St Anthony's School - Term 2 Week 6 2021
Principal's News.....
Welcome to our Week 6 newsletter. Thank you to everyone who came along to our celebration of being Under 8 this morning. It was smiles all around and how wonderful was it to witness children just being able to play and explore!
Next week we begin our first phase of interviews for our 2022 Prep students. If you know of anyone considering St Anthony's for their child's education or you have a child who is turning 5 on or before June 30, 2022 please complete an enrolment form and we can schedule an interview.
We will cap our intake at 50 students.
Celebrating 200 Years…….
This week, Catholic Education is celebrating 200 years in Australia, marking the bicentenary of the first Catholic school established in Parramatta in October 1820.
The first Catholic school in Australia was founded in October 1820 by Irish Catholic priest Fr John Therry and run by convict and lay person George Marley. The school, which Catholic historians believe was in Hunter Street, Parramatta, taught 31 students. By 1833, there were 10 Catholic schools in the colony.
Over 200 years, Catholic schools have grown to become the largest provider of schooling in Australia (outside government) with one in five school age students attending a Catholic school.
This represents 777,000 students in 1,755 schools across the country and employing over 100,000 teachers and staff.
Nearly 40 per cent of Catholic schools are located outside of metropolitan cities in regional, rural and remote communities.
On Monday morning with Huey Geran, Mackenzie Rub and Taylor Brackstone, I attended a Diocesan mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral with representatives from many of our Diocesan schools to celebrate such a momentous occasion. This mass was held concurrently around our nation.
On Monday morning parade I asked the students what they considered to be the best part of being educated in a catholic school and some of the responses included:
- We can read the bible
- We can pray together
- We can go to the church to celebrate
- We can show symbols of our faith, like the cross and the Nano Nagel lantern.
- We have a prayer space in our classrooms
- We can walk in the footsteps of Jesus
All classes participated in a ‘Celebration of 200 Years’ TEAMS Liturgy on Monday.
Parent Portal
Just a reminder to all parents that all communication is now coming via our parent portal. It is important that parents check this portal once a day for any new information.
An update of the week ahead is posted to the portal each Sunday.
The portal is accessed via a unique code/key that has been sent to all parents.
You can also download the Sentral app via the app store and then receive notifications on your smart phone.
The introduction of the portal came from feedback received from parents in our SRIP last year that we had too many platforms to access information.
St Anthony’s Superstars
Congratulations to all our participants and place getters, who were recently involved in various performances at the Toowoomba Eisteddfod.
Special mention goes to the following students:
Poem in Pairs
Year 6 Audrey Below and Clovelly Leonard– Highly Commended
Year 4 Jenna Varley and Bailey Rub – Highly Commended
Duet
Year 6 Audrey Below and Isabelle Jones – 2nd
Solo Singers
Year 5 Olivia Sheward – 2nd
Year 6 Isabelle Jones – 3rd.
Year 3 and Under – Ivy Schick – 2nd
Florence Cook – Highly Commended
Charlotte Sheward – Highly Commended
A massive thank-you to Mrs Spalding for her passion, dedication and encouragement of these students and instilling such a passion for the arts!
Until next newsletter......God Bless!
Louise
louise.pfingst@twb.catholic.edu.au
APRE News.....
Sacramental Program
We continue to keep in our prayers Sharna Mason, Caiden Smith, Christian Magat, Puondak Mawien, Xavier Cullen, Jimmy O’Neill, Libbie Everitt , Brax Lugg and Sidney Geran who are preparing for their Confirmation next Wednesday the 2nd of June. The following weekends on the 5th and 6th of June and 12th and 13th of June they will make their first Communion. Parish Family Mass falls on the 6th of June and students from 6LW and 3RM will coordinate the Sunday 8.30am mass. It would be lovely to see students and families from the school attending this mass to support these students as well as join our Parish community in the celebration.
Reconciliation Week
This week 2OT led our prayer assembly reflecting upon National Reconciliation week. The goal of the reconciliation movement is for a just, equitable and reconciled country. This year’s theme for the week is Reconciliation takes action, it is not just a word. 2OT encouraged the school community to consider how to move from safe to brave on issues effecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, turning awareness into action. For more information on how you can do the same; please follow the link to consider 20 Actions for Reconciliation. https://nrw.reconciliation.org.au/actions-for-reconciliation/
katie.hauser@twb.catholic.edu.au
Middle Leader News
What makes one student achieve more than another? This age-old question often is answered in a debate concerning the dynamics between a child’s personality and life experiences. Our role as a school is to ensure we are working our hardest to level the playing field for all students. We cannot change a child’s circumstance or personality, however we can have expectations around how that child will engage with our school culture, to reach their fullest potential and how we ‘light a pathway for life’.
In working to define the ‘St Anthony’s Way’ that will articulate this culture, teachers have begun some reflective work around our school’s pillar of a ‘Love of Learning’. We profess that this is a pillar we strive towards, however we want to be clear around what this looks like for ALL children and staff regardless of their circumstances? The dispositions we have concluded that reflect a love of learning at St Anthony’s are to:
- Be engaged
- Be curious
- Be a communicator
- Be persistent
- Be proud
katie.hauser@twb.catholic.edu.au
Prep KJ & SJ
We are now halfway through Term 2 and all students have been putting in a great effort with their subjects. Students have been showing exceptional behaviour at the fortnightly assemblies this term, which makes all of us very proud of them.
Throughout the past two weeks in mathematics students have been engaging in measurement, weight, volume and capacity. With this, students have been comparing height, weight and volume of containers. Students have been arranging objects from smallest to tallest, lightest to heaviest and empty to full. Students have been using hands on materials to engage in a real-world experience with these topics. It is wonderful to see students interested and excited to learn new topics in mathematics.
In religion this term students have been focusing on reading and learning about stories from the Old Testament. These stories are Creation, Noah, Joseph and David. We have also been focusing on the importance of prayer and how, why, when and where we can pray. Later this term, we celebrate St Anthony’s Day. We will learn about St Anthony and attend a special Mass.
We are still seeing students with no hats or unnamed items of clothing. Please send your child with a school hat and named school uniform jumpers and jackets. Thank you.
kylie.jones@twb.catholic.edu.au
samantha.jaeger@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 1 HS
It has been a busy couple of weeks in 1HS. We have celebrated 200 years of Catholic Education, as well as recognizing Reconciliation week and under 8’s day! Next week we begin assessment for our Australian Animals Information text. This is closely linked to our Science Unit – Living and Non-Living. If you have any shoe boxes lying around we would love if you could send them in for our habitat creations in weeks 9-10. Thanks in advance.
holly.sheehan@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 1 RW
We have passed halfway! Students have been working really hard in all areas. We are working hard in maths to collect and display data in picture and bar graphs. In English we are still exploring the difference between fiction and nonfiction and writing our own information report on an Australian animal. We have started our new science unit which explores the concept of living and nonliving and topics such as habitats and what animals and plants need to survive. I have said to the students that I would really like to see evidence of them reading and doing sight words at home. Students could bring in the little reading log booklet I handed out at the start of the year, or you can email me to let me know that they are reading at home. I can really see the growth of the students who are reading and doing their sight words at home are making. I understand that life gets busy but it's very important that reading is a priority. A reminder that library is on Tuesdays and students will be bringing home different levelled readers after testing last week.
rebecca.white@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 2 OT
We have been very busy finalising things to begin Semester 1 assessment and reporting. Our narrative writing is taking shape, we have some talented little writers in 2OT. In Math we have learned about money, the calendar, flips, slides and turns and now we are moving onto multiplication. The class is super excited for the Under 8’s Day!! Congratulations to our last week's students of the week Penny and Seth! This week, our superstars are Archie and Jaxson!
ory.tattam@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 2/3 VN
Welcome to Week 6. We have been busily learning about addition and subtraction and different strategies to assist us become faster at these sums. Year 2s are also finding different coin combinations to make set amounts and Year 3s are learning change to 5c. We are beginning to look at multiplication as repeated addition and will be focusing on our 0, 1, 2 and 5 times tables. In English we are learning about the narrative genre and this week have begun looking at how to describe a character in a narrative. Also, in English we are learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives, noun pointers and adverbs. We have been doing a dictation sentence every day and students apply their knowledge of sentence structure and spelling to dictate a sentence and then identify the parts of speech.
vicki.nauschutz@twb.catholic.edu.au
emma.daniells@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 3 RM
rebecca.more@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 4 SC
Year 4 have been working very hard over the past fortnight, with many projects and topics on the go. We have been learning new routines and tasks to develop independence and persistence in learning. Overall, the sudents are doing a fabulous job! We have been working on a number of the day task after we enter the room each morning – this has helped us settle into our day of learning. Many of the cohort have become very proficient very quickly and are taking some of the trickier elements such as rounding off without a worry … well done … keep up the good work peeps!
We have started our “project” on South America or Africa. Most of this work will be completed at school but there may be colouring of maps or flags that may need to be completed at home. All research and information gathering will be conducted during our lessons. Quite a few of our class attended a Western Downs Cricket Day today. Hope you all had a great day!
Thanks for reading … God Bless …!
Kathy Spencer
kathleen.spencer@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 4/5 RS
Science this fortnight has been ‘out of this world’! Quite literally! We’ve been learning about the solar system and the place of Earth in it. We’ve studied lots of data about the solar system to create a scale model of it. It was a fun – and messy – project! Here are some of our products:
We hope you take time to learn more about Space and check out the night skies. The super blood moon eclipse was awesome!!
Have a great week,
Robyn and Barbara.
robyn.smith@twb.catholic.edu.au
barbara.hair@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yr 5/6 TN
Our classroom is starting to sound like a crazy lab! If you were to listen to the conversations of the student, you would think we had potions and chemicals bubbling and gurgling away. Currently, the students are exploring matter and how we can change the state of matter. Students are conducting experiments and learning how to write up an experiment. I know I am excited to watch the Year 6 presentations next week when they conduct their experiment for us and explain what the chemical reaction is and if it is reversible or irreversible.
All Year 5 and 6 students were lucky enough to be invited to watch the St Joseph’s 2021 School Musical. What a great accomplishment for all of the students involved and a special treat for us to go and watch.
As the weather is getting cooler and flus and head colds are beginning to settle in I understand that children will be away from time to time. If your child is going to be away longer then a day, please let me know so that I can rearrange assessments during this busy time of the term.
Until next time,
Mrs Terri-An Nolan
YR 6 LW
As I reflect on the last two weeks, I can’t help but be proud of all that is accomplished in Year 6 on a regular basis. Our daily literacy block runs like clockwork and everyone puts in his or her best effort. We’ve recently spent a number of hours immersed in experiments presented by the students in which they were required to demonstrate a reversible or an irreversible change. As the accompanying photos show, these experiments were well researched and presented.
Our current focus in maths is time - including elapsed time, time zones and reading timetables, while we’re beginning to explore narratives in English.
leigh.winters@twb.catholic.edu.au
Yammer Group
Yesterday was National Sorry Day. The theme this year is ‘Take Action.’ The students and I spent our time this week completing a beautiful colouring in and speaking about what this looks like, sounds like and feels like. The students shared lots of wonderful ideas.
From 27 May to 2 June is Reconciliation Week. Monday to Wednesday next week there will be some different activities that all students can participate in during the lunch breaks including.
Mrs Terri-An Nolan
Music News
The Cat and the Riddle - Year Six Musical
Thank you to all the helpers who have been making things happen lately. Mrs Winters and I went up to The Anglican School and explored their amazing costume room. We've borrowed some items that the Year Six students were able to sort out and try on today at school. Mrs Brackstone has painted up three different Egyptian signs for us to use as part of the set, and they look fabulous! Mr Richard has moved curtains for me and hung up our backdrop at the back of the stage. Please continue to encourage your child to memorise their lines and the lyrics to their songs. All song files are available in Teams.
Families received an information note this week. If you did not see this note please let Mrs Winters know as it contains important information. Briefly:
- Out of school rehearsal requests for:
- Sunday 13th June 10am to 2pm
- Monday 12th July 9am to 3pm (this is the Pupil Free Day at the start of Term Three)
- DATE CLAIMER Thursday 15th July is PERFORMANCE DAY
- Hoping to borrow:
- Egyptian style 'artefacts' or touristy items - not valuable or breakable
A reply form will be sent out soon so that families can let us know if their child is able to attend the out-of-school rehearsal days.
Thanks for your support,
Anne-Maree Spalding
anne-maree.spalding@twb.catholic.edu.au
Eisteddfod Report
I was very proud of all the St Anthony's students who took part in the recent Toowoomba Eisteddfod. I've loved the photos that were put up on Facebook. You looked great!
CHOIR: Thank you to our beautiful choir. We received 85 points for our performance. This was a great score - just not quite enough to get us a medal or Highly Commended. Next year!! We will have a little break from choir until after the musical next term. I will let the students know when our choir days are starting again.
Solo and Duo Performances:
We had two different pairs of students take part in the Poems in Pairs section at the Eisteddfod. Congratulations to Audrey and Clovelly (Year Six) and Jenna and Bailey (Year Four) who were Highly Commended in their different sections. Well done Girls!
In the singing Duet Section, Audrey and Isabelle (Year Six) were awarded 2nd Place! Very exciting result.
In the Solo singing we had a number of successful performers. Congratulations to Florence and Charlotte (Year Three) who were Highly Commended in the Year Three and Under Section; and a special mention to Ivy (Year Two) who was awarded 2nd Place in that section. In the Year Five section - Olivia was awarded 2nd Place and in Year Six solo song - Isabelle received 3rd place. I was very proud of all our soloists. It is a big challenge to step up and perform in front of an audience. They were just amazing! Well done to them all.
Solo Poetry in next part of the Eisteddfod
All families received an email reminding them that entries were due for the solo poetry section of the Eisteddfod. This takes place between the 29th July and the 8th August. Entries were due last week. I will be meeting with Ivy (Year Two) Kai, Florence and Hayley (Year Three) and Eleanor (Year Four) next week to start the process of choosing a poem. We have lots of time to sort this out - so no need to panic just yet!
200 Years of Catholic Education in Australia
The Catholic Education Office decided to create a virtual choir as part of the celebrations acknowledging 200 years of Catholic Education in Australia. Each school in the Toowoomba Diocese could choose one student to represent their school in the short video that was made. I would like to thank Adut Mawien (Year One) who so beautifully represented St Anthony's; and also Mrs Hess who gave so much time supporting her with the different technology demands. Thank you so much!!
NCCD Data Collection
The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD) takes place every year.
All schools in Australia must collect information about students with disability.
The information collected by the NCCD helps teachers, principals, education authorities and governments to better support students with disability at school.
Please refer to the document below for further details.