Term 2 Newsletter 24th June 2022
PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGES
DID YOU SURVIVE?
Well, how did you go? Did you manage to survive the last 10 weeks reasonably unscathed from the pressures of illness, tiredness, homework battles, strained relationships between friends, assessment deadlines, sporting events and just getting up on these recent cold mornings? If you can still manage a smile and have enough motivation to get and get things done, you have done very well.
From my experience, generally I have found that Term 2, due to the above mentioned reasons, is the hardest quarter of the year to manage, especially for parents. Schools are about people and when people, especially our children start to wear down at the half way mark of the year and tolerance levels fall and what classmates say or do can seem far worse than if they were said at the beginning of the year.
It is also the time of the year when school and school work can seem to become a bit of a drag for some young people. At times like these, as the important adults in their lives, we need to spend time explaining to our children that there will always be ups and downs and homework won’t go on forever. There will be times when things don’t go as well as we would like and other times when things are great. It is important that we train our minds and those of our children to focus on the positives. Too much time spent on the negative aspects of life will drag everyone down. But let us not forget that most progress occurs when we work out something is not going as well as it could and we change it. Those changes, I hope will keep occurring.
Working together is the key. I really do appreciate the support our teachers receive from parents. Once children know that there is a common message from both school and home they soon get the idea that characteristics like, respect, resilience, care for others etc. are important traits in life.
A well-known Educational and parenting specialist, Dr. John Irvine, highlighted the need for parents to be supportive of teachers in front of their children. Not much different really than how important it is for parents to be united in their parenting. In his research, he pointed out that schools can be pretty different places to the experience parents had of school. Parents need to be wary of having their view of their child’s school coloured by their own experience or what they may see or hear in the media. He went on to say that good schools are welcoming schools where parents are able to contact teachers or the Principal if necessary. There are easy to follow common sense processes to assist when problems arise.
I have come across very few problems that are solved by doing nothing and hoping that they might go away. There aren’t many things that can’t be resolved if all parties are prepared to listen to another point of view and be open minded. All of us look at life through a particular lens of our particular experience. Sometimes we need to look at things through a different lens. I love parents who support their children in all they do. Experience would tell me though, that it is not uncommon that children relate to parents the summary of facts they think they need to know.
They might not tell lies, but young people are prone to give a particular version of an event. In all cases, if we are concerned by something we have heard and we approach the relevant person it is often good to start with a line like… “Just want to check with you if I have all the facts.” Better solutions will follow.
Problems are a part of life. There will be misunderstandings, adults & children will make mistakes, things will be overlooked, however if people follow the following steps when problems arise we will achieve better outcomes.
- Address issues at the earliest opportunity
- At the lowest possible level, i.e. avoid going over people’s head, especially with minor issues
- With the most appropriate or relevant person
- In the most informal and confidential manner possible
One of the things I have enjoyed in my first 6 months here at St Francis is the level of support I have found from parents. Almost without fail, parents want the best for their children and realize that the staff do as well and are highly supportive of the efforts the staff make on behalf of their children. As this is the last newsletter item for the term, I would like to take this opportunity to thank both the staff, parents and students for your efforts during this very busy and demanding term.
PREP ENROLMENTS FOR 2023 AND ENROLMENTS THROUGHOUT THE SCHOOL
We are currently taking enrolments for Prep for 2023. If you know of families with Prep aged children please encourage them to call in to the office to collect an enrolment pack or visit our website https://www.clifton.catholic.edu.au/ We are also accepting enrolments throughout the school as well.
REPORT CARDS
Report cards will be emailed out today. Please check you inbox/spam folders for your child’s report card. They will look slightly different this year, with dot points as comments in 3 KLA sections (Religion, Mathematics and English). As our practice here, please make contact with your child’s teacher if you have any concerns about your child’s education.
SPORTING NEWS
Congratulations to our winning house for 2022, Cosgrove. The athletics carnival was a great day. All the students represented their houses with great pride and respect. Many people don’t realise the time and effort that goes into organising such a huge event. It truly is a team effort, and both staff at St Patrick’s and St Francis really deserve a big thank you for the time and effort they put into working on the day. In particular, I would like to send a VERY big thank you to Mr Blaikie and his staff for accommodating us at St Patrick’s, for all the time and effort he and his staff have put into setting up the day. Thank you to Mr Tennent for his time and effort in preparing the students for the events. Also a big thank you to our families for making the trip and helping out to Allora, your support and efforts were amazing. We look forward to hosting St Patrick’s next year.
Regards,
Mr Red
CURRICULUM COORDINATOR
CURRICULUM COORDINATOR
It’s a wrap!
This week at St Francis, each class has been wrapping up our learning for the term. It is always a rewarding time for the students when they can complete ongoing learning and then reflect on their journey. Encourage your child to do this whenever they can. Talking points can be:
What did you learn?
What was hard?
What would you do differently if you were to do it again?
How were you successful?
Why were you successful?
When did you ‘get it’?
These questions can be applied to all areas of our school life. As adults, it is always rewarding to ‘coach’ the students through the pit and watch the pride as they climb to the top and experience success.
Report cards come out today. To clarify, please remember, that a:
- ‘C’ Overall Grade on the report card means your child is demonstrating the necessary skills and understandings for that part of the curriculum.
- ‘D’ Overall grade means that your child is on their way! They have not reached the end of year standard at this point in time.
If, at any time, you would like to discuss your child’s progress, please email your child’s teachers and arrange a meeting. We are in partnership with you! We love to see the growth each and every child is making and we understand the importance of sharing this growth with you.
PREP/YEAR 1
Prep/Year 1
Prep/1
What a wonderful semester of learning our Prep/1 students have experienced! We have been blown away with the amount of growth in their social, emotional and academic learning.
Below are just some of the Semester 1 highlights through the eyes of our Prep/1 students.
What have you loved about being in Prep/1?
“Making the Mother’s Day gifts for our mums.’’ Georgia
“Outdoor play and the volcano experiment in science.” Hunter O
“Counting and writing numbers.’’ Isaac
“Making fairy bread in maths, doing our sound booklets and using the ipads.” Jace
“Making potato people and listening to the teachers read stories.” Blake
“Being a helper to my teachers and friends. Making things in art and craft. Spelling was fun too.’’ Bryce
“Writing and illustrating stories.’’ Hunter G
“Maths challenges, writing and spelling.” Charlie
Helping your child over the holidays
Holidays are an important time to rest, relax and refresh. Parents often ask how they can help their children over the holidays – we always encourage parents to keep up with reading. Read to your child and have them read to you. Next term, Prep/1 will begin a unit of work titled Fairy Tales. Perhaps read a few favourite childhood fairy tales to your child. When you go out on adventures, encourage your child to recount what they have done and order the events. Most importantly, enjoy quality time with your child and have fun!
YEAR 2/3
Year 2/3
As the term comes to an end, we wish Mrs. Drysdale all the very best for her long service leave. We are all very grateful for our time with Mrs. Drysdale. The children have written letters wishing Mrs. D. all the very best on her time off. This is a sample of all the ideas we had:
Dear Mrs. Drysdale,
I hope you have an admirable holiday we will all miss you terribly. Here are ten lovely things I have of you:
- You plan lovely activities for the class
- You are sweet, pleasant, and admirable.
- You helped me learn to tell the time.
- Never put nice, good, or happy in your sentences.
- You always smell pretty.
- I enjoyed learning to skip.
- When it was my first day of school, I knew you were a great teacher.
- Last year you were a great soccer coach on Gala Days.
- You help us to select amazing books.
- You are generous because you let us watch BTN and do Typing Club.
I will try not to miss you, but I will. I want to know what you are doing. If you could send a letter back that would be thoughtful.
Love Year 2/3
Year 4/5/6 News
Year 4/5/6
As a teacher, I think it is important for students to learn the dispositions of a learner. These include traits such as grit, curiosity, persistence, determination, problem solving, creativity and flexibility – to name a few. Over the last week, I have watched the students in 4/5/6 learn how to use their time effectively and develop independent working skills as they worked through their Geography project. The students solved problems and sort feedback and suggestions from each other. Not only did we learn about another country or continent, but we also used design principles, technology skills and research skills. Well done to all students in the 4/5/6 class!
Our biscuits arrived in St George and the students have today received their feedback about the effectiveness of the packaging. Please check out the feedback from our St George friends.
Please keep an eye on Seesaw in the coming days. I will add a video showing a key fact from our Geography projects as well as some other bits and pieces from the term.
Have a wonderful holiday.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Bailey and Jackson
You will need to:
Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken? It was a bit broken
Other observations: The duck tape was hard to get off that then broke the biscuits
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package? Not easy because it had too much duct tape
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Bryce and Riley
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken?
- The biscuit was whole
Other observations:
The biscuits stayed whole.
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
The package was very hard to open. It has lots of tap and glad wrap.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Caitlyn and Malea
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken?
One of the biscuits are whole and one was partially broken because I accidentally broke it when trying to open the package. Therefore, they were both whole in their packaging when they arrived.
Other observations:
It was hard to get to because of all the wrapping and tape.
It had some string tangled and a lot oof glad wrap and tissues and It started to get harder to open It had lots of layers
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
It was not easy to open because of all the wrapping and tape and because of that it broke.2 the package had lots of layers which help the cookie stay in place its was layers of glad wrap and stappled tissues but it was kind of easy to open.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Eve and Harvey
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? . Smashed ? Or partially The biscuits stayed in together
Other observations: hard to get into
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package? The materials helped to keep it together. It was hard to get into.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Hope and Lucas
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken?
Other Observations:
· It was completely fine with no cracks, chips, or breaks. But was hard because of the duct tape overlapping and it was fine to open.
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
· No because all the duct tape was super hard to rip and goes everywhere and all the taop is crossed over. It came a week late.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Katherine and Bridget
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken? Both the biscuits are whole and not smashed
Other observations:
The biscuits were packaged securely with gladwrap. It was good that the word ‘Fragile’ was written
on the front to help people carry it with care. That may have helped in the delivery process.
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
The packaging was stable and secure. The brown cardboard box would have helped to do this. The duct tape was effective, however, was hard to take off.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Mick and Archie
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken?
Other observations:
- both cookies were whole
- It was easy to get into
- I think the bubble wrap helped a lot
- It was simple
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
It was easy to open, and the alfoil was also easy. I like how you used alfoil so the crumble didn’t go
everywhere.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Nate and Emmet
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken? Biscuit 1 Biscuit 2 Both 1,2
The biscuit was split into three parts, in half then that half broke in half again with crumbs at the bottom
The biscuit was whole and had crumbs at the bottom Was stale and hard
Other observations:
. the sandwich bag was full of air and was easy to open
. the cookie was in bubble wrap securely wrapped in clear tape inside of the sand which bag
. cookies were very hard to get out of bubble wrap and tape
. two layers of bubble wrap and tape
.both cookies were hard and stale
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
The sandwich bag was full of air and was easy to open however the
cookies were very hard to get out of the two layers of bubble wrap and tape
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Thomas and Chole
*Arrived a week later*
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken?
One of the biscuits was whole, however, one of the biscuits was cracked a little bit.
Other observations:
- It was very hard to open but really
- It did include` a lot of duct tape and bubble wrap but they were
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
It was really hard to open the package with all of the duct tape around it and the bubble wrap. I did also like how you used lots of cotton balls and some siderophore to in the big paper bag.
Task: To record the state of the biscuits Name of students: Xavier and Indyanna
You will need to:
- Take a photo with a little caption featuring your observations
Observations include:
- Is the biscuit whole? Smashed? Or partially broken? Both biscuit were whole
Other observations:
- There was a lot of bubble wrap
- there were tissues on the bottom and bubble wrap on top
- Everything was secure and strong
Feedback: How easy was it to open the package?
- it was very hard to get into but the biscuits were still whole and good
LIBRARY NEWS
BOOK FAIR
This year in term 3, we will be hosting a Book Fair in the library. Book Fairs are a fantastic opportunity for our students and community to purchase new books for their home libraries and for our school library to add to our student collections at no cost to the school.
Our Book Fair is to be provided by The Book Curator, part of local Brisbane publishing house, Yellow Brick Books. This Book Fair will be a bit different to others you may have attended. The team at The Book Curator will tailor the selection of books for our community. Book prices will start at just $5, ensuring every child the opportunity to purchase a book. Also, our fair will focus on books and reading, without the distraction of unnecessary stationery items that are often associated with book fairs.
Giving students the opportunity to ‘shop’ at our Book Fair, reinforces the importance of reading for pleasure in students’ reading development, and allowing them free choice in the decision-making process of what they wish to read.
We hope you will visit our Book Fair next term and we look forward to providing this opportunity to our school community.
SCHOOL COUNSELLOR
Counsellor
Back to school: Separation Anxiety
It isn’t unusual for children to feel a little anxious about going back to school. It usually starts on a Monday morning in the lead up to going to school or may even start the night before. Anxiety can affect the body and cause physical symptoms - children may complain of having a stomach-ache or headache. They may start
over-thinking and focusing on their worries, which can result in them not wanting to go to school. It is important that children are encouraged and supported to attend school when they prefer to stay home. Although avoidance (staying home) may reduce a child’s distress on the day, in the long-term, it has been shown to increase fear and make it more difficult for them to attend school. Below are suggested strategies parents can use to support their children in managing back to school worries:
- Keep a predictable routine and ensure your child is sleeping and eating well. Use an alarm clock to help your child wake on time
- Be organised to reduce the morning rush – plan school lunches, pack school bags, and lay out school clothes the night before
- Make a regular time to talk with your child. Encourage your child to problem solve through any fears they have and develop a plan to support and gently encourage them to face their fears
- Teach and practise coping skills to use when they are feeling nervous – focused breathing, positive self-talk (e.g. ‘You’ve got this’)
- Genuinely praise your child for being brave when they push through their fears
If the behaviour continues, connect with your child’s teacher and request additional support to help your child settle at school
For more information:
Web links:
Separation anxiety in children | Raising Children Network
The Brave Program - Online Anxiety Program for Children and Teens (www.brave4you.psy.uq.edu.au)
Books:
Joanne Garfi - Overcoming School Refusal: A practical guide for teachers, counsellors, caseworkers and parents
Ronald Rapee - Helping Your Anxious Child Second Edition: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents
P & F UNIFORM SHOP
Uniform Shop Co-Ordinator: Kylie Hay
Contact Details: kurlz@live.com.au or 0487 582 107
Uniform Shop Days: MOST Thursdays & Fridays
If you would like uniforms, please fill in the updated Invoice Sheet and email or text Kylie to either arrange a time to meet or for the order to be sent home with your child. If you have an old invoice copy, please bin it and replace with our updated one. This can be found on the Facebook Page or request one from me directly.
UNIFORM SHOP NEWS
- We now have EFTPOS available in the Uniform Shop at the time of collection
- We have some good quality second hand winter uniforms and also summer uniforms available for $5 per item if you’re looking for an extra jumper, shirt, shorts etc. Please note that only limited sizes and items are available but you are welcome to request second hand if available.
- We are no longer stocking the following items however we still have limited stock available for a discounted price if you would still like to purchase them.
- Green Fleece Vest $10
- Sizes 4,6,8,12 & 14 available
- Long Sleeve Boys Polo Shirts $15
- Sizes 4,10,12,14 & Small available
- Girls Green Long Formal Pants $10
- All sizes except 10 available
- Girls Green Long Sports Pants $15
- Sizes 4,6,8,10 & 16 available
- Green Fleece Vest $10
If you urgently require uniforms on a day other than Thursday or Friday, please let me know and I can arrange this with the staff at St Francis De Sales. Please note I do work and will get back to as soon as I possibly can.
STUDENT PROTECTION CONTACTS
Feeling Safe- All students have a right to feel safe and be safe.
If you are concerned about any form of abuse that is immediate, you should call 000. A significant risk or harm to a student, whether or not you have formed this belief on reasonable ground, should immediately be raised with one of our Student Protection Contacts.
ADMINISTRATION
School Fees:
We do recommend the setting-up of a direct debit facility to pay regular amounts into the school account. This alleviates overdue bills.
SCHOOL Bank Details
BSB: 064786
A/C: 100023789
Reminder: All P&F payments & Uniform payments are paid to a different bank account NOT the school account.
P&F Bank Details
BSB: 084610
A/C: 508684159