27 April 2017

Newsletter Articles

From the Principal

Dear Families.

Welcome to Term 2.

We have been reminded recently of the uniqueness of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School and this will be celebrated in the next few weeks as our students commence to wear the new school uniform.

The uniform is representative of our Catholic identity and motto ‘All for Jesus’ signified by the cross. The cross and the blue panel on the inside panels of the shirt remind us of the importance that the Sisters of Mercy had on the religious formation of staff, students and families and their active engagement within the wider community of the Torres Straits across generations.

The school logo reminds us that we are two campuses, united as one school. The Torres Strait pigeon, the bird and the yellow of the sands are symbols of our cultural identity.

The navy colour represents the capacity for sustainability of the shirts and displays a sense of pride in our school.

At the end of last week, we communicated the working parties for 2017 to continue to reflect on areas of school improvement.

Please complete the expression of interest form and return to the front office. If you would like to be a member of a working party from last year, that is fine too. These will be continuing through a review of ideas and implementation phases.

This week we forwarded a letter to parents to confirm that on her return this term after the holidays, Ms Annette Whitton decided that it would be best for her to continue her position in Year 2/3 to provide continuity for the students and the school. We are currently progressing through an advertising process for an additional teacher for Hammond Island.

It is terrific to hear that the uniforms will be arriving this week. We will be placing another order in as soon as we receive the shirts that will replace the uniforms sold. The company has informed us that this process will be a lot quicker as there will be no delays with the setup of design.

We thank you for your patience and understanding.

In addition to these communications, our Parent Portal has also gone live at the beginning of this week. You can access this through our school website. If you scroll down to the bottom on the left hand side, you will see a link to the Parent Portal. This is another pathway for communication with parents. Many things may be doubled up through Skoolbag, the newsletter and the portal, however it is important that we try and provide effective methods of communication. This will also be reviewed this year in the Communication Working Party. If you are interested in this area, please don’t forget to place an expression of interest as an area of focus to support and provide ideas.

This week we commence our fitness sessions for Years 3- 6 on the lower area. These sessions are part of our wellbeing for student’s programme. Ms Annette, Mr Worland, Tilly Orero, myself and the AFL Coaches will be facilitating fitness sessions at first lunch each day.

We offer a range of fitness activities and skill development across the five days. This is based on expression of interest to attend with a high level of engagement required for the session.

All children must have wear a hat to participate.

Thank you to all families and staff who attended ANZAC Day events on Hammond Island and Thursday Island. We also thank all community members from the Defence Force who supported the school and came and spoke to the children. Many people spoke about how they were touched by the liturgies presented on both campuses and in classrooms. This is what makes us unique.

Thank you

Sharon County
Principal

News from the APFL

I would like to thank all those who participated in the ANZAC Day commemorations. There was a considerable turnout for the march and, despite the wind and rain, many still participated. This is a testimony as to how important ANZAC day is for many of us.

On the 12th of May, we will be running our annual Cross Country Event. Any parents or carers who would like to volunteer for the event, please inform me as soon as possible so we can include you in the planning.

We have mapped out a track along Victoria Parade, starting at “the turtles” with a turnaround mark at the end of Victoria Parade (near the Hospital). If you have any feedback to give about the track or require further details, please get in contact with me as soon as possible. Running distances for any students aged nine and under will be 800 meters. For any students aged ten, the distance will be two kilometres. For any students aged eleven and twelve, the distance will be three kilometres. We will have four water and first aid check-points along the track. Staff and volunteers will be stationed along the track with several others running with students.

From the 9th to the 11th of May, we will also be administering NAPLAN testing for students in year three and five. NAPLAN testing will assess language conventions, writing, reading and numeracy. It should be noted that NAPLAN does not impact upon a student’s report and overall achievement at school.

Cale Fisher
Assistant Principal in Faith & Learning

Year 5/6 Class News

In Week One of Term Two the Grade 5/6 Class visited the Chemist on Thursday Island where we installed our posters from the Climate Change Unit we completed in Term One. It was a very exciting moment as we transferred our knowledge and understanding out of our books and classroom and into the public.

We hope parents and friends had time to have a look at our work as we will have to remove it soon. If you haven't had a chance to look yet please pop into the chemist soon.

Important NAPLAN Information

In week 4 of this term, Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th May, our Year 3 and 5 Students will be participating in NAPLAN Testing.

All students in these year levels will be sitting for the tests, however, if parents do not wish for their child to participate, a special Parent Withdrawal Form will need to be completed and returned to the school office as soon as possible or by Monday 8th May at the latest. A copy of the form can be downloaded and printed from the attachment.

Please support your child through this process by providing them with healthy food options in their lunch boxes. A healthy breakfast and plenty of sleep is also recommended.

Information about NAPLAN is attached.

Year 4/5 Class News

Welcome back to Term 2.

Congratulations to Brendan and Erika who were our week 1 SEL award winners!

We have been busy getting to know each other during the first week back of school. As a class, we have discussed and negotiated our class rules and expectations. They are: Respect for Self, Respect for Others and Respect for Property and the Environment. We are striving to demonstrate these through our actions and behaviours.

A parent letter will be sent home along with homework to commence week 3.

If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to come me see during school hours or contact me on bjones6@cns.catholic.edu.au

Eso for your support.
Yours in Education,
Briohny Jones

Year 2/3 Class News

Year 2/3 has been very busy learning about Persuasive texts in Literacy and Division in Numeracy. We will continue with this for another two weeks.

Our class have also done some wonderful art around Anzac Day with Miss Harriet and Mrs Ball. Thanks Jaylia Benjamin and Ahliyah Jia for your fantastic pictures.

Reading groups are up and running as usual and if anyone can help out feel free to come in. It's great to see all the children in Year 2/3 again and we look forward to a fantastic term together.

Year 1 Class News

The year ones have had a good start to term 2, with starting-back-tiredness being helped a little by the public holidays. This term we will be building on our public speaking skills by talking in front of the class every day. All the students have been doing this very well so far and we will soon be looking at how to give positive peer feedback to help us improve further. In English we will be continuing to build our literacy skills and the students will be writing a very brief story which is aimed at building understanding of sequencing and order. Our maths will also continue to build on awareness and confidence with working with the numbers 1-100. We are using concrete objects to assist this so if you have any counters at home, you may find them useful to support ideas of building to ten. History is focused on the past versus the present and it would be great if parents could chat with the children about how things were when they were growing up.

In week 4, we will have our Mother's Day Stall and are still looking for any donations of new goods that could be sold to raise funds for our choir. For example if people have new nail polish, soaps, wash-cloths, we can make up little pamper packs for purchase. Any other ideas are most welcome!

Kind regards,

Stephanie Hogan

Prep Class News

Congratulations Rennaer and Poppy in week 1 on your awards and to Jarrah and Kade as our award winners this week.

THANK YOU to Poppy’s Mum Ms Mel for your help making our ANZAC biscuits last Friday. They were delicious and we divided them up for each class.

In Prep this fortnight we have had fun with;

• Attending the ANZAC liturgy, making poppies and learning about the people who fought for us from the Torres Strait

• Exploring our Geography topic of “Oh The Places We Will Go”-with maps, globes and atlases
• Playing in the new shop in home corner
• Checking out the Book Fair up in the Library
• Making ANZAC Biscuits with Poppy’s Mum Ms Mel
• Starting home readers and sight words at home
• Trying out AFL in our football workshop

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

Helen Osborne
hosborne@cns.catholic.edu.au

Hammond Pre-Prep News

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

Welcome back to a very busy and exciting term 2.

This term our pre-preps are focussing on “All About Me’ and learning all about my own family including our Aka’s and Athe’s (grandparents). We are reading lots and lots of books about our family and learning of other types of families with our teachers. We read by looking and identifying the pictures in the texts, that’s fun! Sometimes we tell our own stories and share this in our class. Reading is very good as we learn new words to add to our vocabulary. Especially when we sing and dance to our nursery rhymes using actions.

Yes! It is very interesting to learn how to make our own puppets, especially gluing on the colourful eyes. Moving our fingers to make our puppets move and sing can be very hard, but having a go is incredible especially when we sing along and control the puppets. Mrs Ball sang ‘This little piggy went to market’ and Three blind mice, she also read a story called “There were 5 in the bed” with 5 different puppets; sheep, moose, lion, giraffe and bear.

We have already started off with water play with our sea creatures and working out which ones swim like the fish and dive into the ocean like the whale and some that jumps out like the dolphins and skip or swim on top like the flying fish or garfish. All of the pre-preps enjoyed having fun and showing their background knowledge of the animals they were able to match with the coloured sea creature posters on our fence.

We are at present waiting to hear from our Hammond Island Library for our first visit. This will be interesting for pre-preps to see, learn, read and use the resources available. Upcoming event in term 2 is our “FIRST 5 FOREVER” which we hope to promote literacy skills for our babies to 5 year olds with our special guest speaker of Indigenous Knowledge Centre, Ms Ella Kris on her next visit to Hammond Island. Will keep you updated on this program.

Happy Reading,

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

Choir News

The OLSH choir students will be rehearsing in some form every day of the week for the next month or so in order to be ready for our Cairns trip.

Monday-all elders attending 1-2pm
Tuesday/Wed/Fri dancing at first break 10.40-11.05am
Wednesday after school 3.20-4.30pm (will transport Hammond students to 5pm ferry)
Thursday-first break singing in prep room

We will be having some important concerts and fundraisers before we go which all students and parents from both campus’ are welcome to attend so stay tuned to this spot. These include;

Movie Fundraising Night-at Thursday Island school Friday 19th May 7pm start.
Concert at Thursday Island Campus 6.30pm Thursday 15th June
Concert at Hammond School Campus-6.30pm (ferry leaving 5.20pm) Thursday 8th June
Leaving for Cairns-Sunday 18th June!!(definitely!)

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

Helen Osborne
hosborne@cns.catholic.edu.au

Goodbye and Thankyou to our School Counsellor

~Goodbye? Oh no, please. Can't we just go back to page one and start all over again~ Winnie the Pooh

It is with a little sadness that I write to let you know that my visit this week is my final one to OLSH. Due to departures and changes in the counsellor staffing allocation within the Cairns Diocese I will be servicing Holy Cross in Trinity Park as before and St. Rita’s in Babinda. I still see our OLSH boarders when tutoring at Saints in Cairns and have some positive stories of how well the recent cohort – Oscar Ethan Amelia Karla Jack Jemma, have settled in!

I would like to thank the children parents and wider community for such a fabulous welcome and in working together with me to help support the children during difficult times. I will be contacting the parents of all children on my case load throughout the week. However, I hope to catch you all to pass on my good wishes, say a big thank you and goodbye.

I am not sure I am ready to leave TI/Hammond. Is anyone? Let’s hope the Wongai fruit works its magic!!

Esso,
Veronica

Thank you Veronica for all the work you have done with our children. Your visits will be missed by the students you work with and all the staff here at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School. We hope to be seeing you again whether it be in Cairns or around the place in the very near future.

Veronica supporting the Ukulele Gammas at the Cairns Ukulele Festival

Book Fair

Don’t forget that our Bookaneer Book Fair is still on until next Friday 5th May.

Awards

Week 1 award winners photo not available.

Community Announcements

Term 2 Events

2017 Special Events and Public Holidays

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