14 September 2017

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s News

Term 3 is nearly complete with Friday a holiday.

Something to remember is that the first Monday back is a holiday as well. October 2nd is the Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday. School will start on Tuesday the 3rd of October.

Last and this week have seen NAIDOC celebrations at our campus and at other places in the community. We were pleased to have Father Paul, Milton Savage (Kaureg Elder), Vonda Malone (Torres Shire Mayor), elders, aunties, akas, athes , uncles and dads and many other guests attending.

The participation, behaviour and involvement of the students was excellent and I commended them on assembly. Hammond Island provided dancing and Ms Osbourne singing. Praise is due to Chris Benjamin, Chi Chi Fuji and Brionhy Jones for their work in organising, advertising and preparing a wonderful spread of food. The day may have started around 9am but people stayed on. A well-run celebration.

Our Satisfaction Survey has been completed and preliminary results have been returned to the school. A summary of the report will be given at the next P and F meeting for comment and discussion prior to dissemination to the community. The survey helps guide school improvement plans and other future planning. The areas involved in the survey were General Satisfaction, Catholic Ethos, Leadership, Improvement Processes, Resources and Learning and Teaching. I am pleased to note that in all areas satisfaction has improved from last year. Results indicate an excellent score for General satisfaction and good scores for the other areas.

This does not mean we stop the change. Information from the surveys indicates that continuing the development of curriculum to what is in other schools is of high importance as is the continued development of resources in our school. We note that keeping staff for longer is a priority as is a Behavioural Management Policy that is effective for OLSH.

We acknowledge the areas we need to work on and parts of our staff meeting today are on curriculum and a behaviour management plan to be active in term 4.

I would like to thank parents for their constructive and supportive comments in the surveys. The school is running well and this must be being said around town because we had several enquiries for positions at OLSH. In most cases we have been able to place the children. However, this is not possible for Year 2 and 3 students as the class is full.

Early next term we will start the process for enrolling for Prep. Advertisements will appear in the local paper and information will go home and be available at the office regarding enrolment dates, parent meetings and starting prep days for students being enrolled.

The Prep entry days will be at OLSH and new enrolments will have the opportunity of spending time at the school before next year. If you know anybody with Pre-Prep students please have them contact the office at the beginning of next term to get an enrolment package.

On a personal note, congratulations to the Mulga Tigers in their win over suburbs. It was one of the best games I have seen on T.I. Both sides were committed to win and neither deserved to lose. And the crowd was enthusiastic and looked the part.

With Mary’s peace
Paul Keenan

Year 5/6 Class News

Grade 5/6 Micrographs

In Grade 5/6 we have be learning how to use microscopes as part of our research on soils and how to improve their nutrient content to grow food. We have also had some time to learn how to capture high quality images.

Year 4/5 Class News

Congratulations to our Blue Award Recipients for Week 9 and 10; Oliver, Chrissy, Sachin, Paikai, Victor and Charles!

Year 4/5 say a smol yawo to Sachin. He and his family are Cairns bound for Term 4 and will return to OLSH for the 2018 school year.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our end of term activities and events. NAIDOC Celebrations, the Blue light Disco, Robotics, and STEM challenges; building our own marble race track and making the tallest towers using only marshmallow and spaghetti sticks were a highlight!

We wish everyone a safe and happy holidays. See you all Tuesday 3 October.

Eso for your support.

Yours in Education, Briohny Jones

Year 2/3 Class News

Dear Parents

Another big fortnight in the year 2/3 Classroom with lots of learning and adventures happening. This fortnight for maths, we have been working hard on developing our addition skills with learning many different ways to add numbers. In English, we are now exploring information texts and finding out about Northern Blossom Bats.

Our highlight was our visit to the Green Hill Fort Museum. We found out a lot of interesting TI history at the fort with the students having a great time exploring the fort and museum. In addition, to celebrate father’s day we had a class liturgy where the children gave a blessing for their fathers.

Thank you to all the parents who have assisted us on the excursion and the dads who came in for our liturgy. We really value your assistance and if you have a free moment please come into the classroom to help with our reading groups. This is between 8:40 and 9:20 Tuesday to Friday. As they say, many hands make light work and the children would love to see you.

Yours in God
Mr. Sedran

Year 1 Class News

Well done on a great term year 1! Apologies for the missing info and photos in last newsletter. A Gremlin ate them. Have a restful and well-deserved break

Congratulations to Carlos, Henry, Holly & Bleyn, as our award winners in year 1 these last 2 weeks. Well done!

Thank you for the milk cartons. Keep them coming! Tell everyone to keep their cartons! Please see our photos for the beginning of the “Igloo Construction”.

Some Igloo Facts found out in year 1

• Real igloos are made from hard snow, can hold up to 20 people and can be warmer than 30 degrees inside.
• Our igloo is 3.2m wide.
• We are up to Level 4 of the igloo.
• We will need at least another 500 2Litre bottles in total to finish our class construction. Our whole class will fit inside- with some standing up.
• Igloos trap heat inside by having a small, low door and solid, thick walls. Ours will be a chill out zone for reading and small groups.

In Year One this fortnight we have had fun with;

• Taking the Tamanu and Malu turtles home to share some family time and telling the class about it in sharetime
• NAIDOC celebrations and enjoying weaving with Miss Trina and Aunty Nay
• Our fabulous excursion day to Gab Titui Cultural Centre and the Green Hill Fort Museum
• 3D shapes and making graphs
• Writing character descriptions

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

Ms Helen & Ms Nadine
hosborne@cns.catholic.edu.au

Prep Class News

Congratulations to Charlie and Jarrah as our award winners in the last few weeks. Well done!

In Prep this month we have had fun with:

• Making father’s day presents and cards
• Celebrating our dads with a liturgy and fun afternoon
• A history excursion to Gab Titui and Green Hill to look at artefacts
• Celebrating NAIDOC with dancing, songs, stories, weaving and a liturgy
• Investigating 3D shapes in maths
• Writing our own books
• Playing with sight words, shaving cream, crayons and paint
• Making our own wind chimes to finish up our science unit

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

Ms Sue, Miss Helen & Miss Katrina
hosborne@cns.catholic.edu.au

Hammond Campus News

Term 3 has been a busy term for the school and the staff and students who have worked extremely hard.

Firstly, I would like to congratulate all our SEL award winners throughout this term for their abilities to use the Five Keys of Success in Social and Emotional Learning in their day to day activities.

We celebrated Father’s Day, Science week, The Assumption of Mary, Book Fair and NAIDOC Day. The school also had a visit from the Torres Strait Regional Authority Land and Sea Management to speak to the students about gardening. All the students participated in making these days very special in our school.

The students have been learning about hygiene and importance of brushing their teeth every day. In Health the students were also taught about stranger danger in their community, home and at school.

We wish the students a well earn holiday to refresh and get ready for the last term of the year.

Social and Emotional Learning awards in confidence, Persistence, Getting Along, Organisation, and Emotional Resilience.

Hammond Campus Pre-Prep News

Dear Parents/Guardians,

This term we had the opportunity to visit our Hammond Island IKC (Indigenous Knowledge Centre) on Tuesdays. We want to share our experience with our visit to Ms Camilla the MSAO (Multi-skilled Admin Officer who was very happy to meet us. She explained of the resources that were available when we go to the ICK, like the books, puzzles, pictures, artefacts, technology and most importantly the rules. All pre-preps enjoyed listening to stories being read by Ms Camilla. She encouraged all pre-preps to have fun and enjoy their time at the centre. We are looking forward to more visits.

We were fortunate to have our local cultural community members who teach us our island songs and dances. They have taught us a lot about our cultural music and the importance to our people. These ladies and a gentleman have been an asset in teaching the songs, dances and to be proud and happy performers.

We are actually in our last week of term 4 and all pre-preps and parents are most welcome to join with us on Wednesday 13th September for the Cultural performance in our ANZAC Park. Please ring or see Mrs Davi or Mrs Ball on 0740692995 if you would like to come across on the ferry as soon as possible.

I would like to sincerely thank all of the pre-prep children, parents and community members for your support and time given and shown at our class functions. All the very best to each pre-prep for our two weeks holiday, have a safe, fun and happy time with your family and friends. Ms Dorothy and I are looking forward to seeing everyone next term for

Au Esoau, Koeyma Eso,
Ms Dorothy and Mrs Ball

Welfare Officer News

Hello again school community!

The past few weeks have been very busy with so many students accessing the lunch time activities being provided. It is so wonderful to see students from all grades working together, building relationships and treating each other kindly.

Alternate activities

In our STEM sessions the students have had the following challenges to work out:

• Paper Cup challenge – Can you make a cup that holds the most amount of water for at least 10 seconds using only a single piece of paper?

The students planned what they would do and made some trial designs. Then in second lunch we conducted our experiments and found that those cups that were made using origami techniques were the strongest and were able to hold good amounts of water.

Our Challenge Champions for this session were: Lani and Ahliyah

Our Nature Crafting group have been busy making natural weaving frames. These are coming along and we are learning how to tie knots in tricky little spaces. Thank-you so much to everyone in the school community who have donated so much material for us to use.

Breakfast Club

Breakfast Club has been a big success and we will continue with this program during term 4. Come along from 8am every Monday morning to enjoy some cereals and fresh fruit.

School based Police Officers

Students were visited by our school based Police Officer Snr Constable Gary McNeil who spoke to students about treating each other with respect. Snr Constable McNeil reinforced our school messages of kindness and reiterated to students that any form of bullying or harassment in not welcome in our school community. We look forward to more visits from our school based police officers.

Kindness Ambassadors

As part of promoting a culture of kindness at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School we are re-establishing the Buddy Bear program. This program is facilitated through the Alannah and Madeline Foundation with a central focus on creating friendly and caring schools.

Whilst we are in the initial planning stages of how this framework will be implemented amongst our students we do have some clear goals that we are working towards achieving during the remainder of the 2017 school year. These include;

• Identifying and establishing Kindness Ambassadors across all grades
• Promoting messages of kindness through parades, newsletters and playtime
• Recognising and celebrating acts of kindness
• Creating a Buddy Bench in the school grounds

It is with great pleasure that I can inform our school community that we now have a team of Kindness Ambassadors. These students have been selected based on the following requirements:

• Displays kindness and empathy to peers consistently
• Is responsible
• Is friendly and approachable
• Is a good role model

Our Kindness Ambassadors are:

• President – Talitha Maguire – Grade 5
• Vice President – Estelle Dunn – Grade 1

Class ambassadors

• Rennaer Benjamin – Prep
• Xavier Hillier – Grade 1
• Ivanka Mills – Grade 2/3
• Christina Nakata – Grade 4/5
• Matilda Maguire – Grade 5/6

Student Shout outs!

We continue to celebrate students in our school community and acknowledge their strengths, interests, talents nad hobbies. Our student shout outs for this edition are:

1. Charlie Dale from Grade 2 – English is my favourite subject because I love reading. My special talents are reading and drawing.
2. Luis Sirriss from Grade 3 – My favourite subject is Maths because you learn awesome stuff!
3. Jacob Manaena from Grade 3 – Maths is my favourite subject because there are lots of numbers and I am good at numbers. My interests are reading and writing.
4. Abbie Hall from Grade 2 – My favourite subject at school is when we write because we get to write stories. My special talent and hobby is drawing!

OLSH Factor!

Our student leaders are excited to announce they are organising a talent quest in term 4. OLSH Factor! will be held on Friday 20th October (Week 3). Students will be required to nominate if they would like to perform and can do so during lunch breaks in the first week of term 4. Those students performing will need to develop an act that lasts for approximately 2mins. Students can perform one solo performance or/and one group performance.

Parents/guardians will be welcome to attend. Further information regarding this event will be sent home early next term.

Have a safe and happy break over the holidays and I look forward to seeing you all next term.

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no-one alive that is you-er than you!” – Dr. Seuss

Sports Co-Ordinator News

Thanks to all students for remembering your hats or buying one of the cool team hats from the Office for $8.50.

Please remember to wear your hats and sunscreen over the holidays and have a wonderful break!

Indigenous Liaison Officer News

NAIDOC CELEBRATION:

I sincerely like to thank all the staff and students for your participation in organising and preparing towards our NAIDOC CELEBRATION last Friday 8th September.

BIRTH REGISTRATION & CERTIFICATE DRIVE:

Parents & Carers please keep these dates available if you need to get a Birth Certificate for your child.

Awards

Our Week 10 Award Winners

Important Dates - Term 4

Community Announcements

See You All At The Multicultural Festival!

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