Newsletter No. 15 | Term 3 Week 5 | Friday 16th August 2024

Prayer

Lord 
We ask that you bless all of us as we care for all of our children 
Those students that read with grace
And those who need grace to read.
Those that lift others up 
And those that need to be lifted up.
Those that embrace learning,
And those that need to be embraced to learn.
Those that make us smile,
And those that need a smile.

Grant us the knowledge, patience and compassion to serve and care for all of our students.
We ask this in Your name
AMEN

Principal's Message

Dear Families and Friends,

It has been lovely to be back at school over the last two and a half weeks. It has been great to touch base with everyone and it has been especially nice to see the children. They always manage to put a smile on the dial! As you are aware, I will be taking my second stint of Long Service Leave from August 17th to September 19, the last five weeks of this Term. I look forward to seeing everyone when I return, and then settling into what will no doubt be a very busy last Term.

As was the case earlier in the Term, Mandy will be Acting Principal in this time. Please feel free to contact Mandy if you have any concerns or if there is anything you need.

Spring is around the corner. Enjoy the sunshine!

Leanne

School Attendance and Absentee Notifications

A reminder that is a requirement that parents/carers notify the school if your child is absent. Please log onto PAM or call the School office before 10am. This is a requirment and also helps us to ensure that all children who have left home have arrived at school safely. Thank you for your support with this matter.

Wellbeing

This week is the National Week of Action against Bullying. Our Wellbeing lessons this week focused on inclusion and ‘Everyone belongs’. In the Prep/1 class we talked about what it looks like and feels like when we play nicely with each other. We also discussed strategies we can use when we may find ourselves with no one to play with. The children were all over it - so positive about including each other and the fact that everyone belongs.

 In the Year 2 -6 classes we discussed that bullying is not a one off incident. It is when people repeatedly use words or actions against someone to cause them distress. We watched a clip of the bus scene from Forrest Gump where no one will let Forrest sit down until he hears ‘the sweetest voice in the wide world’.

Forrest Gump 1994 School Bus Scene

This is a very moving clip which really allows children to develop empathy for Forrest as they observe him being excluded and treated meanly. The children’s thoughtful responses to the clip demonstrated that they understood that it is important to include all. The main message we took for the clip was to ‘Be like Jenny’. If there were more Jenny’s in the word what a great place it would be!

The whole school contributed to making a paper chain with a message of inclusion on each link. The chain demonstrates that we are all linked together and we all belong. The chain is up in the walkway as a daily reminder to us all.

If you would like to learn more about Bullying you can access Michael Carr Gregg clips and other resources from our excellent School TV resource. Follow the link:  https://sbcoragulac.catholic.schooltv.me/newsletter/bullying

St. Brendan’s Behaviour Management Policy

The Staff are currently working on reviewing our School Management Policy. We will share the Policy when it is complete but in the meantime we would just like to share our process for interventions. We will be reminding the children of the process and would appreciate your support if there is a need to address poor behaviour in the school.

We would like to emphasise that we understand that all children make mistakes. When we address misbehaviours at St. Bendan’s we do so with compassion and from a viewpoint of teaching the children to learn from their mistakes. We may ask ‘what could you do next time? It’s all about learning and growing, and importantly learning how to be respectful people in our world.

Please contact me if you need more information.

School Hats

During the daily local sun protection times (those times when UV levels are forecast to reach 3 or higher, Sunsmart recommends that hats should be worn at school. Currently the UV rating has been sitting at around 3. 

At St. Brendan’s it is compulsory to wear hats in Terms 1 and 4. We are alerting you to the UV rating now in case you would like your child to wear a hat for the rest of this Term.

Please ensure that children wear the St. Brendan’s school hat and that all hats are clearly labeled. If your child does not have a school hat, please see Grace.

Book Week - Reading is Magic

The theme this year is "Reading is Magic" and the excitement for the Book Week Parade is building.  The dress up and parade will be held on Friday, 23rd August at 9.15am.  ALL WELCOME. Students can choose to dress in theme or as a character from their favourite book.  There is no competition element to our fancy dress parade. Imaginative and home made costumes are encouraged.

Father's Day

Our Father’s Day celebration will be held on Wednesday 4th September at 5pm. 

Pizza will be on the menu for dinner. The cost  will be $20 per family or $5 per person for families of less than 4. Grace will put out a notification on PAM to ascertain numbers. We ask that you pay by depositing money in the school account OR by cash, and do so before the night.
We are still working out the finer details for the night and will let you know as soon as it has been finalised.

100 Day's of School

The Prep/1s celebrated 100 days of school last week. It was lots of fun! 
It was very  funny to see how many of them fully embraced the role by walking around slowly with bent backs and speaking in shaky voices. We thought it might wear off after a while but many of them almost stayed in role for the full day. They are funny kids!

We were reflecting on  how much the children have learnt in just 100 days. It has been amazing to see.

Well done to Allira and Mel for all that they have done to ensure that the Prep/1 room is full of rigorous learning, lots of fun and a great deal of care. A BIG congratulations  to the children for being such an enthusiastic group who love learning and love having fun!

Building Grant Update

I have spoken to the architects this week and will receive a plan and timeline from them in Term Four. They will be out at school to review the plans in the coming weeks and discuss the finer details of what we would like. 

A simple drawing of the plans can be seen below. If you have any suggestions for what you feel is important to include in the front of school area please let me know. We welcome your input!

Food Bank

The St. Brendan’s community has had a wonderful tradition of building up a bank of meals for families within our school who are in need of support (for example, a new arrival, family illness or bereavement). We would like to continue this tradition and invite anyone who would like to prepare a meal, to send it into school for us to freeze.  Alternatively, you may like to put your name down on a list to be called on to make a meal when the need arises. 

The distribution will be coordinated through the school office.  If you are aware of a family requiring support, please contact Grace.

School Advisory Report

Our Advisory Council Meeting for Term Three was held on Monday night.  Please note some of the items discussed at the meeting:

• Warrion Flower Show: Wednesday 23rd October: Our stall consists of a bbq and other initiatives generally involving the selling of goods to raise money for the school. For those who are unaware, the stall for the Flower Show is very much driven by the parent group. The school staff are happy to help out where we can, but it is primarily a parents/carers initiative. It is important to us that all families contribute to the fundraising efforts of our school. 
  

A suggestion for Warrion is for our stall to take on a sustainability focus. Does anyone have any ideas for this? 

Is there anyone who would like to take the lead to organise a parent group to plan our stall for the Flower Show? It will be a fun way to make connections and work with others to achieve a common goal. Please contact the Office or put a message on the Parent Facebook page if you would like to take it on.

• Footy Gate: Thanks to Kristy for leading the Footy Gate Fundraiser. It would be great if she could fill the spots without having to put multiple requests out (this is Leanne speaking not Kristy). Please answer via the Facebook page, sign up on the form attached to the Whiteboard at the front of the school, or contact the Office if you can help out. Let’s see if we can fill it up by this weekend!

• Wellbeing Strategic Plan: We are excited to announce that this has been completed and will be used to inform our wellbeing planning for future years. The document is attached to the Newsletter.
• Enrolments are still open for 2025. If you know anybody who would like to enrol, please encourage them to come for a school tour. We welcome all.
• Maintenance: We have engaged the services of Otway Garden Solutions to clear the plants for the fence line between the church and the tennis court, as well as doing a general tidy up of the school gardens. It has been extremely difficult to find gardeners so we are very grateful that Otway Garden Solutions were available. It has been a pleasure to work with them. The plan is to plant flowering natives along the fenceline with the view that children can eventually use the flowers to make floral arrangements.
• School Fees: In order to keep up with rising costs, we have been advised by our business manager that School Fees will need to increase by 3-4% in 2025. We have been very fortunate to have had minimal increases over the last four years. Due to the busyness of family life, parents voted to do away with the working bees and pay a maintenance fee to the school instead. The maintenance fee goes a small way to covering our maintenance costs and will be increased to $80 in 2025.
• BARR Audit: St. Brendan’s is one of 22 schools on the Ballarat Diocese schools BARR (Bush and Grassfire Audit) Register. On Tuesday, a representative from Ballarat came out to do an audit on the school, to ensure that the school will be safe from fires in the upcoming bushfire season. There Is some clearing and chopping of trees to be done by the official start of the fireseason on 1st October.

The Scholastic Book Fair will be on again this year! Grace will be set up in the Hall for parents/carers/grandparents to come and buy books on Tuesday 20th August from 3:15pm-4:30pm.

Please contact Grace in the office if you wish to come in at another time. Pre payment is avaliable, also EFTPOS is avaliable on the day. 

Sacramental Celebration

Congratulations to Ayla, Aden and Issy who received the Sacrament of Baptism today. It was very special to have the whole school there to witness this special event.  Baptism is the first of three Sacraments of Initiation in the Catholic Church, the other two being Confirmation and Eucharist. Baptism is the first official welcome into the Church.

Baptism is celebrated by immersion or the pouring of water with the words:

“I baptise you in the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit”.

We thank Fr. Michael for combining the baptism celebration with the Assumption Mass. We always appreciate Fr. Michael’s willingness to do all he can for our school and parish community.

Class Awards
Congratulations to Ava, Liam and Lewie for receiving the Class Awards last week!

Prep/1 Classroom

Week 5 is here! How crazy to think that we’re already halfway through the Term.

Next week is Book Week - time to start thinking about those character costumes. The week will be filled with lots of fun activities as well as a Book Parade on Friday!

Literacy: This week the Preps have been working on words containing 5 letters, as well as words containing the sound /sh/, like shop, shell and rush. The Grade 1’s are working on the sound /u/. There are three common spellings: <u> like in plum, <o> like in son and <ou> like in touch. 

Writing: We have continued to work on procedural texts this week and are starting to write our very own recipes. 

Maths: We have been learning about money over the past couple of week. Students have been investigating and learning about the different Australian coins and their value. They have learnt to name and order the coins from smallest to largest. 

Allira Kluver
akluver@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

2/3/4 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 5 of Term 3!
The children have really enjoyed making their Olympic villages and have worked
collaboratively to create excellent results. Great job 2/3/4!
Homework this week will be revision of the spelling words below and activities related to
basic mathematical concepts.

Literacy: Our phonics focus this week is the ‘o’ sound for Year 2’s (toe, nose, foe, grow, goat, dough, going, though, spoke, coat) and the ‘ae’ sound as in steak, stake, drain, quaint, spray, came, stain, today, replay and whale for the Year 3 and 4’s. We are revisiting narratives and the power of a Sizzling Start to entice and engage the reader. The class were asked to reflect on a scene and create a Sizzling Start based around it.

Numeracy: The Year 2’s have been revising halves, quarters and eighths of shapes and objects whilst the Year 3’s have been identifying and matching fraction parts and counting to whole numbers. The Year 4’s have been identifying tenths in fractions and decimals. We are completing our Post Tests for Fractions this week and will move on to Probability next week.

The Star of the Week award goes to Jordy Price. Congratulations on your excellent effort!

Kind regards,
Mandy

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

4/5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 5 of Term 3! I hope everyone enjoyed the sunshine this week and had a terrific long weekend.

Homework: Spelling and Maths homework was sent home at the start of this week. This is due back to school on Friday 23rd August. A reminder that students are also expected to be reading daily and filling this into their diary.

Literacy: In Phonics we’ve been focusing on the sound /ae/ and exploring the different spellings of this sound. Year 4 students have been working on words such as; favour, whale and replay and Year 5/6 students have been working on words such as; amazement, exclamation and favourite. We’ve also been working away on our Information Reports on the Olympics, where most students have found all their information and are creating their posters.

Numeracy: In Numeracy we have been working through our Fractions and Geometry learning cycles. Year 4 students have been working on improper fractions and mixed numbers and are about to do some work with decimals. Year 5 students have been identifying, ordering, measuring and drawing angles and Year 6 students have been drawing and measuring angles and also identifying complementary, supplementary and vertically opposite angles. 

I hope you have a lovely week,

Tahlia

Tahlia Whytcross
twhytcross@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Birthday Corner

Wishing a very big Happy Birthday to everyone who is celebrating their special day! Especially...

23rd August -  Cuba Quinane (8)

Important Dates

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 Mass 1st Sunday of each month

Our Diocesan Community

https://www.ballarat.catholic.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ODC-July-2024-web.pdf

Click here to read all the news in the latest edition of Our Diocesan Community.

Community News & Events

Bluewater Sensory Quiet Time Pool Session
When: Every Saturday between 1-3pm
Please contact Bluewater Colac if you have any questions.