Newsletter 114 - November 2nd 2023
Prayer of the Week:
All Saints Prayer: For those who walked with us, this is a prayer.
For those who have gone ahead, this is a blessing.
For those who touched and tended us, who lingered with us while they lived, this is a thanksgiving.
For those who journey still with us in the shadows of awareness, In the crevices of memory, in the landscape of our dreams, this is a benediction.
Amen. - Jan Richardson
This week is the feast of All Saints, when Catholics remember all the people who have lived their lives really well and who have died and gone to heaven. It is also a time to think about how we can follow their example and live our lives as God wants us to.
"Those whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are". - St John Chrysostom
Principals Report:
Dear St Patrick’s community
It is with a heart full of gratitude and profound humility that I assume the role of Principal at St. Patrick's Primary school. I offer my warmest gratitude to the dedicated staff and supportive parents of St. Patrick's who have welcomed me with open arms.
As the term continues, I eagerly anticipate forging connections with our school families and building or reconnecting my relationship with each one of you. Your active involvement and genuine interest in our school are greatly appreciated, and we thank you for entrusting your precious children to us during the school day.
I am wholeheartedly committed to ensuring their safety, fostering their spiritual and personal growth, and providing them with an exceptional educational experience during their time at our school. I had the opportunity to return to St Pats a few weeks ago and I witnessed our staff beautifully helping tired and exhausted students, through the day after the school concert.
I wish to take this opportunity to thank Maryanne for her dedication to St Patrick’s as Acting Principal through Term three and these past weeks of Term Four. It was a big task to undertake including going through the School Review process and keeping other big projects underway. I’m sure I will cherish her insight and expertise as I go about settling in. Thank you Maryanne.
I offer this prayer to the Lord as I restart my journey with St Patricks.
Lord,
We gather at St Patrick’s as a diverse community, bound by a shared commitment to learning and growth. With reverence and gratitude, we seek your blessings and offer our collective aspirations.
May our school be a place of enlightenment, where curiosity is nurtured, and knowledge blooms. Let it be a haven of respect, where differences are celebrated, and every individual's worth is acknowledged.
Grant us the strength to face challenges with resilience, the courage to embrace change, and the compassion to support one another in times of need.
May the bonds that tie us together grow stronger, fostering understanding, empathy, and unity among us all.
In our shared journey of education, may we be inspired to be better, to reach higher, and to make a positive impact in our community and the world beyond.
As we embark on this path together, may your guiding light shine upon us, illuminating the way toward wisdom, compassion, and unity.
Amen.
With Kind Blessings,
Bettina
* Please note upcoming school closure days for students:
Monday 6th (Staff PD) and Tuesday 7th November (Vic Public Holiday)
A word from the office:
2024 Planning
As we approach the end of the school year, not only are we busy preparing for all the fun and festivities that happen during Term 4 but we are also right in the thick of planning for next year!
Our 2024 Foundation Transition program has kicked off, and we are also preparing to welcome new students across other year levels in Term 1 next year.
*With this in mind, we ask that any current families whose children will not be returning to us in 2024 notify the office as soon as possible. Much of the School’s resources for 2024 are ordered this term and we are grateful for your early notice which allows us to plan our classrooms accordingly.
Please review your School Fee Account
A friendly reminder to families as we approach the end of the school year to please review your current school fee account balance.
For those paying via Direct Debit or recurring Electronic Funds Transfer, please ensure your current contribution is adequate.
School managed fortnightly Direct Debits will continue to run throughout the holiday period and any credit accumulated will be applied against next year’s school fees. *If you have paid off your account and would like to stop or reduce your direct debits over the holidays, please notify the office before Wednesday 13th December 2023.
If you require a copy of your Statement or have any account queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Anna Wadge
Business Manager
Wellbeing:
4 ways to help children manage their emotions - Finding effective ways to help your child cope with big emotions has never been more important—or difficult! Here are some suggestions for what to do when your kids or teenagers express big feelings, like sadness, anger, and anxiety.
1. Validate, Validate, Validate
Start by acknowledging how your child is feeling at the moment. Remember, you are validating the feeling, not the behaviour. You can validate that your child is sad, angry, or scared without validating that they hit their sibling. Try saying, “I can see how angry you are right now,” or “A lot of people feel scared and anxious right now—it makes sense that you are feeling that way.”
2. Make a Coping Skills Plan for When Emotions Are Overwhelming
A major part of successful coping is being prepared. Work with your child when they are calm to develop a coping plan for when they are feeling intense emotions. Help them identify which of the coping skills listed below work best for them. The plan should include:
- Warning signs that emotions are rising
- A list of 3-5 coping skills that they will use when they notice the warning signs
- Steps for how to seek support from adults, such as text Mom if she is busy working, ask Dad to go for a walk)
3. Create a Coping Kit
While you are creating a plan, it can be helpful for your child to gather the supplies needed to engage in the chosen coping skills. If they choose to look at pictures of cute puppies, eat a sour candy, and do a word search puzzle, collect those materials and put them in a specified, easily accessible place that you can direct them to when they are feeling distressed.
Parents can help their children manage their emotions with these strategies
4. Practice Coping Skills
It can be difficult to use a new skill for the first time when emotions are running high. We recommend having children practise new coping skills before trying them out in the heat of the moment.
Coping Skills to Use When Emotions Are HOT
When children are at the height of distress, they usually are unable to think rationally or talk through their feelings, and their bodies are also overwhelmed—breathing heavily, heart pounding, sweating. These skills are helpful for calming down their bodies:
- Temperature: Give your child an ice pack and tell them to place it across their face, under their eyes
- Intense Exercise: Have your child engage in 5 minutes of intense exercise, like push-ups, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, or burpees
Once their bodies are calmer, grounding is a skill that helps kids and teens regulate big emotions by redirecting their attention to the here and now. Try these grounding exercises:
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Colours: Instruct your child to name aloud 5 things that are blue in the room, then 4 things that are green, 3 things that are red, 2 things that are purple, and 1 thing that is yellow
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Senses: Instruct your child to name aloud 5 things they can see, 4 things they can touch, 3 things they can hear, 2 things they can smell, and 1 thing they can taste
Coping Skills to Use When Emotions Are WARM
When your child is feeling upset and overwhelmed, you can help them identify ways to soothe themselves using their senses:
- Vision: Look at pictures of friends, watch a favourite movie, look at soothing images of nature
- Hearing: Listen to a favourite song, listen to old voicemails from friends/family
- Touch: Pet a family pet, cosy up in a nice blanket, take a bubble bath
- Taste: Eat a favourite meal, have a favourite kind of dessert, eat a favourite candy
- Smell: Use a fragrant lotion, cook a favourite food and focus on the smells in the kitchen
Sometimes, kids and teens need to take a break from a distressing situation and engage in something else until they are able to re-engage. These activities can help:
Contribute to Others
Ask your child to do something nice for someone else, like writing a kind note to a friend or making a present for a peer.
Evoke Opposite Emotions
If your child is really angry, have them watch a funny YouTube clip. If they are sad, have them watch a scary movie. Whatever they do, just make sure that it evokes a different emotion than the one they are currently stuck in.
Refocus Thoughts
Have your child pick a topic they like and then complete an A-Z list in which they write down something associated with the topic that begins with each letter of the alphabet. For example, with the topic of cars: A – Audi, B – BMW, C – Camaro, etc.
Create an Intense Sensation
Ask your child to place a super sour candy on their tongue, squeeze a stress ball really, really hard, or take a hot shower.
Teaching and Learning:
School Assemblies: Our assemblies are led by a different class each week and tomorrow's assembly begins at 2:50pm. Students will be dismissed from the hall at 3:15pm. We invite all our community to come along.
Week 5: Junior R
Week 6: Senior M
Week 7: Senior H
Week 8: Foundation
Week 9: Middle B & C
Week 10: Junior R & F
Week 11: Grade 6
Week 12: No assembly
Professional Development:
At St Patrick’s Primary School we are committed to Professional Development of our team. At various times staff members will be working off site or online which may result in classroom teachers being out of the classroom.
Term 4:
Week 5 03/11 Mr Moloney
Week 6 06/11 Whole school closure day - 5 year strategic plan
10/11 Miss Kerrie Ryan - Offsite
Junior R:
It has been a very busy start to Term Four! Concert came and went and then we had our Indigenous Book Swap, an excursion to the Mik Maks concert, Socktober, a visit from the prison dog squad and behind all of this, assessments are taking place as well.
In Literacy, we have been learning about contractions, trigraphs, digraphs and the different sounds the letters ‘g’ and ‘c’ can make and the rules behind this. We have been learning the difference between a fragment and a sentence and next we are continuing to work on adding detail to simple sentences.
Maths has also been very busy with PAT and Maths Interview assessments. We have also managed to squeeze in lessons on equality, fractions (half and quarter), time (o’clock and half past) and solving word problems.
Our geography unit in Inquiry has been a hit. First we looked at Lego City and the different buildings in it. Then we used Scribble Maps to find St. Patrick’s and looked at what people can do in the places near school. We found the stadium, pool, skate park, football ovals and Cato.
In Religion we have been discussing Jesus' baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. We shared lots of wonderings and compared this baptism to how people are baptised today. We enjoyed listening to Georgia A as she shared her experience of being baptised last year.
In Wellbeing, we enjoyed performing role plays about a situation that might happen and be a bit challenging to students. As a side lesson to this, it brought up a valuable lesson on ringing 000 and how to do this if a phone has a passcode or facial recognition on it.
Our highlight last week was traveling to Ararat to watch the Mik Maks in concert. We danced and sang for nearly an hour then enjoyed a snack and little play at Alexander Gardens. Our highlight this week was the Socktober activities. Well done to all the Grade 5/6 students for organising fabulous activities and for the way you ran them on the day.
There is so much more to come this term including swimming and our excursion to the Halls Gap Zoo. Don’t forget Grade 1 will be hosting assembly this week. We look forward to seeing you there if you can make it! Miss Ryan
Super 8's cricket:
Last Thursday, all of the Grade 5/6 students ventured to North Park to play in a Super 8’s cricket tournament against other schools from around the region. The girls won 3 out of 4 games while the boys team went through the day undefeated winning the final by 22 runs. They will now progress to the next level in Ballarat. A big thankyou to Mrs. Stevens for helping out on the day and all the parents who came along to support their child.
Farewell Miss Fleming:
On Friday we will say farewell to Miss Flemming and wish her all the very best as she starts her maternity leave. Georgia has been such a wonderful asset to our school community. We are all hoping she will come back to St Patrick’s when the time is right for her and her family.
May God’s blessing follow Miss Fleming as she starts her maternity leave
May she walk safely along the pathways of her dreams.
May God’s gentle hand guide the decisions she will make and the passions that she will follow.
May her heart and life always reflect love and truth,
May hope be a light within her that she carries into each new day strong.
And now Lord, we ask for your blessing.
May Miss Fleming enjoy good health,
joy in abundance and peace in heart and mind, from this day
forward and each day that follows.
Visible Learning: As we have previously mentioned St Patricks has embarked on an exciting Professional Development journey over the next three years. We are working through implementing Visible learning which is a research based approach to developing life-long learners. It is based on the research of Professor John Hattie and his metastudies involving over 300 million students and what has the most impact on student progress at school. Visible learning research explores seven core strategies for learning success: working together as evaluators, setting high expectations, measuring learning with explicit success criteria, establishing developmentally appropriate levels of learning, viewing mistakes as opportunities, continually seeking feedback, and balancing surface, deep, and transfer learning.
Our Visible Learning statement is for:
All students at St Patrick’s Primary School will articulate and demonstrate the dispositions of a visible learner and use the language of learning. They will understand what they are learning, how they are progressing and where they are going to next to show a minimum of one year’s growth.
The three key focus areas we have been studying over this year are the following:
- To develop consistency and confidence in using Learning Intentions and Success Criteria across all learning areas.
- To make the Learner Powers ‘live and breathe’ in all aspects of school life.
- Articulate a clear picture of the types of feedback practices the school aspires to have.
*Please ask your child/children if they know: - what Learning Intentions and Success Criteria are?
- Did they receive any feedback today about their learning?
End of school celebrations:
End of school whole school mass:
When: Wednesday 13th December
Time: 9:15am
Where: St Patrick’s Catholic Church - Community cuppa to follow in the school hall. All Welcome
End of Year celebrations - Grade 6 graduation liturgy
When:Thursday 14th December, 2023
Where: St Patricks School Hall for Grade 6 families only. Details to follow.
Time: 5:30pm Followed by -
Whole school - Family Carols on the Green:
When: Thursday 14th December, 2023.
Where: St Patrick's Primary School Oval
Time: 6:30pm Gates open
Catering: To be advised
BYO: chairs/picnic blanket
Carols: Each grade will present a Christmas Carol throughout the evening
Our end of year celebration is where we can come together to celebrate our school year and the Grade 6 Graduation. It will be an evening to celebrate our learning, our achievements and our personal growth. It is also a chance to say goodbye to our Grade 6 students and families that will be leaving at the end of 2023. We hope you can join us in celebrating a terrific year of learning, teaching and growing together as a community of learners.
Living in Faith:
Fundraising activities this term:
From now until the end of the year we are engaging in various fundraising activities, each with a purpose of enhancing and sustaining the values that make our school a special place. Through your support and generous donations and participation in these initiatives it makes a significant difference to those in need. We generally try and only do one fundraising activity per term as we acknowledge the sacrifices and contributions you make and continue to make for our school community.
Non Perishable food drive:
The Stawell Inter Church Council welfare Cottage is struggling to keep up with the demand for help and they are seeking grocery donations to help them help those in need. They are particularly looking for donations of canned items like stew, soup, tuna, vegetables, spaghetti sauce, soaps, toothbrushes, shampoo, clothes washing powder and dishwashing liquid. We realise there is significant extra pressure on our families with cost of living prices, however if you feel able to, could you please buy an extra item or two when you go grocery shopping. Donation tubs are in each classroom and we will present our donations to Mary-Rita Thomas (St Vincent de Paul rep) at assembly in a few weeks. There are many in our town and region who are having a hard time making ends meet.
MINI VINNIES - Great Book Swap
It was great to see students browsing and purchasing a book or two from the Indigenous book swap. The Great Book Swap is a fantastic way to celebrate reading whilst raising much needed funds for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. We have raised $
SOCKTOBER:
It was great to see the children have so much fun during our Socktober fundraising session on Tuesday. Socktober 2023 presents a wonderful opportunity for our students to make a positive impact, simply by organising and having fun playing games that involve “socks.” Activities like these teach our children valuable lessons about compassion and global awareness through a fun and interactive way.
This year, the focus of Socktober's fundraising efforts is on Timor-Leste one of Australia’s closest neighbours approximately 700km from Darwin. Specifically, the proceeds will benefit vulnerable young people attending a medical clinic and a children's home in Venilale. Our contributions can help children who truly need it to access better health, nutritional and educational outcomes, showcasing the spirit of solidarity that defines our school community.$50 can help provide milk and food for babies with malnutrition. $80 can help provide life-saving medication for sick children. $700 can help support the wage of a nurse at the clinic. St Patrick’s raised $489.00.
Thank you to our Grade 5/6 students for organising great activities and shring your kindness with all our students (explaining the rules and encouraging them) & to our families for supporting Catholic Mission.
St Patrick’s following Saint Mary MacKillop “never see a need without doing.”
For more information about Catholic Mission Socktober please click the following link:
Ted getting ready to do the sock and spoon obstacle course
Catherine collecting donations for the ob's course
Jack Dri. racing through the ob's course.
Staff v's students sock tail grab
Henry and Ethan Pa setting up the goal shooting activity
Alfie was the last student running. Well done Alfie!
Akuol collecting for the tug of war
Jai taking aim at the goals with
a soccer ball made of lonely socks.
Fundraising: Each Friday till the end of Term our MiniVinnies group will be selling Zooper Doopers for $1.00each at lunch time under the shade sails. The money raised will go towards Stawell Inter church Council Welfare Centre and St Vincent de Paul Sponsor a student program. As always we thank our St Patrick’s community for your support.
Please follow us on instagram; stpatsstawell
Students of the week:
Ruby Driscoll - For the sensational work you’re putting into improving your reading fluency. Keep up the phenomenal work!
Allyshia Bourke - For the hard work and dedication you’ve been putting into improving your writing. Keep it up Allyshia.
David Duxson - For showing kindness to others. You are always offering to help others in need. What an amazing role model you are!
Alfie Freeland - For the excellent results you achieved in your PAT assessments. You are a focussed learner who uses lots of strategies to solve problems. Keep up the hard work!
Jack Driscoll - For always using your learner superpowers. Your contribution to classroom discussions is amazing. Keep up the super work Jack
Alivia Rolph - For your self- motivation with reading assessments, you have done a super job.
Nate Jantzen - For the great descriptive sentences you have been creating during our Writing lessons. Keep it up!
Kora Allen - For being a self -motivated learner and acknowledging and accepting feedback during Writing time.
Oliver Sutherland - For the fantastically fascinating figurative language you are including in your writing. Outstanding Ollie!
Charli Pickering - For seeking, receiving and using feedback to take your descriptive writing to the next level. You're smashing it!
Maddison Prydderch - For being a self-motivated learner during narrative writing lessons, well done Maddy!
Edward Redford - For the excellent progress in recent reading results! Impressive work Eddie!
Milla Mitchell - For the outstanding results you have produced in both your PAT Maths and PAT Reading assessments. Your results are a reward for all your hard work.
Riley Carlsen - For demonstrating wonderful leadership skills in and out of the classroom. You are going to be an outstanding role-model for the younger members of our school next year.
Birthdays:
Congratulations to the student who is celebrating their birthday this week:
Mason W.
Mary MacKillop Award:
Mary MacKillop lived a life dedicated to her faith and serving the needs of others. Wherever and however she could, Mary MacKillop did everything possible to improve the lives of others. This award acknowledges the thoughtful actions of the students at St Patrick’s to help others. “We have much to be thankful for.”
Congratulations to this weeks award recipient Boston.
For his quiet and unassuming manner, Boston is often observed looking after our vegie patch during recess and lunch. In doing so, Boston displays his kind and gentle soul/manner to all living things.
Diocesan/Parish news:
Mass Times:
Ararat Sunday 8.30am
Stawell Sunday 10.30am
Lake Bolac 1st, 3rd, 5th Sundays 6.30pm Vigil Sat
Landsborough 2nd, 4th Sundays 12.30pm
Glenthompson (Hamilton Parish) 2nd, 4th Sundays 8.30am
Parents and Friends news:
The P & F are running a Christmas raffle this year with the multiple prizes totalling a value over $1500. Each family will receive a book of tickets to sell at a cost of $2 each. We ask that all sold or unsold tickets to be returned by the 5th December. We thank all the local businesses/families that have donated to this raffle and ask you support these and other local businesses this coming holiday season. Raffle drawn 8th of December.
A special thank you to all those who have kindly donated to our school raffle. If you can please support the business that supports us.
Thanks also to those who have sold raffle books. If you would like any more raffle books please call into the school office. As always we appreciate your support.
Around Our Community:
Upcoming Events:
Our Vision and Mission:
Vision Statement: St Patrick's School is a community which reflects and celebrates Christ as its centre point: By honoring our story we value our whole community. By coming together our vision is for a loving, just, compassionate and tolerant world. Mission Statement: In the tradition of St Patrick, we are committed to: Promoting and celebrating a love of God, self and community. Recognizing and enhancing the talents and uniqueness of each person through our vision of Prayer, Care and Learning. PRAYER We nurture and grow our relationship with God as members of a faith community. CARE We foster recognition of difference, compassion for others and the strength to act on our beliefs. LEARNING We develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills essential to reaching our full potential as life- long learners.