St Francis Xavier Primary School Woolgoolga eNewsletter

Prayer:

From the Principal

Mothers Day

Today we celebrated Mothers Day recognising all of the wonderful women in our lives and the lives of the children. I wish you all a wonderful day on Sunday and hope you have a wonderful celebration full of love and family blessings.

Standing in solidarity with our Indian community

The events of this week cannot pass by without recognition of the plight of the people in India. My thoughts and prayers are with every community affected by Covid-19, and I extend my support to all who are suffering as a result. If you have any thoughts or ideas that may assist in standing in solidarity with our Indian community, please contact me on troy.baker@lism.catholic.edu.au or at the Parent Forum meeting on Monday, 10 May).

NAPLAN

Next week our Year 3 and Year 5 students will be sitting the NAPLAN assessments. In preparation for these assessments parents can assist by doing the following:

Remind the children that this is a ‘one off snapshot’ and doesn’t define them nor their ability
Ensure that we celebrate the positive and what we ‘are able to do’
Encourage them to ‘do their best’ because that is enough
Success is more than a ‘score in a test’

All things Learning & Teaching

Classroom Lens On Year 6

Our focus this week begins with a spotlight on Year 6 happenings. Students are enjoying their learning in a dynamic classroom space. It is a space where they can work collaboratively, individually, use the outdoor learning effectively and is certainly fun filled. Here is a little window into how that looks.

Naplan Timetable For Year 3 and Year 5 Students

Naplan begins across Australia next week commencing on Tuesday 11th May with a writing paper. Year 5 will be completing all sections online this year and Year 3 will complete the writing section on paper, with all others online as well. Below is the outline of our timetable.

Lunch Clubs

Lunch Clubs are a great opportunity for students to participate in activities of interest. Below is a list of Clubs currently operating in Term 2. Maybe your child has already been to one of these Clubs? We would love to see them there.

Faith and Mission

Staff Proclaim

On Wednesday this week, the staff came together to participate in a day of formation as part of the Diocesan Proclaim initiative. We listened to input from a number of keynote speakers and processed each, in the context of our own school community setting. It is fitting, that in this 200th year of Catholic Education in Australia, we focussed on our Mission as Catholic educators in today’s society and the opportunities and challenges that presents. Whilst times have changed over the last 200 years, our mission remains the same: to educate children who in our care, have a strong sense of identity and belonging, who are compassionate and giving, and who are able to achieve the fullness of life, safe in the knowledge that they are known and loved by God. Thank you to all families for making childcare arrangements on this day, allowing us to spend this important time together as a staff. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Mary, Mother of Jesus

In the Catholic Church, the month of May is always dedicated to honouring Mary, the Mother of Jesus. This year, Pope Francis is urging all Catholics throughout the world to pray through the intercession of Mary for an end to the Coronavirus Pandemic and for all those suffering as a result of Coronavirus, both directly and indirectly. To date, more than 3 million people have died from Coronavirus, with many countries experiencing their worst wave yet. There are a number of families in our school and wider community who have family members overseas, directly affected by the pandemic. Here at St Francis Xavier, we will be joining in this world wide prayer initiative and encourage families to do the same.

Mother’s Day

For all those unable to attend our Mother’s Day Liturgy today, please see below the link to our special Mother’s Day photo slideshow. We wish every Mother in our St Francis Xavier community a very Blessed and Happy Mother’s Day.

Family Faith Retreat Flyer.pdf

Spotlight on HPL

Stage 3 at St John Paul College Recap

On Monday in HPL Workshop 5 we joined up with Mary Help of Christians, St Augustine’s and St John Paul College. We learnt how to calculate the speed of light with Mr Holmes. At the start we did a maths challenge called ‘Four Fours’. In this maths challenge we partnered up with someone from a different school and we had to figure out how to get from 1 to 20 using Four Fours exactly. We were able to use all the maths symbols; plus, minus and division. We also used our times tables using only the number four. We couldn’t use any other number that didn’t have a four in it.

After that Mr Holmes taught us about factorial numbers.

We also melted marshmallows to see the speed of light that travelled in the microwave. And then we got to eat them. Yum!

After recess we did coding on either Scratch or Co-Spaces. On Scratch you had to make a tiny flying helicopter fly on Mars. On Co-Spaces we were allowed to do our own ideas because none of us had used Co-Spaces before.

Rune Fowler (Year 5) and Eli Nalder (Year 6)

Map Our School

Stage 3 HPL students continued working on the Map Our School project using Google Earth Engine. Today we looked at using a satellite to calculate the percentage of shade our school offers, from both buildings and trees.

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS)

Meet our PBS Student Leadership Team. These students have been involved in building PBS at St Francis Xavier since they were in Year 5. Currently in Year 6, these dedicated leaders are continuing to develop ideas to make PBS fun and engaging for their peers. Leading by example and promoting RESPECT schoolwide is a daily job for this Team, always done with a smile!

What do our student leaders love about PBS?

Charlotte: “I like showing students how to show respect and help them get rewards.”

Taylor: “PBS helps kids learn how to respect other people and they can earn tokens and stamps.”

Ashley: “I like seeing students being respectful to others and the teachers.”

Sporting Roundup

Events coming up:

Friday, 14 May - Walk Safely to School Day
Thursday of Weeks 2-8 Whole School ‘Get into Rugby’ Program (Friday of Week 4 due to NAPLAN, please also note that we had to postpone this week’s session due to inclement weather so this program will continue for one extra week).
Friday, 28 May - Whole School Athletics Carnival

Diocesan Winter Sports Trials

A big congratulations to Jed who represented our Zone at the Diocesan Winter Sport Trials in Rugby Union last Friday. Jed will now represent our Diocese at the Polding Winter Sport Trials at Forbes on Monday, 21 June. Well done Jed!