Dear Parents and Carers, 

Reconciliation Week this year coincided with Wellbeing Week here at Holy Name. Our Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander staff and students have been busy working on their artworks for the upcoming Buuranbal Marray (Spirit Dreaming) Art Exhibition that opens on Monday June 26 at the Forster Art Gallery. Our team here at Holy Name have been working alongside many schools and Early Learning Centres in our area on this project, and are offering an opportunity for our parents to attend the Staff and Parent 'Wine and Cheese' night at the gallery on Tuesday 27th June. There will be representatives from all schools present and we are really hoping that the Holy Name community will show their support by attending and celebrating the local stories shared by the artists across the schools and community. Pop the date in your calendar so you don't miss out!

Our artists and their families will be invited to a special opening at 12pm on Monday 26th June at the Forster Art Gallery. We can't wait to come together with the community of schools to celebrate the work of our young and communtiiy artists with their families.

Given the theme for Reconciliation Week this year is, 'Be a Voice for Generations', participating in the Buuranbal Marray Art Exhibition is one tangible way we can be a voice for reconciliation where we live, work and socialise. Some of the stories from our young artists are 'their stories', and reveal some of the beauty and challenges of their young lives. We are hoping that experiences like Buuranbal Marray wil empower our youth to have a voice and be proud of their rich Cultural heritage as they become the leaders of the future. Check out the Forster Fortnightly for more of the story behind the exhibition.

Talented students

This week, we celebrate our sporting and our academic students.

Lilah Gibson represented Polding at the NSWPSSA Girls Basketball Championships. This means Lilah went through from school, region, diocese and was then selected to be part of the Polding Team. In speaking with her mother, Renata, I heard that it has been an amazing experience for Lilah. She commented on the high standard of basketball played, the new friends made and the valuable lessons learned. She said it was a tough experience but equally as fantastic, with a highlight being that Lilah received a coaches award in one of the games because she always followed the coaches orders with a smile. How good is that!!

We also celebrate our students who participated in the Regional Spelling and Maths Bees. Anna Brooks, Matthew Jajo, Reuben Cassar, Ashton Robertson and Marley Donegan are to be congratulated on their willingness to take on this challenge, with some great results recorded a little later in our newsletter. So much to celebrate!

We are looking forward to our choir practising their performance skills over the coming weeks and thank the students and Mrs Clifton for the time they are dedicating to this endeavour.

Parents and Friends

This coming Tuesday at 5:0pm, you are all welcome to join our short but fruitful P&F Meeting to be held in our staffroom. We also offer an online option for those parents who would like to particpate but would prefer to be at home.

Wellbeing at Holy Name

We are forever grateful for our Support Staff for the roles they play in the lives of our students and staff. On Thursday we acknowledged our gratitude with a morning tea to say thank you to them. One of the beautiful things about the culture among our staff is that the high level of professionalism is complemented with a willingness to share of our personal gifts for the benefit of others. We see this all of the time with our Support Staff and this week was an opportunity to acknowledge this special group within our staff.

This week, Mrs Banham ensured we were looked after with wellbeing activities for the students, in class and on the playground. This morning in the assembly, it was great to walk in and see the students, K-6, dancing, with the biggest smiles on their faces - a nice way to end the week.

DON'T FORGET THAT TUESDAY 13TH JUNE IS A PUPIL FREE DAY! St Nicholas OOSH is open for families who need it.

Yours sincerely,

Brooke Stephens 

Bell Times

Our learning sessions start each day at 8.50, with our first bell sounding at 8.45. It is imperative that students are at school to begin the day on time. All classes start with their reading block which is vital and the first 15 minutes of the day are used by many teachers to work one on one with students to achieve their learning goals. Children are supervised at school from 8.30 each morning.

PBL

Our PBL focus for the past fortnight has been Listening to the Teacher. As I mentioned last newsletter, listening has been a real problem for our students and the teachers have been explicitly teaching the children how to be active listeners. This is done through modelling, videos and practising the skill. We have noticed some improvement but will continue to focus on this skill for another fortnight to consolidate the learning.

PICS OF AWARD Winners

ICAS

ICAS tests for Holy Name students are now available to order through the portal. In the last newsletter, I sent out the parent information letter, however, the links didn’t seem to work. This week I have sent the letter in an email attachment via COMPASS. Please use this letter to access the parent portal. Tests are available for students from Year 2 through to Year 6 in Digital Technologies, Science, English, Spelling, Mathematics and Writing (Years 3-6 only). The tests will be conducted at school during weeks 4-7 in Term 3. If you have any questions, please contact me at school.

SPORT

HNS Athletics House Points

HNS Athletics Champions

Wear it Yellow Fundraiser

Last Friday, in recognition and support of National Sorry Day, the students and staff at Holy Name wore yellow in support of the Wear it Yellow Fundraiser for the Children’s Ground Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to celebrate and uplift First Nations knowledge, create equity and access to high quality education, health and economy in communities for the next generation of children. The children donated $260.60 and along with donations on the website, we raised a total of $430.60. Thank you to our families for their support of this important cause.

Have a wonderful fortnight,

Kyla Loring

Assistant Principal

Holy Name Remembers National Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week

On Friday Holy Name reflected through scripture and prayer that God has given us this great land of Australia and he wants us to share her wealth, her wonders, and her land with everyone who lives here.  May we rise up, with hearts full of strength and courage and commit to treating each other with dignity, respect and tolerance so that all people might feel equal and included. We ask this through Jesus, our model and guide. 

I have included prayers from our Liturgy -The Prayer of the Faithful and the Aboriginal Our Father.

Payer of the Faithful 

Mrs Williamson: 

Gracious God, we turn to you and ask the help of your Spirit as we try to make our world a more peaceful place. 

Reader: Ashton 

We pray that we treat each other with fairness and justice. (pause) Lord, hear us. 

All: 

Lord, help us to walk forward with hearts of justice. 

Reader: Ashton 

We pray that we treat each other with tolerance and respect. (pause) Lord, hear us. 

All: 

Lord, help us to walk forward with hearts of acceptance. 

Reader: Jackson 

We pray that we treat each other with dignity and understanding. (pause) Lord, hear us. 

All: 

Lord, help us to walk forward with hearts of understanding. 

Reader: Jackson 

We pray that we treat each other with forgiveness and mercy. (pause) Lord, hear us. 

All: 

Lord, help us to walk forward with hearts of forgiveness. 

Reader: Arty 

We pray that we treat each other with kindness and appreciation. (pause) Lord, hear us. 

All: 

Lord, help us to walk forward with hearts of kindness. 

Reader: Arty 

We pray that we build strong relationships based on love and peace. (pause) Lord, hear us. 

All: 

Lord, help us to walk forward with hearts of love and peace. 

Mrs Williamson: 

God of mercy, love and peace, be with us as we pray the prayer which unites us as one family. 

All: 

(Aboriginal Our Father…. ) 
You are our Father, You live in Heaven 
We talk to You, Father, You are good. 
We believe Your Word, Father, we Your children. 
Give us bread today. 
We have done wrong, we are sorry. 
Help us Father, not to sin again. 
Others have done wrong to us 
And we are sorry for them, Father today. 
Stop us from doing wrong, Father. 
Save us all from the evil one. 
You are our Father, You live in Heaven. 
We talk to You, Father, You are good. Amen. 

We Celebrbrate the Church's Birthday

On Sunday the church celebrated Pentecost Sunday. The word "Pentecost" means 50th day. We celebrate Pentecost 50 days after Easter Sunday. At Pentecost, the Apostles were gathered with others. The Holy Spirit swept in as a flame and split into individual flames. Everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit. Thousandsof people were baptised by Peter on this day. This was the beginning of the Catholic church. The people baptised were the first Catholics and Peter becaome the first Catholic pope. Pentecost is the birthday of the Catholic Church!

The symbols of Pentecost represent The Holy Spirit. They are the wind, the flame and the dove. Red is the colour of Pentecost. Priests wear red during said masses.

Teachers led their class in a prayer liturgy on Monday to remember this significant day in the Churchs' calendar.

Below I have attached from Catholic Bible Chronicles, "The Holy Spirit descends on Mary and the apostles", which you may like to read and then read to your children. It gives greater context into Pentecost.

Religious Education and Religious Literacy

Teachers share the belief that Religious Education should be given high priority ay Holy Name. Our school is developing an agenda for improvement in religious literacy for we agree we wish to see our students are successful at achieving greater religious literacy.

I am currently working with our teachers to create a Forms questioner for our Yr 4,5 and 6 students to gain deeper insights into how our students view learning religion and knowledge of Religious Literacy in our school, what engages them to be better learners and their suggestions for improvement. 

Earlier this term I shared with you the Kindergarten to Year 6 Religious Education units of work for Term 2 and have unpacked Yr 3 ‘s unit “Hebrew Scriptures” and Yr 4’s unit “The Sacrament of Eucharist”. This week I wanted to share with you the Yr 3 unit of work “The Sacrament of Confirmation”, with success criteria for Religious Literacy and a learning sequence which shows how the children come to understand and know the I can statement for religious literacy success. I am doing this because it correlates with Pentecost, from earlier in my report.

Snapshot of a Year 3 Religious Education Unit in Term 2

The Sacrament of Confirmation

½ hour each day, 2 ½ hours each week, 12 ½ hours of teaching per 5 weeks.

Success Criteria

• I can explain what confirmation is.
• I can make links between the Holy Spirit and Confirmation.
• I can name the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
• I can name 3 ways Confirmation is a sacrament.
• I can list the events that happen during the Rite of Confirmation.
• I can explain what the symbols of Confirmation mean.
• I can name the type of Holy Oil used in Confirmation.
• I can explain what ritual actions occur during Confirmation.
• I can explain what it means to be confirmed.
• I can outline the effects of Confirmation

Learning Sequence

I can list the events that happen during the Rite of Confirmation. 

View the PowerPoint about the Rite of Confirmation, along with watching video clip on Confirmation from Understanding Faith to build the students field of knowledge. Each event is explicitly explained whilst they see a student their age from the video receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.

1) Presentation of the candidates 

2) Homily or instruction 

3) Renewal of Baptismal promises 

4) The laying on of hands 

5) The anointing with chrism and sign of peace 

Teacher distributes an exit slip, students write 3 things they have learned from today’s lesson, 2 things they found interesting about today’s lesson and one question they still have. Teacher collects responses for as a formative assessment.

Genevieve Williamson

Religious Education Coordinator

Great Learning Happening in Kindergarten!

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 Kindergarten.

During English lessons, Kinder have been working hard on using their knowledge of single letter sounds to decode words in their readers. The teachers have been so impressed to see how far they have all come with their ability read more accurately and attempting to read more fluently. Each day the teachers read out a decodable sentence from the class focus book and the class hear and record the words they hear using their knowledge of learnt sounds and spelling rules. This week we counted that we have been working with 13 letter sounds and the teachers are amazed at how quickly the students were able to identify and record words they know containing those sounds. Such clever cookies!

 In writing, Kinder have been learning to write simple sentences. The students have been learning that a sentence is a complete thought and that it shares a message. We have used our writing sessions to create texts about our weekend adventures and to respond to books we have read. Our writing sessions always start with a ‘Think, Pair and Share’ session where the students think about what they want to write, then turn ‘knee to knee- eye to eye’ with a partner to share their thinking out loud. This helps build the students confidence and gives all students a chance to have their say. The teacher then picks a few students to share what their partner said, which encourages active listening! This then becomes like a mini brainstorm of ideas. Once the class has brainstormed the ideas that they would like to include in their sentences, the teacher models a sentence chosen by the students. The teacher refers to the co-constructed writing success criteria to ensure the sentence starts with a capital letter, has spaces between the words, makes grammatical sense and finishes with a full stop. Students refer to this success criteria when they are writing their independent sentence too. Check out some of the awesome writing from this week!

In Maths, Kinder have been learning to use effective counting strategies so they can count accurately. Students have been working in pairs and have been given a large collection of counters and asked to estimate how many they think they have. They then needed to arrange their collection in a way that was easy for others to walk past and know what their total was. Students used great strategies such as arranging their collections in groups of 2, 5 or most commonly 10s. It was great to hear that the students were excited to do a gallery walk to check out other groups clever ways of representing their totals!

In Religion we have been learning all about the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The students have learnt about all the different ways Jesus shows loves to others and have thought about ways we can show love, just like Jesus! Over the past few weeks we have listened to lots of different stories of Jesus with particular favourites being: Jesus calms the storms, Jesus Blesses the Little Children, Jesus Feeds the five thousand and Jesus Heals the Blind Man. Some of these stories were read to the Kinders by some of our big Year 5 friends. Check out these great photos of our special Year 5 guests.

In Science and Technology we are investigating materials through a unit titled, ‘What’s it Made of?’. This unit has been a fabulous opportunity for students to get outdoors in our local community to idea ‘natural’ and ‘made’ materials. Check out these photos from our recent walk over to Pebbly Beach! The students have been working hard to sort different items into categories such as: hard, soft, flexible, natural, made, waterproof etc. Such awesome discussions and reasoning from our students during these sorting lessons.

On Wednesday Kindergarten were lucky enough to visit the Town Library and were given an exciting tour and a special talk from the Librarian. The Kinder students listened beautifully as the Librarian, Lee,  shared some special stories and even gave them each a book to follow on with. Some students even had a go at reading along with the story! What reading superstars.

Well done Kinder students, keep up the awesome work!

Mrs Suzie Monks

Primary Coordinator

On Friday 2^nd June, Anna Brooks, Matthew Jajo, Reuben Cassar, Marley Donegan and Ashton Robertson represented Holy Name at the Regional Spelling and Maths Bees at Wingham. The standard of competition at this level was extremely high and these children should all be commended on how they approached the challenges they faced. Holy Name achieved the following outstanding results:

Matthew Jajo – 1^st place in Stage 1 Maths

Reuben Cassar – 1^st place in Stage 2 Maths

Ashton Robertson – Equal 1^st place in Stage 3 Maths

Marley Donegan – 1^st place in Stage 3 Spelling

Matthew, Reuben, Ashton and Marley now progress to the Diocesan Spelling and Maths Bee Finals, held on Friday 23^rd June at St Catherine’s Catholic College, Singleton.

Congratulations to all and thank you Mr Pomplun for managing our students. Apologies for not having a photo of all students.

On Friday, three of our Year 6 students - Oscar, Marley and Bridie, engaged in an online scriptwriters day. They joined students from other schools across the diocese to watch a production called 'Shack', and then participated in a workshop led by playwright George Kemp. Such a great opportunity!

The Promoters of Safeguarding continue to endorse a culture of safeguarding across the Diocese. To this end, your attention is drawn to the issue of protecting our youth from the growing problem of vaping. Over the next few weeks, the message will focus on health issues and costs to individuals and community associated with both vaping and cigarette smoking. 

Vaping is the use of an electronic device that simulates tobacco smoking. Instead of inhaling smoke as with a cigarette, the e-cigarette user inhales vapor. As such, using an e-cigarette is often called "vaping". 

Both smoking and vaping involve heating a substance and inhaling the resulting fumes. With traditional cigarettes, you inhale smoke from burning tobacco. With vaping, a device (typically a vape pen that may look like a flash drive or colourful highlighter) uses a lithium battery to heat up a liquid (called vape juice or e-liquid) until it turns into a vapor that you inhale. When exhaled, you will see a large white cloud leaving the mouth or nose of the vaper. 

In effect, vaping uses a delivery system similar to a nebulizer, which people with asthma or other lung conditions may be familiar with. It’s a highly effective way of delivering drugs to the lungs. 

On the 2^nd May 2023, Australia banned recreational vaping and tightened other aspects of e-cigarette laws in the biggest crackdown on the tobacco industry in more than a decade to try to stop an alarming rise in teenage vaping.  

Despite this, a University of Queensland researcher said current Australian laws were failing to prevent young people using nicotine vaping products (NVPs). 

Professor Coral Gartner from UQ’s School of Public Health said many people were unwilling to comply with regulations around nicotine vaping, and retailers were continuing to sell the products under the counter, including to children. 

In Australia, it is illegal to have or use NVPs without a medical prescription. We need effective laws to protect people from taking up vaping – while also considering those who could benefit from using NVPs to quit smoking. 

“The law was intended to support people trying to quit smoking, while also protecting young people from taking up vaping, but youth vaping has continued to rise,” Professor Gartner said.