Newsletter No. 2 | Term 1 Week 3 | Thursday 13th February 2025

Prayer

Principal's Message

Dear Families and Friends,

New Year, New Insta Account!

As we kick off another exciting year at St Brendan's, we are thrilled to anounce the launch of our new instagram page! 🎉📸

We know that social media is a great way to stay connected, celebrate achievements and share the vibrant life of our school community. Our instagram will showcase all of the wonderful things happening here - classroom activities, events, special projects and plenty of fun moments that make St. Brendan's so unique.

We'd love for you to follow, share and spread the word about our new page! Here's how you can get involved:

✨ Follow us: Stay up to date with all the latest happenings by following us at @stbrendansprimary (link below)
✨ Share: Don’t forget to share our posts with your friends and family!
✨ Tag us: If you’re sharing school memories or events, tag us and we may feature your posts on our page!

We will still be keeping our Facebook Page active, so don't worry - there's no change to that. Both platforms will work together to keep everyone connected and informed in the best possible ways.

Lets make 2025 a year full of sharing, celebrating, and showcasing all that makes our school community shine! We can't wait to see you on instagram!

Thank you for your continued support.

Warm Regards,

Leanne Eastman
Principal

Stay in Touch!

Please know that I am always happy to assist with any queries, concerns and ideas or just to be a listening ear. You are always welcome to contact me by phone at school or call in for a chat. If you would like to use email or Seesaw to make a suitable time that would be great, otherwise ring the office to check my diary. My door is always open!

Condolences

We would like to express our deepest sympathies to April Lowan and family, on the passing of her husband Wayne, stepfather to Zayne, Declan, Jaxon and Everley. You are all very much in our thoughts and prayers at this sad time.

Beginning of the Year School Mass

Today we held our Beginning of the Year School Mass. It was lovely to have Colac’s new Parish Priest, Fr Andrew Hayes, here to celebrate Mass with us. We thank Fr. Andrew for making time to join us for this special occasion and look forward to him being part of the St. Brendan’s community in the future.  

Thank you to everyone who came along to join us for the celebration. It was great to see you there!

Year 6 Leadership Excursion

On Tuesday, Gerard, Mel and I took the Year 6 students to Geelong for a day focused on leadership and team bonding. It was such a pleasure to take such a fantastic group of students away for the day, they are truly a credit to their parents and our school.

We began the day at Edencraft Boats. My son and daughter-in-law work there and I thought it would be a great opportunity for our students to see first-hand the extensive process required to build these beautiful boats. Boats have come a long way since St Brendan the Navigator was sailing the seas in his leather boat!

My daughter-in-law is the General Manager of Edencraft so she spoke to the children about being a leader in the business. Last year Josie won the International Rising Star in the Boating Industry, receiving her award in Amsterdam. She is a true leader in her field and a wonderful role model to our students. I would like to extend a big thank you to Josie, Patrick and the team at Edencraft for showing us around, it was a wonderful opportunity for us all.

After our visit to Edencraft we headed to Eastern Beach for a team-bonding scavenger hunt, fish and chips and a quick swim. It was lots of fun!

We are extremely grateful to have our own school bus which makes it affordable for us to provide these opportunities for our students. We hope to provide more valuable out of school learning experiences for our students in 2025, allowing new opportunities for growth, learning and achievement. We look forward to all that we will accomplish together. Stay tuned!

Here are some reflections on the day from our Year 6 leaders: 
Grace: Josie told us that a good leader needs creativity and resilience.
Kaitlyn: Josie taught us that being a good leader means you have to show respect, but don't boss people around.

Term 1 SRC

Congratulations to the following students who have been selected for the SRC in Term 1 for 2025.

Harriet, Grace, Greta, Java, Declan and Liam.

Geelong Cats School Visit

Last week we were fortunate to receive a visit from some Geelong Cats players. Students from Years 3 - 6 joined with Alvie Primary School students to meet the players and engage in some fun activities. It was a star-studded list of players this year with Patrick Dangerfield, Ollie Henry and Toby Conway representing the AFL, and Nina Morrison and Amy McDonald representing the AFLW. 

The players gifted our school with a jumper signed by all the players, a Cats Monopoly boardgame, posters and of course, autographs. 

Thanks to the Geelong Footy Club - it was lots of fun. Carn the Cats!

KANA Parade

This year's KANA parade will be held on 15th March. The theme is ' A Country Fair'. 

There will be a meeting to begin organising this year's KANA Parade on Wednesday 19th February at 2:30pm in the Staffroom.

We will need all hands on deck so come along and join in the fun. All ideas are welcome. Your support would be greatly appreciated.

National Lunchbox Week

Did you know that children consume 30% of their daily food intake at school? Most of this comes from the content of their lunchbox. What children eat during their day at school plays a crucial part in their learning and development. 

Healthy Lunchbox Week (Feb 9 - 15) is an initiative of Nutrition Australia. It aims to inspire families to create healthy and enjoyable lunchboxes.

The healthy lunchbox website supports schools and teachers to share healthy lunchbox recipes with their students and families.

All classes have a fruit break at 10am and it is expected that all students will have a healthy piece of fruit (or vegetable) to eat at this time. The first main eating break is at 11.30, with the other main eating break at 1.20 so please make sure you have enough food in your child’s lunchbox to get them through the day.

Check out the Lunchbox Week website for lots of healthy lunchbox ideas. Click on the link below:

Reading at St. Brendan's

Reading just a little each day helps children improve their skills, builds confidence and sets them up for success in school and life.

At. St. Brendan’s, we teach reading through the Science of Reading approach, the latest evidence-based practice sweeping the world. This explicit teaching approach is based on the science of how children learn to read, teaching them to decode fluently so that they can then make meaning from the text.

Reading at Home
You can support your child at home by making time for reading each night. This may be the child reading a book/reader form school, or it could also be you reading to your child. Reading to your child helps them build language skills and learn general information about the world. Its value cannot be underestimated.

School Gardens

Our indigenous gardens are looking beautiful. There are some beautiful pink flowers on the garden that Jarod Walter designed (in the corner near the P and F shed)  and the plants around our ‘meeting place’ in the back square are really taking off. 

The vege garden will be given a makeover shortly and garden bed along the church side fence will be planted out in late March. Stay tuned!

School Times

A reminder that students should arrive to school no earlier than 8.30am as Staff supervise from this time. 

Pick up time is 3.20pm.

Child Safety

At St. Brendan’s, the safety and wellbeing of all children is a shared responsibility. Every member of our school community - staff, parents, carers, volunteers and students - plays a crucial role in creating a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for all young people.

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Child Safe Organisational Framework, a child safe organisation is one that actively works to prevent harm, create a culture of safety, and respond appropriately to concerns.

To uphold these standards, we all need to:

• Prioritise children’s wellbeing in all decisions and actions
• Be alert to risks of signs and harm
• Engage with and listen to children, valuing their voices and perspectives
• Follow child safe policies and procedures at all times
• Work together to promote respect, inclusion and trust within our community

By taking these steps we strengthen our commitment to ensure St. Brendan's remains a place where every child feels safe, supported and empowered to thrive.

For more information on Child Safe practices visit:

School Wide Positive Behaviours

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support is:  A multi-tiered framework for establishing the social culture and behavioural supports needed for a school to achieve behavioural and academic outcomes for all students. 

We have a 90:10 approach to behaviour management - 90% of the time is acknowledging and encouraging positive behaviours, with 10% of the time correcting any misbehaviours there may be. We are fortunate at St. Brendan’s that praising positive behaviours is easy for us, our students are respectful, kind and try really hard to do their best.

At St Brendan’s, we are working with our students on the following behavioural expectations:

School TV

Schools in the Ballarat Diocese are very fortunate that DOBCEL (our governing body) pays a subscription for every school in the Diocese to have access to School TV, an excellent resource bridging the gap between schools, families and parents.

It’s never been more challenging for parents to raise happy, healthy and resilient children. The SchoolTV platform provides schools with an extensive range of wellbeing resources for parents, so they can work together in partnership to ensure better wellbeing for all students.

In each Newsletter, we will publish resources around a particular topic. This week’s topic is POSITIVE PARENTING. 

Research shows that one of the most important protective factors in the lives of young people is a close relationship with a supportive adult. With the mental health of today’s young people being at an all-time low, it is simply not enough to parent effectively. Parents need to familiarise themselves with practical skills, knowledge and strategies when it comes to raising children.

Many parents today are overprotective, resulting in children being less independent, unable to problem-solve or self-regulate. Parents are failing to set clear boundaries, which is unfortunately making kids feeling less secure. There is too much pressure on kids today. Parents fill their days with too many activities in an effort to avoid their child’s boredom.

In this edition of SchoolTV, parents will learn what is the best approach for primary and secondary school aged children.

We hope you take time to reflect on the information offered in this edition of SchoolTV and we always welcome your feedback. If you have any concerns about your child, please contact the school counsellor for further information or seek medical or professional help.

Here is the link to the Positive Parenting edition of SchoolTV:

Reminders - Hats and Spares

• Hats – Sun smart hats are compulsory during terms one and four. Please ensure your child’s hat is named. If you need a new hat please contact Grace in the office. Without a hat your child will not be able to play outside.
• Accidents sometimes happen. Please pack spare underwear, socks and anything else spare in your child's bag that you may think would be handy. We don't always have spares so it would be very helpful if students had a spare change in their bags.

Office Update

Please remember students are not permitted to leave school unless permission has been granted. In these circumstances, the student needs to be signed out in the register at the Office. Thank you for your support in all these school matters.

Lots have forms have been sent home in the past couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who has sent these back already, your support in getting them back as soon as possible is very much appreicated, especially at the busy beginning of year. Please see Grace if you need any new forms.

We also encourage you to double check that your PAM account is up to date. Ensure all medical details and emergency contacts are correct. If you wish to change anything and you cannot through PAM please see, call or email Grace to fix these up. They're extremely important details to have current and correct.

School Attendance and Absentee Notification

Please ensure you are logging onto PAM, calling or emailing the school to advise if your child will be away or late to school prior to 9:30am each morning. This is a very important matter and we wish to ensure each child arrives to school safe.

Prep/1 Classroom

-Tahlia is currently on leave and will return on the 24th February. 

The students have worked really well this week and I was very grateful that they were very patient with me and helpful in letting me know how the room is run. It is exciting to see the preps settling in so well and the way the Year one students support them.

We have learnt that we all learn in different ways and are having lots of fun along the way.

-Dani Allan (Relief Teacher)

Tahlia Whytcross
twhytcross@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

2/3/4 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 3 of Term 1!
The children have settled back into the swing of school life beautifully and we are looking forward to a great 2025! Class money has been introduced this year and the children are really enjoying earning money and working towards class rewards.
We will celebrate our Beginning School Mass today, and are eager to meet Father Andrew who has taken over from Father Michael.
We welcome Laura Christofileas and her family to St. Brendan's. We hope Laura loves being at our school!
Literacy: Our phonics focus is the 'I' sound for Year 2's (lips, little, metal, camel, doll, pencil, ankle, apple, sell, kennel) and the 'oo' sound as in shooting, smoothly, clueless, screwdriver, included, doing, remove, rudeness, shrewd, conclude, fluke and crewmate for the Year 3's and 4's.
We are revising and identifying different sentence types: exclamations, commands, questions and statements. We are also investigating idioms and this week's idiom 'Back to the drawing board'.
Numeracy: We are revising and learning about Place Value. The Year 2's are identifying and representing numbers up to 1,000. The Year 3's are investigating 5 and 6 digit numbers and their value and the Year 4's are working with multiples of numbers and identifying number patterns.

The Star of the Week award goes to Ruby Wilson. Congratulations on your excellent effort!

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to Term 1 of 2025. 

It has been a pleasure getting to know the students in the senior classroom over the last couple of weeks. Our primary focus during Learning to Learn was to create a sense of belonging, connection and self awareness. The students clearly have a range of different interests and different strengths which has been wonderful to see.

A highlight of this week was the Grade 6 leadership excursion to Geelong with Mrs Eastman. The students had the opportunity to visit Edencraft and witness how a real life business operates and what leadership skills are involved to help run that business. We enjoyed a scavenger hunt at Eastern beach which involved the students to work collaboratively to solve a series of challenges. The day was topped off with chips and potato cakes for lunch followed by a swim in the pool. 

This week we have made a start to our main curriculum timetable. The students have engaged in our structured literacy program that includes handwriting, language conventions and fluency. 

In Numeracy we are focussing on 6 and 7 digit numbers and data representation. 

It has been a great start to the year and please reach out if you have any questions or would like to say hello.

Gerard Douglas
gdouglas@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Birthday Corner

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

13th February - Greta Rock (6)

15th February - Annabel Balcombe (7)

19th February - Brianna D'Altera (11)

21st February - Harriet Rock (11)

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.