2021 Term 3 Week 5 Newsletter

Prayer Focus

From the Acting Principal

Dear Families,

I would like to sincerely express my gratitude for the very warm and extensive welcome back to the St Francis Xavier school family. I feel humbled and blessed to have been given this wonderful opportunity to serve the entire school community. In fact, leading and working in my last school community has taught me much about serving others with a “head, heart and hands” mindset. 

For the remainder of the term I am going to allow myself some time and space to take in all the amazing progress that has been made at the school since my departure in 2016. The school buildings and grounds are looking fantastic, the staff are full of energy and purpose, and the students are engaged learners who are an absolute delight! After reading past Annual School Reports I have the sense that parent partnership was thriving until COVID restrictions came into place. 

When addressing the staff for the first time this week I articulated the importance of relationships when leading a school. Relationships with students and their families, relationships with all staff as well as relationships with the Parish. Successful relationships are those that are founded on mutual trust, respect and understanding. 

The work of Archbishop Miller goes further when describing relationships in an authentic Catholic school. ‘Principals, leaders and teachers must set their service from a platform of good relationships based on valuing, respecting and caring for students as good shepherds.'

Please be assured that everyone at St Francis Xavier will be striving to be good shepherds.

Yours in Faith
Warren Niethe

Learning & Teaching

National Science Week

Next week is National Science Week and the theme for 2021 is Food: Different by Design. It honors the United Nations International Year of Fruits and Vegetables and the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development.

So what exciting things will be happening at St Francis Xavier? Pop-up Clubs will be operating at Lunch and Recess next week. Some of the clubs include:

•  Maker Space
• Science Week Colouring In Competition
• Juice Bar  - Featuring the winning juices from our ‘Design a Super Healthy Juice’ competition this week 
• Making butter 
• Making Popcorn

It will be a stellar week!

Take a glimpse at Science happenings at school to date.

Maker Space Request

If families have any recycled materials they would like to donate to Maker Space for Monday could you please send them in. There will be a large recycling tub in the front office on Monday where these items can be dropped off.

Examples of materials needed include: clean recyclable materials eg cardboard boxes (cereal, toothpaste box, shoebox, muesli bar box); egg cartons; cardboard rolls from glad wrap, paper towel, etc (not toilet rolls); berry punnets; and clean plastic milk bottle tops.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Choir

Today at Assembly the choir had their first opportunity in a while to perform in front of an audience. The staff and students were treated to the beautiful rendition of ‘I Have A Voice’. They certainly did have a voice! We look forward to the next opportunity to be the audience again.

Faith & Mission

Feast of the Assumption

This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, the day when Mary was taken to Heaven, body and soul. Why would God take Mary’s body and soul into heaven? In part because Mary is special to God: she said “yes” to becoming the mother of Jesus. But God also wanted to show us that one day, all of us will share in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Mary is the first person in the Church to experience the resurrection in its fullness. We recognised this special day with prayer at this week’s Assembly. Thank you to the Year 5 students who led the school so beautifully in signing the Hail Mary.

Confirmation

Congratulations to the students who received the Sacrament of Confirmation at St Augustine's Church on Thursday night. 

High Potential Learning (HPL)

Breakout Boxes

During Wednesday lunchtime we invited the teachers to test out the breakout boxes we had created during our HPL sessions on Fridays. We wanted to test our tasks on the teachers to ask for feedback before we gave the breakout boxes to Stage 3. The teachers were very engaged and they said it was really fun!

Next week we plan to challenge the Stage 3 students to break out of the boxes.

Stage 2 have been working on a similar task and plan to challenge the teachers next week. 

Stage 3 HPL at St John Paul College (SJPC)

This week at SJPC we participated in code breaking activities with a focus on mathematical codes.

For the warmup we were given a sheet with jumbled codes that required us to think outside the box in order to crack the codes. 

In the first session we did some coding including Greek letters. We had to decode them by transforming them into our alphabet and then figuring out what the code was.

In the second session we participated in rotations where we solved codes until they were all completed. 

In the third session we did the Da Vinci Decathlon Coding Papers for Years 5 and 6 from 2019. Some of our favourite parts were when we unjumbled the Greek letters and changed them into our alphabet. Some of us also liked doing the Decathlon with the ten secret hidden messages and using the strategies we had learnt previously.

Eli Nalder (Yr 6) & Rune Fowler (Yr 5)

Positive Behaviour Support

Behaviour and Social Skills Focus

The Week 5 PBS behaviour and social skills focus is:  Respect Others:  I use appropriate language and tone of voice and I have a positive attitude. 

Our weekly Psalm is 3:4 Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Term 3 Wellbeing Day

This week, students are contributing ideas for activities on offer at our Term 3 Whole School Wellbeing Day and there is no shortage of ideas from Kindergarten:

• Disco
• Running races - “but nothing for the winners”
• Outdoor games - red light, green light, egg races, soccer, hide and seek 
• Treasure hunt 
• Rugby
• Bushwalk
• Building with sticks
• Fun run
• Drawing, colouring and writing
• Mario Kart, Sonic, Minecraft
• Dinosaurs
• Movie
• Painting
• Water fight
• Making fairies

We love your clever ideas, Kindergarten! 

Sporting Roundup

Upcoming Gala Days for Stages 2 and 3

Please advise the school office if your child cannot attend the Gala Day/s they have nominated for. This will avoid teams being withdrawn from the draws.

Netball Club

Netball Club is run on Wednesdays in the Hall. We have been learning passing, catching and the rules of netball. Below are some pictures from this week’s Club.

NetSetGo

This week was the last week of NetSetGo for the junior students. Stage 2 and 3 begin their sessions next week. Below are some pictures from this week.

Certificates of Recognition

Congratulations to all of our Certificate recipients today.  Keep up the great work!

Gold Token Winners

Class of the Week Token Winners

Postponement

Reflect and Connect Parent Gatherings

Dear Parents and Carers,

We are disappointed to announce that these events will be postponed. Lockdowns throughout the diocese and difficulties with presenters travelling have made the logistics of these events too difficult to arrange. The safety of our parent community is a priority and we want to make sure we can host these events in a way that ensures everyone's health and wellbeing. We look forward to a time when we can re-schedule these events but until then, keep an eye out for Parent Assembly hosted webinars which will be advertised soon.

Warm regards,
Christine Morrison
Parent Assembly Cluster Coordinator