St Finbarr’s Student Protection Contacts

Genny McNair & Prue Bodkin

St Finbarr’s Parish School

Jabiru Street, P.O. Box 34 Quilpie, QLD, 4480

Phone: (07) 46561412—Fax: (07) 4656 1306

Email: Quilpie@twb.catholic.edu.au

Newsletter Checklist

Tuckshop Envelope

Charleville RAFS

Playgroup flyer

Important dates

2nd November All Saints & All Souls Liturgy, St Fin-barr’s Church 10.30am

11th November Remembrance Day

22nd November Quilpie District Swimming Carni-val

26th November Mass

28th November Awards Evening

30th November Last day of school

1st December Travel Day for teachers.

Volume: 7

Issue: 18

Date: 1st Nov 2017

Dear Parents and Friends

Last week I attended the final Principals Forum for 2018. It is inspiring to work with leaders who are so experi-

enced and passionate about their work – that is high quality teaching and learning in our schools. The Toowoom-

ba Catholic Schools Office has a clear vision for the schools of our diocese and have completed a mountain of

work this year in the areas of Teaching and Learning, Strategic Resourcing and Faith and Mission and they have

given us, as Principals, the tools to do this and the leadership capacity to lead the learning in our schools.

One topic of particular interest was Visible Learning. At the end of Jim Midgeley’s visit earlier this year, I did ask

him what his advice was to make our school great. His response was to make the children take ownership of their

learning; to know their purpose to come to school is to learn; and to understand the purpose of their learning.

Visible Learning has been derived from the work of John Hattie. ‘Teachers see learning through the eyes of their

students. Students see themselves as teachers of their own learning’. The teacher’s role is to facilitate learning,

to help students become their own teachers. This can be realized as teachers and students set learning goals

which include learning intentions for each lesson eg. We are learning to listen for a particular purpose and this

learning will be measured by the success criteria written in child’s language eg. I will be successful if I can listen to

my classmate’s ideas carefully and contribute some of my own. Students will develop metacognitive strategies to

assist their learning – this is where they have inner conversations such as – I have heard that word before or I read

about this in another book and it also said… They are conscious of connecting new information with past learning.

When reflecting on their work students are encouraged to think about ‘What went well?’ What was tricky? What

could I do about it? If students can become drivers of their own learning they are learning with purpose – not just

‘doing’ learning becomes exciting and students are motivated to learn. A number of our students are doing this

well already but our goal is to enable every student to become active in their own learning.

Parents can have a big impact on their children’s learning too, through their engagement in the educational de-

velopment of their children. It was very pleasing to see all of our parents meeting with the teachers during the

recent parent teacher interviews. Many of these I was able to sit in on and was impressed with the types of ques-

tions parents were asking of the teachers and the discussions these prompted. Our parents are really interested

in understanding and promoting their children’s education.

The Reading Strategy has been a focus of our teacher professional development last term and is now being em-

bedded in our school literacy blocks. Jim has produced a series of short clips to provide more information on

these for schools and parents. These clips can be found at http://twbtandl.weebly.com/reading-strategy.html.

Congratulations to all students who participated in the University of NSW ICAS Maths and English competition.

Charles was awarded with a Merit for Maths, Charles and Lace for Credits in English and Ardie and Hayden for

Merits in English. These tests are designed as a competition, with a high level of difficulty and therefore are not

completed by all students in Australia. Any student who completes the test or receives an award is to be congrat-

ulated.

A final P&F/Board meeting will be held Monday night at 6.30pm to finalise plans for the upgrade of our tennis

court. Other discussions will include school fees, and plans for 2018.

Warm regards

Genny

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.’’ (Mark Van Doren)

IMPORTANT NOTICE! - Change of Dates

Swimming – Wed 22nd November

Speech & Awards Night—Tues 28th November

Important Music Notice

Music lessons are being held

on Wednesdays this term.

Please remember your instru-

ments and music books.

Date Claimer!

Quilpie ICPA Holiday Camp Tues 5 – Fri

8 Dec

Circus skills, swimming, music, leather-

work, craft, boxing

FOR ANY STUDENT PREP – YEAR 10 IN 2017

MORE INFO? beechal@skymesh.com.au

ICPA Members & Non-members welcome

(Members of other branches please

contact Branch Secre-

tary for discount)

The feasts of ALL SAINTS and ALL SOULS will

be celebrated with a Liturgy at 10.30am on

Thursday 2nd November in St Finbarr’s

Church. All Welcome.

Reminder

No holiday for Melbourne Cup day 7th No-

vember. School will be as normal.

Final P&F Meeting

P&F Meeting will be held on Monday night at 6.30pm

6th November. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Library Stocktake & Overdue Returns

Lists of borrowed Library books have been sent home

with students. These Library books have not yet been

returned. We would appreciate if all library books could

be returned by the end of

this week as Mrs Haylock

and Miss Belinda will be be-

ginning stocktake next week.

If you would like another

copy of outstanding books,

please contact the school.

Kerri and Joce got super creative

for this weeks Tuckshop and pre-

sented a wonderfully weird wacky

watermelon face with sharp teeth

and open mouth with watermelon

and grapes inside.

Of course of all the fruit on the

tray, the first type of fruit to be

eaten was the watermelon!

SCHOOL OUTING THIS FRIDAY

This Friday 3 November, our school will walk down to the

Combined Schools Art Exhibition to see all the different

entries. Students will be accompanied by Mrs Moran, Mrs

Haylock and Miss Janell. If you have any questions about

this outing, please contact the school.

Students of the Week

Congratulations to our Students of

the Week for weeks 3 and 4 of Term

4. In week 3, the students from the 3-

6 class were Darcy for asking for help

when he needs it and Millie for her

hard work in technology. From the P-

2 class the student was Ava for

writing fantastic sentences. In week 4

the two students from the 3-6 class

were Lace for taking her time with

graphs and Cody for working hard in

Maths. In the P-2 class the students

were Elroy for working hard in read-

ing groups and Stuart for always try-

ing his best. Well done

to these students for

their positive efforts.

P-2 News

Hello and welcome to week 5!

In English this term we are learning about characterisation in regards to how an

Author develops characters to engage their targeted audience. The students

are exploring how the language used can present and develop the characters

and how they can influence the reader within the book of George’s Marvellous

Medicine by Roald Dahl.

The Preps have been

working extremely hard

with learning to identify

and use the indigo sight

word ‘what’ and ‘come’.

This week the Prep’s focus

sound for spelling is ‘ee’

and ‘or’. I have been very

impressed with the Preps

writing their words out

each night for homework

and I can see the results on Friday with their spelling test…Well done Preps!

This week in Mathematics for year 1 and 2 we are identifying a Question of in-

terest to gather data to the relevant question. The students are then classifying

the data to create various displays using lists, tables and graphs to represent

and interpret the information. The Preps this week are participating in learning

activities to compare and count groups to 20 and beyond using the language of

less, more, smallest and largest

to explain their reasoning. The

Preps are also rearranging groups

to 20 and beyond to create and

match equal groups.

In Science this week the students

have worked in collaborative

groups to investigate a variety of

objects to determine whether

they sink or float in water. They

explored how the forces of pull and push act within water and have identified if

each object changes shape or size.

Have a fantastic week!

Thank you, Mrs Moran

ALL SAINTS AND ALL SOULS

Today, 1 November, Christian churches celebrate the feast of ALL SAINTS when we recognise all those who have been named ‘Saints’ by the church. The day also reminds us of St. Paul’s words that we are all saints because we strive to live as Jesus lived.

On 2 November we celebrate the feast of ALL SOULS when we recall with love and thanks those from our families and com-munities who have died. It is a long tradi-tion in the Church to pray in thanks for those who have gone before us.

We will celebrate these special days on Thursday 2 November in St. Finbarr’s Church at 10.30am. To honour those who have died each person is invited to light a candle and name the one they are re-membering e.g. “I light this candle in memory of _______”.

To help our students with this, please talk to them about someone from the family community perhaps known to them and write the name for them on a card.

The candle lighting is not just for the stu-dents. All present may light a candle if they wish.

Please come along too, and celebrate with us.

REMEMBRANCE DAY

Remembrance Day, 11 November, falls on a Saturday this year.

St Finbarr’s students are encouraged to participate in the Service at Bob Young Park. Please assemble at the park at 10.30am in prepara-tion for commence-ment at 10.45am.

Students are asked to be in full uniform, in-cluding hat.

Best of Brass

Last week the town of Quilpie was visited by BoB from Music Viva. Our instrumen-

tal students began the day by

having band practice with Mr

Sloan along with all five mem-

bers of Best of Brass as coaches.

The rest of the school then ar-

rived at the Shire Hall and en-

joyed a performance by the five

Brass players.

With trumpets, trombones and

a French Horn, BoB played mu-

sic written by composers from

across the world: tango legends, Australian waltzes, classical masters and Kazakh

folk music. It was an amazing

performance during which the

men explained to the stu-

dents how the various instru-

ments worked and about vari-

ous melodies, harmonies and

rhythms that combine togeth-

er to make the beautiful mu-

sic.

Later that afternoon, Graham

(who is touring with the BoB)

visited the school. He is a mu-

sic teacher as well as a professional Guitar player. He also spoke with the students

about getting into music and his

experiences.

The school bands performed

that evening during the Best of

Brass community show and

were highly complemented by

the Brass players saying that

they had never heard such a

wonderful band play together

for their size and experience.

Day for Daniel

Friday, 27th October was the Day for Daniel. Everyone dressed in red to show support and raise awareness for kids safety. Thank you to every-one for your donations. Money raised will be sent to the Daniel Morecombe Founda-tion which has two main aims, to educate children and young people safe in a physi-cal and online environment and to support young victims of crime.

Pen Licences!

We are proud to announce

that Millie and Marcus are

now fully qualified pen opera-

tors. Miss Jaeger has issued

each with a “Pen Licence”

due to their careful hand-

writing. Congratulations to

Millie and Marcus.

WELCOME!

We welcome Diesel

to St Finbarr’s

School. Diesel is a

new student and

has joined the P-2

class as a year 2 stu-

dent. He is already settling and making friends

and we welcome him warmly.