CALENDAR

Detailed calendar can be viewed at www.spnhill.catholic.edu.au or on the FlexiBuzz app

SEPTEMBER Hats on from 1 September Fr 15 Junior Extended Day Mo 18 Reading counts 1,2,3 … read with me 9am

Tu 19 SAC Meeting 7:00pm Th 21 Last Day Term 3—Dismissal 3:15pm Fr 22 School Closure Day OCTOBER Mo 9 First Day Term 4 Th 19 Nhill Show—School Closure Th 26 SAC Meeting 7:00pm

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

NATIONAL CHILD PROTECTION WEEK and CHILD PROTECTION SUNDAY—Sunday 10 September was Child Protection Sunday. Now in its 27th year the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia suggested the theme of See Me, Hear Me to raise awareness for the voice of the child. According to Sr. Annette Cunliffe rsc, Executive Officer, NCPS, “We all have a part to play in protecting our children and most vulnerable”. “Actively listening, and pro-actively responding to the voices of children is essential if our Church and our communities are to be safe places for children and young people to flourish.” We need to ‘pay attention’ when our children raise a concern and support those who are most vulnerable within our community. The following words taken from the Sisters of Mercy prayer issued during the Royal Commission may be our prayer this week as we work together as communities committed to the protection of all children:

As your Spirit of Justice is needed, may it prevail; As your Spirit of Truth is needed, may it enlighten and liberate;

As your Spirit of Compassion is needed, may it be deeply experienced;

As your Spirit of Hope is needed, may it change hearts and minds;

As your Spirit of Healing is needed, may it restore and renew.

CONGRATULATIONS—A huge congratulations to Heath who completed in the Little Desert Division athletics carnival in Horsham on Tuesday. We admire Heath’s willingness to commit to new experiences and, while not placing in either the long jump or the 100m, Heath tried his best and had a great time competing. Well done Heath!

ABORIGINAL CULTURE—On Tuesday 12 September Jeanette Morris from the Ballarat Catholic Education Office visited St. Pat’s to speak to the students about Aboriginal culture. Jeanette is an Aboriginal woman from southern Victoria and she spoke to both classes about how the first Australians make rules and laws and how they differ from current Australian laws. For example, Jeanette explained that in Aboriginal culture there are no words for please and thank you as everything belongs to everyone and if ‘I think that I need to be asked for the use of something then I am being very disrespectful to my mob and I will be punished for this behaviour’. The students experienced this method of decision making when food was prepared for everyone to try. The

St. Patrick’s

Church Times

Sundays at

10:00am

17 September

Mass

St. Patrick’s School is a Child-safe school. As a Catholic Christian community, we will nurture the children as they learn together to respond to the Gospel in their daily lives and explore their emerging role in Australian society.

Our Vision

St Patrick’s School

is a child safe school 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

Term Dates Class Times Administration Office Hours 2017 Term 3 17 Jul to 22 Sep 8:55am Class time

2017 Term 4 9 Oct to 22 Dec 11am Recess Monday Closed

11:30am Class time Tuesday 9am

3:50pm 1:30pm Lunch Wednesday

2:15pm Class time Thursday

3:15pm Dismissal Friday 9am1pm

Newsletter No. 2017/28 Thursday, 14 September 2017

Attachments

Walk to School fact

sheet

SCHOOL

Advisory

Council

Members

Lisa Braybrook Helen Cannell (Chairperson) Michelle Dickinson Jamie Donnell Kimberley Philip Melissa Polkinghorne Ex Officio Fr. Peter Hudson Kathryn Bendall Ann Munro Karen Rintoule

A prayer for stronger communities, safer children

Gracious God, you said ‘let the children come to me’.

We ask that you strengthen and guide all in our Catholic communities. Grant us wisdom in our time to make decisions that protect children and the vulnerable.

May our families and communities – through love, generosity, commitment and patience – build stronger communities, safe for our children.

Let your grace and love fall gently upon our children giving them the inner strength, peace and resilience they will need for life’s journey.

We ask you, God, to help our Catholic communities to be resolute in creating environments where our children both flourish and are safe.

Amen.

MONTH

Full colour version of newsletter is on our website spnhill.catholic.edu.au/newsletters-2017.html and FlexiBuzz

Jobe, Nessa

& Jack

This week in the F-2 classroom we have been reading 'Police Officers' as our shared reading book, in anticipation of Friday's excursion to the Horsham Police Station.

In Mathematics, the Foundation students have been learning more about counting while Year 1 and 2 students have been making graphs and collecting data.

We are in our second week of our Poetry unit and there are some wonderful poems starting to emerge across all year levels.

Integrated Studies this week has been focussed on summarising what we have learnt over the term.

During our Art session, we completed posters for the GWM Water Week poster competition.

This week in Literacy, the seniors are working on writing recounts on our Halls Gap Camp. It has been very exciting to remember all the fun and educational activities we did. Our vocabulary words this week are ‘prevent’, ‘witness’, ‘transport’, and ‘routine’. We are reading about police officers and all the different and important jobs that they do.

In Numeracy, the focus is three dimensional shapes and their nets. The students have been learning to make models of three dimensional objects and describe key features and connect three dimensional objects with their nets and other two dimensional representations.

In Integrated Studies this week the students have been learning more about democracy. Jeanette Morris came in to visit us on Tuesday and we got to learn about democracy in Aboriginal culture, cook some Aboriginal food and learn about some creation and dreamtime stories. The students were all very engaged in this as it gave them the chance to share some of their learning from Brambuk.

students decided how much damper would be made and how the kangaroo stew would be prepared. They then got to try these delicious foods at lunchtime. Jeanette’s presentations were very insightful and we are very grateful that she travelled to Nhill to share her extensive knowledge with our students.

SENIOR CLASS CAMP—It was fabulous to welcome back some very tired but happy senior students on Friday afternoon when they returned from camp. It seems they had a wonderful time and I want to extend my thanks and gratitude to Renee Anson for organizing and leading the camp, as well as heartfelt thanks to Billy Bennett, Les Butler and Kingsley Dalgleish who left their own schools so that our camp could proceed. There are reports and photos from students elsewhere in the newsletter.

ABOVE AND BEYOND—For the last two weeks our focus for the Above and Beyond award has been Achieving Academic Growth. Firstly it is appropriate to acknowledge the hard work of so many of our students in this area. Unfortunately though we can only have two awards and they are Cooper and Maddison. Both of these students have been working really hard with their reading and during their MiniLit lessons. Cooper has also achieved great success with his high frequency words and can now identify and spell 52 of them. Congratulations to Cooper and Maddison and to all students who have been working hard on learning tasks throughout the last two weeks.

READING AWARDS—A fortnight ago Shai received an award for reading 90 books so far this year. This week Erin and Maddison received awards for reading 60 books and Tia and Zara received awards for reading 90 books. Congratulations girls and keep reading.

FATHER’S DAY BREAKFAST—Thank you to all the fathers, grandfathers, and those like fathers to our students who celebrated Father’s Day by joining us for breakfast on Friday 1 September. This year the menu was ‘improved’ to include pancakes which were a big hit with the students, if not the adults. It was wonderful to see the hall full of smiling children and their fathers. Some photos of this event are included elsewhere in the newsletter.

PARENT TEACHER INTERVIEWS—Thank you to all those families who attended Parent Teacher Interviews last week. If you were unable to attend then please speak to your child’s teacher and arrange a mutually suitable time to discuss your child’s progress.

TRAUMA PROFESSIONAL LEARNING—I recently attended a presentation about trauma and its impact on children. I am working with the Lookout Centre to organise this professional learning for all our staff. While this would entail a school closure day early in Term 4 I believe the benefits of all staff learning more about trauma and how to work effectively with children who

This week’s

winner is Riley who was

caught using our school rules by displaying respect.

Nominated by Olivia

Mondays, 9-10am Term 4 Dates 9, 16, 23, 30 October

6, 13, 20, 27 November

4, 11, 18 December

Mrs Creek has run two successful Reading Counts sessions since our last newsletter. Toddlers and their carers are always provided with great opportunities to engage in literacy activities each Monday morning. Over the last two weeks toddler have learnt about the letters Uu and Vv, and

engaged in fun activities including creating an umbrella and a worm, learning umbrella and worm poems and playing the game ‘What’s the time Mr. Wolf?’ We invite all toddlers to these sessions. There is no cost associated with this program.

have experienced trauma would be of great benefit to our school community. Please stay tuned for more details in the near future.

UPCOMING EVENTS—

School Advisory Council—Our next meeting is Tuesday 19 September. If you have any issues to be raised please contact a Council member (names on the first page of the newsletter) so that the issue can be placed on the agenda. We value your input and would like to hear from you about questions or thoughts you have about how we can improve our school.

School Closure Friday 22 September—Don’t forget that there is no school for students next Friday. Staff will be attending a Social Justice professional learning day.

Walk to School program—October is ‘Walk to School’ month. Attached to today’s newsletter is information about this program. We are encouraging all students to walk or ride/scoot to and from school, or the bus stop, throughout October. The first week of October is school holidays but we encourage students to walk or scoot/ride during this week and record this activity and bring the details to school so that it can be recorded on our tally charts. Hindmarsh Shire Council has also organised for Wimmera Regional Sports Assembly and Jordan Wright from Praise Christian Dance School to conduct lunchtime activities for the students. It is so important that we look after our bodies and our physical health and I encourage everyone to be involved in Walk to School during October. Look out for the chalk footprints on the footpath at the front of the school next term.

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

Kathryn Bendall, Principal.

1, 2, 3 … read with me Reading Counts

Halls Gap Camp Recount by Jobe

On Wednesday 6th of September to the 8th of September I went to Halls Gap for school camp, and to discover about next term’s study of flora and fauna. I went with my class, Miss Anson, the bus driver from Horsham (Mr Butler), Mr Bennett, and Michelle Dickinson. We travelled by bus. First thing, we hopped on the bus. Heath and I counted my footy cards and listened to music. We stopped at Horsham to go to the art gallery, I saw some amazing photos and paintings in there. We went in to another room to do print making. I made three owls. Secondly we went to J Ward. Our guide told us it was a gaol for 26 years and then a hospital for people with mental illness. We went into all of the rooms and the backyard. Eventually we went to our rooms at the hostel. We got ready to go swimming and had lasagne for tea. Finally we got to the swimming pool, got changed then hopped in. Heath and I played on a mat and with a ball. We had showers and got changed back into our clothes, then went back to Halls Gap. The next day we got up, had breakfast and then went on a nature walk. We walked to a stunning waterfall. After that we went to the Halls Gap Zoo. We saw all of the animals. My favourite animals were the Pygmy Marmoset and the Wallaby. We had lunch near the fat bison. When we left we saw the turtle. We went back to the Hostel at around 1. We played for 30 minutes and then we went to Brambuk, but the lady said our guide wouldn’t be there for thirty minutes, so we went back to the common room for 30 minutes. Later we arrived back at Brambuk, waited a little, then our guide turned up. I nearly fell asleep during the talk. Then we went to watch a movie, I fell asleep. Last but not least we went bush tucker tasting, then went to the ice cream shop. I got a bubble-gum ice cream. The next morning it was my birthday, we played pass the parcel, I got a book and footy cards. Then we went to Gum San and we learnt about Chinese history and about Australian history. We watched a film and then did goldmining. Finally we had lunch. We had a Chinese lunch. I had honey chicken. I had the time of my life at camp. I really want to go back. It was awesome!