7 June 2024

PRINCIPAL’S REPORT

Hello St Patrick’s families, I hope this finds you happy and well. 

Removal of Demountable Buildings – School Master Plan 

Last week we finally waved goodbye to our demountable classrooms on the back oval. Hooray! This is a big step for the school as the removal of these buildings is a huge step towards achieving the next stages of our school Master Plan. 

The school Master Plan is, as the name suggests, the school’s plan for managing the physical assets of our school, mainly, the buildings. In this plan, we hope to eventually remove the older buildings in the school (the double story building with our toilets and the joined building currently housing our yr. 2 and yr. 1/2) and replace them with modern, up to date learning spaces for our children. 

No matter if you are a state school, independent school or catholic school, any large-scale project like this relies on government funding. Historically, when we have applied for government funding for a project like this, we have been denied as we have too many classrooms, with the feedback being if we don’t like our classrooms, move into other ones you have on site. Removing the old demountables means we are no longer over-prescribed with classrooms and will hopefully now be more eligible for government capital works funding. 

The process from here is now straightforward. With the support of the Toowoomba Catholic Schools Office, we will now put together a new government capital works funding application that will be submitted in 2025. If we are successful in obtaining this funding (this is still not a given), we would be able to commence building works on the new project in 2026. 

This is an exciting time for the school. Although the removal of the demountables does not guarantee we will receive the required government funding, it gives us a much better chance. I will continue to keep the school community updated on the progress of our application and ask that you keep everything crossed for us. 

Late Dropoff & Early Departure Procedures – Reporting via the Office 

It sometimes happens that a student will arrive late at school, or just after the bell. It is important to remember that if a student arrives after 8.30am (even if it’s 8.31am!), they are late and need to go via the office before returning to class, so they can adjust the classroom roll accordingly.  The student will then be given a late slip to give to their teacher, so the teacher is aware they have checked in at the office. It is also important to remember that any students who arrive before 8.10am need to wait in the undercover area for the teacher on duty to arrive. In general, students shouldn’t be arriving before 8.00am without prior arrangements being made with the Principal.

Similarly, if you are picking up a student who is leaving school early, parents are required to do so by coming to the office and letting the office staff know. They will then call the classroom and ask for the student to come and meet you at the office. This ensures we don’t have families walking through the school needlessly. 

Our processes around students arriving late or early are there to ensure we are meeting our legal obligations of duty of care but, more importantly, to ensure students are safe and accounted for. I appreciate your support of these policies. 

Semester 1 Report Cards – Issued via Parent Portal 

This year we are starting a new journey for St Pat’s with our report cards. Last year, for the first time, we issued report cards electronically via email, instead of sending home paper copies to the students. From this year on, starting at the end of this term, we will now be issuing report cards through the Parent Portal. This is reflective of a need to streamline the systems we have at school and to provide families with a copy of the report card that is easily accessible over time. Through the Parent Portal, the report card is downloadable if you need to print a paper copy and, most importantly, it stays in the Portal for the whole time your child is at St Patrick’s so, you always have access to it. 

We will continue to remind parents of this as the term progresses but please, take the time to ensure you have the Parent Portal and are accessing school notices through it. If you do still require a hard copy, please contact the office to let us know. 

Prep 2025 Interviews 

2025 seems a long way away, but for the school we are already putting processes in place for next year’s Prep class, including identifying how many applicants we have and finalising our Prep cut off numbers. 

If you have a child you wish to enroll for next year, now is the time to ensure you have gone on to our website and done so via our electronic enrolment link. 

Although we do preference siblings when identifying Prep enrolments, their online enrolment must still be lodged! Prep students with older siblings cannot be offered a place if there is no application for them! 

The school will begin enrolments early in Term 3. We look forward to seeing our new families soon and meeting our future Preps. 

Mr. Wren is Taking Leave – Term 2 W10 & Term 3 W1

I will be taking personal leave for the last week of this term and the first week of next term. My wife is having surgery next week and will have a prolonged recovery, so I will be taking this time to be with her and to look after the kids while she recovers. In my absence, Mrs. Chandler will step up into the Principal’s role and deputise for me. If I don’t see you before I go on leave, take care over the holiday break and enjoy your time with friends and family.

Calendar Holders – Important Term 2 Dates 

Take care,
Jim Wren
Principal

PARENT PORTAL

Download & Use the App Now!

St Patrick’s Parent Portal is now up and running for more streamlined communication with parents. The transition took place on Monday 5^th February, so if you haven’t already, make sure you follow the instructions below on how to register. If you are having issues registering, please contact the school office so we can help with the process.

Warm Regards,
Jim Wren

OUR PRAYERS…

Let us support each other in Prayer, especially for the Sick and the Deceased and those who are suffering Hardships, in our Parish and School.

APRE News

This week has been a special week for our community here at St Pat’s.

Bishop Ken Howell has visited us for the first time, and I am proud to say that he has loved being part of our classes for the day. After celebrating a beautiful mass together this morning, Bishop Ken joined Father Antony and the St Patrick’s staff for morning tea. Following first break the Bishop, Father Antony and Mr Wren led three teams in the inaugural ‘Beat the Bishop’ quiz show. We had so much fun as a school community and I’m sure Mr Wren will want everyone to know that his team won the day!

Following this Bishop Ken and Father Antony toured our classrooms and spent some lovely time with all our student groups. There were lots of questions and thought-provoking answers given. It really has been a wonderful day and I’m very proud to be part of the Saint Patrick’s community.

This weekend on Sunday some of our students will be receiving the sacrament of Confirmation. It is an honour that we have Bishop Ken with us and the team that has led the confirmation preparation has been doing a wonderful job.

As a faith community, these events are highlights in our year and it are these events that set our school apart from other school choices.

We should take it seriously, and we should be proud to share our faith journey with the wider community.

Faith truly is a gift from God and often it’s what not only brings us together in times of celebration but supports us in times of sadness.

We can’t wait to welcome back Bishop Ken to our community, it is also wonderful having Father Antony back after his months away. Looking forward to seeing as many families as possible to support our young people on Sunday!

Take care,
Mrs Anna Chandler
(Assistant Principal Religious Education & Learning Support)

MASS TIMES

St George-Dirranbandi Parish

Priest Administrator: Fr Antony Samy 0409 278 968 Email: balonneparish@bigpond.com

TUCKSHOP

St Pat’s Athletics Carnival

Kids Tuckshop Menu (Sports Day)

Student orders to be placed via FlexiSchools.

Parents/Volunteers Tuckshop Menu (Sports Day)

Regards
Sue Hopkins

MLCC News

Reading with children at home. 

Parents frequently ask, “How can I support my child’s reading when they are reading decodable texts?” 

In alignment with the new Diocesan Approach to Reading, it is important that a child does not randomly guess or use the pictures to work out unknown words. The focus should be on the letters and sounds, and the process of blending those together to read the word. You can use the Decoding Poster ‘What to do if I get stuck?’(see below) to help guide your child. 

What about sight words? Your child will encounter high frequency words that may contain letter/sounds that they have not learned yet. These are sometimes referred to as sight words. It is important that these words are approached in the same way as any word, using synthetic phonics (not by memorisation of the whole word). To support this, identify the known parts (letters/sounds) and talk about the letter/sound correspondence that are unfamiliar. This is different to the way we have taught reading in the past, that aligns with the new updated version of the Australian Curriculum. If you have any questions about this, please chat with your child’s teacher or pop in and see me. 

Annette Colley 
Middle Leader/Curriculum Coordinator 

CLASS News

Health & Drama

Students of the Week

Week 7– Lily Donpon (lower) Kalicia Saunders (middle) Willow Marcos (upper).

Welcome to Week 8 and Winter  

Hope everyone is well and staying flu free! I would like to congratulate the students on their great behaviours and work ethic displayed in each session in both Health and Drama. I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching and getting to know you all.  

Upper School 

In Health the upper school have continued learning about shaping their identity and how they can be influenced by people and places. The students have been working on their last assessment task. The students are organising an Identity Expo with the aim of providing young people with information about careers, positive self-identities, navigating through change and combatting stereotyping. They had to create briefs on topics learnt and source various service vendors to display in an exhibition and design its layout.  

Middle School 

In Health the Students have continued learning about the concept of identity and change and explain how identities can be influenced by people and places, and how we can create positive self-identities with Family the biggest influence. As part of the final assessment task the students had to design a boardgame with concepts covered in the units. 

Lower School  

In Health the Students have continued learning about their identity and what are personal qualities and the family structure. For their assessment the students had to select a character from The Singing Mermaid and another one either their own or a family or friend. They had to draw or write to identify their personality qualities. 

Drama 

Throughout the school In Drama the Students have been practicing Tongue Twisters and Poems for their assessments. They are being assessed on preparedness, tone, fluency, volume, clarity of speech, enthusiasm and confidence. We have been learning how to present a poem on stage to create a compelling experience for the audience. They use their voice, body language and stage presence to bring their poetry to life using rhythm, tone and emotion to engage and connect with the listeners.

Congratulations to all the students who have presented your confidence and ability to perform in front of your peers has been fantastic. 

Upper and Middle school had to select Tongue Twisters and a Poem from a selection. They are being assessed on preparedness, tone, fluency, volume, clarity of speech, enthusiasm and confidence. Congratulations to all the students who have presented your confidence and ability to perform in front of your peers has been fantastic. 

The Lower school has been practising the following two poems to present, ‘Mummy Mummy and the Little Turtle’.  They were assessed on preparedness, tone, fluency, volume, actions and overall confidence. 

Have a great day,  
Keep Smiling! 
Mrs Jane Webster

Peeking into PrepM

Students of the Week

Week 7– Lily Donpon, Emily Morris, Lachlan Tierney.

English - We will continue working on looking at the pictures in our readers to predict what a story might be about and identify the characters and what happens at the beginning, middle and end of a story and answering literal questions. This week we will also look more as a whole class at sight words also known as high frequency words. With the change in the Australian curriculum, sight words have less of a focus, but still play an important role in reading as they allow sentences to be grammatically correct. They are hard to teach as they do not contain decodable elements at a prep level. In the classroom we will, with explicit teacher instruction, read the whole word then break it into its phonemes (the is th/e) read the word in a sentence and practice, practice, practice them. We will also continue to talk about the vowel letters to ensure students understand that even though we don’t learn all the sounds in Prep these letters can make a variety of sounds.  

Mathematics - We will continue to work on learning about partitioning. That is recognising then separating into different parts. For example, ten can be 5 and 5, 2 and 8, 3 and 7, 4 and 6. We still have many students forming their numbers incorrectly as well as writing them back to front, so this will continue to be a focus.

Religion - We have started to learn about the Golden Rule of treating others the way we want to be treated (Matthew 7:12) and how this applies to our life but also stories from the Bible that highlight how God wants us to live our life.  

I would just like to touch on the importance of students forming numbers and letters correctly. Learning to write letters the correct way is very important as it leads into running writing in years 2 and 3 and assist students in not writing letters back to front. If you are working with your child at home and notice that they form a letter incorrectly or back to front, can you please take the time to correct it. This may look like you showing them a letter/number that has already been written and asking them if it looks the same, why/why not? Then demonstrate the correct way to write the letter or number followed by them having a go. Incorrectly forming letters and numbers or writing them back to front is a habit and if left too long is very hard to break. Apart from it being an important life skill to be able to write letters and numbers it is also a requirement in our Australian Curriculum.  

Kind regards,  
Nichole & Courtney

Year 1H

Students of the Week

Week 7– Grace Bailey, Millie Harrison.

Dear Parents, 

Welcome to week 8! 

Over the past few weeks, I have changed our phonics to ensure your child is working on what they need. This week one group has focused on the sounds for v and w.  The other group has focused on the sounds for ng and wh.   

This week we continued to use the book ‘Bowerbirds Blue’ to explore the structure of a narrative.  The students have also been working on writing their own narrative about an animal. 

In Maths, we have continued to work on partitioning of numbers and have used MABS to make links with tens and ones. 

In Religion, we began to explore the sacrament of Eucharist.  We looked at its links to the ‘Last Supper’ and what the students already know about the sacrament of the Eucharist. 

Have a wonderful weekend. 
Mrs Fiona Harch

Year 1/2D

Students of the Week

Week 7– Mackenzie Hyland, Heidi Mace.

Dear Year 1/2D parents and carers, 

Learning for this fortnight: 

Math – Year 1s have been learning about duration, talking lots about how long events take to happen, using the language of seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years. For example, how long does it take for you to brush your teeth? Does it take longer to mow the lawn or wait for a tree to grow? Year 2s have been learning about time. Now we are focusing on an hour and half hour. We will slowly move towards reading quarter past and quarter to, times. This will hopefully connect nicely to our recent learning of whole, halves and quarters of shapes.  

English – Our sound focus for last week was the /ch/ sound revision. This week we move onto Level 5 with the Decodable Readers Australia. Our sound focus this week is the long /a/ sound that is written as ‘ai’ and ‘ay’.  

Science – We have started looking at push and pull and the idea that force is required to produce this movement. 

HASS – Our new unit explores geography and focuses on place, environment, space and change.  

Important: 

• Report cards will be sent out via Sentral, in Week 10 of this term
• Please keep an eye out for more information regarding our Athletics Carnival 

Upcoming Dates: 

• Thursday 13^th June – Ball games.
• Friday 14^th June – Athletics carnival – sprint and field events.
• Friday 21^st June – Final day of term.

Kind Regards,
Miss Beth Daly

Year 2G

Students of the Week

Week 7– Cassy Custodio, Dustin Keeping.

Hello, 2G parents,

Welcome to Week 8 of Term 2!

Here are some of the amazing learning we have been doing in the term:

Math: We have continued being “Math Detectives” looking at variety of number problems and have been analysing, identifying, and answering a variety of addition and subtraction facts from 20 and above. We have been working hard with this focus for the past weeks and the students are continuously showing great perseverance and focus.

English: We have continued analysing news reports and writing our own news report to present to the class, being a real “news reporter.”  Students have continued writing their report onto their “news report paper” following the sequence of a news report with the correct language and flow. We are coming towards the end of this focus for the term, and it has been a lot of fun. 

HASS: We have continued looking at Technology Over Time. We have been analysing photographs, interviews, toys and information, comparing objects from the past to the present, helping us gain knowledge and the benefits of all these technology changes. 

Science: We have continued to look at the topic of physical sciences, “Push and Pull.” Students have experimented cardboard pieces and recycled items to create push and pull movements with these materials to create their own car ramp, making sure we could easily push the car down the ramp, experimenting with different environments, angles, and objects to help the car move down the ramp. We have had a lot of fun working together in groups to create a successful car ramp!

Religion: We have been reflecting and reading stories from the New Testament about “Who is Jesus,” the qualities and actions he depicts. We have been writing, watching, drawing, and reflecting about stories of Jesus being a healer, teacher, and friend.

Digital Technologies: We have continued exploring digital technologies by collecting, exploring, and sorting data; we have continued looking at this concept by sorting 2G class data, looking at what our interests are and categorising this into a graph.

Question to ask your child: What is a mode of transport that has changed over time?

Notes: Library books need to be returned on a Wednesday so that students can borrow books on Thursday. Homework is due on a Friday.

Kind regards
Miss Merryn Gaggi

Year 3C/H

Students of the Week

Week 7– Riley Curtis, Charlie Harch.

Welcome to Week 8. Please find below a summary of what Year 3 is learning currently. 

Religion: Portraits of God is our focus for this week. We read a book about a little girl who tried to draw God. We had a go at drawing what we thought God looks like and each day in our Morning Prayer we have read a piece of Scripture that has a description of God.  

English: This week we started our mini poetry unit. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at two poems: The Ant Explorer by C.J. Dennis and Mulga Bill’s Bicycle by Banjo Patterson. We will learn about the features of these poems and have a go at writing our own poems. Suffixes continue to be our focus in word work, and we are learning about common nouns and proper nouns.  

Math: This week we are conducting more chance investigations and looking at how our results may or may not change if we repeat the experiment. We are continuing to consolidate our knowledge around adding and subtracting.  

HASS: Our research task on the capital cities of Australia is progressing and we are learning about lots of features, natural and human, that can be found in and around each capital city.  

Other news: This Friday we are fortunate to have our Bishop visiting. There will be Mass at 9.30am and everyone is welcome to attend. The bishop will also be visiting our classrooms throughout the day.  

There is no Assembly this Friday due to the hall being set up for the RFDS Rally Dinner. 

Kind regards
Mrs Annette Colley

Students of the Week

Week 7– Hailey Easterbrook.

Mathematics 

We are continuing to consolidate our time telling skills. We have also been using our knowledge of time to calculate the duration of given events. 

Science 

Last week we explored to school grounds collecting ‘leaf litter’ from various locations. We examined this leaf litter and then, just like taxonomists, identified which animals were present. From this, we then investigated which animal group they belonged to. We had some interesting findings. 

Visual Arts 

The students have been very busy planning their own piece of work and then executing it. They were given the opportunity to choose a medium we have previously explored in class to create this piece. The students will also complete an evaluation on their art piece. 

Kind regards,
Mrs Angie Harrison

Year 4R

Students of the Week

Week 7– Darcy Stower, Miller Hardie, Lewis Price.

Kind Regards,  
Miss Alice Rathie

Year 5W

Students of the Week

Week 7– Olivia Harch.

What is democracy? What type of government do we have in Australia? Where does the government derive its power? These are the types of questions students have been asked in the unit we are studying in HASS this term. We have also been exploring our voting system, and even hosted our own polling station with class candidates providing How to Vote cards. Our own AEC representative, Pippi Cott, counted the ballot papers and declared Alastair North the winning candidate! Congratulations, Alastair!

If your student has started talking in Army time, then you might have guessed that in Math we’ve been learning about 24-hour time. Why not wake them up tomorrow with your own – ‘Oh 6-hundred hours’ wake-up call😊!

Staying on the topic of Math, we’ve been using playing cards to learn times tables and rainbow facts (the kids will show you). If you could encourage this, that would be appreciated.

As an aside, the Targeting Math App is a great tool for primary students. It is aligned with our math topics and is great to use to support learning (I have no connections with the company, but I have used it a lot in the past to support students’ learning.)

So glad to be teaching your beautiful kids this term!

Kind regards
Ms Natalie Davis
(Relief Teacher) 

Year 6M

Students of the Week

Week 7– Lauren Duffin.

Welcome to Term 2, week 8 newsletter! We have been busy finishing and completing assessments, ready for report cards.  

Math  

In Math, students have started to explore the area of rectangles and squares, using the formula to calculate the area. 

English  

In English, students have finished their Historical recounts and are diving into character analysis, looking closely at characters, their actions and how they respond to different situations. 

HASS  

In HASS, students have been exploring businesses and have started working in groups to think of a new business idea for St George that they will present to the class as part of their assessments. 

Religion  

In Religion, students are analysing key messages from some Old Testament prophets. We have looked at Amos, Samuel and Jonah, in particular. 

Have a good weekend!  
Mrs Claire McDonnell 

Sport & Library News

Eley Elite

Week 7– Maddie Hearne.

LIBRARY 

Borrowing

All classes will be borrowing on Thursdays.  Please ensure you child has a library bag for borrowing.  Book return day is Wednesday so the books can be processed before borrowing again on Thursday. 

Reading is Power and Knowledge.

Happy borrowing and reading,

Binnie Eley & Julie Pike
(St Patrick’s Library Staff)

COMMUNITY NEWS