Week 4

Family Fun Evening

Please join us for our next family fun evening on Tuesday 5 June from 5.30pm in the Infants Breakout area. The evening’s focus will be on literacy skills and fun ways to play with your children to improve spelling, vocabulary and using literacy. We look forward to another huge crowd. Children and adults of all ages are most welcome to come along and join in the fun! An invitation and RSVP to assist with set up will come home shortly.

Infants Liturgy

Thank you for joining our Kinder to Year 2 students at their Infant’s Liturgy today. It was lovely to see our students so involved and to have support from our community. Thanks to our wonderful teachers for their preparation with the students and ensuring the reading, singing and dancing was so well done.

Thank you!

The Grow Your Mind school kit is a wellbeing school kit grounded in positive psychology research to inspire a growth mindset in students. The kit aims to build skills in resilience, emotional regulation and to develop each child's character strengths. This program supports our already existing well-being initiatives currently occurring in the school and will support the well-being language across all year levels.

We have been generously donated a kit from Lucy Smirl’s godmother, Skye Burney. We wish to extend our sincere thanks to Skye for the opportunity for our school to trial this kit in 3M. It looks like an excellent resource and I am sure our students and staff will benefit from having access to it.

Athletics Carnival

We are looking forward to another fabulous athletics carnival tomorrow at Albert Park. I am looking forward to House Spirit on display as our students have practiced their marching and chants throughout the week. Please encourage your children to wear House colours – but to also dress warmly and ready to participate. All students from Year 2 to Year 10 will be participating and I wish all involved the very best for the day. Students need to be at Albert Park by 8.50am for roll call.  Students arriving at the school by bus, please wait at the school Library and Mrs Cartwright will walk with you to the carnival. If you need your child to leave early, please ensure they sign out at the announcer’s desk. As it is a normal school day, we require a note for any students signing out. The carnival is scheduled to finish at 3pm. Students may leave with parents at this time or walk back to school with teachers to catch buses.

Professional Learning – Friday 18 May

The staff had a terrific day joining with teachers and CSAs from Western Region Schools to develop new ways of engaging our students and challenging their learning and thinking. Our focus for the day was “Raising Challenge, Questioning, Thinking Maps and Numeracy.” It was great to come together with other teachers and share different experiences and perspectives. We look forward to our students developing their skills in using thinking maps for a wide variety of purposes in class. It was great to see many of our teachers already introducing thinking maps to students on Monday as they returned to classes and the students being fully engaged with what they were learning.

Year 10 Retreat

I am always delighted to take school groups away as we are provided with thanks and strong affirmation of the manners and positive involvement of our students. This was again the case last week as our Year 10 students participated in their Retreat at Talbingo. Students ‘can do’ attitude was evident as they jumped in and helped in their ‘clean up’ teams, participated in team challenges and activities and added to skits and conversations which allowed them to explore “Knowing God” in real and profound ways. Both the facilitators (Youth Mission Australia) and the manager of Talbingo Mountain Retreat made the effort to let me know how impressed they were with our students. Thank you, Year 10, for your excellent attitude towards the retreat last week. I am very proud of each and every one of you and you were a credit to yourselves, your families and our school.

Manners

Remember those days when we used to say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me” and even made so bold a gesture as to open a door for an elderly person or to give preference of entry to a mother with small children. (I may be old fashioned, but I still think this is very important!) There was even a “once upon a time” era when parents tutored their children to give up their seat on a bus to an adult, particularly a woman, and to refrain from rowdy behaviour when in public places. So what has happened to courtesy and politeness and respect for the presence of other people. For many people “good manners” have come to be viewed as superficial and hypocritical – if they are actually thought about at all. I am pleased to note that at Sacred Heart, manners are often on display as students say ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and hold open doors for others when their hands are full. These small acts are greatly appreciated and help to make others feel good.

As the first educators of children, parents and teachers need to present themselves as strong role models to emphasise the importance of manners, courtesy, politeness and common respect. There is a “hidden” message in the following observation concerning the influence parents have on their children:

'Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners'.

Let us be the best role models we can for all our children!

LNAP Phase 2: A Literacy and Numeracy Initiative at Sacred Heart Central School
The NSW Literacy and Numeracy Strategy 2017-2020 is a plan announced by the Premier Mike Baird and the Minister for Education Adrian Piccoli on 21 September 2016 to ensure NSW students have the essential literacy and numeracy skills they need for success in learning and in life. Funds are given to our school by the NSW Government and matched by the Archdiocese of Canberra & Goulburn over these four years.

Sacred Heart has embraced this opportunity with enthusiasm. We have a shared moral purpose to improve our students’ learning. We are fortunate to have dedicated, capable teachers committed to the action plan. Over the four years, teachers at Sacred Heart will be trained in best practice, intervention in the early years of schooling, explicit teaching instruction and better, faster diagnostic assessments. 

As a professional learning community, working with parents and the wider community, we are excited to be part of this wonderful learning journey together.

With blessings,

Mrs Janet Cartwright

Principal

janet.cartwright@cg.catholic.edu.au

• A reminder to parents when returning the Sacred Heart Community Snow trip note please complete all pages.
• School Fees are due 1st June if prior arrangements have not been made.
• Winter Jacket order forms to be returned by Friday 25th May with payment.

A full sports report on previous events will appear in next week's newsletter.

Primary Dates:

TERM 2

Heart Athletics Carnival 25^th May- Cootamundra

Mackillop Touch Trials 25^th May-Penrith

Young Soccer Carnival 15^th June- Young NEW DATE

Secondary Dates:

TERM 2

Secondary Basketball carnival 29^th May- Canberra

Final of Girls Tag League 1^st June- Wagga Wagga

Small Schools Rugby League 5^th June- Tumut

Secondary Soccer Carnival 8^th June- Dickson ACT

CCC Touch Championships 20^th June-Penrith

A reminder to parents that the clothing pool is opened every Wednesday from 3.00pm - 4.00pm if not otherwised notified via email. If you are unable to make it on Wednesday afternoon and your require an item of clothing you can leave your requirements at the front office and they will pass it on to them.