Newsletter No. 4 | Term 1 Week 7 | Friday 14th March 2025

Prayer

Principal's Message

Dear Families and Friends,

It has been a very warm start to the school year. The children are coping very well with it and soldiering through. Here’s hoping we get some rain soon, it’s looking very dry out there. 

Speaking of warm days, Saturday looks like being a very hot day. The latest report this morning forecasted 35 degrees which will be quite hot for a parade at the Showgrounds. I regret making the decision to forgo the parade this year, particularly because I really feel for the organisers of this event. So much work goes into putting on events such as KANA, and at St. Brendan’s we like to support community events wherever we can. It is also fun for all! However, I think in the interest of safety, we will forgo the event this year. Thank you to Nenje, Carissa, Lauren, Sophie and Liz who supported us with organising the event. Hopefully we will see St. Brendan’s in the parade in 2026!

Warm Regards,

Leanne Eastman
Principal

Easter Raffle 2025

A message from Sarah Coates - our Fundraising Leader: 

This year we will be doing an Easter Raffle to be drawn on the last day of Term 1 on Friday 4th April. The parent fundraising committee are asking if all families can possibly please donate one thing to go toward the three prizes. 

We recognize that not all families will have the means to be able to donate to the raffle and that is very understandable. Please take any donations to Grace in the office.

NAPLAN

Year 3 and Year 5 students have begun NAPLAN testing, completing the Writing and reading tests this week. The dates for next week’s tests are as follows: 

Monday 17th March: Language Conventions
Thursday 20th March: Numeracy

As mentioned in the previous Newsletter, Naplan is just one measure of children's progress. More information about NAPLAN can be found on the following link:

Colac Division Athletics 

We congratulate all of our athletes who represented our school at the Colac Division Athletics. All children did their best and demonstrated excellent sportsmanship and supported each other beautifully.

We congratulate Kaitlyn who has qualified for a number of events which means she will head to Warrnambool to participate in the next stage against schools outside of Colac. We are still awaiting the details and will keep you posted. Well done Kaitlyn!

School Gardens

We are hoping to start planting the new gardens in the next couple of weeks. There has been a hold up to the vegetable garden as we are waiting for the current garden to be completely demolished and a new surface to be put down. Our garden bed builder is right to go once this has been done. The gardens along the church fence will also be planted out in the next couple of weeks. We have held off with this until Summer was over, hopefully the Autumn rain will get the plants off to a good start.

The photos you can see here were taken on Clean Up Australia Day. They were taken in the new area on the back square around the meeting place. Last year we received a grant and worked with a local nursery to plant out the area. It is coming along beautifully!

Clean Up Australia Day

Clean up Australia Day was on Sunday 2nd March. On the following Monday the whole school worked together to clean up our local areas of Cororooke and Coragulac. The students worked really hard and took great pride in caring for their local environment.

SRC Meeting

Last week we had our first SRC meeting over a party pie lunch. The students came up with some wonderful ideas for w how we could improve our school and create some fun for our students.

Some ideas were: 

1. Buy some more sports equipment eg a mini basketball ring for the Junior students; more basketballs; tennis balls; more little bikes
2. Buy some books / short novels about basketballs
3. Have a Pyjama Day at the end of the Term
4. Should the carols and graduation be on the same night? Is it a bit rushed?

I am looking into purchasing the sports equipment and books and we will pencil in a day for the pyjama day.

The carols and graduation will be discussed with Staff and the Advisory Committee. Feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts on this.

I thank the students for freely sharing their thoughts and ideas. Increasing Student Voice is a focus for our school and we really value their contributions. 

Sports Day!

A reminder that there will be a bit of a change to the Sports day this year. The oval is very dry, so  consequently, the surface is very uneven. We feel that it will not be an ideal surface to run on. Alvie Footy Club have given us the go ahead to use their oval and they will even draw the lines for us. Last week we took the children to the oval for a practice run. The oval was in amazing condition and the children loved running on the soft, even surface.

Please note the following details:

Arrival: 9:00 am at Alvie Football Ground Oval 

PLEASE NOTE: Families are welcome to drive their children straight to the ground. There will be teachers there to meet them. Any children who cannot get to the ground with their families, will be driven to the ground in the school bus. 

Shelter: There is not much shelter at the ground. We will be putting up a couple of gazebos. If you are able to bring one, we recommend it. There is some shelter under the clubrooms verandah but it is limited and a little bit away from the action.

Lunch: We are looking into doing a bbq but if that doesn’t work out we will cook hot dogs. We will let you know before the day. Please BYO Lunch if you do not eat sausages or hot dogs.

Drinks: BYO drinks

Hats: All children must have a hat. 

Sunscreen: The school will bring sunscreen. If your child requires special sunscreen please supply and send with your child.

Dress: Students are to be dressed in clothing suitable to doing running and field events. They may wear their school sports uniform or dress in their House colours. Sports day is a fun day so feel free to look the part!

Timetable for the Day: Please see below:

Library Borrowing on Wednesdays

Students will be participating in a Literacy session during the Wednesday timetable, beginning the week after Sports Day. In this time they will be focusing on writing and also borrowing two library books each during this time. Some children have already started borrowing library books.

Can you please find some sort of bag which could be used as a Library bag and pop it in your child’s bag? This will help to protect the books. 

Students can return books each Wednesday. After books have been returned, they will be free to borrow again.

Ash Wednesday

On Ash Wednesday we celebrated Mass with the Colac Catholic Schools. 

After Mass, Fr Andrew invited the St. Brendan’s Students and staff into his house (the presbytery) to look at, and try on, some amazing hats that he has in his collection. He then played us a couple of tunes on his piano. 

It was a heap of fun! Thanks for welcoming us into your home Fr. Andrew!

Big Water Walk

As part of our Lenten journey, we are participating in Caritas Australia's Project Compassion Appeal, which raises funds for the world's most vulnerable communities. This year's theme is Unite Against Poverty, and we are excited to be involved in the Big Water Walk, a 40 day walking challenge to raise funds for clean, safe water in at-risk communities.

Students will take part in Sustainability Day on 3rd April with particular focus on water. Each day we are encouraging students to walk for 3-5 minutes, either during fruit break or as brain break, to raise awareness and funds. We are also encouraging students to walk over the weekends in support. To conclude the challenge, we will ask for a gold coin donation and we will have house groups complete in a fun relay, carrying buckets of water similar to the experience of children in developing countries.

School TV - Sleep

Students today have extremely busy schedules, with ever increasing responsibilities at school and at home. Many kids, especially adolescents, are going to bed later and later and are at risk of sleep deprivation. This affects three areas of a child’s development: psychological, physiological and psychosocial. All three are essential to a child's growth, learning ability and overall wellbeing. Sleep is vital to a child’s overall development and is as important as diet and exercise.

Sleep also strengthens a child’s immune systems and supports their ability to function properly on a daily basis. Children who do not get enough sleep show increased levels of aggressive behaviour, are less attentive and are much less active. Trying to catch up on sleep on weekends is not the answer and can still lead to severe sleep deprivation.

In this edition of SchoolTV, parents will learn about the importance of sleep and how sleep deprivation can have adverse effects on a child’s health and wellbeing.

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 Sleep edition of SchoolTV:

Social Media

A reminder that you can follow us on the following social media platforms to stay up to date with all of the happenings in our vibrant school community.

Reminders - Hats

• 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.
  

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.
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.

Prep/1 Classroom

Welcome to Week 7!

I hope everyone had a lovely long weekend and have been soaking up the sunshine! We have a couple of exciting events coming up. This Friday, we have our second last week of swimming lessons and we will also be entering the KANA parade on Saturday at the Colac Showgrounds, we hope to see you all there!

Sports Day: Our annual school sports day is coming up next Wednesday 19th March. See above for details from Leanne, I will also be sending out a letter to all Prep/1 families with further information. Please email or come and see me if you have any questions. It should be a fantastic day!

Literacy: In Literacy we have been working away through our Sounds-Write units. Prep students have been learning the sounds s, a, t, i, m and are moving onto n, o, p this week. Year 1 students have just begun learning all of the spellings for the sound /ay/. Among this, we have also been working on using a correct pencil grip and improving our letter formation. All students have been given readers reflecting these units, please ensure these are in your child’s bag every day so we can check them and change them once a week.

Numeracy: In Numeracy, Prep students have been working on counting and representing numbers up to 5. Year 1 students have been working on skip counting, revising friends of ten and subitising numbers up to 10. 

I hope you have a lovely week,

Tahlia

Tahlia O'Keeffe
twhytcross@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

2/3/4 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 7!

I hope you all enjoyed the four - day weekend! We have been blessed with magnificent weather. It is great to be back and I thank Mick McKenzie and Merilyn Sutherland for taking care of my class whilst I was away.

We are lookng forward to our annual Sports Day next week and trying out a new venue. Good luck to all the teams and may St. Brendan's spirit shine throughout the day.

NAPLAN testing has begun and the children have completed the Writing and Reading components.

Literacy: Our phonics focus is ‘the oo’ as in book sound for Year 2’s (argue, knew, unit, huge, fuel, screw, unicorn, fuse, new, use) and the ‘ue’ sound as in cooking, put, shouldn’t, football, could, would, childhood, bush, bullet and goodbye for the Year 3’s and 4’s. We are revising and identifying antonyms and synonyms, and looking at the rules for adding ck or k to words. We are also investigating idioms and this week’s idiom is ‘cold feet’. The children are enjoying our class novel - The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton.

Numeracy: We have been revisiting time, with the Year 2’s revising o’clock and half hours, the Year 3’s identifying time to 5 minute intervals, and the Year 4’s investigating am, pm and duration of time. Next week we will look at Statistics which includes reading and interpreting data on graphs.

The Star of the Week award goes to Lewie Panther. Congratulations on your excellent effort!

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to week 7 of Term 1. 

We have been very busy over the last 2 weeks in 5-6. Last Thursday the majority of the students represented our school at Colac District Athletics day. It was very pleasing to see how all of our students conducted themselves on the day. A special mention to Kaitlyn who was outstanding in her events and will progress to the next round. 

Last Friday the year sixes visited the West Barwon Reservoir. We were led on a tour of the Reservoir by Fernando Garcia from Barwon Water. Unfortunately the reservoir is only 22% full currently and this reiterated to the students the importance of not wasting water. 

In Numeracy we have been focussing on factors. In Literacy we are continuing to work hard with our handwriting, language conventions and reading fluency.

Gerard Douglas
gdouglas@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Birthday Corner

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

15th March - Liam Wilson (10)

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

Community News & Events

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