14 October 2016

Newsletter Articles

From The Principal

Dear Families,

Welcome to the last term of the school year. This is always an exciting time of the year as we stop to celebrate all the things that we have achieved throughout the year, finalise specific projects and plan for the following year of our learning journey.

Our strategic goal is based on recognising your feedback, emphasising the continued focus required on quality learning and the wellbeing for all students. We hope that this is something that we always have at the heart of teaching and leadership. How can we improve the level of education that we provide to our students? This is one of the most debated questions across the world. Recently I was reading an article that discussed the benefits of the education system in Finland and those across Asia; all education systems who have received a high level of results in global testing over the last decade.

So what does that mean to us? Children are best able to reach their potential to learn if they feel a sense of wellbeing in their life. This comes from a sense of belonging, being healthy, eating a variety of balanced and regular meals, participating in exercise, having a regular sleep routine…there are many things that we can be doing to help our children to be more engaged within their learning environment.

Our aim is to support our students to develop into young people in our community who are independent, self managing and self motivated learners. Through modelling effective behaviours to our students and children, they recognise the behaviours that they identify as positive and strive to be like the positive role models in their lives. I was reminded today of the importance of how significant it is to have expectations and establish goals that drive our personal motivation.

This week, we further our understanding of Mental Health across the world. A positive mindset, a sense of purpose and achievement in one's life at any age all contribute to a positive level of mental health. However, we all recognise that maintaining this can be very challenging.

Please reflect on the following ideas to support your mental health:

Last week we farewelled Pam Steward who has had to leave suddenly due to the need to care for her mother in England who has been admitted to hospital. We wish her the best of luck for her travels home and our thoughts and prayers are with her mother who is 93. What a great age!

Please remember that next week we have no school on Monday and Tuesday to allow staff to attend meetings with other schools across the diocese to assist with developing skills in consistent assessment.

We look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday (Photo Day on Thursday Island). Hammond Island will have their Photo Day on Thursday.

Au Esoau and take care.

Sharon County
Principal

APRE News

Dear Parents and carers,

What a wonderfully busy start to Term 4. It has been fantastic to see the enthusiasm that the students have returned to school with. As I have mentioned last Term amongst many other Term 4 activities and events we will be celebrating our Year 6 Graduation on Thursday the 24th at 9am with a Graduation Mass and we would like to invite our family and friends to come and be part of this very special moment for these students.

We will also be holding our Thanksgiving Mass and Carols Under the stars on Wednesday of week 7, the 16th of November. Mass will start at 5:30pm followed by the Carols up in the school. We will be selling, food, drinks and glow in the dark items. All proceeds from these purchases will go to our Fiji cause. If there are any parents and friends that are able to help out on the night or with the set up please let me know as we all know many hands make light work.

I have shared a prayer with you that as a parent and as a teacher I found really lovely.

Changes to Homework Club

Dear Parents and Families,

There are a few changes to clubs and activities this term. Due to attendance and amount of homework, Homework Club will only be run on a Thursday afternoon 3-4pm.

On a Wednesday afternoon 3-4pm I will be running a new club that focuses on community service and engagement. The main project we will be supporting this term is the TI Reading Group's "Christmas Book Advent Calendar". Some of the activities we will be doing to contribute include wrapping books, making labels, wrapping paper and book marks, just to name a few.

I hope you all have a great term and I'm looking forward to seeing old and new faces of an afternoon

Thanks,
Paige

Year 4 News

Congratulations to Kanish and Sachin who were our award winners this week for their consistently persistent efforts to finish tasks and work with others well. Well done!

Welcome to the World Baby Hailee James Brown

Miss Tam and Mr Dean's baby came into the world last Tuesday at 5pm weighing 3.5kg. Year 4 thinks she is very cute just like all of us. Congratulations from everyone at OLSH.

Miss Tam and Hailee James Brown

In Year 4 this fortnight we have already had fun with;

• Meeting the wonderful Miss Bree and hearing of her travels and teaching all around the world. It's been terrific to have such a great teacher in year four and she has fit in very quickly. I think she even won a teacher's trophy over at Hammond Island this week!

• Starting our trip around the world in Geography and earning flights to different capitals around different continents. This fortnight we have studied the 7 continents, states of Australia and started exploring mapping of Australia. We are now headed to Africa to get the next pages in our passports stamped.
• Feeling FRICTION and drawing pull forces from our science tug of wars.
• Starting our plastic lid mural drawing/painting and preparing to screw on lids!
• Browsing and reading new books in the book fair.

Well done all year four students who have worked to get their homework done and handed in to a greater standard this fortnight!

We are improving every week so keep it up as we get ready for year 5.

Please contact me at the school/email below if you have any further queries,
Helen Osborne
hosborne@cns.catholic.edu.au

Year 5 & 6 News

Hi everyone and welcome back for the last term of the year. The next six weeks are going to race past so I hope everyone is holding on tight. Let's see what we will be up to as we finish off the year.

Let there be light!

The overarching theme for this term is "Let there be light" and in science we will be investigating the related topics of Electricity and Light. This will give us lots of smaller ideas to explore, not the least interesting of which will be magnets, as they are integral to the production of electricity. We will also look at the way some very unique creatures are able to make their own light in the form of Bioluminescence. All in all a very interesting way to finish off the term.

Maths

Maths this term is all about Chance and Data. So far the students have been learning how to express chance mathematically and the difference between theoretical and experimental chance. They will soon be creating a survey and asking their peers questions in order to record and present the results. This should be a fun little unit and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

English

The focus this term switches back to Narratives, so there will be more stories to be written. We are also looking at the different devices that writers can use to make their writing more interesting and exciting. I'm sure I will have some great reading in front of me. Of course we will continue with our regular spelling program and working on our comprehension skills.

Religion

We have started RE by looking at the 10 Commandments. We have investigated what was happening during the time the 10 Commandments were created. We have also started looking in depth at each Commandment, with the idea of translating them into more contemporary language for our class. We will also investigate how the Commandments can help us to live faithfully in today's society.

Geography

Geography is all about natural disasters this term, with a particular focus on floods and bushfires, which are very much a part of this wide brown land of ours. We will also look at our Asian neighbours, particularly those who were impacted by the Boxing Day Tsunami.

Let there be light!

Well along with everything else that is happening as we race headlong towards graduation that should be more than enough to keep us busy this term. I'll finish off by reminding you that next Monday and Tuesday are pupil free days, as we will be in Cairns for the Consistency of Teacher Judgement day. As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Regards
David Magner
Year 5/6 Teacher

Year 2 & 3 News

Welcome to Term 4!

This term, we have been blessed to welcome 2 more new students to our class and OLSH family. Dulcie Layne joins us in Grade Two and Angus Layne joins us in Grade Three. We are very excited to have Dulcie and Angus in our class. We also welcome Miss Bree to Grade 2/3. Miss Bree will be covering Mr Shankaran's classes while he is away in Fiji.

Congratulations to our award winners this week: Dulcie, Angus and Zach were all recognised for their great efforts to show all of The Five Keys to Success to settle into their new class; Tehara has been making great efforts to always do her best at school and in her homework; and Nauma has made a confident start to the term by actively participating in class and consistently making his best efforts.

In Literacy, we have been using computers to edit, publish and add multimedia elements to text. We have also been using spell check effectively and rehearsing to deliver presentations.

In Maths, we have been exploring different strategies to solve problems. This week we explored the spilt addition strategy, near doubles and add to ten. We also looked at pentagons, angles and symmetry. There are some fabulous looking symmetrical name monsters in our class that we welcome you to come and see.

We have wrapped up our 'Melting Moments' Science unit by investigating the difference in melting times of various sized pieces of chocolate.

In technology we have been using Goldilocks and the 3 Bears as inspiration to design and create chairs out of various materials. What features do you look for in a chair?

We are all looking forward to a great term and to finish the year strong.

Miss Emma

Our Award Winners

TI Campus Week 1 and 2 Award Winners

Term 4 Events

Regular Events

Book Fair

Office Update

School Photos

School photos (Group and Individual photos) will be taken in Week 3.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR CHILD IS WEARING A CLEAN BLUE SCHOOL UNIFORM SHIRT (with OLSH School Logo), grey pants for boys and navy shorts/culottes/skirt for girls. Covered shoes are also required and are a compulsory part of the OLSH School Uniform.

Extra photo order forms are available from the school office. Please complete the form and return it to the School Office by Friday 14th October with full payment. Late orders will not be considered due to the added cost of submitting a separate order.

Please ensure you retain your signed receipt at the bottom of the order form for your records.

This service is being provided separate to general school business therefore payment will need to be made in full by Cash only.

Completed orders should be available for collection by week 8.

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