Issue 4 - 16 March 2016

Newsletter Articles

VISION STATEMENT

St Rita’s School will be a compassionate and supportive community built on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, specifically incorporating the Mercy Values which are lived out. We will be a values-based community reaching out to and welcoming the wider community. Our strong school spirit will shine. St Rita’s will be a school in which every member is respectful of self and others.

PRINCIPAL’S PEN

Dear Parents and Carers,

One of last week’s highlights was the participation of our Year 4, 5 and 6 students in the Term 1 Gala Day sports event. On Gala Day, local schools gathered at Babinda State School for an afternoon of Futsal matches organised by PE teacher Dwayne Richardson. The St Rita’s players worked well as a team, showed good sportsmanship and only needed the occasional reminder that participation, not winning, was the focus of the day. I extend a big thank you to staff members Maryjane Masina, Julie Parker and Debbie Kurucz, and parent Laura Kirwan, who made the excursion possible by being coaches, supervisors and drivers.

Since last newsletter, I attended two days of the Term One Primary and Secondary Principals’ Meetings scheduled by Cairns Catholic Education Services. On the first day, Maryjane Masina and I participated in an ‘Evidence into Action’ seminar for school leaders to learn the skills needed to apply the Visible Learning pedagogy to their own school settings. During the seminar, we designed a St Rita’s Learning Matrix by gathering, collating and examining evidence from our school and transferring this into action that will make a positive difference to the outcomes of students.

The second day focused on a meeting of both primary and secondary school principals in the diocese to discuss a multitude of issues that relate to our schools: the 2016-18 Strategic Plan, the Australian Curriculum, Workplace, Health & Safety practices, CES Guidelines & Policies, the new Administration SIS program. Although the Agenda was comprehensive, principals are able to return to their schools armed with the most relevant information and skills needed to assist us in our leadership roles.

St Rita’s teachers will attend the annual TREWTH Conference (Topics on Religious Education and Wellbeing That Help) in Cairns on Saturday. This conference is held each year as a service of the CES Identity and Mission team. In addition to the Keynote Speaker, Dr Maurice Ryan, TREWTH provides a wide variety of CES-led workshops which are related to Religious Education, personal wellbeing and Social Emotional Learning (SEL). I am grateful that staff will give up part of their weekend for professional development that will benefit teaching and learning at St Rita’s.

St Rita’s will be one of the four hundred and ninety schools throughout Queensland who will participate in the NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST BULLYING AND VIOLENCE this Friday. The National Day of Action, now approaching its sixth year, “is Australia’s key anti-bullying event for schools, and encourages all students to ‘take a stand together’ against bullying and violence in schools, the classroom and beyond”. By participating in the National Day of Action for the fourth consecutive year, St Rita’s promotes its anti-bullying policy, strategies and programs and continues to give out a strong and clear message that bullying will not be tolerated at any time.

At a classroom level, students will participate in a range of NDA-focused activities, a whole school Assembly will promote the slogan of NDA, ‘take a stand together’ and ‘speak up’ against bullying to keep our school a safe and happy learning environment. Although the National Day of Action provides an opportunity to highlight the programs and initiatives we use to counter bullying on one specific day, St Rita’s explicitly teaches a Social Emotional Learning program that fosters respectful, peaceful relationships between all members of the school community all year round.

That’s not to say that bullying does not occur at our school. If it does, however minor an incident may seem, everyone plays an important role in responding effectively to instances of bullying. Teachers need to be informed by children and/or parents so that the school can investigate the report and take the necessary action. Bullying involves everyone in the school community. Students, staff and parents need to actively promote the anti-bullying message and work together to ensure the school environment is safe and happy for everyone. Let’s take a stand together!

Last week, the local media placed considerable emphasis on school tuckshops and the importance of a healthy diet for children. As the term draws to a close, and winter weekend sport has commenced, there is another lifestyle factor that significantly impacts on children’s ability to concentrate in class. Sleep. An interesting article about the importance of sufficient sleep for young children can be found on the National Sleep Foundation’s website. The following excerpt is from an article, ‘Active Children are Sleepy Children’.

“The secret to your child falling asleep faster may be as simple as turning off the TV. A recent study conducted at Monash University in Melbourne and the University of Auckland found that for every hour a child is sedentary — watching TV or reading — it takes an additional three minutes to fall asleep. According to a BBC News article, researchers observed 519 seven-year-olds and found that the majority of children fell asleep in 45 minutes and the average time to fall asleep took 26 minutes. In addition to falling asleep faster, very active children slept longer throughout the night”.

It’s that time of year in our academic calendar that we plan formal meetings with parents. This week, classroom teachers will be meeting with you to discuss your child’s progress, identify specific difficulties, and set individual goals to guide learning and growth next term. I have always been pleased that we have one hundred percent participation by parents in our planned parent-teacher interviews. You are partners in your child’s education!

During Lent, you would have heard your children talking about Project Compassion and the special activities that APRE Mrs Burns has organised in the past weeks. Project Compassion is the primary fundraising drive of Caritas Australia that links the personal prayer and discipline that we are called to undertake during Lent with a vision of providing service to others across the world. Our students have learned to look outside their own human needs and to show compassion to those in need by taking part in whole school fund-raising ventures, such as Pancake Tuesday and CARITAS Café. We thank you for understanding and supporting these significant events.

As it is the last newsletter for the term, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank St Rita’s families for supporting the staff during the first term of 2016. I know that we feel supported in our endeavours to provide the best teaching and learning experiences for all students. Special thanks to the wonderful parents who have assisted in the classroom, worked on the tuckshop and grounds rosters, attended P & F meetings and provided transport for excursions. We couldn’t do it without you!

I wish all St Rita’s families a happy and blessed Easter celebration. I hope you have a safe and relaxing family time in the two-week holiday break. I look forward to seeing bright, enthusiastic students returning to school on Monday, 11th April.

Regards and blessings,

Judy Billiau
Principal

APRE THOUGHTS …..

There are many moments in life where I feel truly blessed. This was certainly the case in my recent trip to the LA RE Congress. To be present at a Eucharist with over 30,000 Catholics was surreal. The atmosphere, music, singing and sermons were incredible and this was all before I headed to a number of workshops facilitated by passionate leaders of the Catholic Community. The resources, ideas and passion I have been exposed to not only reignited my spirit, it made me realise how strong the presence of God is in our world.

The theme for the Congress was “Boundless Mercy” and one of the most touching experiences I had was attending the “Mass for the Marginalised.” Here I was exposed to stories of people who have lived such difficult lives and in the most horrifying circumstances they found God in their lives. This was often in the form of people, Priests, Sisters, and Catechists who were there and showed love and mercy, when no one else would. The stories of how mercy has been given and received touched me and left me with the truth, that we are the hands, hearts and mind of Jesus and we can only know Jesus when we know the stories of others.

This is all the more prevalent during our Season of Lent. The giving from our children and classes has been nothing short of amazing. In the first four weeks of Lent, we have raised over $120 for Caritas and $30 for the victims of Cyclone Winston in Fiji. Thank you so much to all the parents and students for this effort.

To continue our efforts for Lent our last activity will be the Caritas Café which will be held on Tuesday 22nd March. This activity is about appreciating how easily we can access food in Australia and looking at foods that others eat in various countries around the world. In many countries meat is a luxury that is not included in every meal and many people live on beans and legumes as the main portion of their diet. To acknowledge this, and playing with words, we have decided that this year’s Caritas Café menu will be Lentil Burgers.

Order forms will be sent home and should be returned to school by Friday 18th March to assist with the organisation of the Café. Burgers will be $4 each and all money raised will go to support Caritas. I would encourage all children to try the Lentil Burgers and family members are most welcome to join us on the day.

As we move towards Easter we also enter the Season where we begin preparing for Sacraments. If your child is baptised, and in Year Four or above, please see me in regard to participating in the Sacramental program. If your child is not baptised and you wish to discuss having your child baptised please see me or contact Father Kerry. The information night for the program is on Thursday April 14 at 4:15pm.

Finally, in the lead up to Easter I have included a link to the Good Egg Guide http://acrath.org.au/6600/will-your-easter-be-traffikfree/. This guide includes shops and brands that are branded as fair trade and do not involve the use of trafficked labour. The Good Egg Guide is supported by many social justice organisations from many Christian denominations.

Wishing everyone a safe, Holy and relaxing Easter break.

Bec Burns
Assistant Principal (Religious Education)

CASTING THE NET

Works of Mercy: Clothe the Naked

An elderly friend, who was in the Navy during WWII, was an officer on the ship sent to Ambon Indonesia, to collect Australian prisoners of war freed at the end of the war. He describes the moving experience of seeing these men emerge from the jungle, their clothes in tatters, struggling to wear with pride the few emblems from their uniforms they had been able to keep. In that horror situation, their pride lay in being Australian soldiers and what was left of their uniform was what they used to claim that dignity.

In most societies, other than our own, clothing costs time, effort and money to acquire. We, who are flooded with cheap clothing, rarely if ever encounter someone who goes naked. Therefore we can fail to understand the indignity that those who have little or no clothing experience. Yet there are many in our society who experience indignity in other ways. The people who serve in lower paid work or service industries can appear invisible, but we can give dignity to them and to ourselves when we treat them with courtesy and thanks.

Our cheap clothing comes at a cost: the cost of others working in appalling conditions for a pittance of a wage. Thankfully, this injustice is being recognised and due to the work of Baptist World Aid, we can do our bit by buying clothing that has been produced in a just and fair way. See https://www.baptistworldaid.org.au/get-involved/be-vocal/ethical-fashion-guide/. Yes, it does take time and trouble, and true, we cannot always do it, but if we start somewhere, we will be acknowledging the dignity that we all are clothed in: that of being children of God.

Loving Father, my dignity lies in being your child made in your image and likeness. May my attitude towards others recognise and clothe them in this dignity. I ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will hear me.

Sr Kym Harris osb

COUNSELLOR’S CORNER

Why Me?

Dear Parents,

Each of us has a journey to walk that has a beginning, a middle and an end. Sometimes we feel like we have to endure life and sometimes we feel like it is an easy and comfortable part of the road. It is important to remember that each part of the road is part of the journey.

Encourage and support your children to find ways to look for happiness, hope and joy, even when they walk the trickier parts of their journey. It is too easy to focus on “How hard life is?”, “How unfair life is?” and “What have I done to deserve this?”.

If we continue to focus on the negative aspects of our journey we can create a negative mindset and a negative downward spiral of emotions. The further we allow ourselves to move down this path, the harder it is to pull ourselves back up. The more times we wander down this path, the harder each time becomes to want to come back up from the dark depths.

When we feel ourselves in this space of not caring, not bothering, not wanting to be around others and feeling hopeless, we need to find a helpful relative, friend, colleague or counsellor. A person we can talk to about what is happening for us.

By picking up on this earlier rather than later, helps us to move back into focussing on the positivity of life and all it has to offer and enjoy. Life is too precious and often feels too short when the time comes to say goodbye to those we love. Why spend your time wallowing, being angry and being resentful when you could be seeking love, kindness, understanding and acceptance.

May you appreciate all that your life has to offer.

Yours in Counselling,

Carmel Parisi

CURRICULUM CORNER

Australian Curriculum: Technologies Unpacked

Upon first glance it appears that the curriculum has been developed in response to a changing educational landscape. The practicality of the Technologies learning area engages students in critical and creative thinking. The approaches to problem solving, experimentation, prototyping and evaluation instil into students the value of planning and reiteration to bring ideas to fruition.

The Technologies Curriculum encompasses two interconnected areas: Design and Technologies, where students use critical thinking to create innovative solutions for authentic problems; and Digital Technologies, where students use computational thinking and information systems to implement digital solutions.

The knowledge, understanding and skills in each subject are presented through two related strands: knowledge and understanding; and processes and production skills.

The aims of the Digital Technologies syllabus are to ensure that students can:

• Create, manage and evaluate sustainable and innovative digital solutions
• Use computational thinking and the key concepts of abstraction to create digital solutions
• Use digital systems to automate and communicate the transformation of data
• Apply protocols and legal practices that support safe, ethical and respectful communications
• Apply systems thinking to information systems and predict the impact of these systems on individuals, societies, economies and environments.

What is most promising about how this curriculum is written is the way in which it has embraced technology, as a holistic approach to thinking and exercising creativity. The traditional teaching of ICT in schools has usually been focused around integrating tools to assist in other subject areas, which is the intention of the ICT as a General Capability in the Australian Curriculum. Instead, the Technologies Curriculum paves the way for teachers to work with children as young as Foundation on pattern recognition and classifying data in contexts that they can understand, gradually building up to the development of students with a strong understanding of computer science by the time they reach Year 10.

The content structure of the Technologies Curriculum can be viewed at

(Excerpt: “Supporting the new technologies curriculum in your school” in e-Technology: Technology in the Classroom, February 2016).

AROUND THE CLASSROOMS

Year 4 in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program

This year, Year 4 students, Georgina Stone, Caleb McEwan and Jamie Brose, are participating in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program. The SAKG program is held every Tuesday and the children take part for an hour in cooking and gardening activity.

By Caleb McEwan, Georgina Stone & Jamie Brose:

During the first two weeks we had to tidy the garden from the Christmas holiday. We weeded the garden and dug up forty-two sweet potatoes that had grown over the holidays. With this produce from our garden, we cooked a sweet potato bake, a sweet potato slice and wedges with a refreshing lime juice drink. On Shrove Tuesday, we made fluffy pikelets with a variety of toppings. The mouth-watering toppings were banana and lime juice, passionfruit butter and lemon-lime butter.

Last Tuesday we cooked Banana Pizzas. Georgina and Jamie made the topping for the pizzas. We put caramel, plain flour and castor sugar into a bowl and then used the electric mixer. We mixed it until it was a soft, wet dough. Mrs Stone then coated it on top of the Banana Pizza and put it into the fridge to get ready for the banana topping.

We also made scrolls. We made the dough out of milk, two cups of self-raising flour, a pinch of salt, two-thirds of a cup of plain flour, 90g of butter and then kneaded it into dough. We kept kneading the dough until all the ingredients were mixed together. When it was ready, we put the dough on a bed of plain flour and rolled it out with a rolling pin into a rectangle. Afterwards, we put the dough on the pizza tray and it was ready for the topping of ham and pineapple.

We also cooked Margherita pizzas with one and half cups of flour, half a cup of milk, 90g butter and extra flour for the edges to make it all nice and puffy. We roasted tomatoes in the oven with garlic for the pizza topping. After roasting, Jamie and Georgina peeled the tomatoes even though they were quite hot. We used this topping to make delicious pizzas!

LIBRARY LINKS

A mixture of gasps and smiles from students entering the library over the last week has brought answering smiles from Mrs Calcagno. Our current library display encompasses all things ‘scary’ including spider webs, bats, snakes and even skeletons. Our theme ‘Books are Scary Good’ highlights the wonderful and exciting mysteries written by our author of the week, R L Stine. Whilst these novels are recommended for our senior students, all ages have been catered for with story books about swashbuckling pirates and ‘not so scary’ monsters proving very popular. We have had a lot of fun enjoying our ‘scary’ display and are now eagerly looking forward to our upcoming Easter celebration. A competition will be held to find the most decorative Easter Basket, along with an Easter Egg Hunt throughout the library, during the last week of term. FUN, FUN, FUN!

I wish a joyous and holy Easter to all of our families.

Mrs Lisa Calcagno
Library Assistant

SPORTS UPDATE

What a wonderful day we had last Thursday at the Term 1 Gala Day! After four games of futsal, we were excited to hear the news that we had progressed into the finals. This was a great achievement by all players, as everyone had an equal amount of playing time and everyone tried all different positions on the field. We kept up a solid defence and stopped many goals from being scored. There was some fancy footwork displayed by Caleb, Vito and Andy, and Billie scored a much-needed goal at the right time.

It was great to see our four Sports Captains demonstrate good sportsmanship and encourage a positive attitude while we played the games. Andy capably assisted me with organising positions and subbing players on and off the field. By being runner-up on Gala Day, we have shown that the senior students are developing strong Futsal skills and St Rita’s is a true contender in the local schools competition.

Mrs Maryjane Masina
Sports Coordinator

IMPORTANT DATES

STUDENTS OF THE WEEK

St Rita’s School congratulates those students who were awarded ‘Student of the Week’ at Assembly on Friday 11th March 2016.

BIRTHDAY CONGRATULATIONS

St Rita’s wishes Caleb McEwan all the very best for his recent birthday. We hope you had a wonderful birthday celebration Caleb!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

AN INVITATION FROM THE P & F

Dear Parents,

You are invited to join us for the next monthly meeting of the St Rita’s P & F to be held on Tuesday 15th March beginning at 5:00pm. Come and share your ideas as we plan social events, guest speakers and fundraising ventures for the year.

We hope to see you there!

Julie Parker
P & F President (Acting)

COMMUNITY NEWS