31 March 2017

Newsletter Articles

News from the Principal

Dear Families,

As we complete the end of Term 1, we recognise significant people who have been part of our community who are leaving our school.

Fr Saju arrived in April 2015 and has touched many lives with his faith and dedication to serving the Parish, school and wider community. He has shared a love for the Torres Straits with students, staff and parents and will be remembered for his love of fishing, dancing, music and his sense of humour.

On Sunday April 9th members of the school and parish community are invited to bring along a shared plate for dinner to celebrate Fr Saju.

Location: The back of Fr Saju’s house, next to the church
Time: 6:30PM
All families are welcome to attend.

Today we farewelled Mr Peter as Year 4/5 teacher. We thank Peter for his time and commitment to the students at our school. At different times in Term 2, Peter will be returning to assist with relief teaching as we continue to strengthen our expert teaching team, providing opportunities for professional learning at the school and collaborative planning to achieve a consistent and sequenced delivery of curriculum across both campuses and from Prep – Year 6. We look forward to Peter’s continued support of our staff and students at different times throughout 2017.

Miss Jenny who has assisted in Year 4/5 may also be leaving us as due to limited accommodation on Thursday Island. If anyone has accommodation that is available, can you please email me as soon as possible. Jenny has been a huge asset to our school community this year and has a wealth of experience that she has provided to our school culture. Hopefully we will be able to find some accommodation and welcome her back in the near future.

With the change of staffing, we have had what we call a domino effect! We have attempted to provide consistency of our current teaching staff where possible to maintain the level of experienced staff providing quality learning and wellbeing for all across both campuses.

Members of the Parents and Friends Association have prioritised the significance of maintaining consistency of experienced staff at our school, and we hope that we have continued to achieve this goal as we enter Term 2.

May you all have a wonderful time with families and friends over the holiday season, remembering the significance of Easter in the Catholic Church Calendar.

‘Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world’… John 1:29.

Take care, Au esoau
Sharon County
Principal

APFL News

As we continue our Lenten journey, we seek to forgive and choose good. We find ourselves in a time where we examine God’s position in our lives. God created us with a pure heart and gave us the joy of His love and grace. However, we often find ourselves in a world of sin and evilness. The goodness, on the other hand, far outweighs sin. Where we find sin, we find an abundance of goodness through God’s grace and divinity. It is often presented in very simple ways; when we realise the simple ways through which it is presented, we see that it is abundant. Yet in many places around the world there exists such significant evil. We are constantly bombarded with images on the television of war, pain and suffering. Caritas and Christian brothers and sisters have been providing many refugees with aid and relief.

For us we have a mission to turn “God” into our own action. We seek to support our Christian brothers and sisters through donations and creating awareness. In this season of lent, providing help to those that have such loss is perhaps the best we can do in living with a pure heart. Caritas donations can be made in classes or at the front office. We also have envelopes to go home for families to help raise donations.

We further give our best wishes to Father Saju and Peter Shorthouse as they depart our school community. Never will we forget their strength, hope and compassion. They will forever hold a place in the heart of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School.

Year 5/6 Class News

Exciting times in the Grade 5 /6 class as our learning about the effects of climate change in the Torres Strait translates into a science experiment. As a class we observed that natural and enhanced greenhouse gases affect the Earth in different ways. The natural greenhouses gasses in our atmosphere are great and keep our planet nice and warm. The enhanced gasses made from burning too much coal creating C02 and breeding too many cows creating Methane, make the blanket around our planet too thick and the Sun’s heat gets trapped under the blanket. Making our planet hotter than it should be.

In our experiment we tested the hypothesis that if we created two atmospheres in bottles and enhanced the C02 in one of them, when we applied heat to the atmosphere with the enhanced C02 the atmosphere would increase in temperature faster than the natural greenhouse atmosphere.

We used controls like plants, bottle size, starting temperature, thermometers and hairdryers. We also built our own equipment for the experiment. Our class learned a lot about being accurate during experiments and coping with changes in plans to carry out the experiment.

Year 4/5 Class News

In Year 4/5 our class rules are Respect for Self, Respect for Others and Respect for Property/The Environment .We are striving to live these out in our actions and behaviours.

We have been learning about the impact climate change has on the environment around the globe and we know more about how it impacts on Australia, especially the Torres Strait. Everyone has been engaged in this learning and sharing their understandings to the class. The children have been exploring communities affected by these extreme weather conditions, especially now Cyclone Debbie is impacting further south.

We have been learning about what the features of an informative text are and we have continued to investigate what makes a good narrative and how we can plan a narrative and use that plan as a reference and checklist. We are also learning about the need to edit our narratives in our English lessons and to use a checklist. We have been using our public speaking voices to read in character and use various expressions and tones that convey emotions of anger, joy and happiness.

In Maths we have been focusing on learning strategies to solve problems and learning to use number patterns to help us in our basic recall of number facts and times tables. We have been revising our times tables and quick recall of number facts. We have been learning the language of maths such as, symmetry, vertex, acute, three dimensional, etc. Our revision of maths language and understanding continues this week.

In our RE we focused on the events of Holy Week by looking at each event and the sacrifice Jesus made for his people. We reviewed our goals on how we can improve ourselves as better people during Lent by praying more, giving more and being more respectful .We have also been focusing on the various community groups we belong to and what are the benefits of having these different community groups around us. We continued to read Bible stories on how Jesus was on a mission to improve every community that he visited with his knowledge, wisdom and love. We learn from one another and share our learnings and the well being of all students and members of our school community is discussed each day.

Finally, Thank you to all the amazing people who have made me feel so welcome and assisted me in my teaching and settling into life on Thursday Island! You are awesome and I will miss you and the children. Hopefully I can come back to T.I one day. Our Swimming carnival was a great day for our children and l have felt very proud for being part of this great school community.

Regards,
Peter Shorthouse

Year 2/3 Class News

ONE HUGE ESSO

Thank you to all the children for a great term. Special thanks to Mel McLean and Susan Dale for giving up their time to help with reading groups. Both the children and I are really pleased with the progress being made with their reading. The children really love to read to another adult so any volunteers are warmly welcomed next term.

Also a big thank you to Bonnie Hall for her fabulous science presentation on the life cycle of a frog, which fitted wonderfully into our "Living Things" Science unit.

A HUGE thank you to Ms Harriet for everything in the classroom. "Our living reef mobile" wouldn't have happened without her and the children's great effort. We LOVE YOU Ms Harriet. !!!

A really big thanks to Ms Donna for all the technology support for both the children and teacher. !! With Term 1 almost finished I could go on and on with the "ESSOS" as there are many people who have helped the children and I settle into 2017. We can't forget our principal Mrs County as well with all the support she provides to both children and staff.

Just quietly.....I am addicted to Miss Margaret's curry so thanks for those lunches Miss Margaret.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE ... and remember...... STAY CALM AND KEEP ON FISHING!!!!

Year 1 Class News

As the term winds up, there are so many things the year ones have achieved that they should be proud of. They have been working hard on how to behave cooperatively in a classroom, how to answer questions in a respectful manner, and how to be inclusive. These are quite challenging for five and six year olds, but they have been working really well on these concepts. Curriculum-wise, they have worked with the numbers 1-100, looking at patterns and relationships in 100-squares, and counting in twos, fives and tens. In English we have looked at vowel sounds and some blends and have used the golden words, first level, as part of our writing. Literacy and numeracy will continue to be a focus next term as we build on these concepts, moving the students toward greater understanding of reading material, and increased confidence with the basics of numeracy.

Next term we will be holding a Mothers' Day stall in week 4, which is aimed at fundraising to support the Choir in their competition. I would like to make up some bags of nice soaps/cosmetics for the year ones to sell on the stall. If anyone has NEW soap or cosmetics such as nail polish, that they could donate, that would be greatly appreciated. There will be plants for sale too, and I am hoping there will be some other nice knick-knacks I can pick up in Brisbane in the holidays too. Year ones will run this stall but they might also like to purchase a gift for their mum/guardian from there during week 4, so make sure they have a little bit of money to spend that week. Nothing will be over $10. I will send more information after the break.

I hope you all have a peaceful Easter and enjoy your break.

Kind regards,
Stephanie Hogan

Prep Class News

Congratulations Kade Stevens and Charlie McNeil in week 8 on your awards for independently creating a fabulous St Patrick’s Day hat. Also to Isabelle Bryce for your positive attitude to all activities and being kind to everyone at OLSH school as our award winner this week.

THANK YOU to our dedicated Prep parents who all came to help/watch at last week’s swimming carnival and for being so positive in our parent/teacher interviews. I hope you all have a peaceful family time over the Easter holidays.

In Prep this fortnight we have had fun with;

• Creating St Patrick’s Day Hats and making green pancakes.
• Wearing Orange and practicing being KIND for Harmony Day and every other day in prep.
• Preparing for our Thank you Thursday afternoon tea for our families this week.
• Learning and showing others what the real meaning of Easter is with our egg presentations.
• Swimming for our first swimming carnival and cheering with our houses.
• Going on a shape hunt around the school, and making a shapes book.
• Writing adventure stories.
• Preparing our Holy Week play for the school reflections on Easter.

Please contact us at the school/email below if you have any further queries,

Helen Osborne
hosborne@cns.catholic.edu.au

Hammond Island Campus News

Firstly, I would like to congratulate our SEL award winners over the past two weeks: In Week eight, Caden, Fhistina, Neville, Aaron, Desmond, Shamira, Saskia, Aleon, Dakota, Elsie,Jo’Liyah, and Nola was congratulated on using confidence, persistence and getting along when participating in their swimming races at the swimming carnival. We would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate all students for the reading skills, sounding out of letters and practicing their sight word. Well done everyone!

Big eso goes out to our Hammond Island parents; Lily Solomon, Aaliyah Gela, Seba Sabatino and Dorothy Cowley for your time and support with our students at the Swimming Carnival.

Last Wednesday Hammond Island Campus and the Community celebrated Neville Nona’s baptism at Joseph Church followed by a shared morning tea with the students, staff and the community. All then joined in with cultural singing, and dancing.

We hope families have a relaxing and safe Easter break. School will resume on Tuesday 18th April. Please don’t hesitate to come and see us if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for your ongoing support.

Yours in Education,
Mrs Ceceila Davi, Mrs Briohny Jones, Ms Dorothy Cowley, Miss Seba Sabatino

Hammond Pre-Prep News

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

Yes! The pre-preps have started to play with water in our trough by discovering how to fill and empty cups, containers, cooking cutlery and utensils plus plastic objects. The enjoyment and fun we have had as we tried not to wet ourselves, but accidents do happen and sometimes we may get a bit wet, oh, oh.

Singing and identifying our alphabets is really hard at first but we manage to learn the letters we find most desirable to learn as they are in our name. We are really trying hard to learn as much alphabets we can and will carry on learning the rest in term 2.

Colours, colours, colours… jumping in every hoop to identify each colour is amazing because we try to remember something that matches or looks like this colour in our environment like ‘E’ for the elephant and the letter ‘H’ for horse. Sometimes we look at the clothes we are wearing or the toys we are playing with to help match the coloured hoops. If we do say the wrong colour that’s alright… Miss, always helps us along especially when she jumps in the hoops with us to identify the correct colours together. Miss says, that’s alright we can practise again tomorrow or some other time with a smile!

Pre-preps are learning to count forwards and backwards to 5. A game we usually play taking turns is the jumping into the number hoops. One child is selected to call the number the rest including our teacher has to jump in the correct number called. Our drink bottles are always ready beside us to have a drink and bounce back into our game.

We all peeled an egg each to help us recognise the letter ‘e’ sound. It tasted delicious! Our first visit to St Joseph’s Church, we had to walk up the hill, sign our cross and genuflect (bend one knee) before sitting down on the seat. We all did our very best with participating in our end of term whole school mass. It was a very special day for Ms Dorothy as her son; Neville Nona was baptised in Church by Fr Saju. We are some lovely food during our morning tea break.

Easter is finally approaching during the second week of the school holidays. The children will bring home a small basket of Easter eggs to take home and have during Easter. Have a very Blessed and Loving Easter Holidays with your families and community elders,

I would like to say a very big thank you to all of the parents for their wonderful support during term 1. It has been a successful term for all pre-preps who have demonstrated, challenged and accepted their roles in keeping our learning area organised. You have all done yourselves proud!

Kind Regards,
Marion Ball & Dorothy Cowley
Pre-Prep Teacher & School Officer
Hammond Island Campus

Notice of Appointment – Year 4/5 Class Teacher

Congratulations Mrs Briohny Jones!

Notice of Appointment – P-3 Hammond Campus

Congratulations Mrs Annette Whitton!

OLSH Choir News

The OLSH choir have now got their flights booked!

We have been using up lunchtimes to rehearse and relay information. We will be having some important concerts and fundraisers next term so stay tuned to this spot. These include;

Movie Fundraising Night-at Thursday Island school possibly Friday 28th April.
Concert at Thursday Island Campus in evening-possibly Wednesday June 7th.
Concert at Hammond School Campus-possibly Wednesday June 14th.
Leaving for Cairns-Sunday 18th June!!(definitely!)

The Easter Monster Raffle was drawn on Thursday this week. We have raised over $1380.00 with many hard working ticket sellers and some excellent donated prizes. Thanks everyone for supporting this project 100%.

RAFFLE WINNERS:

Please contact us at the school/email below if you have any further queries,

Helen Osborne
hosborne@cns.catholic.edu.au

Administration News

It is important that parents notify the school office of any absences including leaving on holidays early. While it is also important to advise the classroom teacher of your child’s absence, it is also a requirement to notify the school office. This makes it official and attendance records can be adjusted accordingly.

Have a safe and happy Easter Holidays.

Week 8 Award Winners

Week 9 Award Winners

2017 Swimming Carnival

Congratulations to McDermott House for winning the Swimming Carnival. All your hard work and teamwork really paid off!

Congratulations to all of our Swimming Age Champions:

Library News

Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday don't forget book fair will commence on 24th April - 4th May. Unfortunately we will not have a dress up Bookaneer book fair parade this term. The dress up parade will be held in August to coincide with book week.

Term 2 Events

2017 Special Events and Public Holidays

Community Announcements

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