Dear Community,

This warmer weather has been great! Because the weather is warming up, I think it is fair that students are permitted to wear summer or winter uniform next week (Week 10). A friendly reminder for students to wear their hats also. 

Now we just need the restrictions to ease, so that we are able to return to some normality with school events. On that note, we have just received information about the Year 10 Graduation requirements and we look forward to sharing more information with you in due course. 

I would like to congratulate Hayden McGrath and his family on his Baptism at Mass today. It takes courage at an older age to take the important step into the Catholic faith and I wish him all the best with his faith journey. I also congratulate Hayden's Year 8 peers for their reverent participation at Mass today. 

The School Community Council met this week. We discussed many things, including the upcoming Garden Viewing event and the arrangements surrounding that. A typical meeting agenda includes; Community Council finances, School Finances, Parish Priest report, Principal's report, marketing, enrolments and building maintenance. I thank the Community Council for their attendance and contributions to the meetings. 

This week, staff participated in a Twilight meeting on Faith Formation. Our REC Jacqui Collins led us through a number of activities with special note of the activity on suggestions around raising our Catholic Identity profile. It was also a privilege to attend Mass as a whole staff and hear our visiting Archbishop lead us in prayer.

Take care,

Grant Haigh 

The Kindergarten room is now finished, however, we are still waiting on some information surrounding our power upgrade, which will prevent the Kindy students moving in just yet. The builders are wrapping up their physical presence on site and reducing the size of their compound. They will be patching the bitumen surface in areas that needed to be dug up. Today they worked on installing the new safety strips on the edge of the secondary stairs. This will be a great addition. They will be repairing some damaged walls next to the computer room as well. 

We installed a number of new split system air conditioners for staff offices on the top floor of the convent building this week. This will improve the working conditions in both summer and winter. 

The staff took part in a twilight spirituality evening earlier this week. It was a lovely opportunity to reflect and renew the relationships with God. Fortunately it coincided with the Archbishop’s visit to the Sacred Heart parish, enabling the staff to attend mass concelebrated by Archbishop Christopher Prowse and Fr Sijo.

Congratulations are extended to Hayden and Liam and each of their respective families, who decided that the boys would be baptised this week.
Hayden was joined by his class at Mass today.

Primary Wellbeing Program

This term, Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 have been participating in a Wellbeing Program run by Brigette Pritchett from the Salvation Army. Brigette has spent one hour per week with each of the primary classes and the students have learnt some really valuable lessons about a range of topics including:

• Self Esteem
• Resilience
• Feelings
• Sharing
• The importance of listening to others and working as a team
• The qualities of a good friend

There were some great discussions in each of the classes and the students were given some strategies to deal with challenging situations. We thank Bridgett for her time and enthusiasm in delivering some very engaging lessons for our students.

Below are some photos of Year 3 working cooperatively as a team:

Kindergarten Library Visits

The Kindergarten students have been visiting the library with Mrs Hughes each Tuesday morning. They have been borrowing a book to take home each week and they have been doing some craft activities.  Kinder had a special visit from ‘Dusty’ the Rabbit during their library lesson this week. Thank you to Mrs Kite for bringing in her family rabbit for Show and Tell. Kindergarten loved meeting ‘Dusty’ and learning lots of information about Rabbits.

Kinder - Dusty Karn for working hard across all areas of learning. Mack Oliver for his continued effort and improvement in his reading and sight words. Alexy Balon for her kind and friendly approach towards her classmates.

Yr 1 - Clancy Gibbs for making a huge effort to use all his reading strategies. Tony Samaan for using amazing adjectives in his writing.  Amra Nirupan for always being kind and helpful.

Yr 2 - Addie Warren for her understanding of the cycle of reconciliation.  Isaac Cronk for his hard work and effort in all lessons all week.  Riley Gilchrist for checking on classmates when they are upset.

Yr 3 - Serenity Bron for taking her time to complete assessments and NAPLAN.  Oscar Block for showing great focus in Maths. Livvy Blackwell for being a great role model in class with her behaviour.

Yr 4 - Shiraz Broad fast recall of number facts.  Michael Kreyts for persevering in writing his speech. Will Maxwell for showing great sportsmanship during sport on Monday.

Yr 5 -  Zahara Karn for having the maturity and confidence to step out of her comfort zone.  Darcy Murphy for applying himself well during literacy group activities.  Archer Gaynor for his thoughtfulness towards others.

Yr 6 - Cate Granleese for a focussed attitude in class.  Eloise Haigh great Maths assessment results.  Matilda Reardon for her positive outlook.

Special Awards - Pen Licence - Ethan Bett, Jack King, Hugh Perry

Week 8

Kinder  - Stella Krause for her hard work and effort across all learning areas.  Ned Hale for being an enthusiastic participant during spelling lessons.  Abby Wheeler for including others in her games and always playing fairly.

Yr 1  - Addie Gilchrist for increasing confidence to participate in class. Clancy Gibbs for making a huge effort to use all his reading strategies.  Amra Nirupan for always being kind and helpful.

Yr 2 - Paige Reardon for her outstanding spelling results. Angus Oliver for his excellent recall and recital of the Act of Contrition during Religion. Brooke Gilchrist for showing kindness to everyone.

Yr 3 - Harvey Drumore for fabulous public speaking.  Ava Derrick for a great week particularly in Maths. Billy Krause for being a positive member of Yr 3.

Yr 4 - Eliana Orbita for excellent work during Religion this week. Robbie Bett for a great knowledge of angles. Kimberley Roberts for being a friendly and helpful student at St Anne's.

Yr 5  - Isobelle Crawford for her great attitude towards learning.  Jonte Reid for always working to his potential in all subjects. Layla Paki for helping others.

Yr 6 - Lachlan Blackwell for a focussed speech writing effort.  Matisse Reardon  for seeking deeper understanding of Maths concepts.  Lillian Oliver for checking on others to see if they are okay.

Monday 12th October 2020 is a Pupil Free Day. Students return for Term 4 on Tuesday 13th October 2020.

Year 7 English

Year 7 have just finished their first Secondary novel study. Our focus for this unit was to develop an understanding of how characters interact with each other and how this drives the story. They have spent a lot of time working on their written language skills and have written an essay on the topic of which character from their novel is the most important. Year 7 also displayed their creative side by creating a new character that could be included in ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’. It is wonderful to watch how their ideas to come to life, and there were no two that were even remotely similar. 

Year 8 Geography

The Year 8 Geography class is currently redesigning Temora to turn Hoskins Street into a mall from Victoria street to Parke street. They have been tasked with keeping most of the existing businesses and adding a children’s play area, seating, gardens, and ensuring that the entire area is disabled and elderly-friendly. We started this term look at how the world has changed in terms of technological advancements over the past 100 years or so. This took in the development of communication technologies, travel and we even managed a look at how farming life was changed to make things easier. 

Year 9 Geography

The food-producing biomes of the world have been a focus for Year 9 this term. Students have examined the various ways we use tropical, temperate and grassland biomes to feed the world and have been amazed by some of the variety that they have discovered. They have also conducted their own research into ways that humans have changed natural biomes in order to produce food and the ways we use technology to update farming methods and make them more productive and less hazardous for the natural environment. 

Year 10 Geography

The environment was also a focus for Year 10 this term; however, they were looking at the ways we have used and misused the environment and how the human race now needs to fix the damage of the past. Sustainability has also been a focus and there have been many ideas on ways that we could act locally to improve our global environmental health. In the past week, we have begun to examine the wellbeing of the human race from the perspective of our wealth, living conditions, education standards and the role of our politicians. Already students have been amazed by the difference in living standard within Australia and the effect this can have on a person’s wellbeing. 

Food Technology

Stage 5 students have created some wonderful food this term and have been finding some of their own recipes to try out. Next week they will complete their ‘Special Occasion Cake’ and the designs for these look amazing. This week, they cooked up a storm for Feed Mi, making Creamy Chicken Pasta, Singapore Noodles, Oreo Brownies and Apple Pies for the staff and secondary students to feast on. The students worked hard and created some very happy tummies. 

Year 10 took their final rockets to Nixon Park last week to assess their ability to soar. Some rockets reached magnificent heights while others stayed closer to the ground.

Week 8

Yr 7 - DJ Bowman-Cannon A great work ethic on his geography assessment. Bella Bush For creating great flashcards in French. Alexia Lancaster for creating great flashcards in French. Rachael Thompson for persevering with her research in Geography.

Yr 8 - Bea Balon for a well researched and informative feature article. Tully Gaynor for a well written and informed feature article. Jazzabella Nguyen for a well researched and informative feature article.

Yr 9 - Jed Reardon for his sense of mateship and looking after those around him.

Yr 10 - Whole Class for showing initiative and great care for our environment.

Monday 19th October - Team 4 - Lisa van Egmond, Kara Clydesdale, Lauren Block

Monday 26th October - Team 5 - Mai Pham, Kirsty Oliver, Liz Oliver

Monday 2nd November - Team 6 - Angela Gilchrist, Kirushanthi Nirupan, Amber Crawford, Bec Reid