Newsletter No. 8 | Term 1 Week 9 | Thursday 31st March 2022

For you I have a destiny and a hope

                                                                                                                                              Jeremiah 29:11

Principal's Message

Dear Families and Friends,

Last week I attended the VCPSCA (Victorian Primary Schools Catholic Principals Association) Conference. The VACPSP organised an incredible exploration into the importance of hope and optimism in education, leadership and the world in general. We listened to an impressive line of keynote speakers over the three days. They made us laugh, cry and think until our brains hurt, sometimes all in the same presentation! The presenters are listed below and are all well worth checking out, most have all recorded TED Talks, which can be accessed via YouTube. 

Adam Spencer:  Australian comedian, media personality and former radio presenter.

Craig Ruecassel: Renowned writer and Comedian, presenter of  ‘War On Waste’ 

Kath Koschel: The Kindness Factory

Dr. Jason Fox: motivational speaker, best-selling author, leadership advisor

Steve Sammartino: futurist and media commentator on emerging technology

Dr. Catriona Wallace: Dr Catriona Wallace is one of the world’s most cited experts on the Future of Customer Experience, Artificial Intelligence and Bot Strategy.

Simon Girffiths: Creator of the business,’ Who Gives a Crap’

Judy and Tim Sharp:  Tim is autistic and was told he would never talk. He is now a talented artist with his art centred around a character he created called Laser Beak Man. You  may have even seen Laser Beak Man on ABC 3. (See artwork above)

Throughout the Conference, I reflected quite a bit on our school Vision: For you I have a destiny and a hope. The future for our children will look different to what we know right now. Sometimes we can be filled with a sense of fear at the unknown, but when we think about it, the world we are living in now is completely different to what our parents experienced at the same age (who knew that we would be able to talk to phones on our wrists?) and it is now our new normal. 

Change is inevitable, but with change, humanity always finds a way to shine through. I left the Conference with a sense of hope for the future of our children. Hope that no matter what changes may come in the future, there are a lot of good people out there working hard to make our world a better place for future generations. Our kids will be ok.

Have a great weekend!

Leanne Eastman
PRINCIPAL
principal@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

SUSTAINABILITY

This week in sustainability Mrs (Merilyn) Sutherland and the students spread mulch around the Indigenous garden to freshen it up. Everyone has been working hard and it is really showing, our grounds are looking fantastic at the moment! Great work everybody!

The students have been collecting soft plastic wrappers from their lunches so that they can be recycled. This was our first collection which has been dropped into the Coles soft plastic recycling bin. The ultimate aim would be to reduce use of soft plastics, but when we are using them we are recycling them and are thinking more about how much soft plastics we use.

Reduce will be the next step!

HOLY WEEK CELEBRATION

Please join us for our Holy Week Celebration next Thursday, 7th April at 2.30pm.

                                                      The celebration will begin in the hall.

EASTER RAFFLE WINNERS

Monday afternoon we drew our Firewood/Easter Raffle. Congratulations to all of our winners of our Firewood/Easter Raffle and a BIG thank you to everyone who supported the raffle by buying tickets, chopping the wood or donating Easter eggs.

The raffle raised $661.80 for the school. An amazing effort!

1st Prize: Joe Bayne

2nd Prize: Bridget Newcombe

3rdPrize: Joey Lamb

4th Prize: Annabelle Carlon

COLAC DIVISION ATHLETICS CARNIVAL

On Monday, a number of our students took part in the Colac Division Athletics Carnival. As well as being an opportunity to participate in a competitive event, it was also a great opportunity for our students to interact with children form other schools. Well done to all the children who represented our school. You all gave it your best shot and did us all proud.

COVID-19 UPDATE

We have had a number of families in the school isolating at different stages over the past few weeks. We would just like to say that we are thinking of you all and we look forward to having the whole school back together again. It will be a cause to celebrate when we have a day when everyone is back at the same time!

Vaccinations:

Parents who would like their children to receive their second COVID-19 vaccination can take them to St.Mary’s Primary School on Monday 4th April at 9am.

Please contact Gracesyn to make an appointment.

STUDENT NEWS

Crazy Hair/Crazy Clothes Day: Friday 8th April - Gold Coin donation with proceeds to going to Project Compassion. We look forward to seeing all sorts of craziness!

SRC Meeting: There will be an SRC Meeting this Friday, 1st April.

Morning tea will be provided for SRC students.

Only in the Country!

Meet Cassie and her cow, Biscuit. At times, it seems that Biscuit is confused as to whether she is a cow or a horse!  As you can see, Cassie rides Biscuit and can even go over small jumps on her. What a cow! (or horse).

From Cassie: "This is Biscuit, my Hereford and Friesian cow. I got her from Billy McGuane’s farm as a calf and trained her to lead and be ridden. The Campbell’s helped me alot by giving me halters, a bridle, a saddle and much more. We now round up other cows and do lots of jumping and much more. Biscuit’s the best cow and no other cow will ever be better." Love Cassie

Last Day of Term: Friday 8th April is the last day of the school term. School will finish at 2.15pm on this day.

SCHOOL PHOTOS 2022

Annual school photos including sibling photos will be taken at St Brendan’s Catholic Primary School by Arthur Reed Photos on Friday 13th May 2022 (Note this is a recently rescheduled date).

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.

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 2022 images are online to view before making your purchase. 

AUSLAN

We hope that your families are enjoying learning AUSLAN along with us via the videos on your Seesaw. If you require assistance with setting up Seesaw at home, please come into school and we will give you a hand.

Five Interesting Facts About Auslan

• Auslan is a uniquely Australian language. It is a unique language created by deaf and hearing impaired Australians.

• Auslan is around 200 years old. 
• It doesn't use English grammar. 
• You use your whole body to communicate.
• Fingerspelling makes up 10 percent of chats.

Catholic Culture

PROJECT COMPASSION 

Lent began on March 2nd this year. As a Catholic school we use the time of Lent to raise funds for Project Compassion, a Catholic based charity ran by Caritas Australia.

This charity works to promote justice and uphold dignity for people living in less fortunate countries. Over the coming weeks we will share information about Project Compassion with you.

All students have been sent home with a donation box and we ask families to use this to start thinking about how you can support others less fortunate. If you have been filling your donation box with coins throughout Lent please return it to school before the end of the term so we can add your fundraising to the totals.

STATIONS OF THE CROSS

The Stations of the Cross take place each year on Good Friday (this year; 15th April 2022) in the Botanical Gardens Colac at 11am. We encourage all families to attend this event, it is a wonderful coming together of many different religious groups from within the area to make a spiritual pilgrimage through contemplation of the Passion of Christ. Mrs Sutherland will be attending to speak at this event along with some St Brendan's senior students, let's try and get along to support them if we can!

Prep/1 Classroom News

Week 9!

Wow! We are nearly at the end of the Term - when did that happen? Excitement levels are beginning to rise as we think about Easter and the holidays ahead. 

Word work: This week the Preps have been learning about the letters b, c, g and h. They have been reading and writing short words such as hat, hot and big. The Grade 1’s are working on the digraph <wh>.

Literacy: The students’ narratives are coming along very nicely. We took the story, “Handa’s Surprise” and innovated to create an entirely new story. The children were then invited to develop their own story plan using characters of their own choosing. There have been some wonderful stories so far, such as the following excerpt by Milly Carlon:

Rosy Bear’s Surprise:

"Once upon a time, there lived a little snake called Rosy Bear who lived in a little hill. One sunny day, she set off for a walk. Unfortunately, some hungry animals stole her fruit."

Maths: The Preps are learning about addition sentences and using the word “add” in a mathematical sense eg. 5 marbles add 2 marbles is 7 marbles. The Grade 1’s have continued their work on addition sentences and using the count-on strategy to add up the total.

Religion: They have been decorating candles, bibles, prayer cloths and crosses over the past few weeks. Yesterday, this culminated in them setting up their own prayer table. I was most impressed with how students’ were able to articulate why each item belonging on the prayer table.

Integrated Curriculum: This week we have all been delighted to see each other’s cute baby photos! To learn about timelines and the ideas of past, present and future, students’ are creating personal timelines of their own history. If you haven’t yet sent in your child’s photos, please email digital copies to allirakluver@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au or send in hard copies to be photocopied of the following:

• A baby photo

• A toddler photo

• A kindergarten photo

Keep up the home reading each night!

Allira Kluver
akluver@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

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2/3/4 Classroom News

Hello everybody!

We are getting close to the end of other busy term. To celebrate we will be having a whole school movie and popcorn on Friday 8^th April.

Often when we ask our children ‘What did you do today?’ we don’t receive much of a response. Sometimes presenting questions in a different way can elicit an array of information. Some things you could ask are:

What made you laugh today?

What was the best thing that happened today?

What are you looking forward to about tomorrow?

If you could change one thing that happened today, what would it be?

This week we watched a short clip about a young man who was being a ‘Good Samaritan’ to others trapped in their homes in the floods. He has saved over 40 people in his tin boat. Our task was to Think - about the situation – Pair - talk to a partner about how you feel about it and Share - your responses with the class. The children did a fantastic job and really showed understanding and empathy towards the situation as well as respect towards their partner.

In Writing we are currently creating narratives for our Portfolios.

Our EPIC efforts have helped us reach 325 books read. A super effort 2/3/4’s!

In Maths we are investigating addition and subtraction. We have been learning to use number lines

adding two and three digit numbers.

This week for homework the activity is focused on times tables that need to practiced and learnt over the year. New spelling words are included as well.

The Star of the Week award goes to Jerry Robb. Congratulations on your excellent effort!

If you have any concerns or queries please contact me at school or by email.

Cheers,

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 9! I can’t believe we’re nearly at the end of Term 1!

This week in AUSLAN we have been learning how to ask questions. We have learnt questions such as; who, what, when, where and why?

In Maths we have been working on adding and subtracting fractions. The Year 5’s have been working with fractions with the same denominator and Year 6’s have been working on fractions with unlike denominators.

This week in Integrated Curriculum we have been reflecting on the values of Australian Democracy. We have been completing a C-S-I (colour-symbol-image) poster while we think about values such as freedom, equality, justice and fairness.

Highlight of the week: On Monday I attended the Colac Interschool Division sports with some of our students. All students put in their best effort and displayed excellent sportsmanship. It was a fantastic day and experience for everyone.

I hope you all have a great week, please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions or concerns. 

Tahlia Whytcross
twhytcross@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Birthday Corner

We would like to wish a very big Happy Birthday to everyone who has celebrated their special day this week and last, including:

April 5th   -   Joseph Lamb (6)

Important Dates

Acknowledgement of Country

At St. Brendan’s Primary School we pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land, the Gulidjan people and pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.

We will respect the land, animals and waterways, from the roots of the earth to the tops of the trees. Through the example of our first Australians, we understand that if we look after the country, then the country will look after us.

About Us

School Vision:   'For you I have a destiny and a hope.'                    

PARISH PRIEST: Fr Michael O’Toole                  PRINCIPAL: Mrs Leanne Eastman

SAC CHAIRPERSON: Ms Gayle McNabb          CHILD SAFETY OFFICER: Mrs Leanne Eastman