CALENDAR APRIL Mo 25 School Closure Day—ANZAC Day Public Holiday Tu 26 Parent/Teacher Interviews (from 3:30pm) We 27 BookClub orders are due Th 28 Excursion: Circus Oz, Horsham MAY We 4 Cross Country @ Nhill College (Yrs3-6) 10am Th 5 Meals on Wheels Fr 6 Meals on Wheels / Mother’s Day lunch Mo 9 Meals on Wheels Fr 13 Meals on Wheels Mo 16 School Closure Day—School Review Fr 20 Walk Safely To School Day M-F 23-27 Catholic Education Week Tu 24 Excursion: Warracknabeal We 25 National Simultaneous Storytime & Biggest Morning Tea JUNE Mo 13 School Closure Day—Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday We 15 PAC Meeting 7:00pm Th 16 Open Day/Inquiry Presentations 11am-1pm Fr 24 Last Day Term 2—Dismissal 2:15pm JULY Mo 11 First Day Term 3

TERM DATES

Term 2 11 April to 24 June Term 3 11 July to 16 September Term 4 3 October to 20 December

CLASS TIMES SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION

8:55am Class time OFFICE HOURS 11am Recess Monday closed 11:30am Class time Tuesday 1:00pm Lunch Wednesday 9:00am—3:50pm 1:45pm Class time Thursday 3:15pm Dismissal Friday 9:00am—1:00pm

Full colour version of newsletter is on our website spnhill.catholic.edu.au/newsletters-2016.html and tiqbiz

Dear Parents and Members of St Patrick’s School Community,

Last Sunday was the fourth Sunday of the Easter Season. The Gospel from John reads

Jesus said: ‘The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life; they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from me. The Father who gave them to me is greater than anyone, and no one can steal from the Father. The Father and I are one.’

The image from the Scripture is of the shepherd; someone who is caring and compassionate in leadership. There is mutual respect and recognition between the shepherd and his sheep. They both trust each other. The sheep listen to and recognise the voice of the shepherd and that is why they continue to follow him. This gospel is a metaphor for our relationship with God. We need to recognise and trust the voice of Jesus as it comes to us in our daily lives. This ‘voice’ has many forms but most often it is in the voices of the people we meet on a daily basis. If we do not recognise the voice of Jesus in our lives then we are likely to get lost and lose our way. Belonging to God’s kingdom allows us to serve each other and help make our world a better place to all to live in. Students in the Senior class are currently studying “Celebrating God’s Gift of the Spirit” which focuses on the gifts that are available from the Spirit and how we can utilise them to help others. Junior students are studying “I Care for God’s World” as their Religious Education unit. Both units emphasis the need for individuals to be actively engaged in God’s ministry on earth.

CONGRATULATIONS DAREEN, GLENN AND SHAI—On Sunday Dareen and Glenn Lewis welcomed Shaira to their family. Shai is a very excited big sister and is providing daily updates to everyone at school. Congratulations to the Lewis family on their new arrival.

MESSAGE FROM FATHER NEVILLE—Father Neville sends his regards and thanks everyone for their support and prayers. His mother is home with personal care from home nurses. She is slowing down day by day. Please continue to keep her in your prayers.

ABOVE & BEYOND—This week’s focus: was Showing Initiative And Leadership. This week’s winners are Thar Shue Bee for showing great leadership when working in Maths groups and Hanna Cannell for using her initiative when trying lots of different strategies to decode new words when reading and writing. Congratulations Thar Shue and Hanna.

Next week’s focus is Next week’s Above and Beyond focus is Displaying Creative Thinking. This involves—

Asking questions to clarify what is required Consider different points of view Wonder how others might feel about something Use your imagination to dream and think of other ideas and answers to problems Consider the consequences of behaviour and actions and their impact on others Consider different possibilities to a question/issue/problem

ANZAC DAY, Monday 25 April A reminder that Monday is a school closure day/public holiday. ANZAC Day recognises all service men and women and acknowledges the sacrifices that they made for our country. It

St. Patrick’s School

29 Leahy Street, PO Box 113, Nhill 3418

Phone 03 5391 1575

Mobile 0419 929 271

Fax 03 5391 1506

Email principal@spnhill.catholic.edu.au

Web www.spnhill.catholic.edu.au

Newsletter No. 2016/10 Thursday, 21 April 2016

St. Patrick’s Church

Sunday 24 April Mass at 10:30am

27 April

This week’s

winner is

Harmony who was caught using our school rules

by displaying responsibility. Nominated by: Nessa

JUNIOR CLASS NEWS from Miss Farquharson

The Junior class has been very busy since last week. On Friday, we all went to Nhill College to join in the Fun Sports afternoon with students from Nhill College and the Lutheran School. Every student tried their best in all of the different activities and it was fantastic to see them cheering on their friends from all of the schools. The students have also been doing some fantastic work in our shared reading when they have been describing characters in the story. They have been learning many new and exciting adjectives which they are beginning to be included in their writing. We have begun our experiment to make salt crystals and the student have made lots of different predictions about how it will turn out. They are going to have to be very patient though as we won’t see results until later next week!

SENIOR CLASS NEWS from Miss Anson

This week in Literacy, the seniors have been practising their oral language and spelling strategies using the chewing gum stretch, onset and rime, syllable counting and rhyming words each morning. We have been reading the book ‘Longest, Tallest, Heaviest’ during shared reading and focusing on vocabulary, text structures and text features. In Numeracy, the seniors are revisiting addition and subtraction. We have been learning to develop mental and written strategies to solve these types of sums. The Year 3’s have been practising their 2 times tables and the Year 4’s and 5’s have been working on their speed and accuracy with their 7 times tables. In Inquiry, during our topic ‘Chemical Science’, the students have completed an experiment using milk, food colouring and detergent and are also creating salt water crystals. The students got to mix the ingredients together to see the reaction. The students have been making predictions and recording observations as well as drawing diagrams about what happens.

is a day of great national pride and a time to be very grateful that we can live freely in Australia. The ANZAC Day ceremonies in Nhill on Monday will be at Goldsworthy Park at:

6:30am Dawn service followed by gold coin donation BBQ hosted by Rotary 10:30am Wreath laying ceremony followed by a march to the Nhill Memorial

Community Centre

11:00am Service at Community Centre with Guest Speaker Jo Ussing

It would be great to have a group of students wearing uniform to represent our school for the wreath laying ceremony. Any students who wish to represent St Patrick’s School at the ANZAC Day service are asked to be in Goldsworthy Park at 10.20am.

NATIONAL SIMULTANEOUS STORYTIME and BIGGEST MORNING TEA—Wednesday 25 May at 11.00am —Again this year we will celebrate these two events on the one day. This year’s NSS book is called ”I Got This Hat”. Students will undertake some work on HATS and we will conduct a hat parade as part of this event. PLEASE join us for NSS and support our fundraising for cancer research at the same time.

PROJECT COMPASSION

Mrs Munro has collated all Project Compassion collection boxes and to date we have raised $135. Project Compassion is Caritas Australia’s annual fundraising awareness-raising appeal to help end poverty, promote justice and uphold dignity. The theme for Project Compassion 2016 is “Learning more, creating change”. Visit caritas.org.au/projectcompassion for more information about this very worthwhile project. If you haven’t returned your collection boxes yet, there is still time, drop it in to Mrs Rintoule in the office as soon as possible.

FOOTY TIPPING—We are already up to round 5 this weekend! There are 28 people participating this year which is fantastic. Senior students have tallied the results and there are four points between the leading 17 participants—very close.

PREMIERS ACTIVE APRIL—Remember to continue being active during April and fill in the activity tracker.

CIRCUS OZ EXCURSION NEXT THURSDAY—Almost all permission notes have been returned to the office. If you haven’t already done so, please complete the permission slip on the pink note which was sent home earlier this week and return it to the office by next Tuesday. We don’t want any students to miss this great opportunity.

F-2 ATHLETICS CARNIVAL—Our students really enjoyed this afternoon of fun with the College and Lutheran School students. Miss Farquharson reports that students were very well behaved and they displayed excellent sportsmanship by cheering on their friends from St Patrick’s, as well as the other two schools. We imagine that they should have all slept well that night. See elsewhere in the newsletter for photos of the event.

GRASS CLIPPING HOUSES—This term it has been absolutely fabulous to see all our students playing cooperatively together at recess and lunch time. They have been using their IMAGINATIONS and having a wonderful time using something as simple as grass clippings to entertain themselves. A big HIGH FIVE to all our wonderful students for using your initiative. There are a couple of photos of this activity elsewhere in the newsletter.

PARENT ADVISORY COUNCIL

The PAC met on Wednesday evening and discussed the following:

The purpose of PAC and the roles/responsibilities of members. Thank you to Chris Robarts for this informative presentation.

We will celebrate Catholic Education week in Warracknabeal on Tuesday 24 May. Parents are welcome to attend this celebration and I would appreciate your names by Friday 29 April so that St Mary’s Warracknabeal can plan their catering. There will be no cost involved for parents who join us for the day.

Reports from the Principal, Fundraising, Grounds and Maintenance and Social Justice Working Groups were received.

A member of the school community has asked questions about our playground and ways to improve it for the students. We have requested more feedback about these suggestions.

As always, please contact the school if you have any questions about what is happening at St Patrick’s School. Kathryn Bendall, Principal.