Issue 14 - 30 August 2017

Newsletter Articles

MISSION STATEMENT

St Rita’s School mission is to create a community which inspires a love of holistic, life-long learning grounded in the Catholic Christian faith. Childhood is celebrated and nurtured by caring adults. A student’s capacity for their best future is realised in the context of our small rural community. We provide a safe and supportive environment, characterised by strong, life-giving and respectful relationships with students, staff, families, parish and the wider community. The school strives to ensure we are living out the Mercy values.

APRE THOUGHTS……

BON VOYAGE TO MRS BILLIAU

We wish Mrs Billiau ‘bon voyage’ as she embarks on her trip to the United Kingdom for a well-deserved break on long-service leave. We pray that her journey is enlivening, re-energising and fulfilling and look forward to her safe return in Week 1 of Term 4.

PARENT TEACHER INTERVIEWS

Educational research findings unequivocally conclude that, the more actively families are involved in their child’s education, the better the educational outcomes. This is regardless of the families’ income level, culture or education background. Strong partnerships between families and schools are beneficial to children, where you can expect to see higher academic results and greater personal and social competency.

When children experience the family and the school working together, they are more likely to have a positive attitude to school and a better self-esteem, leading to self-efficacy, that is, a belief that they can be successful! Research also shows that children who see their parents involved in their education value their formal education more highly, and this results in lower rates of risk-taking behaviours, increased graduation rates and enrolment in further education beyond secondary school. And, not only do the children benefit from the connection between home and school, families and schools benefit too. While improved student achievement and behaviours are definitely evident, community capacity can be built from higher levels of trust and support.

Parent-Teacher interviews provide an opportunity for families and schools to connect and communicate. Parents bring a wealth of knowledge and different perspectives about their child, their culture and their community to the school. Teachers value this information as it adds to a teacher’s skills and expertise, and sharing expert information also allows for informed decisions to be made.

If you have not done so already, please make contact with your child’s teacher via student diaries or last week’s note regarding Parent-Teacher interview times, and arrange an appointment to meet and discuss your child’s progress. A time allocation of 15 minutes has been set aside for each appointment time. Should you require additional time, please email the school office or inform your child’s teacher personally to arrange a mutually convenient time to meet. St Rita’s values family contributions to our school community and welcomes the opportunity to consult and share with families

CELEBRATING LEARNING

The eagerly anticipated Science Day and Book Character Dress-up Day of our weeks 6 and 7 have now passed, and we are pleased to report that the learning experiences undertaken through Science Week and Book Week were a resounding success! There were a myriad of activities to be involved in, and for each occasion we opened our doors to welcome visitors from the extended community, that is, McDonnell Creek State Primary for Science Day, and Babinda Community Kindy for the Book Character Parade, shared reading and craft activities. In addition to this, our Prep/Year One class visited the Babinda Library for some Storytime fun throughout the week!

During Science Day, children had the opportunity to participate in activities centred on the ‘Future Earth’ theme for 2017. Our guest speaker, Mr Steve Calcagno, outlined some important environmental actions and considerations that farmers put into practice to protect the local land and waterways, and following this, children engaged in many practical projects specifically chosen to reinforce the message of living sustainably.

Parents, students and staff members are to be congratulated on the creative energies that went into the fantastic costume designs for our Book Week Parade – it was thoroughly entertaining to see the variety of book characters that the children resonate with! Stories and craft activities were then the order of the day as children experienced some of this year’s short-listed picture books. Many thanks to our dedicated staff members for their excellent organisation of both events. As well, our school students are to be commended for their friendly hospitality and the warm welcome shown to our visitors.

SENIOR CAMP

Next week, students from the Years 5/6 class will attend school camp, to be conducted at Daradgee Environmental Educational Centre. Noel, a representative from the camp, spent time with children last Monday to create their own personalised t-shirt using spray-bottles of fabric paint. When they were all hanging out to dry, we were delighted with the colourful results. He showed students what they might expect to see or do at the camp through a digital presentation, and answered many questions from the students.

School camps are an exciting adventure. Not only do they build on students’ leadership and cooperative teamwork skills, they offer children a chance to challenge themselves personally and further develop social-emotional skills, particularly an individual’s confidence and resilience. Of course, camp also challenges each child’s skills to organising themselves and their belongings - without parents to assist – and to act independently outside of a familiar realm! We wish the staff and students a most excellent time away for the three days, and can’t wait to hear of your exciting adventures upon your return.

FATHERS

Would you believe that Father’s Day, as an official celebration, is less than 100 years old? In fact, when the idea was first proposed by Ms Sonora Dodd in 1909 to honour her father Henry Jackson Smart - who raised a large family of six children alone after the death of his wife - it was considered laughable. Traditionally, it was viewed that only a mother could be regarded as the sole nurturer of children, and thus, was more important for a child than the father. Thanks to Sonora’s continued campaigning, Father’s Day became a reality first in 1924, and was then permanently observed from 1972.

Today, the importance of the role of Father in the life of a child is well-established; children are reliant upon fathers for their spiritual, emotional, physical, financial and social well-being. Father’s day is a day to express our love and gratitude, and honour the sacrifices and contributions made by fathers and other father figures. To the significant males in our St Rita’s families, may we wish you all a happy Father’s Day.

Prayer for Fathers

God our Father,
in your wisdom and love You made all things.
Bless these men,
that they may be strengthened as Christian fathers.
Let the example of their faith and love shine forth.
Grant that we, their sons and daughters,
may honour them always with a spirit of profound respect.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

RECONCILIATION AND SENIOR CLASS MASS

Students who have received the Sacrament of Penance will have the opportunity to attend Reconciliation this Friday 1st September from 11:30am with Father Nathan McKay. Father Nathan will then celebrate our ‘Spring Ember Day’ Mass with the senior students, scheduled to begin at 12:15pm. Parents are warmly invited to attend.

Blessings,

Maureen Gaul

SCHOOL RESULTS SURVEY NOTIFICATIONS

Dear Parents,

As part of our ongoing commitment to continuously improving the school, we believe it is critical to seek each parent and guardian’s opinion on a range of issues relating to St Rita’s School. Your feedback is very important to us as we continue to build a successful school and strengthen our reputation as an ‘educator of choice’.

As such, Cairns Catholic Education Services has engaged the professional services of MYP Corporation to undertake a strictly private and confidential Schools Results Survey on our behalf. The survey should take approximately 10-15 minutes and will need to be completed online between 28th August 2017 and 13th September 2017. There are no right or wrong answers and we ask that you respond honestly to each statement.

Please note that this survey will be confidential. No member of the leadership team at St Rita’s School will have access to your individual responses, and we will be provided with a summary of collated results only.

MYPCorp will undertake the following process to ensure anonymity:

1. Parents and guardians will be emailed individual survey logins.
2. Results will be collated externally.
3. A summary of collated results will be provided to the school leadership team.

On the survey start date, Monday 28th August 2017, survey instructions and a personalised login link will be emailed to all parents. You will continue to receive reminders during the survey period until you have submitted the survey. If you do not receive your survey instructions on the survey start date, please check your spam and junk email folders before contacting the school office.

Thank you for your assistance in helping to shape the future direction of St Rita’s School.

Kind regards,

Judy Billiau
Principal

CASTING THE NET

Escape to Everywhere

Given an unlimited travel ticket, where would you like to go? By the time you rattled off your bucket list, I am sure many more places would have sprung to mind and then you would have dreamed of even more. Why? Because at the base of every human heart, there is the desire to have more. Enough is rarely enough. When we get what we want, we settle for just a little while and then we hanker again. This can be good, it can be bad. It depends where it leads us.

In wanting more we can become selfish…or we can want more and that can feed our interest in other people. That’s right, we are actually made with infinite desires and we cannot fulfil them just within our own self so our desire to see more, experience more leads us to encounter others. This year’s Book Week theme points to the very real encounter we can have with other people and their lives through the medium of books. We may not make it to Afghanistan or Peru or live through war or experience disability or marry royalty but through reading we can ‘go’ to all these places and ‘enter into’ the reality of others’ lives…and as we do our hearts and minds widen and we become rich compassionate people.

And this is what we want our children to become…the type of person you would like to encounter on one of your imaginary or real trips. So start them on that journey, buy them the ticket of books.

Loving God, through story you let me experience the richness of other peoples’ lives. Help me to introduce my children through reading to the amazing lives of people throughout our world. I ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will hear me.

Sr Kym Harris osb

AROUND THE CLASSROOMS

Science Day

Wigs, large eye-glasses, name badges, lab coats….everything at school looked different! St Rita’s School was celebrating Science Day!

There were many Science activities that we did last Thursday, but my favourite was the wind-powered cars. We made the wind-powered cars out of cardboard, straws and bottle top lids. A blown-up balloon was stuck onto the car and then the air was released, and this made the car zoom forward.

Next, I went to build a water wheel. Four cups were stapled between two decorated paper plates with an axle made of plastic straws. Water was poured onto the plastic cups, which made the water wheel spin around.

The ‘Freddie the Fish’ activity taught us if you spill oil or litter in creeks you will kill the fish. The ‘Litter Bug’ activity taught us not to be a litter bug. We recycled rubbish to make arty creatures. We even made our own paper! We tore up used paper, blended it up to make pulp, poured it onto a screened frame, and dried it in the sun to make new paper to use again.

Egg heads were easy to make! We placed cotton wool inside the egg shell and decorated it to make a face. We sprinkled seeds onto the cotton ball and moistened it with water. I can’t wait until the seeds I planted start to grow!

Did you know you can turn dirty water into clean water? On Science Day we made water filters by placing rocks, sand and fabric into a bottle that had been cut in half. Dirty water was poured into the bottle and clean water came out!

It was fun performing the Science activities. I learnt new skills and interesting information about sustainability and the power of the wind, water and sun. Everyone loved Science Day at St Rita’s!

By Rhya Maxwell (Year 3) Roisin Stager (Year 6)

LIBRARY LINKS

BONZA BOOK WEEK

‘Escape to Everywhere’, the theme for Book Week 2017, reminds us what a gift the ability to read is. At any time, by simply opening the pages of a book, we can escape to far off worlds and fantasy lands. We can become firefighters or ballet dancers for a day; the possibilities are as endless as our imaginations are boundless.

I would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to our wonderful families for getting into the spirit of Book Week. Thank you for supporting your children with the planning and making of their amazing costumes, and thank you to those of you able to stay for our parade on Wednesday morning. The smiles on the children’s faces were priceless.

This year, our Book Fair will be held from Monday 16th to Thursday 19th October. The Fair is always eagerly anticipated and this year we will be show casing some wonderful gift ideas for Christmas. I will keep you updated as the date draws near.

Until next time,

Happy Reading

Mrs Lisa Calcagno
Library Assistant

SCHOOL WRITING COMPETITION

WRITE4fun

The 2017 School Writing Competition is NOW OPEN! Write4fun encourages students to read and write through these FUN competitions that are EASY to enter! School Students across Australia will battle it out for the great cash and prizes on offer. Including $1000 cash first prize with $500 awarded to their school and $500 to the winning student.

The quickest and easiest way to enter is online via the link below. Alternatively you can fill in an entry form and mail your entry to PO Box 2734, Nerang DC, QLD 4211 (one entry form per entry) or email your poem/story to enter@write4fun.net or fax to us at (07 5574 3644).

There is NO THEME! Entries can be on any topic and in any style. Entry is FREE and the closing date is 31st August 2017.

WOOLWORTHS ‘EARN & LEARN’ PROMOTION

St Rita’s School will once again participate in the Woolworths Earn & Learn program. Through this program we will be able to get new educational resources for our school and all we need you to do is shop for your groceries at any Woolworths supermarket. If your extended family and friends do not have a school to support, we encourage you to ask them to collect for St Rita’s too!

From Wednesday 26th July to Tuesday 19th September, we are collecting Woolworths Earn & Learn Stickers. You will get one Woolworths Earn & Learn Sticker for every $10 spent (excluding liquor, tobacco and gift cards). Place the Woolworths Earn & Learn Sticker onto a Woolworths Earn & Learn Sticker Sheet and bring it to the school office when it is complete.

At the end of the promotion, the school is able to order new equipment and resources from an extensive range of Maths, English, Science, Arts & Craft and P.E. equipment. Our school really does benefit from being able to purchase additional teaching resources from the Earn & Learn program. Many thanks to those families who have already sent in lots of stickers!

DATE CLAIMERS

STUDENTS OF THE WEEK

St Rita’s School congratulates those students who were awarded ‘Student of the Week’ at Assembly on Friday 8th September 2017.

BIRTHDAY CONGRATULATIONS

St Rita’s wishes Hannah Lansdown all the very best for her recent birthday. We hope you had a wonderful birthday celebration. Congratulations Hannah!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

COMMUNITY NEWS

BABINDA COMMUNITY KINDERGARTEN

PARENT EDUCATION SEMINARS

ART EXHIBITION

BASEBALL

NETBALL

Well Women’s Clinic – Babinda Hospital

(This clinic is available to Medicare eligible clients)

Wednesday 6TH September 2017
All services are provided by a specially-trained Women’s Health Nurse.
For appointments phone 4067 8200