St Anthony's School Term 4 Week 2 2022
Principal's Report
Welcome to Term Four! I hope that everyone in our community managed to find some time for family, rest and recreation over the recent term break. We look forward to journeying with you across our shortest term of the school year.
In almost 25 years working in schools, I have seen some consistencies in Term Four. It is a time of great anticipation and excitement as we prepare for endings and new beginnings, none more important than the preparation for Christmas. Term Four can be chaotic but at the same time joyous. Most recognisable, however, is that the final term appears to develop its own momentum and come to a conclusion very rapidly. I wish all in our community well for Term Four as – true to our school vision – we aspire to be like Christ, caring for each other.
Farewell Sr Maria
It is with great sadness on November 1st that we will farewell our beautiful Sr Maria from her official role as Parish Co-ordinator of St Anthony’s.
I have worked with Sr Maria now during my 5 years at St Anthony’s and she has been a tremendous and very positive support for me, our students and staff. Her passion for this community – both parish and school has been inspirational. She has provided a valuable connection to our Presentation charism and has been a wealth of knowledge in sharing the story and values of Nano Nagle. Sr Maria espouses the qualities of Nano Nagle, always extending the hand of kindness, compassion and care. She has been the driving force behind the parish sacramental program and has been a very active presence in our school community, taking time to pop over to school just to say hello, come to assemblies, PPF gatherings or just to drop off a box of chocolates at the end of term for the staff to share. On behalf of our school community, thank-you Sr Maria for your selfless dedication to the parish and school and keeping that connection as very much a strong and vibrant one!
We will hold a ceremony to formally farewell Sr Maria to acknowledge and thank her for her valued contribution to our community in the coming weeks.
Christmas Concert and Fair
It is only 6 weeks until our annual Christmas Concert and Fair on Thursday, 24th November from 5.30 – 8.00pm. All students will be performing a song under the big tree (weather permitting).
All classes will be co-ordinating a market stall.
Prep – Gourmet donuts
Yr 1 - Toy raffle (all Yr 1 students to donate a toy)
Yr 2 - Glow sticks
Yr 3 - Lolly bags
Yr 2/3 - Face painting/balloons
Yr 4/5 - Fairy Floss
Yr 4 - Slot cars
Yr 6 - Drinks
Yr 5/6 - Homemade art and craft
5 half hams to be raffled.
Food vans on site will be: hot chips and dagwood dogs, coffee and frappes, hot spud van, dippin dots ice-cream.
Santa will also make an appearance and there will be a jumping castle for the kids.
We have our next PPF gathering on Tuesday, 18th October at 6.30pm in the staffroom. – 1 month out to finalise the organisation. Feel free to come along!! Keep an eye out also for correspondence regarding helping on your class stall for a short time on the night. If we all help, we can all enjoy the fair!!
2023 Classes
This is an excerpt from our last newsletter of the term, as a reminder that any considerations for classes in 2023 must be lodged by tomorrow.
"If you have a sound educational reason for a particular placement that you feel should be considered during the class placements process, I invite you to forward this consideration to myself via email or in writing to louise.pfingst@twb.catholic.edu.au and mark the correspondence Attention Principal – Class Lists 2023. Please note that we will not accept any requests for a particular teacher as all teachers in our community are proficient at differentiating the curriculum, recognising a variety of learning styles and building strong relationships with students. All requests must be made by Friday 14th October.
Despite the very involved process of developing final class lists, it is impossible given the number of potential combinations, to arrive at classes which will be most preferred by every student or parent. It is also impossible and professionally inappropriate, due to privacy, for parents to be consulted during this process. It is important that all parties appreciate the multiple factors which influence the final groupings and have trust in our ability to make good decisions for the benefit of all students.
We are unsure yet of our definite class compositions for 2023 but will inform our school community once these are finalised. This will not be until next term".
Notification of 2023 individual class allocations will come out via the Sentral Portal towards the end of Term 4.
Out of respect to a child’s current teacher and the procedure for establishing class configurations, if after publication there is an issue of significant concern, parents should contact the school office to speak with myself who gives final approval to each class. Class teachers should not be approached regarding requests, concerns or grievances. This puts them in an uncomfortable and professionally inappropriate position.
Year 6 Travellers
From all accounts, our Year 6 students are having an absolute ball on their school trip to Tangalooma Island. What an amazing experience and lots of firsts for many of the students!
A special thank you to Mrs Winters, Mrs Nolan and Mrs Doherty who have accompanied these students. There is a huge level of responsibility when taking other people’s children on any kind of excusion. and I know these students are in the very best of care. Thanks ladies!!
We will post on the portal and on Facebook when we have an estimated time of arrival on Friday evening.
Until next newsletter……God Bless
Louise
APRE News.....
Welcome back to Term 4! It is always lovely when we return to hear the stories of the children’s holiday exploits. The exuberance of children and their ability to find the awe and wonder in the ordinary is so good for the soul. In the busyness of Term 4 it can feel like the routine of school and family life can speed along at a frantic pace and sometimes it is hard to keep the right head space for appreciation, however, the approach of children to reflect with a sense of gratitude and excitement, find the positive and share their enthusiasm is a great reminder of how the ‘ordinary’ is always worth celebrating. Maintaining our significant relationships and routines are always key to keeping our resilience high as the end of the year approaches and teachers will strive to do this in classrooms.
St Anthony’s Way
This term I would like to take some time to unpack the ‘Love of Others’ pathway from the St Anthony’s Way. There are two pathways along the St Anthony’s Way: love of learning and love of others. When the staff worked together to bring to life our mission and vision as a school in this contemporary time, we looked to the past to guide this work. The touchstones in the pathway reflect the presentation values that have prevailed in our school since its beginning. 'Be Inclusive' is the first touchstone along the love of others pathway and is the most fundamental premise of our school community. When unpacking this touchstone with students they can easily discuss and explain the concept of including others. The deeper work begins when students realise that being inclusive refers to ALL people in the community, not just those who they like, play with and are drawn to.
Developing and encouraging in students the ability to accept difference without judgement is not always easy, however we believe it is vital to our community and for their lifelong journey. In my role I am often tasked with the job of facilitating restorative conversations between students when friendships break down or are in jeopardy. By enabling students to unpack their feelings about other’s actions together they can easily see that what unites them, their common humanity, is far greater than what divides them. Sometimes this may lead to a newfound friendship, other times it leads to students understanding the need to be respectful even if their differences feel too large to overcome. Teaching the social skills of how to join games and initiate interactions is important for all students. However, being inclusive means we also strive to develop in students the ability to look for those who are ‘left out’ and develop ways to include these students.
Grandparents Day
Next Thursday we are looking forward to welcoming Grandparents to the school for the morning. This is always a highlight in our school calendar for all students, regardless of if their Grandparent/s can attend! We always strive to ensure all students feel a part of the experience and ALWAYS find grandparents who are more than willing to ‘adopt’ an extra grandchild for the day! Don’t forget to RSVP to the invite found in the portal.
Middle Leader
As Term 4 begins, teachers are designing their final units of work to consolidate the learning for the year so far and challenge students with the last pieces of the puzzle for that year level curriculum. Being the final term of the year, plans are in place to gauge student progression with standardized tests and mandated assessments of the Toowoomba Catholic Schools. The Reading Improvement Strategy that has been in place since 2018 within our system details a clear assessment and monitoring program. By the end of Week 6 students will have been assessed with rigorous reading assessments and teachers will determine their progress comparative to all students within our diocese and against the benchmarks set by this program. The implementation of this approach has been very successful, as evidenced by the NAPLAN results in reading that measure comparative progress from year to year, as well as against other systems and diocese in Queensland. This year our Year 5 students have individually performed very well in this domain, which is a testament to their engagement across the years in this approach and the consistent work of their teachers.
Without doubt, the best way you can support students from home is to read with them every night! The best way to improve a skill, is to practise! During the Reading Presentation I delivered last term at the PPF information night, we looked at the different components of learning to read. One of those very important components is fluency. Fluency refers to an individual’s ability to read with speed and accuracy. For a student an easy encourager is to ask them to make their reading sound like talking, not like a robot! Students who read word by word (like a robot) without phrasing or intonation can often mean they are working extra hard to decode each and every word, or maybe they have developed a habit of reading like this. Either way they often need some support by an adult to work on this skill. In the very early years supporting students to recognize their sight words quickly can then help free up space in their brains to only have to decode an unfamiliar word. For students who are a little further along, asking students to copy your phrasing can help, for example you read the line, they repeat it. Choral reading can also help as you read the words together with them trying to match your pace and expression.
Ultimately reading at home should not just be about practice, but also about building a love of reading. Home readers are often small books that practise a particular skill, however, encouraging students to look for books that have topics that interest them and engaging features to borrow from the library or purchase to have in the home can often be a great motivator for students to pursue a reading habit. Happy reading!
Prep SR & TF
“The beautiful thing about education is nobody can take it away from you”-B.B King
And just like that it’s Week 2 Term 4!!!!! It’s hard to believe we are in our final term of Prep. What an extraordinary year it has been indeed.
The children have returned with eagerness and a bounce in their step. We are excited to dive into learning, especially with our Letter Writing English Unit. We are enjoying listening to a variety of stories from authors like Jackie French and we are learning about the narrative structure. We are even starting to think that one day we too could become an author!
We are also very excited about how new play area- a Post Office, where we will be able to learn how to write postcards and letters. Prep TF would like to thank Mrs Katie for making a fabulous Post Office Box for us.
Just a couple of upcoming dates to keep in mind. Thursday Week Three is Grandparents Day and we will be singing a song in the Church as part of that special day. Grandparents are encouraged to come to the Liturgy Service starting at 9am and then we visit our Prep classrooms before enjoying a Morning Tea picnic out on the oval.
Friday Week Three is Crazy Sock Day and students can wear Crazy Socks on that Friday.
Take care and God Bless.
Yours in learning,
Tracey and Siobhan and Katie and Ang.
Yr 1 ED & Yr 1 KS
We hope everyone had a great holiday break. This term is always very busy! In English we will be looking closely at the book "The Day the Crayons Quit." This will inform our writing for this term. In Maths we are delving into subtraction and we will be having a term of mostly revision and extending skills through investigations.
A reminder that Library is on a Monday. Some students are not borrowing frequently and this is one of our main homework requirements to regularly borrow books for home reading.
Our term started with some great excitment with a follow up visit from the fire fighters. This was a valuable visit and also fun as the students got to have a go at the fire hose!
Emma and Kathy
Yr 2 BH
We have begun the new term by welcoming Mr Micheal Gillespie to our class. Mr Gillespie is studying to be a teacher and is currently in 2nd year at USQ. We hope his stay with us is enjoyable and of great benefit to his career!
Homework has begun again this week. As always, the activities can be found on Teams. Paper copies are sent home on Mondays for those who need them. Each week your child is asked to practise some of the skills we have been learning in class. It is always our spelling words and this term, we are learning our tables ‘off by heart’. Please listen to your child read for a minimum of 10 minutes each night. Thank you.
Remember to bring Library Books and home readers back each Tuesday so they can be swapped out for new books.
Here’s to a productive term,
Mrs Hair
“Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong” -Unknown
Yr 2/3 VN
Welcome to Term 4! Blows my mind that we are already at the end of the year. This term is sure to be very action packed with lots of learning taking place. There will be an overview of our learning sent home on the Portal this week- keep an eye out for it. I would recommend that you read this and at the minimum keep what we are learning in the back of your mind so you can engage in conversation with your children about their learning. Simply asking something like ‘what have you learnt about heat so far this term?’ and allow your students to share their knowledge with you. Spelling is another part of the term overview that I would check on regularly. We follow this plan very closely and you will then know which sounds/blends we are learning that week and we also provide practice words that you could discuss or practise with your child. Ask them what the word means, put it in a sentence, spell it, find the syllables etc.
In Science this week, we conducted a very simple experiment in which we placed food colouring into a container of hot water and a container of cold water. We observed what happened and concluded that the heat energy in the hot water made the molecules move faster, which made the food colouring move faster too. The cold water had less heat energy, so the molecules would have been slower moving, which made the food colouring move slower too. Simple, yet very effective in learning about the effect of heat energy.
Yr 3 RM
Welcome back. As always, Term 4 is shaping up to be very busy. In English we have been learning about poetic devices - alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia. In Maths we have been working with constructing and interpreting graphs. We have used technology to create digital graphs. In HASS we are learning that consequences can be both positive and negative. When we first discussed this, it was interesting to note that the children only thought that consequences could be negative. In Religion, we are learning about taking care of the poor. Again, we had a misconception "poor" meant to have no money. We have discussed that "poor" can simply mean that you are without something - friends, love, clothes etc.
Yr 4 SC
All members of 4SC have come back to school ready to learn. We welcome Joey to our classroom family. It has been interesting to investigate how life in 18th Century Britain was very different to the life we live today. In Science we are learning about the different types of forces that impact movement. We are working on using descriptive language to create a range of different forms of poetry and developing an understanding of how to use poetic devices in our poems. We look forward to a term full of learning and fun. God Bless. Mrs C
Yr 4/5 PK
We have had a great start to Term 4 in 4/5PK. It is certainly a fast-paced term that we have ahead of us. We have been exploring different multiplication and division strategies to start our term off. We are also building our speed, accuracy, and fluency. So much growth has been seen amongst everyone within this area of mathematics. This week, we began talking about positive attitudes to bring to our learning. We have spoken about being ‘above the line’ and ‘below the line’. Above the line sees us being responsible, accountable, and showing ownership. Below the line is where we don’t want to be. Being below the line shows us making excuses, blaming others and denying our actions. It great to see us focusing on our ‘above the line’ attitudes. Our library day has changed from Tuesday to Thursday. This information is noted on our homework sheet along with any other reminders that students will require for the week ahead. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me. We are looking forward to our term ahead.
Until Next time,
4/5 PK.
Yr 5/6 TN
I do hope that everyone enjoyed and recharged over the holidays. September holidays are always a favourite of mine as Toowoomba is truly a beautiful place in all its flowery goodness.
The students have come back to school and jumped straight into our daily routines and new units of work. I look forward to sharing with you all the exciting things we will be doing this term over the coming week.
This term is going to very busy and full of exciting things, so I do encourage you to check the Portal and support your child in checking our class calendar which is accessible through Teams.
As you are aware, this week I am on camp with our Year 6 students and I am very proud of how well the Year 5 students were getting themselves orgainsed before I left, to step in and complete the jobs around the school that the Year 6 students look after.
Until Next Time,
Mrs Terri-An Nolan
Yr 6 LW
Dear Year Sixes,
We are here, at the beginning of a new term, with dreams, desires, challenges, opportunities and the ability to successfully deal with it all. So give this term a solid, meaningful, positive purpose and claim the great value it offers.
Choose to make some progress in a direction you desire. Instead of merely letting time pass, put life and love, effort and commitment into every day.
Think of what a great opportunity you have with each day that comes your way. You have the opportunity to make a difference, to truly change your world and to live your precious life in new and joyful ways.
Look back and recall the best day you’ve ever experienced and make the choice to make this one and every subsequent one of this term, even better. The quality of each day depends on what you put into it, so start right now to put your best into each day that you have.
Instead of merely wishing for what could be, or complaining about what has been, you can do something much more powerful. You can act; right here and now, and significantly increase the quality of your life experience.
Today is happening, so take an active and positively supportive role. Feel your authentic purpose, live this and every day with that purpose, and make it the best term yet.
- With thanks to Ralph Marston
Mary's Reading Warriors
Mary's reading Warriors are making sure that they are wearing their glasses for reading. Congratulations to all!
State Athletics
We would like to congratulate Cedar on an outstanding performance at the State Athletics Carnival representing the Darling Downs this week. Cedar came 9th in the state for 800m and 14th for 1500m.Well done Cedar!
Jen Fenn - Guidance Counsellor
St Anthony's Outside School Hours Care
Our Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) services provide the opportunity for children to grow and develop their social skills in a leisure based environment nurtured by our Catholic ethos.
The services offer a combination of before school, after school, Pupil Free days and vacation care led by a team of qualified educators. Our educators work with all children to create fun and recreational experiences so that a child’s wellbeing, learning and personal development are a priority. The services provide a variety of indoor and outdoor activities to support the diverse interests of all children.
St Anthony's OSHC Toowoomba
Phone: 0458 937 154 or 0458 897 293
Email: ANTcare@tckc.qld.edu.au
