And see, I am sending upon you what my Father has promised.

Luke 24: 49

(from the Gospel for the solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, Year C)

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to our new look newsletter!

Today we celebrate the feast of the Visitation with a whole school Mass at 9:30am. Everyone is warmly invited to join with the children in observing this beautiful feast marking the greeting of Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist to her cousin Mary, pregnant with Jesus. Scripture marks this event as the first recognition of the divinity of Jesus.

On Sunday, the church celebrates the Ascension of the Lord making way for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which will be celebrated in a week’s time. These two feasts, the Visitation and the Ascension in a sense bookend Jesus’ earthly life. Join us at Mass!

Reconciliation Assembly at 2:20pm TODAY

This week has been Reconciliation Week. We will mark this significant week in our national calendar at assembly. The children have created a “sea of hands” which we will set up outside the hall (wind and weather permitting!). We hope you can join us.

Kindergarten 2020 enrolment period is now open!

If you have a child who is ready for school in 2020 or you know someone who has, our enrolment period is now open. Applications can be picked up from the school office or downloaded from the school website. Interviews will be conducted this term  and first round offers of enrolment will be made at the end of term.

Responsible User Agreement

The Responsible User Agreements were sent home two weeks ago for each child and parent/guardian to sign. We ask that the Responsible User Agreements be returned to school as soon as possible.

COMPASS parent meeting Tuesday 11 June at 6pm in School Hall.

We will be conducting an ICLT parent session on Tuesday 11 June regarding the COMPASS roll out. COMPASS was initially launched in 2017 within the Diocese. There were some implementation issues at system level. The rollout to all schools is now well established.The school staff have been using COMPASS for record keeping and internal communication. Its use has been been smooth and successful. COMPASS will replace SkoolBag and will be the delivery platform for your child’s reports (and will also include an archive of previous reports).

Semester 1 reports and Parent Teacher interviews

Children in Years 1 to 6 will receive their Semester 1 reports on Friday 28 June. Kindergarten do not receive a Semester 1 report as per Diocesan policy.

In order to access your child’s report, you will need the COMPASS app. This Diocesan priority was presented to you at the end of 2018 when the final paper reports were issued. I strongly urge you to prioritise the COMPASS meeting noted above which we aim to make as practical as possible.

Parent Teacher interviews will be conducted in the last week of Term 2 (commencing Monday 1 July). We urge every family to attend these important meetings.

Principal Appraisal- a note from Carolyn Hadley, Head of Human Resources, Catholic Education Diocese of Wollongong.

As part of the Catholic Education Diocese of Wollongong (CEDoW) Principal Professional Development Planning and Review Process, an Appraisal occurs for each Principal every four years of his or her contract. This provides system and community accountability that is aligned with the School and Improvement process, focusing on the Principal’s leadership achievements and strengths, as well as identify areas for growth and development and future directions.

The Appraisal will be occurring for your Principal, Mr Don O'Brien, over the coming weeks and parents are invited to participate via a short survey. We use an electronic tool for the administration of this survey with Parents and Staff using a link to SurveyMonkey. Please click or type this link for your survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ParentOBrien2019

Surveys need to be completed before Friday, 14 June 2019. The information you provide will be kept confidential to the Panel that will be undertaking the Appraisal. If you are unable to access the electronic tool, hard copies of the survey will be available from your school’s front office.

Another part of the process is a Panel Review, which will be occurring on Thursday, 27 June 2019. The Panel is comprised of an external Educational Consultant, a peer Principal and a CEDoW Leadership member. On this day the Parish Priest, members of Staff, Students and a Parent representative group (approx. 12 parents) will meet with the panel. If you would like to be included in the parent group interview which will be scheduled for approximately 40 minutes, please speak with Mr O'Brien.

I wish to thank you in advance for taking part in this important process which is aimed at continual enhancement of the Catholic Education provided at your child’s school.

Premier’s Reading Challenge has commenced

We have begun the Premier’s Reading Challengethis term. Mrs Cassidy is explaining the challenge to the children during their library lessons. Children have been given a reading log to record the books they have read. We would encourage you to encourage the children to read and complete their logs.

STEM scrimmage today

Our STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) group has been working very hard building and programming their robots. Next week, we will have the team participate in the first robotics “scrimmage” for the year at Albion Park. Our children will put their robots through a series of challenges.

Don O’Brien – Principal

PRINCIPAL’S AWARDS

Congratulations to the following students who have achieved a Principal’s Award: 

MERIT AWARDS

Congratulations to these students who achieved awards this week for great work:

The First Holy Communion program continues this Sunday. Families are required to attend the 10:00am Mass at St Paul’s followed by the class in the school hall. Please consider how many guests you would like to bring to the First Holy Communion Masses on the 23^rd of June. 

• Classes: 2^nd & 16^th June (No classes on the Queen’s long weekend – 9^th June)
• First Holy Communion: Sunday 23^rd June.

Visitation Mass

On Friday the 31^st May, there will be a whole school Mass to celebrate the Feast of the Visitation. This will commence at 9:30 and will be held in St Paul’s church. Students will be involved in different roles during the Mass, particularly with reading. All are welcome to attend this Mass.  

Thank you

Catherine du Bois 

Religious Education Coordinator

Hindmarsh Cup / Noble Challenge rugby league- Thursday 4 July at Elderslie

The Hindmarsh Cup/ Noble Challenge has been rescheduled till Thursday 4 July to be held now at Elderslie near Camden. This is the second last day of term. We will forward organisational details closer to the date.

Athletics Carnival Friday 14 June

You will have noted in the term dates over below that the school athletics carnival will be held on Friday 14 June. Everyone is welcome to come along and support the children.

PROGRAM OF EVENTS        

9.00  11 yrs/Seniors/Juniors: 800 metres

9.30  MARCH PAST AND WAR CRIES   

9.45  INFANTS  / PRIMARY AGE RACES (Heats): 100 metres

11.00 Junior/11 yrs/Seniors: 200 metres plus final

11.30 PRIMARY FINALS OF FIELD EVENTS

 11.30 INFANTS EVENTS ON ASPHALT

1.45 PRIMARY SPRINT FINALS (100 metres)

2.00  RELAYS -  JUNIOR GIRLS, JUNIOR BOYS, SENIOR GIRLS, SENIOR BOYS

Please be advised that presentation of all medals and ribbons and the announcement of the winning house will take place at the school assembly on Friday 28th June

Chris Boyd
Sport Co-ordinator

Finding support – providing support within our community.

At times we can all be overwhelmed by the day to day tasks we need to undertake. This can be especially challenging when life events occur that limit our capacity to meet these challenges. Many of us have access to family and friends that can support us with these challenges, however for some this is not the case. Gather My Crew is an Australian charity who believe in a world where everyone going through a tough time is surrounded by the support of their own community. They believe people want to help – they just need to know how. They believe people doing it tough want to ask for help – they just need the support to do so. This is their focus and as such they provide technology, guidance and online support – making it easy to coordinate supportive communities around people in need. Their online help roster is the first step in this process. It is free and easy to use. Take a look at their website.

 https://gathermycrew.org.au [gathermycrew.org.au]

 Karen

School Counsellor

Our lovely canteen worker, Karen, will be leaving us at the end of next week.

Our school canteen is operated by an outside provider, Fresh Start. They have been trying to recruit a new canteen worker. If you are interested in being employed by Fresh Start to work in the school canteen, please contact the Fresh Start owner Karen Johns on 0490 683 505 or by email at Fresh Start