Prayer

An Easter Prayer for Hope

Risen Presence, stir hope in us when we waver in our belief about the goodness of humanity.  Turn our face toward the sunrise of each morning. Assure us that every day brings light after night’s heavy darkness. Let it remind us that a fresh beginning continually awaits us.

Open our eyes to recognize signs of your endless love. Draw us close on our own Emmaus roads. When our hearts are disconsolate, surprise us with your peace-filled presence. Rekindle our love.

Clear our mind of the tendency to close off the possibility of a world warm with the glow of human kindness. Veer us away from negativity. Help us delete our thoughts of inner strife and the apprehension of doomsday prophecies.

Bring us into a remembrance of your empty tomb when we want to give up on humanity’s care for one another. Restore our recognition of your presence abiding in each and every human being. Let us look deeply, beyond despicable behaviour and brutality, and find the pure essence of your love abiding there.

Risen Lord, breathe hope in us. Help us keep it alive by how we think, feel, and live everyday.

Amen.

School Photo Day

School Photos 2024 – St Brendan's Catholic Primary School

Annual school photos have been taken by Arthur Reed Photos.

To view the images of your child and order photos, you will need to first register online.

1. Go to https://order.arphotos.com.au and enter the 2024 image code for your child (from their personalized flyer)
2. Tap on ‘Add another child’ to enter the image codes of any siblings
3. Fill in your email and mobile details and then review all details before confirming your registration

That’s it! When 2024 photos are ready, you will be notified by email and SMS.

Even if you registered last year, it’s important that you do it again each year using your child’s new image code to link their photos for the current year with your contact details.

To ensure you are ordering school photos for the current year, please wait for notifications that 2024 images are online before placing orders.

In the webshop you can view photos and customize your photo package; Choose ANY layout, ANY image and purchase multiple digital image downloads.

All photo orders will be sent directly to the address you provide when ordering.

REGISTER ONLINE NOW to be notified when 2024 school photos can be viewed and ordered.

Prep/1 Classroom News

Welcome to Term 2! It's great to be back. I’ve really enjoyed seeing all the students and hearing their exciting holiday news. Looking forward to a great Term.

Literacy: We’ve jumped straight into our word work again this term. The Prep’s are consolidating the letters b, c, g and h before moving onto d, e, v and f. They have been practising reading and writing three-letter words containing these letters. The Grade 1’s are reviewing the sound /oa/ like in boat before moving onto /ir/ like in bird. I’ve also signed all students up to “Decodable Readers Australia” so you can access some digital readers from home. Follow the instructions I’ve sent home to login! There’s so many great books on this site.

Maths: This Term, we are learning about addition and subtraction. This week, we have started by telling addition stories and writing matching addition sentences. The students were very quick to pick up the concepts and are already using the correct mathematical symbols (+ and =) in their maths work! Go team! Over the next few weeks, we will tackle some more complex strategies for solving addition problems eg. counting on, using doubles facts, using number bonds to ten and bridging to the nearest ten. 

Religion: Our concept for RE is ‘Respond.” To begin our unit, we have been learning about what the word ‘respond’ means. We have read some stories and identified times in the story that a character has responded to an event.

Integrated Curriculum: Our theme for IC is ‘change.’ This is an exciting topic which will cover history, geography and social sciences. Our class storyboard is back! We arrived this week to find that our storyboard is taking us back in time - to long, long, long ago! Our storyboard shows what Coragulac might have looked like in times gone by. Throughout the Term, we will consider how Coragulac has changed over time and what differences we see in the landscape compared to today. To give you a sneaky hint - it might involve megafauna, volcanoes, Aboriginal land management, the arrival of settlers and the building of cities, schools and houses… just to name a few.

Allira Kluver
akluver@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Local News & Events

Birthday Corner

Wishing a very big Happy Birthday to everyone who has celebrated their special day recently! Especially...

5th April   -   Joseph Lamb (8)

22nd April   -   Jordon Price (10)

2/3/4 Classroom News

Welcome back as we begin our journey into Term 2!

Our school production of The Wizard of Oz was a phenomenal success. We are so super proud of all our students for the dedication, love and effort they put into producing such a fabulous performance. I cannot wait to see the video and see how amazing it was again!

Religious Education: Our concept this term is ‘Identity’. The class listened to the story ‘Be Who You Are’ by Todd Parr and reflected on what the author was trying to tell us. He spoke about ‘speak your language’ ‘learn in your own way’, ‘be proud of where you’ve come from’ and ‘just be who you are’.

Literacy: Our phonics focus this week is ‘oy/oi’ for Year 2’s and more spellings of the /or/ sound as in bored, board, taught, thought, and four for the Year 3 and 4’s. We are building the words identifying the sounds represented in each of the words.

In writing, we are creating recounts about our experiences with The Wizard of Oz.

Numeracy:  We have been revising addition strategies this week. The Year 2’s are revisiting Friends of Ten, doubles to 20 and counting on. The Year 3’s are revising the Jump Strategy

Eg. (54+34= (50+30) + (4+3) = 80 +7 = 87, and the Year 4’s are reviewing number lines and adding 2 digit numbers to 3 digit numbers.

Homework: This week for homework I ask that the children get back into the habit of reading nightly.  It might just be a page or two, but it is important to create and maintain regular routines which will assist with fluency, comprehension and hopefully, enjoyment of texts.

Just 10 minutes a day achieves the following!

The Star of the Week award goes to Luca Lettieri. Congratulations on your excellent effort!

Kind Regards,

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Catholic Culture

St Brendan's Coragulac & St Joseph's Pirron Yallock Mass Times

St Brendan’s Coragulac: 9.30am Sunday Lay-led  /   Mass 5pm 4th Sunday of each month
St Joseph’s Pirron Yallock: 10:30am Sunday Lay-led   /   Mass 1st Sunday of each month

Our Diocesan Community Magazine

Please find below the link for the March 2024 edition of “Our Diocesan Community”. The aim of the magazine is to share the good news stories of our schools, parishes and agencies across the diocese.

If you have a good news story to share with others in the diocese, ODC welcome articles and photos for publication in the magazine and the diocesan e-News.  Please forward to odc@ballarat.catholic.org.au

4/5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 1 of Term 2! I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter break and enjoyed spending time with family and friends. I would like to congratulate all students for participating in the Wizard of Oz at the end of last term. The performance was phenomenal and definitely one to remember!

Homework: Spelling and maths homework was sent home at the start of this week. This is due back to school on Friday 26th April. A reminder that students are expected to be reading for 20 minutes each night and filling this in their dairy. All students were sent home with books to read today.

Phonics: In Phonics we’ve been focusing on the sound /or/ and exploring the different spellings of this sound. Year 4 students have been working on words such as; taught, thought and bored, and Year 5/6 students have been working on words such as; distraught, foreshore and sought.

Maths: In Maths we have been working on Addition. Students have been practising adding two numbers with carrying. Year 4 students have been working on 3-digit numbers, Year 5 students have been working on 4-digit numbers and Year 6 students have been working on 5-digit numbers and beyond.

Religion: In Religion this week we have begun our unit on Gratitude. To begin our unit we have been looking at what it means to display gratitude and created a Gratitude jar as a means of daily reflection.

Tahlia Whytcross
twhytcross@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Important Dates

Principal's Message

Dear Families and Friends,

Welcome to Term Two. I hope you all had a chance to catch your breath over the holidays. It was a very busy Term 1!

As you are aware, Gracesyn will be taking up a new career opportunity in the agricultural industry. As I said in the email earlier this week, Gracesyn leaves big shoes to fill. If you know of anybody who you think may be interested and suitable for the position please send them in our direction.

We extend our heartfelt sympathy to Paul, Tracey, Joe and Grace on the passing of Tracey's mother. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.

Leanne Eastman
leastman@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

The Wizard of Oz

We have had some wonderful feedback from our Wizard of Oz production, I think we will be dining out on this experience for quite a while! The film is currently being edited and will be saved to USBs for families to purchase. We will let you know as soon as it is ready to go.

Easter Raffle Fundraiser

The Easter raffle raised a whopping $960! This will go towards our $6000 fundraising target. Thanks to everyone who donated easter eggs and/or purchased raffle tickets.

SRC STUDENTS

Congratulations to the following students who have been elected as SRC representatives this Term:

P/1: Esther & Lewie

2/3/4: Issy & Sophie

4/5/6: Aden & Grace

Principal for the Day

Our Principal for the day winner from Term 1 was Teddy Phillips. Due to it being a very busy end to the Term we postponed the day until this Friday. 

Teddy has requested that students can come in casual clothes or dress ups if they would like! I wonder what else he has planned??

Enrolments

Over the next few weeks schools will be advertising for new enrolments. Evidence shows that the best way to advertise a school is by word of mouth, so feel free to spread the word and send families our way so that we can give them a personal tour. 

It is always good to be prepared, so perhaps have a think about what you would tell people about our school. What do you love about our school? How are we different from other schools? Why do you choose to send your children here? 

As the Information Night did not go ahead, I will share some of what we were going to talk about on the night. This may also help if someone asks you about our school. Feel free to speak from your heart and share your personal experiences, share the video on the facebook page and send them to us for more information.

Catholic Culture

A major point of difference is that being a Catholic school, the Gospel values of love, patience, kindness, acceptance and compassion are at the heart of all we do. This is seen on a daily basis through interactions with students, staff and parents and the wider community,  and creates a warm, nurturing environment for our students.

Learning and Teaching

We ensure that the teaching of the core areas of English and Maths are given a high priority. Our teaching methods and programs are grounded in evidence-based research to ensure that we are giving our students the best opportunities for academic success.

Other curriculum areas such as our integrated curriculum units, encourage our students to develop skills relevant and necessary to learning in the 21st Century. We teach students to be curious and to have skills such as critical and creative thinking, collaboration, communication, teamwork and personal and social skills.

Specialist Subjects of Art, Music/Drama, Sport, Outdoor Learning, Auslan and STEM ensure that our students are engaged in a comprehensive, well-rounded curriculum.

Learning through play is also an important aspect of our learning and teaching.

Wellbeing 

Our Staff have been working on developing our Wellbeing Strategic Plan which will be launched to the community in a few weeks. Having a strategic approach to how we enhance wellbeing at our school is important to ensuring that we cover all bases and provide a holistic education where we cater for the physical, social and emotional, spiritual and mental wellbeing of all of our students. 

Part of the document states: 

A major point of difference for our school is that we are a small school. We believe that this has a positive impact on the wellbeing of our students. The size of our school allows us to have more freedom and flexibility with how we teach and operate. It is important to us that we do not operate in the same way that bigger schools do, but rather take advantage of the increased options for freedom, exploration and personal development. In today’s world where so many children are crammed into big schools with many rules and regulations, our students have the opportunity to develop initiative, trust and an adventurous attitude to life. Students are encouraged to test their limits, engage in ‘managed-risk’ activities, take on responsibilities, develop positive relationships across a range of age levels, and experience the joy of being outdoors, connecting to nature.

Community Engagement

The following extract is taken from the Wellbeing Strategic Plan:

Central to the wellbeing of students at St. Brendan’s is our strong sense of community. We truly have a ‘village’ where parents, carers, staff, parishioners, former students and families, and the local community, all play a role in looking out for our students and supporting them in their educational journey. People often remark on the wonderful community at St. Brendan’s and we take immense pride in being such a positive aspect of our school. 

Sustainability Club

On Tuesday at lunchtime we planted strawberries. We planted them in the vege garden and gave them a good water. They should be ready in late Spring or Summer. We enjoyed planting them and we can’t wait for them to be ready!

By Harriet.

School Advisory Council

The next meeting for the School Advisory Council will be on Wednesday 24th April at 7pm in the Staffroom. 

We hope to see you there.

Upcoming Dates

Monday 29th April: Year 6 students Leadership Conference

Thursday 25th April: ANZAC Holiday

Friday 7th June: Bush Excursion

Lunch Orders

Lunch Orders are available every Wednesday from the Cororooke General Store. Parents and families can visit or call the Cororooke General store on a Tuesday and place an order for the following day, or alternitively a standing order can be arranged to happen every week. A list of options are prices is avaiulable at the shop.

The school collects the lunch orders on Wednesday and distributes them to students at lunch time. If you have any quesions please contact the school office or the Cororooke General Store.

Newsletter

Good communication between home and school is extremely important to us. If you have any feedback on our processes please feel free to let us know.  

Please note the summary of school/family communications at our school:

Newsletter: Weeks 1, 3, 5, 7 & 9

Parent Facebook page: quick reminders, messages which may require a quick response, sharing photos of school events etc. If you are not on the Parent Facebook page and would like to be added, please see Leanne

Email: To notify parents of school issues that require more than a quick reminder. This is also a means of communication where we receive feedback from parents.

Community Facebook page: To share events and happenings with the wider community in order to promote our school and enhance community connections

SeeSaw: To enhance family/school partnerships in student learning, by sharing student work and classroom happenings. Parents are invited to view their children’s work and give feedback. 

Phone calls: To communicate with individual families. We are only a phone call away. Please do not hesitate to call us if you have any concerns or have something that you would like to share.

Prayer

GOOD FRIDAY

On this day Christians commemorate the passion, or suffering, and death on the cross of Jesus Christ.

May the blessings of the Lord 

shine upon you on this Holy Day

And may He always keep you in His loving care.

School Photo Day

School Photos 2024 – St Brendan's Catholic Primary School

Annual school photos including sibling photos will be taken by Arthur Reed Photos on Wednesday 17th April 2024.

There is no need to return any forms or money to school.

Unique image codes will be issued to all students on/after photo day so families can register online to view images when they become available in the webshop.

Registration is simple, just follow the 3 simple steps on your child’s personalised flyer once you receive it and remember to add the codes for all your children attending this school.

Even if you registered last year, it’s important that you do again this year using your child’s 2024 image code to link their images for the current year with your contact details.

When images are ready to view and in the webshop, all parents who have registered will be notified by SMS and email.

Once registered, please wait for notification that 2024 images are online to view before making your purchase. 

Book Club News

Important Dates

Principal's Message

Dear Families and friends,

Thanks for your support throughout Term 1. What a Term it was and what a way to finish! I am still smiling every time I think about the production - our children are so capable and so willing to take on a new challenge and have some fun. To see them shine as they did was an absolute joy.

I have already thanked everybody involved numerous times so I won’t repeat myself. I hope you know how much I appreciate everybody in our school community. There were a few people I forgot to mention on the night: Jess Smith (Peyton’s Mum) for volunteering to sell the tickets at the door, Bridget (our cleaner) for supplying baskets for the raffle prizes and Allira’s fiance Tom, for helping with the sets on the night. I also wanted to give a special shout out to our learning support officers Deb, Diane and Kynan who were out the back with the kids on the night of the concert and did not get to see any of the action on stage. They were busy ensuring that everyone was in the right costumes, comforting tired children, directing children to the right side of the stage and exercising some crowd control. The unsung heroes!

Tom Billings (media trainee at Trinity) took the video and lots of photos on the night. Hopefully Tom will get that to us soon. We will be selling the videos on USBs. There will be more information on this next Term.

Kara is going to sort through all of the costume items in the first week back at school so if you have left anything at school we will return it in that week.

Our Easter Egg raffle was very well supported by families.  Thank you for your generosity, with both donating eggs and buying raffle tickets.  I want to give a BIG thank you and shout out to Australian Dairy Farmers Corporation who donated a $100 Sports Power Voucher as part of the 1st prize in the raffle. Funds raised from the raffle will contribute to the $6000 fundraising goal for 2024.  

I want to thank all of our hard-working staff who have put in an enormous Term 1.  It was a short but action packed term, with lots of extracurricular activities to fit in around our usually busy schedule.  Now it’s time to catch our breath!

REMINDERS:

• WIZARD OF OZ SCRIPTS: Could all families please return any Wizard of Oz scripts that you have? We would appreciate them being returned on the first day back at school. We need to pay $27 for any missing books. If you have written on the book it still needs to be returned. We will get a portion of the money back if the script has been marked in any way. Thank you!
• The first day of Term 2, Monday 15th April, is a School Closure Day. The staff will be engaging in a professional learning day with a focus on Wellbeing.
• School photos are in the first week back, Wednesday 17th April.

This year our school adopted Mary McKillop's motto of 'never see a need without doing something about it'. It has been heartwarming to see this being lived out by all sectors of our school community this Term. Thank you!

I wish all families and staff a happy Easter and a restful holiday. 

Take care,

Leanne Eastman
leastman@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Prayer

Lenten Prayer

Lord, bless us during this season of spiritual 

renewal.

Fill our minds and hearts with love,

that we may be a sign of Jesus to all those 

living in our midst.

School Photo Day

School Photos 2024 – St Brendan's Catholic Primary School

Annual school photos including sibling photos will be taken by Arthur Reed Photos on Wednesday 17th April 2024.

There is no need to return any forms or money to school.

Unique image codes will be issued to all students on/after photo day so families can register online to view images when they become available in the webshop.

Registration is simple, just follow the 3 simple steps on your child’s personalised flyer once you receive it and remember to add the codes for all your children attending this school.

Even if you registered last year, it’s important that you do again this year using your child’s 2024 image code to link their images for the current year with your contact details.

When images are ready to view and in the webshop, all parents who have registered will be notified by SMS and email.

Once registered, please wait for notification that 2024 images are online to view before making your purchase. 

Prep/1 Classroom News

Congratulations to all students for their enthusiasm and participation on Sports Day! It was a fabulous day for all involved. Thanks to parents and families who came along to support. 

We’ve had a great couple of weeks in Prep/1. Lots of learning has been happening and it's exciting to see the students’ confidence in their skills and knowledge growing each day!

Literacy: We have been exploring the story, “The Papaya that Spoke” the past few weeks. This has been an entertaining and enjoyable story. We’ve created a story map as a class and come up with actions to help us internalise the text. Our sentence work has revolved around the story. The Prep/1’s are currently learning that all sentences contain a subject (who or what) and a verb (what they’re doing.) We’ve also been working on starting our sentences with a capital letter and ending them with a full stop.

Word work: The Preps are learning the letters n, o and p. They know the most common sound that these letters represent and are practising reading short words containing all the focus sounds eg. pat, tap, can. Grade 1’s are working on the sound /ee/ like in tree. They have been learning that there are four different ways to spell this sound: ee, e, ea and y.

Maths: In Maths we have been learning that our number system is built on groups of ten. Students have been practising making groups of 10 and then using their knowledge of skip counting to count the total number of items in a collection. They applied this to a real-world scenario when I brought in my dried broad bean seed collection to count. It turns out, there were 591 broad beans! What a phenomenal job the whole class did counting all of those beans.

Religion: As Lent continues, we have been learning about the Liturgical Calendar and the different colours that represent special times during the year: purple, white, green and red. Over the next couple of weeks before Easter, we will be exploring the Easter story and doing plenty of Easter activities to get excited for Easter.

Thanks again for all the support on Sports Day! We look forward to the concert next.

Allira Kluver
akluver@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Wellbeing

School TV / Anxiety

Early this week I sent out an email inviting parents/carers to complete a short survey about their child(ren’s) wellbeing on the SchoolTV site. Thank you to those who have already completed it. We would like more families to complete the survey in order to give us more accurate data, so please follow the link below when you get a chance. Thank you.

The Wizard of Oz

UPDATES

Not long to go now. There is such a buzz in the air and the children are doing such a good job of rehearsing their lines and acting their scenes. Next week, children will be practicing each afternoon. If your child has a speaking part we ask that you please practice with them at home. There is not much time left so we need to really step it up. This week students will not be reading their scripts during rehearsals. This will help them with memorising their lines.

Once again, I thank everyone who has been working on the costuming and set design. We really are blown away with how much support there has been from the parent community. Part of the reason for doing the production was to enhance student wellbeing. It is clear that not only has it enhanced the wellbeing of our students, it has enhanced the wellbeing of staff and parents, and demonstrated the wonderful community spirit in our school. Bring on opening night!

Programs: Programs will be available for purchase on the night. They will be $2 each.

Video: The performance will be videoed and will be downloaded to USB sticks which the school will sell for $10 each.

Easter Raffle: At the end of the concert we will draw the Easter Raffle. Tickets will be $2 each or 3 for $5. You’ve got to be in it to win it!

IMPORTANT

All students costumes must be dropped at the office

before next Tuesday morning (19th March).

The costume committee will be sorting through costumes Tuesday afternoon and organsing them for the upcoming dress rehearsals.

If this is not possible for you for any reason please let us know as soon as possible. Thank you.

Tickets

Tickets for the Wizard of Oz are $5 per adult, children are free. Tickets are on sale now via TryBooking, follow the below link to purchase or scan the QR code on our posters. We plan to have a program for you to have as a keepsake on the night. Stay tuned!

Show Week

There will be a lot happening on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the last week of Term. Just giving you a heads up! Please note details below:

Tuesday 26th March

9am - 12pm: Rehearsal at school

12.30pm - 2.30pm: Children bused into Trinity for microphone checks

2.30pm Return to St Brendan's

Wednesday 27th March

9am Children bused into Trinity

9.30am - 10am Children fitted with mics and shown lighting

10am - 11.30am: Full dress rehearsal 1

11.30am - 12pm Lunch

12.30pm - 2.30pm: Full dress rehearsal 2

2.30pm Return to St Brendan's

6pm: Children back at Trinity to get ready for the 7pm public show

Aproximitly 8.30pm: Conclusion of Show

It’s going to be a big week!

Practice, Practice, Practice.

If students would like to practice their singing at home the link to the soundtrack is listed below: