Newsletter No. 19 | Term 4 Week 5 | Friday 8th November 2024

Prayer

Litany of Remembrance

God of Compassion
In the rising of the sun and in its going down.
We remember them
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter.
We remember them
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of the summer.
We remember them
In the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn.
We remember them
In the beginning of the year and when it ends.
We remember them
When we are lost and sick at heart.
We remember them
When we have joys we yearn to share.
We remember them
So long as we live, they too shall live.
We will remember them

Amen

Principal's Message

Dear Families and Friends

I hope you all enjoyed celebrating the Long Weekend with your families. This break allows us all a chance to recharge for what is always a busy home stretch to end the year. This will include Mission Day, report writing, graduation, class break ups, end of year Mass, carols, surfing excursion and lots more. Strap yourself in!

Each Term Principals from all schools in our Diocese (from the Murray to the Sea) gather in Horsham with our DOBCEL leaders to learn, share best practice, and collaborate with one another. Throughout this year, representatives from the DOBCEL leadership team, Principals, DOBCEL Board members and others, have been consulting with renowned Finnish educator Pasi Sahleberg and his associate Dave Runge, to create a new Systems-based Strategic Plan for our Diocese, with the objective of creating schools of excellence and optimal outcomes for our students. It has been a comprehensive process with the Strategic Plan now in Draft form. 

One component of the Plan is to increase collaboration amongst schools. The extra planning days after Easter next year (as mentioned in the last Newsletter) are a direct result of the new system in action. Schools are required to engage in collaboration with one another, so we will be collaborating with our neighbouring schools, St. Mary’s and Sacred Heart. It is an exciting time to be in Catholic Education in the Ballarat Diocese.

Remembrance Day - Monday 11th November

Next Monday is Remembrance Day - we remember all those whose lives have been torn apart by war. Those who have served their country in the armed forces and those on active duty. We remember those whose lives have been changed forever by the experience of war in their lands and especially those who have died. We remember the people of Ukraine and the Middle East, who have lost their lives innocently in recent, and ongoing conflicts. We recommit ourselves to peace on occasions such as Remembrance Day.

There will be a short Remembrance Day Ceremony on Monday at 10.45.
The ceremony will be led by our senior students. 
ALL WELCOME

Mission Day - Thursday 21st November

Mission Day is fast approaching and the children are excited! 

Please note specific details from Mandy in this Newsletter.

If anybody would like to cook the bbq for us on the day please let Grace know.

Safety in the Car Park 

With the tragic accident in Melbourne last week at school pick up, the reminder emailed  to families about our own pick up procedures, could not have been more timely.  The incident was so heartbreaking for all concerned, an incident we hope will never be repeated in any school. 

Please note the following points for our own pick up procedures:  

• If children are walking across the car park, they must be escorted by a parent/carer.

• If you are not wanting to get out of the car to pick up your child/children, you may join a car line (like we had in place during Covid). For new families, drive over to the fence near the school gate which children walk through to catch the bus. Your child will be lined up there ready to be picked up. They can jump in the car and you drive off.

• Children can only be picked up in the carline between 3.20 and 3.30 - this is before the bus arrives. If you are late and arrive after the buses have gone, you can also drive over to the fenceline.

Thank you for keeping everyone in our community safe.

Pre-Prep Program

Our Pre-Prep Program will begin on Friday 15th November. This will be an opportunity for Pre-Preps to become familiar with the school and their new teacher Tahlia Whytcross. We are all very excited to meet our 2025 Prep students. If there is anybody you think would like to come along to take a look at our school and join us for this session, please let them know they are welcome. 

World Kindness Day

There are lots of days throughout the year where we celebrate special events or sentiments such as Remembrance Day, Harmony Day, World Teacher’s Day and even, National Cappuccino Day, National Hug a Bear Day, and World Tuna Day! Some days have more significance than others. This Wednesday 13th November is World Kindness Day.

Perhaps we can challenge ourselves to all do a random act of kindness on this day. It could make a real difference to someone's wellbeing.

Icy Poles

As we are in Term 4 and heading into (possibly!) the warmer weather, our Grade 6 students will once again be selling icy poles at lunchtime on Fridays. These will be $1 each and will be sold each Friday until the end of the term. In our SRC meeting, we will discuss where we will donate the money that we raise.

Hot Shots Tennis

Tomorrow some of our students will be heading to Colac South West Primary School to participate in a Hot Shots Tennis Tournament. Good luck to: Kaitlyn, Brennan, Grace, Jackson, Claire, Zayne, Jerry and Archie. We hope you enjoy the experience!

We are fortunate that local tennis coach, Charlie Grist, will be joining us for the day.

Bush Excursion

The weather was shining on us for our bush excursion to Bambra. Our students were given the opportunity to engage with nature, encouraging play and creativity in an unstructured environment. They gathered wood for the fire and topped it all off by toasting marshmallows on the fire. We are big believers at St. Brendan’s that not all classrooms have four walls. 

Connecting with nature has many benefits, including enhanced mental wealth and wellbeing: “Sad child,? Nature. Cranky child? Nature. You’re welcome.” Penny Whitehouse

Thanks to Alice for putting in the work to ensure that we all benefited from connecting to nature!

School TV

One objective of our school Bush Excursions, such as the one to Bambra last week, is to build resilience in our students. We also endeavor to do this through our wellbeing lessons and in various ways throughout the school day. Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg states:

“Resilience is key to addressing mental health issues. We need to allow our kids to experience adversity. There is a tendency to shield our kids because parents have become a bit over-protective.”  

Click on the SchoolTV link below to learn more about the importance of developing resilience in our children.

School Advisory Update

Last night we held a School Advisory Meeting. I really appreciate the members of our Advisory group who give up their time to represent the parents and carers in our school. There were many items discussed. Please note the following:

Parents and Friends group for 2025
It was raised that it would be helpful to have a Parent and Friends Group that could coordinate events throughout the year. They would seek assistance from all members of the community to ensure that we all support these events in some way. We will be sending out a survey in the next week to seek your responses to this initiative. We look forward to hearing your responses.

Fundraising
Our yearly target for Fundraising is $6000. So far we have raised; $4640.45
$960 - Wizard of Oz Raffle
$2500 - CDFNL Footy Finals Gate
$1180.45 - Warrion Flower Show
We will be drawing our Spring raffle at Mission Day. There are some fabulous prizes! A book of 10 raffle tickets will be going home to each family. If every family could sell a book it would be a great help. If you would like more than one book please let us know.

Building Project Update

I met with the architects last week. It is hoped that the project will be started in the middle of next year and be completed by the first day of school in 2026. If you would like to come in and look at the plans feel free.

All feedback is appreciated!

A Gift from St John Ambulance Australia

On Thursday, representatives from St. John Ambulance arrived at our school to present us with a defibrillator. We know for a fact that every second is critical when sudden cardiac arrest occurs. If a defibrillator is applied within the first couple of minutes, survival can reach as high as 70%. 

Over 60 days, volunteers will travel more than 16,000 km across every state and territory, delivering free CPR training to 5,000 Australians and installing $50,000 worth of lifesaving Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs).

The initiative is designed to enhance community safety and empower communities across the country. 

We are very grateful for their donation and will place it where it will be easily accessible for both us and our Parish community. Hopefully, we never have to use it, but it is good to know that it is there if needed. 

Thank you to St. John Ambulance!

Class Awards

Congratulations to the following students who have received class awards over the last couple of weeks: Annabel. Declan, Ava, Greta, Sophie and Esther. Thank you for being such great role models for your fellow students.

SRC Lunch

The Term 4 SRC students will be treated to a party pie lunch over their meeting on Monday 11th November. I look forward to seeing what fresh ideas they have to add to our already fabulous school!

Swimming Program

Just a reminder that our Swimming program is on tomorrow. We are on week 3 of 5 already! Please ensure all students have all of their swimming gear for the pool!

Child Safe Standards

As mentioned previously, in 2023 the Government revised the Child Safe Standards and increased them to 11 standards. We take the Standards very seriously at St. Brendan's, always ensuring the safety of our children. Over the next few Newsletters we will be revising the standards with you.

This week we have standards 4 - 6.

Child Safe Standard 4 - Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing.

Child Safe Standard 5 - Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.

Child Safe Standard 6 - People working with children and young people are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice.

Mission Day

Mission Day is approaching fast with only 2 weeks to go!

We start the day at 10.00am with a liturgy in the church. The infamous cake auction begins at 11.30am in the hall. The Year 6's run it and we ask for donations of the baked variety to sell on the day. Please remember to label the ingredients in your baked goods. We appreciate any contribution to the cake auction. We proceed out to the stalls after the auction is completed. We warmly welcome you all to come along and celebrate with us.

Please note the following categories for our cake competition. Who will be our baking Master Chefs? Happy baking!

• Best Dad Cake
• Best Mum Cake
• Best Teacher/Staff Cake
• Best Grandparent Cake
• Best Student Cake
• Best Community Cake

Kind regards,

Mandy

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

Welcome back after our long weekend. Hopefully we are all rested as we head towards the end of term.

Mission Day: Alice and I will send a letter home with your child today regarding Mission Day for Grade Prep / 1s.  If you have any further questions or suggestions please don’t hesitate to ask us.

Work word: The foundation students are working on words ending with the sound ’ng’ as in sung and ring. The Grade 1 students are learning about the sound /ue/ like in news. There are three common spellings: <ew> like in few, <u-e> like in cute, <ue> like in fuel and <u> like in unit.

Writing: We are learning about persuasive texts. One of our writing tasks will be  to use our writing skills to create posters to persuade everyone to come to our stall on Mission Day. 

Maths: We have started learning about measurement - length, capacity and  volume. We will also do some work on money so we can be ready for working on our stall at Mission Day. 

RE: Our unit this term is Family.  We have been focusing on the question ‘Who are we connected to?’ We are now learning about Jesus’ family and reading and understanding ‘The Visit’ when Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, a story from Luke’s gospel.

Liz McGuane and Alice Armistead
lmcguane@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

aarmistead@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

2/3/4 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 5!

I hope everyone enjoyed their extra days off this week!
We are gearing up for Mission Day which will be happening in two weeks.
The childrn are designing posters and organising their groups and activites this week.
We had an extra special guest on Wednesday and Thursday. Sophia Gray came back to visit us before she heads off to America with her family.
We wish the Gray family all the best for their new adventure!!

Literacy: We have been enjoying our novel Matilda and the adventures that her class have with Miss Honey and the awful Miss Trunchbull!
The Year 2's current sound focus is /oo/ spellings = oo, ew, u, ue, u-e, ou, ough: fruit, moon, soup, screw, use, Sue, super, group, tattoo and through.
The Year 3/4's current sound focus is /e/ spellings = e, ea, ai: again, spread, said, dread, quench, French, threat, thread, fresh and bread. In Writing, we have been revisiting sentence expansion connected to events in our class novel.

Numeracy: Charlie has taken over teaching Maths during his time with us. The children have been learning how to use a ruler correctly, comparing lengths of objects and terms related to measurement. Everyone is enjoying the activities and learning about length. They will be investigating area next which will include perimeter of shapes and objects. 

Homework: Homework this week will be choosing 5 objects and measuring them in centimetres or metres. Remember to use the corect symbols and abbreviations: cm= cemtimetres and m-metres

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

Mandy Sutherland
msutherland@sbcoragulac.catholic.edu.au

4/5/6 Classroom News

Welcome to Week 5!

I hope everyone enjoyed the sunshine over the long weekend. We have been working hard in the senior room and we cannot believe Mission Day, Graduation and Christmas are fast approaching!

Homework: Spelling and Maths homework has been sent home for Week 5/6. This is due back to school on Friday 15th November.

Literacy: In Phonics we were focusing on words with the /er/ sound and have now moved onto words with the /e/ sound. Year 4 students are working on words such as; spread, quench and threat and Year 5/6 students have been working on words such; as unpleasantly, alphabetically and dreadful. We have also been working our way through our class novel, War Horse and answering chapter questions. This week, students will begin to plan an introduction paragraph for their narrative text on the theme; ‘Journey to the unknown’.

Numeracy: In Numeracy, Year 4 students have completed their unit on Time and have moved onto Shape. They have been identifying properties of 2D shapes and 3D objects and are currently creating 3D objects using nets. Year 5/6 students have been finishing their Measurement unit with a big focus on finding the volume of shapes. Students have been finding the volume of cubes and rectangular prisms, with Year 6 students also finding the volume of triangular prisms.

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:

12th November - Jackson Scott (11)
                            - Eden Robb (10)

15th November - Samiyah McLeod (12)

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.