Dear Parents and Carers,

Holy Name School has much to be proud of and grateful for. Our students have opportunities to excel across a range of academic, sporting and creative experiences and are taught how to see and act in ways that show kindness or love for others. We are blessed with teachers and support staff who are known as leaders across the Diocese because of the innovative ways they incorporate best practice into the teaching, learning and wellbeing agenda of the school. They are focused on evolving in their professional capacities, and are informed by how well our students are achieving the standards. Our staff stretch themselves everyday to make sure the needs of our students are met. It is hard to describe the content and number of decisions made each day that are carefully considered within a myriad of variables, all with the sole focus on our students. When we talk to other schools about our community, we share that our ability to operate as we do is made easier because we have the support and confidence of our parents and carers. Your belief and trust in the work we do, in the changes we make and in the decisions that affect you and your children, are also very important pieces of what makes Holy Name School a great place to work and to learn. On Tuesday, our staff were focused on deepening the formation life of the school for our students. We are forming a plan for our students that draws from our vision, mission and charism, and aligns with classroom learning and the needs of our community so that students themselves are able to consider and act in ways that make a difference in the lives of others. Part of this formation will build bonds between the community of our students and the wider community. We can't wait to have this plan come to fruition!

Continuing with the gratitude theme, we will soon be blessed with new facilities and the completion of the recent works at our school. In addition to the new amenities, four refurbished classrooms and redevelopment of our outdoor spaces, we were also successful with our grant application to replace the tatty synthetic grass leading up to the hall. The CSO Building and Facilties Team have asked the builders on-site to do the work so that it expediates the job and they are currently laying concrete on the areas where the grass has never grown.

As part of our regular school maintenance, we are replacing the carpet in the Learning Hub over the holidays and therefore we have stopped the borrowing of Library books for the last two weeks of this term. There will be no more borrowing until next term to allow for our Learning Hub staff to pack up the books in preparation for the carpet to be replaced. Please return any books laying around at home this coming week.

Taekwondo at Holy Name

"GRAND MASTER FAY SHACKLOCK"

We are very excited that from next term, Grand Master Fay Shacklock will be holding her Taekwondo lessons at Holy Name after school on either a Tuesday or a Thursday depending on interest. The classes will run for one hour immediately after school from 3-4pm. This brochure used in other schools has some information about Fay and her program. From experience, I know Fay has a way of getting the best out of anyone in her classes and it is a very worthy and affordable program for those students and families who might be interested. Please register your interest by Monday 19th June by emailing admin@forster.catholic.edu.au with your name, phone number, student/s and the preferred day. Once we have the options, we will confirm a day and pass on your details to Fay.

Student Reports

Semester 1 Student Reports will be available for parents and carers at the end of next week via Compass. There will be two versions of reports this semester due to the trial of some classes with the new 'Goal Setting Conversations' during Term 1 (Kinder, Yr 1, Yr 4, Yr 5) and the previous model of 'Student Led Conferences', maintained by other classes (Yr 2, Yr 3, Yr 6). Our staff are already having discussions about the pros and cons of both processes in regard to what we think improves the outcomes for our students and parents. We are hoping to gather your feedback again through a short survey once the process is complete for this semester to make decisions about the model for our school moving forward. When this opportunity arises, I encourage your participation.

Yours sincerely,

Brooke Stephens 

Check out what's happening at St Clare's College Taree through reading their newsletter here!

I hope you have had some time over the past fortnight to enjoy this beautiful Winter weather with your loved ones.

Positive Behaviour for Learning

Our PBL focus for the past four weeks has been Listening to the Teacher. Children have been awarded surfboards when they are “caught” displaying this skill. The Class Awards recipients for this fortnight are:

The focus behaviour for the last 2 weeks of Term 2 will be Keeping our Environment Clean and Tidy.

 Our class Awards for this fortnight went to:

Principal’s Awards were presented to the following students for receiving 20 surfboards:

Nikki Dang in 4H received a Principal's Award for receiving 40 surfboards. Great effort Nikki!

ICAS

I have received some enrolments for the ICAS competitions that will happen in Term 3. The Parent Portal can be accessed at shop.icasassessments.com/pages/pps and the code is IQH273. The competitions are available to students in Years 2-6 in Digital Technologies, Science, Spelling, English and Maths and Writing is available for students in Years 3-6.

Regional Athletics

We are pleased to provide a brief report on the Regional Athletics Carnival held at Tuncurry Oval, featuring students from Wingham, Bulahdelah, Forster, Taree, and Gloucester.

The weather was ideal, allowing for a day of thrilling races and impressive displays of skill. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the helpers who contributed their time and efforts to make this event possible. Your assistance with organising, managing, and supporting the athletes ensured the smooth running of the carnival. Your dedication to creating a positive and memorable experience for everyone involved is greatly appreciated.

Additionally, a special thank you goes to Lee MacDonald for hosting the High Jump event. Whose expertise and guidance provided a valuable opportunity for the athletes to showcase their high-jumping skills. 

The carnival was a testament to the dedication and hard work of the athletes, as they strived to achieve their personal bests. Their commitment to training and preparation was evident in their performances on the day.

We extend our appreciation to the teachers and support staff who contributed to the success of the carnival. Their efforts ensured a well-run event that provided a platform for students to showcase their athletic abilities.

Congratulations to all the athletes who participated in the Regional Athletics Carnival, including the Holy Name relay teams. Your talent and achievements are truly impressive, and you should be proud of your hard work and dedication. 

Thank you to everyone who attended and supported the carnival, making it a memorable and exciting event.

This morning at our Friday assembly, Ms McKinnon presented certificates to our HNS swimming record holders. Congratulations to Airlia Coulton-Donnelly, Anna Brooks, Lilah Gibson, Sienna Cooper and Brabham Cooper.

RSYSTEM

Last week, our Year 6 students walked up to Forster Primary School to participate in the RSYSTEM Science Challenge Day sponsored by Rotary. The children had a wonderful time immersing themselves in great Science, Maths and Engineering activities. The students won the challenge and took away a $500 prize! This money will be put towards purchasing STEM resources for our school.

A huge thanks to our local Rotary Club for offering our students such an engaging experience.

Kyla Loring

Assistant Principal

Staff Formation on Mission and Justice

Holy Name Staff gathered together on Tuesday to better understand Catholic Social Teachings and how these can help form a deeper undertanding of what it means to be people of mission and justice in our school, local community and wider world.

From our School Improvement Plan, in 2023 the staff will understand Catholic Social Teachings and have a plan that outlines the focus of learning and action for each grade. Our purpose for this formation day was to understand the call for Mission and Justice. Adam Frost, from the Maitland Newcastle Religious Education and Spirituality Team, began the day by building the staff's field of knowledge of the 6 Catholic Social Teachings and how we can connect these with the themes from our K-6 Religious Education units.

The Catholic Social Teachings (CST) are Dignity of the Human person, Common Good, Solidarity, Stewardship, Option for the Poor and Vunerable and Subsidiarity (the role of Governmnet/Economic Justice). Attached is a CST document which provides a definition and human link to each of the principles and critical thinking questions that our teachers reflected on and discussed. 

Next term our staff will continue this work in the Mission and Justice space to create a Catholic Social Teaching Scope and Sequence of formation for our students. 

Kind regards,

Genevieve Williamson

Religious Education Coordinator

Great Learning Happening in Year One!

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 One.

In English, the Year One classes are engaging in their reading lessons with a high level of engagement and motivation. The students are continuing to enjoy having their own copy of the class decodable reader each week, which enables them to use the reader during lessons and practise reading the text at home. The decodable reader the students have week is linked with the class sound focus which assists the students in building their knowledge of more complex letter sound combinations. Each day students read the class reader together to build reading fluency and work towards their goal of reading a target amount of words per minute. Students take part in a daily dictation lesson where words containing the sound focus are included in the sentence the students need to record. You can see from the amazing examples of dictation writing on the whiteboards that the students are working hard on their hearing and recording of sounds in words.

During writing our Year One students are learning to construct quality sentences to include in their informative writing pieces. Over the past fortnight teachers have been modelling how to include adjectives to sentences to make them more interesting. The students have enjoyed using think/pair/share to verbalise their interesting sentences before attempting to write them in their books. The students have been researching an animal of their choice by scanning QR codes around the room and recording facts they have learnt in their own words. During this process the students were so keen to share their thinking and discuss their progress with their peers. When students were happy with their facts in draft form, they presented altogether with an image of their chosen work. Check out some of their awesome work!

In Maths, Year One been continuing to develop their number skills. Students have been representing large collections of counters in ways that makes counting efficient and easy and quick for a partner to identify the total. Students have been using the tens frame pattern to clearly show how many groups of ten there are and the ones clearly separate. The Year One teachers have been impressed with how confidently the student can explain their method of representing their total and how they know what their total is. Teachers have been using prompting questions to identify if the students know one more and one less than their total. Some students are even working towards identifying ten more and ten less than their total. The students have also been engaging in fun space and geometry lessons where they have investigated using shapes to create patterns.

In Science, Year One have been working on a unit titled ‘Materials and Change’. In this unit, the students have been investigating how materials can be changed, manipulated and combined. Students have followed the design process to create objects by manipulating and combining materials while making predictions and observations of their results. The students enjoyed looking at a video and different images from ‘Sculptures by the Sea’, where a range of different materials are used by artists to make some pretty amazing sculptures which are on display annually near Bondi Beach. The highlight of the unit was investigating changes to materials based on temperature which involved the students making ice cream! Check out the happy smiles when they got to eat the results of their science experiment.

Well done Year One students and teachers keep up the awesome work!

Mrs Suzie Monks

Primary Coordinator