervision is offered at school from 8.30am until 3.15pm. If your child/ren need to be cared for before or after school hours, the St Nicholas OOSH operates in our school every morning and afternoon.

Before and After School Care | St Nicholas – Early Education, OOSH & Pathways

PB4L

Our PB4L focus for the last fortnight has been "I Can Walk on the Concrete." The students were given surfboard tokens for displaying this safety skill. Our next focus will be "I Keep our Environment Clean and Tidy."

Our Class Award winners for week 4 were:

Principal's Awards were given to:

SRC

The SRC Zooper Dooper initiative was a great succes yesterday. The Year 6 students sold out of icy poles and raised funds that will be put towards purchasing school sports equipment. The Year 6 students will sell Zooper Doopers each Tuesday and Friday from the canteen at a cost of 50c and a limit of 1 ice block per student. Thanks for your support.

Remembrance Day Ceremony

Dear Holy Name School Community,

We warmly invite you to join us for our Remembrance Day ceremony on Monday, 11 November, beginning at 10:40 am under Kirkingina. Together, we will honor and remember those who have served and sacrificed for our country. This solemn gathering is an opportunity for reflection, unity, and gratitude. We hope to see you there as we commemorate this important day.

Our Yr 6 students, Mrs Loring and Miss McKinnon will be joining our Forster Tuncurry Community for their Remembrance Day ceremony at 10:30am.  

Lest we forget. 

Parish Connections

Parish Mass at Holy Name

Sacrament of Reconciliation

Children in Yr 3 to Yr 6 who have received the Sacrament of Confirmation or both the Sacrament of Confirmation and the Sacrament of Eucharist and who have not received the Sacrament of Reconcilation are invited to enrol in the program. Catholic children in Yr 2 may also enrol in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Please read the details of the enrolment process and commencement date for the program being taught in our parish. 

Any other questions, please contact me at school as I am more than happy to help.

Mrs Genevieve Williamson

Religious Education Coordinator

Great learning in Year 5!

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 5. I have been lucky enough to have a number of  clever Year 5 students write this report to give us a close look into what has been happening in the 5H and 5S classrooms!

Reading Report by Reuben Cassar

During Term 4 for reading we have been focusing on objective, subjective language, perspective, theme, graphemes/ vocabulary, highlight key information and loads more. 5H have been using our Rowan of Rin books for examples on what we’re learning about and to model our success criteria. Year 5 sometimes come together to do tasks if we are learning the same thing. Mr Hassett has put up whiteboard pages that have our reading goals on it and he will help us with that goal every 2nd Thursday. I have interviewed Max and Harry to speak about reading and what they like in it. They have said “I like watching videos that help our understanding further, so we know what we’re learning about.” Bryce has said, “My favourite thing to do in writing is vocabulary because it is fun!”. Every Wednesday Mrs Frost is our teacher for the whole day, so we do reading with her on Wednesdays. That is everything for reading so far in 2024 term 4! 

Writing Report by Eden Lucenti and Bella Sleiman

This term in writing we have been learning about passive voice, compare and contrast, summarising, subjective and objective language and theme. This work was to help us create a school news report. For the Year Five’s news report, we have been separated into groups within our class and have all been assigned a role, for example: Local news reporter, international news reporter, national reporter, sport reporter, investigative reporter, weather reporter and the anchor. Year five have been using Canva to create the special news report. We interviewed a few classmates about how what they have been enjoying: (Makayla Bowie) “My favourite thing that we have done in writing has been the news report because it isn't boring, we get to go on Canva, and it hasn’t taken me long.” (Eli Lea) “The news report is my favourite thing in writing because of the freedom of choice.” (Levi Miller) The school news report has been my favourite thing because my group and I can work together, and I like doing the slide shows on Canva.” The top writing goal in 5H is using complex punctuation and the second highest is no more than two spelling errors. Writing in Term 4 has been awesome!

Maths Report by Alessandra Devescovi and Haya Hamdy

In Year 5, we were working on conversions such as turning decimals into percentage, then into fractions. Additionally, we have also been learning about how to put negative numbers on a number line and subtracting and adding them together. But as for now, we’ve been focusing on minimum/maximum temperatures in different locations and average rainfall and windspeed. On top of that, Year 5 hosted fun carnival games, related to data and probability. Furthermore, we were studying measurement and twenty-four-hour time, after we completed that, we practiced doing short division with two- and three-digit numbers.

Science Report by Harrison Mills

In Science Year 5 have been learning about earthquakes and how earthquakes happen. Earthquakes happen when the tectonic plates move and then they become coiled with each other. There are three different ways that the tectonic plates can move: The first way that they can move is where two plates coiled with each other and then one falls under the other plate. The second way that the tectonic plates can move is where two plates slide apart from each other. The third way is where two plates grind past each other to make the earthquake. We have also been learning about chemical changes so Year 5 have made slime to see the change of state from liquid to solid.

Keep up the great work Year 5! You are going to make great leaders of our school next year.