Newsletter No. 18 | Term 3 Week 3 | Thursday 27th July 2023

Prayer

Dear Lord,

We thank you for grandparents and elderly relatives

throughout the world.

We are grateful for the love, care and the advice

that they give to each of us.

Protect them dear Lord, in all that they do,

as we continue to be blessed

by their wisdom and love.

Amen.

Principal's Message

Dear Families and Friends,

Today we celebrate Grandparents Day. It was a real pleasure to welcome many of our grandparents into the school. We understand that it is not possible for everybody to be there in person but they were all with us in spirit. The children spoke so fondly of their grandparents and made sure to take something home for the ones who couldn’t be here. Grandparents hold a very special place in our hearts, whether they are near or far.

Some of our grandparents brought it some items from the ‘olden days’. Cuba’s grandmother (Val) brought in a meat mincer, Jimmy, Nellie and Pearl’s grandparents (Tim and Dianne) brought in an egg beater and a manual drill, Lewie’s grandmother (Barb) brought in a 72 year old teddy and Jerry, Archie, Liam and Ruby’s grandmother (Bridget) brought in an old school suitcase. The suitcase had some old photos in it of her First Communion at St. Brendan’s and a school photo of Ruby and Liam’s Mum at St. Brendan’s. We couldn’t get over how much Lynda looks like Ruby!

Thank you all for sharing some of your artefacts. We loved it! 

We thoroughly enjoyed having grandparents at our school and can’t wait to do it again. I believe that one of the joys of being a grandparent is that you can get away with spoiling the children a little more than their parents can. I am yet to find out if this is true but I look forward to finding out!

Leanne Eastman
leastman@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

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IT'S A BOY!

Congratulations to Candi and Ross on the birth of their new baby boy, Ollie. Ollie is a brother to Levi, Lewie and Sid. I am sure Ollie will be well looked after by his big brothers!

SRC

Congratulations to our SRC students for this Term:  Samiyah, Claire, Charlie, Teddy, Caleb and Esther. You will make excellent SRC leaders. We will be having our first meeting on Monday, 31st July. The meeting will include a party pie lunch. 

ST. BRENDAN’S SCHOOL TRIVIA NIGHT

The Trivia night is edging closer. We still have some tables to sell so if you would like to come along, or have organised a table, please let us know as soon as possible. 

It would be great if you could seek out people in the community who may like to come along. The more the merrier!

The donations keep rolling in. Thank you! 

We will be sending a book of raffle tickets home with each family. Some prizes in the raffle include: $100 Babil voucher, $100 bottle of Penfolds red wine, $100 Adore voucher; wine and chocolates, small gifts, lamb, fruit and vege vouchers and more.  You’ve got to be in it to win it!

INSIGHT SRC SURVEY

It is two years since we completed the Insight SRC surveys and the time has come for us to do so again! For those that are new, these surveys are completed by staff, students and families to look at the organisational health of our school and to inform our goals going forward. 

Families havel been chosen at random to complete the surveys in the coming two weeks. Fingers crossed you are one of the lucky ones!! 

If you do receive a survey, we would really appreciate you taking the time to do it. It really helps us with moving forward as a school. Thank you!

NAPLAN

2023 Naplan reports arrived last week and were individually handed to parents and carers. A letter from National Assessment Tests (NAPLAN) accompanied each child’s reports.

We emphasise that this report provides a single snapshot of your child’s progress and needs to be considered in light of other available assessment information. The scores they get on the test will tell you how well they did on that day but will not tell you everything. As a school we use a range of data to inform us of your child’s progress. NAPLAN is just one of our data sets. 

The test does not tell us how your child learns or what other strengths your child possesses.  Remember, your child did their best on the day and there is no one way to ‘test’ all of the wonderful things that makes your child unique. 

If you would like to learn more about how to interpret the individual results check out the video below:

STUDENT TEACHER PLACEMENT

Claudia McLaren will begin her student placement in the 2/3/4 room on Monday. Claudia will be with us until the end of Term. We welcome Claudia to St. Brendan’s and wish her all the best for her placement.

BUSH EXCURSION TERM 3

Thursday 10th August

We are very excited to announce that our neighbouring Thomas Carr Campus are generously providing us with the opportunity to attend Wildlife Wonders in Apollo Bay. Entry fees will be covered by Thomas Carr and they will be driving us down there on two of their buses. We will also take our bus. 

This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to experience the nature tour and wildlife sanctuary in the Otways. The whole experience will strongly support our continued focus on sustainability and conservation.  

The students will have the opportunity to encounter beautiful Australian animals living freely, as they would be in the wild. It’s almost certain we will see koalas, but we might also be lucky enough to spot a potoroo, bandicoot and many other amazing Australian animals that call Wildlife Wonders home.

For more information on Wildlife Wonders go to:  https://wildlifewonders.com.au/our-story/

5/6 WINTER SPORT - TOMORROW

The Year 5/6 Friday Sports tomorrow will be held at Colac South West. The bus will lave at 11.20 and return by 1.30.

NOTHING WORSE THAN WET SOCKS!

As we reach the depths of Winter in the South West recess and lunch breaks here at school often mean that students are coming back inside very wet and cold.

There is nothing worse than having to put up with being in wet socks all day and so to prevent this, we ask that all parents please ensure there are 1-2 pairs of spare, dry socks in their childs bag each morning before coming to school.

Students are also welcome to bring their slippers to school to wear in the classroom, which would mean that we could leave all wet & muddy boots at the door. Thank you for your help with this.

Catholic Culture

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

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

Wellbeing News

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

So, what does that mean?

Recent evidence suggests that knowing our own character strengths and using them daily can help us build happier, more meaningful lives. It is also now recognized that children who learn character traits often have a better success in school and life overall.

Our character traits while often are used to describe our personalities or the qualities that make us who we are; they also shape our behaviour, decisions, and choices.

Briefly... A group of social scientists identified six values, (courage, wisdom, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence), which they then used to classify the 24 character strengths which are recognized across all peoples and cultures. 

Today’s spotlight is on Fairness:

Respecting and looking out for all people and giving everyone a fair chance.

Fairness is a strength which is closely related to other strengths of Justice, like Teamwork and Leadership. These strengths are about how individuals contribute to a community.

Suggested fairness activities:

Board games: sharing and taking turns can be a great way to talk about fairness. Games where people take it in turns to be in charge, like following the leader, could be fun.

Spot fairness in action: consider how communities and businesses are using their strength of fairness to enable greater wellbeing of the people around them.

Share a story: here’s some suggestions…

Fairness is about believing all people have value and treating them justly based on principle. Kids high in this character strength treat others in just and caring ways and are unbiased and objective when making decisions. They are inclusive, open to other ideas and opinions and treat others with respect.

Too little fairness can manifest as complacency or prejudice, while overuse of fairness can make one become detached, cold or indecisive.

REF: Institute of Positive Education
Sue Bath - Chaplain
sbath@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Prep/1 Classroom News

Another big week in the Prep/1 room this week! We welcomed grandparents into the classroom today and have enjoyed showing them around and spending time with them. Thanks to all those who could make it.

Literacy: Students have been learning to write similes this week. A simile involves comparing one thing to another eg. “The cat’s teeth were as sharp as knives.” Students have shown some excellent descriptive writing skills. Below are some fabulous examples:

“The lion’s eyes are like glowing suns” - Milly

“The echidna is as spiky as long grass” - Ivy

“The eyes are as pretty as marbles” - Cuba

Maths: We are continuing to learn about fractions and dividing collections to halves and quarters. We have also been exploring measurement and money. The highlight of this week was when the students created a life size measuring tape along the floor. Then then proceeded to measure and compare their own heights.

Religion: For RE we’ve been talking about the different books of the Bible and exploring both the old and the new testament. Over the next few weeks we will learn some stories from the old testament as well as some important symbols.

Integrated Curriculum: Our unit on creativity has been a huge hit. Students were challenged to turn a ‘mistake’ (eg a torn piece of paper or a scribble) into something beautiful. They did a wonderful job of coming up with novel and interesting ideas.

Keep up the amazing home reading and I look forward to hearing about students’ ‘Grow Projects.’

Allira Kluver
akluver@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

2/3/4 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 3!

We look forward to Claudia starting with us next week and we hope her time with us is exciting and rewarding.

Grandparents Day was celebrated today, and I hope all the grandparents who were able to attend, enjoyed spending time with their beautiful grandchildren.

Religious Education: Our Scripture piece this week was the Last Supper. The children explored the World Behind the Text and shared wonderings they had about the text with the class. They also discussed the symbols associated with the Eucharist and what it means for Christians and the Catholic community.

Literacy: In morphology we are investigating the suffix ‘tion’ and ‘ion’ which make the phoneme ‘shun’. Our new spelling words are graphemes that represent the /u / sound as in love, trouble, and jump. We have been learning about prefixes and suffixes and how they are added to base words.

In Writing, we have unpacked Kennings poems, alliteration and onomatopoeia. The class have really embraced our poetry work and are producing fantastic poems. See examples below of the excellent Kennings poems being created by our class.

Numeracy: This week in Maths we have been investigating location. We have looked at grids, maps and co-ordinates. The children have created their own treasure maps and in pairs, identified the co-ordinates to objects on the maps.

Integrated Curriculum:  The Year 2’s and 3’s have been making props to represent their own bedrooms using a variety of ideas and materials. They have been really creative!

The Resilience Project: This week Leanne took the Year 2/3/4’s for our lesson. The children reflected on what gratitude means and why we are grateful for members of our family. They then constructed a letter of gratitude for someone in their family.

Homework: Homework has been sent out and we are working on our times tables. New spelling words have been included and have the /u/ phoneme (as in above and trouble).

Storyboard: The Year 2’s and 3’s are designing an island that is run by children. They have decided the island has 3 main parts which are the city, forest and zoo. Within the city a magical tree grows and it is protected by the inhabitants of the island. The story will continue to unfold!

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

Cheers,

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Dog

Gruff howler

Cat lover

Stick biter

Mud eater

Fire sleeper

Moon looker

Tail wiggler

Meat demolisher

By Charlie Ferrari

Horse

Big jumper

Muscly trotter

Human lover

Apple eater

Brave traveller

Useful helper

By Pearl Armistead

Cat

Milk burper

Purring music maker

Table sitter

Night walker

Mouse eater

Sofa wrecker

Fur dropper

By Jerry Robb

Snake

Human hunter

Sneaky creeper

Mouse catcher

Poisonous slider

Sun lover

Egg layer

By Jordy Price

4/5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 3 of Term 3! I hope everyone has been keeping warm, it has been very chilly this week!

Writing: In Writing have been continuing with our Poetry unit. The students have been learning about and writing their own Kennings, Alliteration and Rhyming poems. We have been focusing on word choice and are trying to choose the perfect synonyms to use in our poems. 

Maths: In Maths we have completed our unit division. Year 4 students were learning about division with remainders, Year 5 students were practising division and writing the remainder as a  fraction and Year 6 students were practising division and writing the remainder as a decimal. I am so impressed with everyone’s hard work!

Religion: In Religion we have been unpacking our scripture piece, Luke 8:1-3 ‘Some Women Accompany Jesus’. We have been learning about the important women that accompanied Jesus, such as Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna. We also discussed how women back in these times were not treated equally and how this impacted their lives.

Integrated Curriculum: In Integrated Curriculum we have set up our storyboard for the term. This term we are holding the ‘Coragulac Market’ on our storyboard, so the students have been busy creating different objects to help our market come alive. 

Homework: Homework was sent home at the beginning of last week and is due back to school this Friday 28th July. 

Have a great week and please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions or concerns.

Tahlia Whytcross
twhytcross@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

Birthday Corner

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

9th July   -   Brennan Robb (11)

13th July   -   Jessica Beardsley (7)

19th July   -   Jimmy Armistead (12)

26th July   -   Charlie Ferrari (9)

28th July   -   Matilda Carlon (9)

Important Dates

Damian Lettieri has joined the Variety Bash with Car 460 - Chateau!

In 2023, we're hitting the road with the Variety Vic Bash to make a difference to kids in need! 

Along our journey, we'll be presenting grants and much needed equipment to kids who are sick, disadvantaged or have additional needs. We can't wait to meet the kids who will benefit from your generosity very soon. Donations from legends like you support the work for Variety - the Children's Charity year round, to assist kids who might otherwise go without the vital help they need. 

Help us help kids reach their full potential and donate today via the link below!

Rural Australians for Refugees Group

We're welcoming a refugee family into our Colac community. Can you help? Contact below.