Week 1, Term 3, 2023

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to Term 3 at St Saviour's Primary School! 

The start of a new term is always an exciting time for all students to reconnect with their friends and hear all of the exciting adventures that took place over the holidays.  It is also a great time for students to refocus on their learning as a new semester commences.  Of course, a good place to start the refocus is with the St Saviour's Primary Learner Qualities - Be Adventurous, Be Collaborative, Be Creative, Be Determined, Be Curious, Be a Communicator, Be a Thinker.  As you engage in your child's learning, some questions and/or discussion points between you and your child might include:

• What mistakes did you make in your learning today?  What did you learn from these mistakes?  Do you realise that making mistakes are a part of learning?
• What was the most challenging part of your day?
• What do you do when learning get's tough?  What strategies do you use in the classroom or with your homework?

Very happy to hear any feedback that you may have.  Sam.Hannant@twb.catholic.edu.au 

Uniform Reminders - Hair Cuts

Please see below a section from the school uniform policy.  I have noted recently that there are a few hairstyles that can be classed as 'extreme'. Please take the time to make sure that your child's  'hair is neat and tidy, and worn off the face'.  Thank-you for your attention to this matter and I am happy to discuss with individual parents as necessary.  

Strategic Plan

During Semester 2, St Saviour's Primary, as a community, will be constructing our strategic plan for the next four years.  

There are several pieces of information that are crucial to this process.  We will utilise the feedback from the School Renewal Process that took place in Term 2.  As important is feedback from all stakeholders at St Saviour's Primary including our Years 5 and 6 students, our staff and our parents.  

Below you will see information about an upcoming Parent Perception Survey that you will receive a link to in the coming days.  Not only will this survey provide important information to the diocese as a whole, we will also utilise this data as feedback from parents for the strategic plan.

Please take the time to complete the survey when it becomes available on July 17.  

Thanks in advance!

Survey coming soon

Every two years we ask staff, parents and students in our schools to share their views, to ‘check in’ on how each school within our community, and as a group of 31 schools together, we are bringing to life our purpose: to enable full and flourishing lives. We do this by asking each of you to complete a perception survey. The Shaping our future – Toowoomba Catholic Schools perception survey will be sent via Sentral on Monday 17 July, so keep an eye out for it.

Survey Information

We encourage all of our parents to share their views in the Shaping our future – perception survey. This survey is being completed by parents, staff and students from our school and the other 30 schools that make up the Toowoomba Catholic Schools’ community. This 15 minute survey closes on Sunday, 6 August, 2023. Please check your email for a link to the survey.

Announcement - Mrs Katie Horne

I would like to congratulate Mrs Katie Horne who has been awarded the position of Acting Assistant Principal: Religious Education at Sacred Heart Primary School.  Katie will commence this position in Term 4 for a period of 12 months.  

Entering back into leadership has been a goal of Katie's and I wish her all the best for her time in this position.  

A recruitment process will take place for the 12 months Katie is at Sacred Heart.  

Sam Hannant

Acting Principal

Welcome back to Term 3!

I hope you had a chance to enjoy a change of pace over the break. Over the holidays I read “The collected regrets of Clover” by Mikki Brammer. It tells the story of Clover who has the unusual but, I think, privileged role to be with people as they pass away. It is beautifully written in that Clover records lessons learnt from each person's life; regrets, advice, confessions and adventure. It made me think about letting our children, and ourselves, to seek new adventures, try new ideas, make mistakes and learn from them. As you get older, which experiences have you learnt the most from? When reflecting on this book, it confirmed to me that by offering different opportunities to our students allows them and us to grow, but we do need to be brave.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Nelson Mandela. I hope this term we continue to support each other to be brave and celebrate in our triumphs together.

We welcome Bishop Ken Howell to our Catholic faith community as the Bishop of Toowoomba Diocese. Thank you to the Yr 5 & 6 students (Jimi King, Charlotte Franklin, Sia Luck, Rose Stead, Hari Vinod, Joe Black, Aya Doherty and Ellie Smith) who represented SSPS by attending Tuesday’s Mass and welcoming guests.

This term sees a busy start with our school community celebrating Catholic Education Week (beginning Week 3, Monday 24 July) where the theme, “Planting seeds of Hope”. This is a state wide celebration with a number of events to be held across the week including our whole school Mass on Monday 24 July, a day of Music with Andrew Chinn on Tuesday 25 July and Student free day/Staff Bishop’s Inservice day on Friday 28 July.

Andrew Chinn worked as a classroom teacher in Catholic Primary Schools in Sydney, Australia for nearly twenty years before moving into his full time music ministry. Andrew has visited more than 1100 Catholic primary schools, performing in 3000 concerts across Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada sharing his music and his faith with children, teachers and parents. He has released 12 albums, 5 DVDs and 6 picture books, which are used widely by teachers and catechists in the faith development of children. In recent years he has developed the Butterfly House, an online RE Resource.

Each class will attend a Music workshop with Andrew and in the afternoon, the whole school will come together to perform in a concert in the Mercy Centre from 1.40pm – 2.45pm. All welcome!

Pastoral care at SSPS – Know someone going through a difficult time, who needs a helping hand? You can let us know via the link on the Sentral App! It’s a convenient and confidential way you can let our team know if we can support a family in our school community. You can access the link here https://forms.office.com/r/4ZsEgvRxsM

Have a great week and thanks for reading!

Ann-Maree Ward

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to Term 3! Hard to believe we are in the second half of the year. 

At the end of last term, I met with the teachers from each cohort to discuss our reading results from Term 2.   We had lots of positive results with reading in the school, however we know there is also always room for improvement. From this data collection, teachers are putting into action some specific goals for their students to achieve in Term 3 to help improve reading.

This week we are looking at our Prep and Year 1 goals.  Below is an outline of our Prep and Year One goals and a guide as to how parents can assist their children with these goals at home.

Prep

Focus is on segmenting and blending words. E.g. Students can break up a word, c-a-t,  and put it back together to say ‘cat’. We are only focussing on doing this for CVC words (Constant, vowel, constant words)

At home, you can assist your child by doing the following:

• When they get to an unknown word, ask them to say the sound of each letter. If they are unsure of a sound, please tell them.  Assist your child to put the word back together if they are unsure. 
• Please note that not all words are easy to sound out and can be tricky to put back together. Many spelling rules can often apply.  We really want the students to be able to do this mainly with CVC words to start. 

Year 1

Focus is on re-reading for meaning.  Year 1 have introduced ‘re-read rabbit’ reading strategy.

At home you can assist your child by doing the following:

 - When students are reading and you hear them say a word that doesn’t make sense in the context, we can ask them to use re-read rabbit. This means they go back to the beginning of the sentence and re-read the whole sentence to see if another word would make more sense.

- At the beginning, students might not realise the word they read doesn’t make sense.  If they do not pick up on their mistake by themselves, please let them know that it doesn’t make sense and ask them to use re-reading rabbit. Children may then need further support to decode the unknown word.

We are really excited to see student’s working towards these goals and can’t wait to see our great progress throughout the term.

Look out on Facebook next week, for some of our student’s working on their reading goals!

Happy reading,

Bec Thomas

Dear Parents and Guardians, 

Some great things are happening in Teaching and Learning to kick us off in Term 3! In other news, we are entering my favourite time of the year for teaching and learning! By Term 3, classroom routines have settled, students know their teachers and their teachers know them and it is by far the best term to knuckle down and get so much quality learning done. I always saw the most growth in my students in Term 3!

Pupil Free Day

On Monday the teachers met for a day of planning and collaboration. The morning began with a look at each year level’s reading results. In their year level teams, teachers looked at the greatest area of need and decided on the best direction for their teaching this term. Some year levels are looking and segmenting and blending, others are focussing on vocabulary etc. This was a great opportunity for teachers to use the data to plan their lessons in a way that targets exactly what the students need. Each year level team will be sharing how their students have progressed in this area at a staff meeting later in the term.

In the middle session we used the revised version 9 ACARA curriculum to plan out units of work for 2024 for English. We are now well underway for implementation of the revised curriculum in 2024 for Maths, English and HASS. We have a twilight session this term where we will look at the changes in the HASS curriculum so that we can be ready to teach it in 2024.

Learner Qualities

We are continuing to make our learner qualities part of our everyday language here at SSPS. This Term, we want to hear from the students at assembly and how they use them in their classroom to enhance their learning and get out of the learning pit! Here is the proposed timetable for the presentations (subject to change) – come along if you can!

Week 3 – Year 6​

Week 4 – Year 1​

Week 5 – Year 5​

Week 6 - Prep​

Week 7 – Year 4​

Week 8 – Year 3​

Week 9 – Year 2

Teacher Coaching

We have had great success with our Coaching Cycles for the first Semester. Our impact coaches have now all had experience running a coaching cycle with a teaching staff member and this term they will each work with a new teacher. Through the coaching cycles we’ve completed so far, we’ve seen so many positives come out of the experience, some examples are:

• Improved student achievement in a specific focus area based on the needs of the students
• Teachers transferring learnt skills across many subject areas, extending their impact
• Increased teacher confidence with a high impact teaching strategies
• Opportunities to share amongst colleagues in a professional conversation

Have a great week!

Warm Regards

Nicarla Prentice (Acting APA)

Term 3 in the Library 

We celebrate amazing children’s literature all term! 

The 2023 theme for Book Week is “Read Grow Inspire”. We will explore the ideas that this theme brings to our reading and enjoyment of books. The official poster features a seahorse which in some cultures signifies growth. The artist, Matt Ottley challenges us to find an object or an element in the artwork for every letter in the alphabet! 

We will be enjoying the notable and short-listed titles chosen by the Children’s Book Council judges. Feel free to look at these books on display in the library. 

Book Week Dress-Up Parade

Our Dress up parade will be held on Friday 25th August. Students are asked to think how their costume connects to the theme. 

Book Week Performance

All students will see the Book Week presentation WAY TOO COOL! from Perform! Education on Wednesday 30th August. Four of the CBCA award nominated books will be woven into a story and brought to life by 2 actors. This experience of story enriches and deepens students’ understanding of the themes, messages and ideas found in the books. 

Year 5/6 Parent and Student Book Club

We will meet to chat about our recent read “Runt” on Monday 17th at 3.20pm in the 5H classroom. We will also choose a new book to read during Term 3. All interested students and parents/family members are very welcome. 

Happy Reading  

Anne Anderson 

Teacher Librarian 

PE (P-2) Term Three

Students in Prep to Year Two will engage in a Touch Football unit. Students will start by focusing on the basics of catching and throwing a touch football, making a touch, scoring a try and playing the ball. Students will then use these newly acquired skills to play modified games of touch football.

PE (3-6) Term Three

Students in Year Three to Year Six will also be participating in a touch football unit. Students will learn to pass and catch a touch football, play the ball, defend, perform a dump and split, perform a wrap, three-person ruck and draw and pass. Students will then put these skills in to game-based situations playing in teams against members of their class.

Health (Prep – Year 2) Term Three

In Term Three and Term Four, Prep, Year One and Year Two students will be engaged in health lessons on Wednesdays. Prep students will be learning about how their body parts work to help them move, what happens as they grow and how to look after their body by living a healthy and active lifestyle. Year One will be focusing one changes when they grow, what has changed since they were a baby, looking at difference and their identity, and how to live an active and healthy life. The learning focus for Year Two is a more in-depth insight into healthy eating, steps to increase physical activity at home and in the playground at school, keeping a healthy and safe classroom and how we can include others.

Zone and Darling Downs Trials

All Zone and Darling Downs trials will be placed on Parent Portal. Please check Parent Portal regularly or set up notifications on your phone if you wish for your child to be eligible to trial for Zone and Darling Downs sporting teams as you will be required to obtain paperwork from myself. I am unable to nominate students after the closing date so please make sure you do keep an eye on Parent Portal. Any questions, please contact me at brendan.luck@twb.catholic.edu.au.

Upcoming Events (Term Three)

• Catholic Athletics Carnival – 14/7/2023 8am-2:30pm
• Central Zone Athletics Carnival – 9/08/2023 8am-2:30pm
• Darling Downs Athletics Carnival – 23/08/2023 8am-2:30pm
• Catholic Touch/Netball Gala Day (Year 5 and 6)– 27/7/2023 9am-2:30pm
• Catholic Touch Football Gala Day (Year 4) – 12/09/2023 9am-2:30pm

Cheers

Brendan Luck

HPE Teacher

brendan.luck@twb.catholic.edu.au

CHOIR ANNOUNCEMENT:  

Term 3 Choir Rehearsals Wednesdays 7:45am  

We look forward to our first Choir Rehearsal for the term next Wednesday 19 July 7:45am in the Music Room. This term, choir rehearsals will return to once a week. New choir members from Years 3 – 6 are welcome to attend.  

At our choir rehearsal in Week 2, we will be learning 3 songs to perform in concert with guest performer Andrew Chinn the following Tuesday 25 July.  

Music Course Outlines - Semester 2 2023 

Prep Music 

In Music this semester, Prep students will continue to learn a range of spoken rhymes, simple songs and musical games. They will practise keeping the beat, as well as performing movement and actions to known songs. Activities in Prep Music also focus on developing aural skills including inner hearing and an awareness of dynamic comparatives such as loud and soft, high and low, bouncy and smooth. Students will be assessed on musical skills including in-tune singing and keeping a steady beat. 

Years 1 – 3 Music 

In Music this semester, students will perform a range of spoken rhymes, simple songs and musical games. They will practise keeping the beat and clapping the rhythmic pattern of known songs. Students will learn to demonstrate their perceptions of higher and lower sounds through movement, hand signs and visual representations.  Students will be assessed on musical skills and literacy, including in-tune singing, rhythm and melody. 

Years 4 – 6 Music 

In Music this semester, students will continue to learn a range of simple songs and musical games to sing and perform on glockenspiel. They will derive and write the rhythmic pattern and melodic contour of known songs, using simple stick and staff notation. To develop part-work skills, students will perform songs in canon and play simple ostinatos on glockenspiel whilst singing. Students will be assessed on musical literacy and performance skills including in-tune singing, part-work, rhythm, melody and instrumental skills. 

Mrs Kathryn Stewart 

Music Teacher 

School Photos:

School Photos have arrived and have been sent home with your child on Tuesday.  For those parents who specifically requested to collect your photos from the office, these are awaiting collection.  Please call into the office to collect.

Please do not hesistate to contact us if you are missing any packages ordered.  We will be happy to help.  

Term 3 School Fees:

Term 3 School Fees are due on Friday 11 August.  This is the final Term Fee for the 2023 school year. 

Details to pay via Direct Deposit are below:

• Account Name: St Saviour’s Primary Account
• BSB: 064-786
• Account Number: 100025243
• Bank: Commonwealth Bank of Australia
• Branch: ADF

Pupil Free Day:

Catholic Education Week Pupil Free Day is being held on FRIDAY 28TH JULY. There is no school this day.  Week 3.

Parking Reminders:

As we start Term 3, we would like to remind everyone about parking aroud our school.  

Please be mindful of parking around our school particularly in front of residents driveways in Neil and Perth Street's. We have had reports from residents informing us that people are blocking their access of a morning and afternoon. Please be considerate of our neighbours and do not park across their driveways or footpaths and block access.  

School Crossings:

Please use the pedestrian crossings of a morning and afternoon. Our crossing supervisors are there to ensure you cross safely.  

Assembly:

Assembly will continue to be held every Monday afternoon at 2.30 pm in the Mercy Centre.  Parents are welcome to attend. 

Mobile Phones:

Children who bring a mobile phone to school must hand in their phones each day to the office upon arrival at school and collect at 3.00 pm.  

Parent Portal:

Please remember to check the Parent Poral for all notifications, excursion permissions and general reminders that are sent out from school via the Portal. If you have any problems logging on to the Parent Portal please contact the office staff and they will help you with any trouble shooting.

Calendar:

Please refer to the Calendar on the Parent Portal which provides up to date information on term dates, special events, and pupil free days, which are useful when trying to organise and plan ahead.

Scholastic Bookclub:

Term 3 catalogues have been sent home this week.  The due date for orders is Friday 28 July.  

Tuckshop Volunteers:

If you can help out in our Tuckshop on a Friday please contact our Tuckshop Convenor, Renee Kilpatrick 0417 797 854.