Sacred Heart Primary School, Cunnamulla eNewsletter

Principal Report

A warm welcome to all our new and continuing Sacred Heart families and community members. I am excited to be back from maternity leave and leading our schools' learning agenda again alongside Cara Haig, staff and students. It was wonderful to see the students’ smiling faces today and hear about their first week of school for 2024!

At Sacred Heart, there is a relentless focus on LEARNING and the development of expert LEARNERS and this focus was made a priority during our professional development days. Catherine Kimmorley (TCS Education Officer) had us delving into two learning intentions, what it means to be an effective learner? And how we make learning stick?

We explored our school Habits of the Mind and Heart by answering the question, why are they important for our learners? Some of our answers included; it is the foundation of our school culture, they show us how to be good learners and good people, they provide strategies on how to learn something new or delve deeper into a topic. We were also able to make strong connections between our Habits of the Mind and Heart and the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities.

We want our students to be extremely clear on the behaviours needed to be an effective learner. Therefore, this year, staff have intentionally used the language of the Habits in their classroom expectations to ensure it includes the specific learning behaviours. For example, “We COMMUNICATE with our classmates respectfully” rather than saying, “put your hand up to speak.” We look forward to seeing whether it changes the students perception of effective learners when we collect our first round of student voice.

Another key take away from the day, was the importance of understanding working memory and long term memory. We know that, “learning is a change in the long term memory”, so how do we help our students make learning stick and simply not forget? As teachers we need to focus on strategies to gain students attention, activating prior knowledge, minimising classroom distractions, providing learning in small chunks, including brain breaks and visual aids/anchor charts. It is also important to consider the working memory ‘capacity’ and cognitive load.

We have plenty to think about and action from our learning about learning day! We look forward to developing this into a Rapid Action Plan for the 2024 school year and sharing with you all throughout the fortnightly newsletters.

Principal

Mrs Polly Goodman

Prep

Welcome to Prep! As we begin this year, and after our visits and transitions, we welcome our brand new Prep class for 2024! It has been a very busy start in the Prep classroom with the students beginning their transition to school life. We have been learning about how to be a Sacred Heart students, for example how to mark the roll, how to line up, how sit on the carpet, our smiley faces and stop signs, how to answer questions, participate in ‘Think, Pair, Share’ and so much more. The students have participated in range of learning activities and connected craft and are enjoying being at school. Across our first two weeks, we participated in our very own ‘Rocking in Our School Shoes’ tour with the help of Pete the Cat. While practicing walking in our safety line we visited the important areas of our school, including the church, office, classrooms and library. Throughout our first week, we completed many fine motor activities and name crafts to help decorate our new classroom.

We will begin swimming lessons this week on Thursday so please pack your child's swimmers, towels thongs and goggles. We will also be borrowing from the library this Thursday, so if you haven’t already sent in your child's library bag please do this by Thursday morning.

The students have had a very enjoyable first week of Prep and Mrs Fett and I are excited for an energetic and fun-filled year! Have a good week!

Miss Sophie Walker

Prep Teacher

Year 1

Welcome to Year 1 for 2024! We have had a great start to the year with all students settling in well and beginning to learn the daily routines. To start the year we have been doing a variety of activities to get to know each other. This will be displayed (when completed) within our classroom for parents and others to come and view. We have chosen four focus Habits, Persistence, Effort, Communication and Belonging, that we believe are important within our classroom. As a class we have brainstormed what each of these Habits Looks like, Feels like and Sounds like within our room. These ideas will form our classroom expectations, with students acting out the different suggestions to display within our classroom. We have swimming on Thursday afternoon, as well as Library, so please make sure all students have their swimmers, including a swim shirt and thongs/crocs, and their library bags.

I can’t wait to see the learning that takes place in the Year 1 classroom this term.

Miss Ellie Charlton

Year 1 Teacher

Year 2

Welcome to year 2 2024! It has been a wonderful beginning to the school year in our room, with our students settled in and daily routines beginning to come together. We have been spending time reviewing our Habits of the Heart and Mind and how we use these important dispositions to help us with our learning. We have begun our new phonics program this week and have been using “room on the Broom” by Julia Donaldson and we are excited to make our very own broomsticks. This week we will begin swimming lessons on Thursday as well as library borrowing, please make sure your child has their library bag on Thursday so that they may borrow. We’ve drawn some great self-portraits of ourselves and classmates which are now up decorating our classroom.

All in all, our year two classroom is a happening place

Miss Ailie Lewis / Miss Grace Carter

Year 2 Teacher

Year 3/4

Welcome to 2024 with 3/4! I hope everyone had a relaxing and happy holiday with friends and family. The three four students were well and truly ready for learning on day 1 with lots of smiling faces entering the classroom. We had an excellent first week with plenty of fun and learning had by all. These are some quotes from our 3/4 students:

“I am excited for learning with my teacher” – Lucy

“I am excited for Deadly Choices” – Deegan

“I am excited to make new friends” – Heather

“I am excited for technology” – Noah

“I am excited to have lots of fun in my classroom” – Jerry

“I am excited for HPE and class games” – Lake

“I am excited for Sports Camp, having two new teachers and learning more” – Brooke

“I am excited to decorate our classroom” – Clive

Miss Hood and I are looking forward to a very exciting year of learning. Have a good fortnight!

Miss Aimee Bretherton

Year 3/4 Teacher

Welcome back to school! We bounded through the door on day one full of excitement to interact with our friends and learn. We have spent the past week reviewing how to showcase our Habits of the Heart and Mind in and out of the classroom and we started learning some classroom routines. Routines included think, pair, shares, communicating with our learning buddies effectively and quick writes. We showed belonging by welcoming our prep buddies in the community with a fun scavenger hunt. Our class will continue to develop leadership skills by continuously displaying the Sacred Heart Habits. Our Year 6 students are currently preparing their leadership speeches which will take place this Friday after our first school liturgy. We have set personal and academic goals for the year and cannot wait to see what this term has in store for us.

Mrs Abby Kindelan

Year 5/6 Teacher

Class Awards

Birthdays

Assembly/Leadership Speeches/Opening Liturgy

This Friday 2nd February at 8:40am, we will be holding our first assembly for the school year as well as our Opening School Liturgy. Our Year 6 students who wish to apply for a school leader role, will also be presenting their speeches. All parents, friends and community members are welcome to come along and join in on the first celebration for the year.

Swimming

Swimming lessons with Miss Maryanne at the town pool will begin this week. All students are expected to participate in these lessons as it is part of the HPE curriculum. If your child is unwell and not able to participate in a lesson, please write a note for the classroom teacher or phone the school office. All students need to bring their togs, towel, thongs (optional) and $1 to participate.

Class swimming days and times for the next fortnight are:

Week 2

Thursday 1st February:
2pm - Prep, Year 1 & Year 2

Week 3

Thursday 8^th February:
11.45am - Year 1
12.15pm - Year 2
2.15pm - Prep

Sacred Heart Twilight Swimming Carnival

This Friday evening 2nd February, we will be holding our annual school swimming carnival at the town pool. The evening will kick off at 5:15pm so we ask for all students to be at the pool by 5:00pm. We encourage all students to attend and to participate in the events.

Students are to wear their full school sports uniform (white shirt, green bottoms, white socks, black shoes and green hat). We will be looking for some parents/community volunteers to help on the night so anyone who is able to lend a hand please let the office know.

Get ready to cheer your team on!!!

Tuition Fees

Employment Opportunity

Student Protection

At Sacred Heart the safety and wellbeing of our students is our highest priority. All children should grow up free of violence or exploitation and be able to learn in a safe and supported environment. Schools have a number of specific child protection reporting obligations that are detailed in our Student Protection Processes and Guidelines.

It is a legislative requirement that all non-state schools have at least two nominated staff members to whom a student can report the behaviour of another staff member that the student considers inappropriate. We call these specially trained staff members School Student Protection Contacts, or SSPCs. Each SSPC has been nominated by the principal in recognition of their integrity, approachability and knowledge in the area of student protection. Whilst students are encouraged to speak up to any trusted adult in the school community, it is important that they know they can access these specific staff members at any time should they have worries, queries or concerns. You will have noticed posters throughout the school depicting our current SSPCs. The SSPCs are also published on our school website along with information about our student protection processes. In everything we do at Sacred Heart Primary School student safety is our highest priority, therefore the SSPCs at our school are key personnel in our overall safeguarding processes.

If a student wants to talk to someone about harm, abuse or inappropriate behaviour toward themselves or others, they can speak to a trusted staff member or one of our School Student Protection Contacts (SSPCs). The SSPCs receive additional training and are identified in the student protection posters displayed around the school.

Summary documents have been developed for parents and caregivers about our student protection obligations and our broader strategy for maintaining safe school environments.

Further information on all of the above topics can be found on the Toowoomba Catholic Schools website at the link below:

Embed Link - https://www.twb.catholic.edu.au/parents-and-community/student-protection/