Issue 5 - 3 April 2019

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,

Following the St Rita’s celebration of the National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence, we had a very successful visit from Police Liaison Officers Stacey Kneubuhler and Michael Sands, and Constable Kevin Perkins from the Innisfail Station. Our visitors spoke to the senior class about their differing policing roles, and the importance of respectful relationships to minimise bullying in and out of the school setting. PLO Stacey presented an engaging workshop focused on cyber safety and the appropriate use of technology by primary-aged children.

This Tuesday, 2nd April, is ‘Go Blue for Autism Day’ in Queensland, an annual event organised by Autism Queensland. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD, are enrolled in schools and access Australian Curriculum through differentiated learning programs. It is important for parents to have an understanding of ASD and its implications in educational settings. I found the information available on the Autism Queensland website, https://www.goblueforautism.com.au, to be an interesting and informative read, so I have included a short summary below.

WHAT IS AUTISM?

When someone has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), it means that their brains are wired differently to other people. However, the symptoms of ASD vary enormously from person to person.

People with ASD find it difficult to interact socially and communicate with others. As they often have difficulty understanding what other people are feeling and what interests' others, they might say the wrong thing.

They might talk for a long time about a topic they really like, as they are unaware that the topic is of no interest to others. They may not use gestures and body language, in the way that other people do. For example, they may not use eye contact and may not smile. However, their ability to communicate can vary tremendously, with some people with Autism having no or limited speech, and others having extensive vocabularies.

Although people with ASD can find it difficult to talk to people and make friends, they still have the same emotions as anybody else and love to have friends, even if it’s hard.

People with ASD also like things to happen the same way. They might take the same route to school or the shops, or line up their toys in a particular order. If something is out of place or if routines change without warning, they can get upset or worried. They may also be bothered by sudden loud sounds, bright lights or unexpected touch that do not bother others. They may become upset if someone hugs them or talks too quickly or loudly.

They often have intense interests in particular topics and may be extremely knowledgeable about their special interest areas. They can also have an amazing memory for detail.

Every person with Autism is different to another and has their own way of seeing the world, which makes them interesting and unique.

During this period of Lent, you would have heard your children talking about Project Compassion and its significance at St Rita’s. Project Compassion is the primary fundraising drive of CARITAS that links the personal prayer that we undertake during Lent with a vision of providing service to others across the world. On Tuesday, Mrs Gaul and Mrs Stone have organised our annual fund-raiser, the Caritas Café, for the St Rita’s community. I’m looking forward to sharing this event with staff, students and parents.

At the end of term, I am reminded of the many successful events we have had at our school during the past ten weeks. I sincerely thank St Rita’s families for supporting the staff in ensuring the success of this first term of 2019. We couldn’t have done it without you! Last week, we welcomed James Cook University Bachelor of Education student, Miss Ivy Dickinson, to our school. Miss Ivy will be completing her Second Year teaching practicum in our Prep/Year 1 class this semester.

I wish all St Rita’s families a happy and blessed Easter celebration. I hope you have a safe and relaxing holiday together, and I look forward to seeing bright, enthusiastic students returning to school on Tuesday, 23rd April. Especially take care on the roads if your family is going on a road trip over the break.

God’s blessings for Easter!

Regards,

Judy Billiau
Principal

2019 SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN CONFERENCE

This year Catholic Education Services is excited to announce that their annual Catholic Education Services Safeguarding Children Conference to be held on Saturday 27th April at the Pullman Cairns International. The theme this year is ‘Stronger Communities, Safer Children’ and the Keynote Speaker is Professor Daryl Higgins, Director of the Institute of Child Protection Studies at the Australian Catholic University.

Staff will be attending this conference, and I would also encourage any interested parents to join us for this extremely worthwhile conference.

Please note that there is no registration cost but places are limited. Conference information and registration details can be accessed via the conference website:

APRE THOUGHTS

Dear Parents,

‘LOAF’ for LENT

Pope Francis’ Message for Lent has a clear focus on the renewal of all creation: ‘‘May our Lent this year be a journey … bringing the hope of Christ also to creation, so that it may be “set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). Let us not allow this season of grace to pass in vain!’ And while many Christians will observe the tradition of ‘giving something up for Lent’ by way of fasting from food, have you ever wondered how you can lessen your environmental impact of food production, waste and transport and the production of greenhouse gases?

There is a UK organisation, known as the Green Christian movement, which encourages consumers to think LOAF, that is: Local, Organic, Animal Friendly and Fair trade. Before purchasing food items, and even when making decisions about which Easter eggs are the best choice for your family from this point forward, you might consider the following in order to live out our Catholic Social Teaching of Stewardship of the Earth more fully.

“The challenge is to obtain and consume food sourced as locally as possible, grown and reared as sustainably and chemical-free as possible, paying due attention to animal welfare and biodiversity, and ensuring fair relationships between producers and consumers. The decisions we make about our food have far-reaching effects, influencing the way food is produced and animals are treated. LOAF can raise questions about overexploitation of soil and people, and industrial agriculture’s dependence on oil for transport, fertilisers and packaging. The intention is not only to be reflective but to be practical; hopefully throughout this Lent we will not simply think LOAF but live LOAF.”

CARITAS CAFÉ

CARITAS Café is an annual event at St Rita’s which is highly anticipated. Lovingly prepared by the Year 5 and 6 students through the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program, and under the tutelage of Mrs Stone, a simply delicious meal of vegetarian fried rice and home-made lemonade is able to be enjoyed by all for a small donation of $5. All monies raised from CARITAS Café, Pancake Day and other miscellaneous donations are donated to Project Compassion to assist them in implementing various outreach programs, both domestically and internationally, such as in Michaela’s story:

Twenty-one year-old Michaela is helping to build a social enterprise for people with chronic illnesses at The Purple House in Alice Springs. The young Alywarr woman cares for patients as they receive dialysis and helps them to feel at home and remain hopeful during treatment. Patients in turn pass on traditional knowledge to Michaela.

The program is run by the Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation, with support from Caritas Australia.

First Australians are twice as likely to experience chronic kidney disease, and four times more likely to die from it than other Australians*.

With the help of staff like Michaela, the Aboriginal-controlled service gives patients the opportunity to stay connected with their culture. They do this through traditional healing practices and income-generating activities, such as making bush balms and soaps.

Profits are invested back into supporting patients receiving remote care and help to get people on dialysis back on country.

Thank you for your efforts towards making a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.

HOLY WEEK LITURGY

In the Church’s Liturgical Calendar, we are drawing closer to the celebration of Easter - the pinnacle event upon which our Catholic faith is based. The week preceding Easter is known as ‘Holy Week’ where we remember the events leading up to the death and resurrection of Christ, such as: Palm Sunday, Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples, the Passion of Christ and his Resurrection. On Friday afternoon, beginning at 12:30pm, staff, students and parishioners of St Rita’s will celebrate together in St Rita’s Church with a Holy Week Liturgy. Please feel most welcome to join us.

Blessings to our families and friends as we move into the Easter holiday break. May I extend wishes for many happy family moments together, safe travel and personal rejuvenation in preparation for Term Two.

Blessings,
Maureen Gaul
Assistant Principal (Religious Education)

CURRICULUM CORNER

Reading is a huge part of the English curriculum and it is much more than decoding the written word. Classroom teachers often explain to parents that although decoding skills are solid, the child is not necessarily comprehending the text adequately. “The process of comprehending texts involves much more than the ability to decode words”. In the classroom, teachers specifically plan to develop effective comprehension skills in readers. How do they do this?

Why Teach Strategies?

Effective teachers have an understanding of how reading occurs and are able to plan learning experiences and instruction that support students to become more successful readers. Teachers play an important role in ensuring that all students build up a bank of knowledge that can be accessed during the reading process. Teachers often work tirelessly to ensure that students have knowledge of:

• a growing list of high frequency words
• graphophonic elements
• grammatical features of the English language
• text structures and organisation
• topics and concepts
• cultural and world matters

One of the most crucial elements of supporting reading development is the explicit teaching of reading strategies so readers are able to access their prior knowledge during reading. The process of comprehending texts involves much more than the ability to decode words. A reader must actively integrate a range of strategies, including both word identification and comprehension strategies to draw upon all available knowledge in the form of cues. Efficient readers have often automated many of these reading strategies so many occur subconsciously.

The teaching of comprehension and word identification strategies is essential. Explicit demonstrations, on-going scaffolding and opportunities to practise and apply reading strategies will support all readers to identify unknown words, prepare for, monitor and adjust their reading.

What Are the Strategies?

Many teachers have attempted to catalogue a list of the strategies that readers use as they comprehend text. This is a challenging task as the reading process is silent and motionless and involves cognitive strategies that are often not observable.

Reading research over the past two decades has provided insights into the identification of the processes most commonly used by skilled or efficient readers. Although educators will list and categorise strategies in different ways, most lists contain similar elements. The common element in all work is the focus on what ‘good readers’ do as they identify words and comprehend text. This focus provides a valid framework for determining the strategies to introduce to students.

Efficient readers are active as they read, simultaneously using a range of processes to identify unknown words and comprehend text. These may include a combination of any of the following processes.

• Clarifying the goal of reading the text (purpose)
• Skimming or looking through a text before reading
• Making predictions about what might be presented next in the text
• Refining predictions as the text is read
• Making connections to what is already known
• Determining which information is the most important in the text
• Re-reading any information considered important or difficult to understand
• Reading on when searching for some specific information
• Making inferences about information not explicitly stated in the text
• Synthesising information in the text to summarise and monitor understanding
• Generating questions about the text
• Creating images from what is read
• Paraphrasing the information read
• Seeking clarification when meaning is lost.

The list of behaviours is not an exhaustive one, but certainly provides useful information about what is important in reading. As a result of the analysis of these behaviours, a list of reading strategies has been compiled. The following strategies are not hierarchical or phase specific. In any reading event a number of reading strategies will be used simultaneously to aid comprehension and/or to identify unknown words.

A List of Reading Strategies

• Predicting
• Connecting
• Comparing
• Inferring
• Synthesising
• Creating Images
• Self-questioning
• Skimming
• Scanning
• Determining Importance
• Summarising and Paraphrasing
• Re-reading
• Reading On
• Adjusting Reading Rate
• Sounding Out
• Chunking
• Using Analogy
• Consulting a Reference

Source: ‘First Steps’ Reading Resource Book, Department of Education, Western Australia, 2013, pp 112 - 114

SPORTS REPORT

The inclement weather held off just long enough for the Small Schools Athletics Carnival to go ahead last Wednesday. Mirriwinni State School did a tremendous job in hosting the event, with five local schools in attendance. What a fun and exciting day for the adults and children alike, with its war cries, field and track events, novelty items and the ‘Chicken Run’. The staff-parent relays and toddler races truly made this carnival a day for the whole family to enjoy!

At the end of the carnival, Bartle Frere State School was awarded the Aggregate Trophy. St Rita’s Babinda and Bellenden Ker tied for second place, with Mirriwinni coming in third and McDonnell Creek in fourth placing. St Rita’s staff was very proud of the exceptional level of effort and enthusiasm demonstrated by the students at the competition. Our competitors represented the school very well in many events, with the stronger students being awarded Age Champion medals.

Once again, our school would like to extend a huge thank you to the staff at Mirriwinni State School for hosting such a well-organised athletics carnival. Our thanks also go to Mr Richardson, the Cluster Schools Sports Coordinator, and to all St Rita’s parents who came along to support the children. Thank you everyone from St Rita’s!

On the previous Monday, the Combined Schools Cross Country was held at Bill Wakeham Park. This event is typically one of the hardest races to compete in, as eligible children run the longer distance of either 2km or 3km. Congratulations to Kylee Hansen, Elijah Geary and Cooder Postic, who all participated with excellent stamina.

A mighty effort was also given at the 800 metres races held last Tuesday, where both Hallie Lansdown and Elijah Geary received second placing for their age groups. Cooder Postic, Eva Masina and Latoya Ambrum also competed in this event, which was part of the athletics carnival.

This week, our final sessions of tennis lessons will be delivered by Mr Nigel Liddle in the Sporting Schools Tennis Program. This term, Nigel has taught the basic elements of strokes and footwork used to play tennis, as well as the improvement and physical fitness and conditioning of our students being improved.

Thank you Nigel for delivering fun and engaging lessons that the students looked forward to each week!

Mrs Maryjane Masina
Sports Coordinator

SCHOOL COUNSELLOR

Parenting Digital Natives

‘Digital native’ is the term for the rising generation of young people who have access to information technology from birth. Parenting them to use this technology responsibly and in moderation is a challenge to today’s parents that no previous generation of parents has had to face. Our own experience of being parented has a significant influence on how we parent our children. How do parents parent in this ‘digital age’ without a template from previous generations?

The principles of self responsibility and moderation can inform parents and provide direction to ensure their young people use technology morally while maintaining a balanced and healthy lifestyle. The parental role is to monitor and set limits on time spent on social networking sites, texting, gaming, ‘youtube’, etc, to maintain healthy sleep, nutrition and regular exercise. It is critical that parents have regular and ongoing discussions with young people on the moral and ethical use of technology – including exposure to inappropriate material and cyber bullying.

The overuse of technology is impacting on the quality and quantity of young people’s sleep with serious implications for mental and physical health and wellbeing. It is also a challenge for educators with increasing numbers of students presenting with chronic tiredness and cognitive fatigue in the classroom. Overuse of screen technology is also contributing to school refusal and chronic school absenteeism. Screen devices should be kept outside of bedrooms.

Parents can use technology to support them in their parenting role. The internet provides access to support and information for parents. The following brief list includes some examples.

• Parent line – www.parentline.com.au (Tip Sheets – Social Networking Safety and more)
• ACMA resources – www.cybersmart.gov.au (mob. safety, sexting, offensive content, cyberbullying, social networking)
• eheadspace – www.eheadspace.org.au (fact sheets, research, videos, information for parents and young people)
• www.esafety.gov.au
• Internet service providers have apps for parents to monitor and limit access and time spent on screen devices – check their websites
• www.thinkuknow.org.au

A google search can provide even more resources and information.

Larissa Juniper
School Counsellor

LIBRARY LINKS

Wall of Happiness

20th of March was a very special day; International Day of Happiness. What a great thing to celebrate! I thought it might be a nice idea to have all our wonderful St Rita’s kids share one thing that makes them happy (and our awesome staff too!). I have decorated our main display board in the library, showcasing our responses. It was a given that everyone’s family & friends make them happy, so we dug a little deeper and got to know something new about each of us. What FUN!

While researching some ‘happy’ books recently, I came across a lovely idea to remind us of just how many moments bring us happiness each day; a Happiness Jar. Begin with a jar of your choosing. Every time something good happens (it may be something small that brings a smile to your face), write it on a piece of paper and slip it into your jar. On December 31st, empty your jar and recall all the opportunities for happiness given to you throughout the year. Definitely something worth celebrating.

Hoping the remainder of Term 1, and the upcoming holidays, bring each of you many opportunities for happiness.

Until Term 2, happy reading.

Lisa Calcagno
Library Assistant

DATE CLAIMERS

STUDENTS OF THE WEEK

St Rita’s School congratulates those students who were awarded ‘Student of the Week’ at Assembly on Friday 29th March 2019.

BIRTHDAY CONGRATULATIONS

St Rita’s wishes Katara Ambrum and Maddisyn Masina all the very best for their recently celebrated birthdays. We hope you had wonderful birthday celebrations Katara and Maddisyn!

ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

We congratulate Elijah Geary (Year 4) who successfully contributed to the Cairns Post ‘Inspire’ feature on Tuesday 26th March 2019. Elijah wrote an interesting article on competing in the recent Combined Schools Cross Country event. Well done Elijah!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

COMMUNITY NEWS

IMPORTANT PARENT NOTICE

Student Care Insurance

Has your child had an accident or injury at school or in a school related activity such as inter-school sport or a school camp? If the answer is yes you may be entitled to claim for expenses under Catholic Education’s Student Care Insurance. It covers expenses such as medical costs (where the law allows), emergency transport, travel, home tuition and school fee relief.

For further information click the following link:

Queensland Dental Health

P & F NEWS

Turn Your Trash into Cash!

The P & F is contributing to the St Rita’s sustainability initiative by organising the collection of recyclable containers that earn 10c upon return to Cash 4 Containers FNQ. Although we are yet to receive our collection bins, the school is keen for parents to begin collecting at home.

Please view the poster in this newsletter to show which specific containers will incur the 10c refund. Although it seems like an insignificant amount paid for each container, it ‘all adds up’ if all families start collecting and sending in their containers. We thank you for your interest and support of this fundraising activity!

Maryjane Masina
P & F Secretary