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Dear Parents and Carers,
With the end of our third week in lockdown, we have started to settle into a rhythm for both home and school learning. Sydney families are in their tenth week and I am still feeling grateful, as I know many of you are, for the blessings we have here in Forster-Tuncurry and surrounds. This doesn't discount the fact that many of our families are doing it tougher each week without the regular work or capacity to open businesses. I am conscious of the fact that we might not even know how hard it is for some members of our community and would welcome your contact if you think one of our services might be able to support. Catholic Care, St Vincent De Paul, our Parish, the Neighbourhood Centre all have different ways of providing support during this time and we are happy to connect our families with the right people.
Teachers are reporting that the majority of students are engaging with the learning provided and appreciate the support our families are providing for their students to access the learning provided. It was wonderful to be able to provide the additional technology this week to improve the access to learning for some of our students.
Last Sunday, I messaged our families to reassure you that your best is always good enough. I acknowledged that we don't know the individual circumstances of every home environment and rely on your communication with us to determine what is possible and how we can best support you during this time. Please get in touch with your child's teacher if you would like our support with home learning. The teachers are continuing to evolve what they are providing and how this is presented. Please provide them with feedback if the programme is not working for you. Our teachers are working alternate days and on the day they are face-face teaching, they may not be available to provide feedback online. Please understand that teachers will respond to your queries or provide feedback to students at least every second day.
This week, we will see the first of our teaching positions for 2022 advertised. We have two permanent full-time positions and one part-time position available. This is an exciting time for our school and I know that this process will strengthen the wonderful staff that we currently have here at Holy Name.
You may have noticed that the fence work has finally commenced around the boundary of our school. This will be the first in a few projects aimed to improve the overall functioning and appearance of the school.
I hope you are managing to enjoy some of the great outdoors in this beautiful place we call home.
Take care,
Brooke Stephens
Online Learning
Hello to all our families and students! It has been a while since we have seen some of our children and families and I sincerely hope you are all staying healthy and happy during this lockdown period.
Every day at HNS, our Teams are meeting to ensure that every students has access to learning and our lessons are continually evolving the further we get into the lockdown. If you have any questions or suggestions, please communicate with your child’s class teacher/s.
During this week, the Year 6 students have been engaged in virtual tours of Canberra. Although the excursion is 3 months away, we are very aware that we may not get to Canberra, and these online experiences give the children a taste of what Our Nation’s Capital has to offer.
PBL Update
We are moving along in our PBL (Positive Behaviour for Learning) journey at Holy Name School. Our next steps are to get our school wide expectations of Responsibility, Respect and Resilience displayed in our school community. Mrs Monks has developed some templates for the recording of Minor and Major behaviours through Compass. Our next step is to do some staff professional learning around classroom reward structures and data recording.
A scope and sequence of Social and Emotional learning lessons has been developed for the remainder of 2021. Whatever the behaviour focus is, the surfboard reward tokens will be given out when children are “caught” displaying positive choices both in and out of the classroom. These rewards will move toward and in class system.
National Child Protection Week
Week 9 is National Child Protection Week.
We will be acknowledging this important week with some events and activities.
All week:
- Child Protection Week Art Club
- Art Competition – “My Perfect Neighbourhood”
- Online safety lessons and videos
Monday: Stage 3 Webinar – Be an E Smart kid
Tuesday: Australia’s Biggest Online Safety lesson through the Daniel Morcombe Foundation
Thursday: RUOK? Day – the children will be encouraged to share videos, comic strips, posters etc online
Friday: Voices activity – What students love about HNS and what they would like to see changed. Classes catch ups with kids at home to make sure everyone is OK.
The links to the online events will be shared with class teachers who will share with their online learners.
The safety of our children is of the utmost importance to everyone at Holy Name School and we have many policies and procedures in place to ensure their safety. Our current PDHPE syllabus also guides us to teach lessons on personal safety, road and water safety, online safety and positive relationships
World Day of Prayer for Care and Creation September 1
Let’s think about the relationship we have with our common world and everything in it. We would agree the relationship we have with our world needs fixing. Wednesday the 1st of September marks the World Day of Prayer for Care and Creation and World Creation Month.
World Day of Prayer for Creation
During this month we are challenged to repair and restore our relationships with creation and with each other. Pope Francis says “ This is the season for letting our prayer life be inspired anew, to reflect on our lifestyles to undertake prophetic acts of creation. It’s a time to call for courageous decisions and direct the planet towards life not death.”
The season of creation is a time for all of to experience a time of reconciliation with our world.
As a school community Holy Name wants to repair the relationship we have with creation. The SRC Garden Group with the support of the Garden Club and teachers plan to launch a new Waste Management Plan on September 1st. Students will collect vegetable and fruit scrapes from Infants classes fruit break and first lunch break. These will be taken to the compost bin in the garden for composting. We hope to use this composite on our vegetable beds and school garden beds.
I encourage you to think about how you and your families can do actions that amends to repair the relationships that we have with creation. Let’s put our faith into action!
Father’s Day celebrations at Holy Name
Regardless of lockdown, Holy Name will still be celebrating Father’s Day with our students. Each class will pause during their school and home learning on Friday to reflect and through prayer give thanks to our fathers, stepdads, grandfathers, uncles, and father figures. We will add some photos of our zoom and class liturgy celebrations to Facebook and to our next newsletter. Happy Father’s Day to all fathers and father figures in our school community.
Holy Name Garden
We had lots of lovely fresh produce to harvest and offer to Holy Name Community Kitchen this last fortnight. Yr 1 have been watering the garden each day and this has boosted plant growth. We have 4 new cherry tomato plants to plant this week into 4 large pots. We also want to repaint them white to freshen them up.
Mrs Williamson
Religious Education Coordinator
Thank you to all the wonderful families who have continued to support our 5c Friday initiative so far this term so far we have raised $240, that’s a lot of 5c pieces!! We appreciate the support of all of our families and the Parish who have continued to send us their donations. Thank you so much.
Breakfast Club is always a great way to start our week; warm Milo, hot toast, music, smiles and weekend chit chat is a beautiful way to commence our school week. Our Mini Vinnies team are always ready to serve, butter toast and help clean up.
There is always plenty of creativity in art club. Over the past few weeks we’ve made posters of HOPE featured to be featured in MN News. The Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle encouraged students and families to renew their sense of HOPE by inviting us to create posters of hope. You can see them all here
https://mnnews.today/catholic-schools/2021/gallery-of-hope/
We’ve also been stitching up a storm, the children have been making beautiful embroidered artworks. It is such a joy to see students, girls and boys, from kinder all the way to Year 6 learning new skills and then also helping others learn these skills. We have magic needle threaders, running and back stitch and loads of kindness hearts being made for future random acts of kindness……more on that soon!
This week a HUGE shoutout goes to Bunnings Forster for donating a large number of DIY Fathers Day gift packs for our students to paint and make. They have had a lovely time art club creating special dad signs and cards.
I wanted to share a prayer that I recently shared with our staff and students through Well Being Week. I know that these are challenging times for all of us, I hope that you are all taking gentle care of yourselves and each other.
“Heaven, help me to believe in peace and harmony on earth. Even when I am most challenged by that which lies before me, strengthen my faith in the beauty, perfection and magic of life. As I choose to live calmly in a spirit of love, help me to shine brightly as a light with and for others. May I actively contribute to peace on earth, blissfully at one with myself and all creation.” (Meredith Gaston)
Kristie Banham
Pastoral Care Worker