Term 1 Week 5

Dear Families,

As we approach the midpoint of the first term, SCMS is thriving with a range of enriching opportunities and activities for our students. Our Catholic Schools Choir training is now well underway, and we extend our appreciation to Di Schmidt for her assistance on Wednesdays. Additionally, our Student Representative Council (SRC) meetings have commenced, with our members working diligently to represent student voices and contribute to school initiatives.

The next few weeks are a hype of excitement with Sports Day, excursions, incursions, performances, Easter celebrations and Feast Days. Please keep an eye out on socials for upcoming events.

NAPLAN

Students in Years 3 and 5 will soon undertake NAPLAN testing, a national assessment that provides valuable insights into literacy and numeracy skills, helping to inform our teaching strategies. To support this process, these students have recently participated in a National Coordinated Practice Test. The purpose of this practice test was to assess the platform’s readiness for the upcoming online testing in March. Please note that student performance was not assessed during this practice. We encourage students to approach the tests with confidence and to perform to the best of their ability.

The NAPLAN testing schedule is as follows:

· Tuesday, March 11: Writing

· Wednesday, March 12: Reading & Conventions of Language

· Thursday, March 13: Numeracy

Should you have any questions regarding your child’s participation in these assessments, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Additionally, as part of our commitment to delivering high-quality education, we have commenced the collection of data from the Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) across various year levels. These assessments offer critical insights into student progress, enabling teachers to tailor instruction to better meet individual learning needs.

Sports Day

A key highlight of the school year, Sports Day is fast approaching and will take place on Thursday, 6th March at the Yorketown Football Oval, commencing at 9:00 AM. Over the past few weeks, students have been actively preparing for their events and practicing the health hustle to ensure they are ready for the day.

The Parents & Friends (P&F) committee have organised lunch orders through the QKR app. If you would like to volunteer on the day, please reach out to our P&F group or contact the front office.

Teachers will also require assistance with various activities, including measuring, recording, and organising events. If you are available to help, please speak directly with your child’s teacher. We encourage all students to participate enthusiastically and families to come along and support them. Please ensure your child is prepared with their house colours, water bottles, and sun protection.

Following Sports Day, please be reminded that Friday, 7th March will be a Student Free Day. On this day, staff will be engaged in planning and mapping the Keeping Safe curriculum to enhance our educational programs. This will be followed by a public holiday on Monday, 10th March. I wish all families a safe and enjoyable long weekend and look forward to seeing many of you at Sports Day.

Thank you for your continued support and engagement in our school community.

God Bless,

Luke Buchanan

Hello!

This year is a special year in the Catholic Church, it is a Jubilee Year! This is a year that comes once every 25 years. It is a tradition that comes from the Old Testament and rooted in the Jewish faith and “was intended to be marked as a time to re-establish a proper relationship with God, with one another, and with all of creation, and involved the forgiveness of debts, the return of misappropriated land, and a fallow period for the fields.” (Jubilee website) This year’s theme is ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ and our school will be looking at ways we can be pilgrims of Hope in our school, families and community. Our staff retreat happening in Term 2 will also take on this theme. For more information, please visit https://www.iubilaeum2025.va/en/giubileo-2025/segni-del-giubileo.html .

Next week we begin Lent, our 40-day journey towards Easter Sunday, the feast of all feasts. Ash Wednesday marks this beginning and calls us to remember that we are imperfect beings in need of forgiveness and redemption. Lent is a beautiful time to remember our failings so as to fall confidently into the merciful arms of our Saviour. It is the perfect time to bring to God all our hopes, failings, sorrows and joys and ask for His intercession and blessings on us and on all those we love. Lent has three pillars, prayer, fasting and giving. Each of these pillars are meant to help us to grow closer to God. They are there to help us to strip us from our egos, our selfishness, our self-centredness and to try and makes us build our lives on God and to be others focused. We are asked to try to pray a bit more to deepen our relationship with God, we give something up so that we can learn to say no to ourselves, and we donate to the poor so that we can say yes to others. I encourage you all to contemplate joining in this Catholic tradition and to see how beneficial it is!

Important Dates and Info:

Tuesday, March 4: We will once again be offering pancakes for recess next Tuesday as part of the long-standing tradition for Shrove Tuesday.

Wednesday, March 5: Mass for Ash Wednesday will be at 11am next week. We will be welcoming Fr George Ochola Oluoch from Adelaide to say Mass for us in Fr Johns absence. All are welcome to come and pray with us.

Monday, March 17: To celebrate St Patrick’s Day students will be able to wear green on this day.

Wednesday, March 19: Feast of St Joseph, we will be doing activities in class to celebrate this important patron for our school.

Wednesday, April 2: Walk for Water Challenge. As a school we will be participating in the ‘Walk for Water’ challenge and completing a walk down at Edithburgh later in the term to raise money for Project Compassion. More info to come on this later in the term. For more information on Project Compassion, please follow this link. https://fundraise.projectcompassion.org.au/

God Bless,

Miriam Honner

APRIM

During our recent Food Tech lesson with Jo, students combined literacy and cooking. They gathered the necessary equipment and ingredients to prepare pikelet batter, with adjustments made to accommodate allergies.

A special highlight of the session was incorporating fresh lemons from our Green Space, adding a delicious touch to our cooking. Under careful supervision, each student had the chance to write their name using the pikelet mixture before enjoying their tasty creation.

While some students were busy cooking, others played important roles by practicing their name writing, setting the table, and helping with clean-up, making it a collaborative and engaging experience for all!
 

In the 1/2 class, we created compliment jars to spread kindness and love! We spoke about how compliments help fill our "buckets" and make us feel good. Each student created colourful hearts with kind words and gave them to their classmates to put in their jars. It was a great way to share positivity and brighten everyone's day! 💛

The Year 3/4 students have settled in well for Term 1 2025 and have been a delightful group. They have taken part in getting to know each other and team building activities, including macaroni tower building. The children have been learning computer skills, about rules and consequences and have tackled PAT testing already this term. They have enjoyed sensory play activities when their work is finished. I am looking forward to the rest of the term, especially our English units of work on desert lakes and ANZAC Day.

Our Senior Primary class is starting to prepare for our upcoming Canberra Camp later this year. To kickstart the learning involved, the year 5/6 students had a very exciting video call with the Parliament of South Australia. Students engaged in activities about the Levels of Government and Separation of Powers. We also split the class and had a debate! Students got a 3D tour of Parliament House and were able to ask any questions. After this session, students are excited to start the HASS Civics & Citizenship learning in the classroom in preparation for Canberra!

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

It has been a busy start to the year in all the classrooms, and the students are now settled and actively engaged in their learning alongside their teachers.

This year, in my role as Leader of Curriculum, I am overseeing the teaching and learning at St. Columba’s. I will be working closely with teachers, supporting them in delivering an exciting and enriching learning program. At the beginning of Term 1, teachers mapped the Literacy and Numeracy curriculum across the year, using the Achievement Standards and Content Descriptors from the Australian Curriculum.

We have also reviewed our school’s assessment schedule and planned how we will assess students and use data to inform our teaching practices. Next week, I will begin the Masterclass series in High-Impact Instruction through the Teach Well program, alongside other Leaders of Learning from across the state.

The Masterclass series, grounded in robust research and evidence, provides teachers with concrete, immediately applicable techniques for building high-impact instruction into their classrooms. I look forward to sharing my learning and insights with staff throughout the year

Student Representative Council Semester 1

Earlier this term, we announced the SRC for Semester 1, and the leaders were presented with their badges during assembly. These students were elected by their peers and teachers for demonstrating outstanding leadership qualities and embodying the school values on a daily basis. We meet weekly with myself and Suzie Harvey.

School Captains: Eddie Player and Abbey Molnar

Year 5/6: Archie Phasey and Alexandra Rowe

Year 3/4: Cylus Bamford and Molly Stockings

Year 1/2: Hamish Smith and Amahria Coombe

Reception: Gus Halman and Frankie Bernhardt

We have met twice so far, and the students have brainstormed what makes a good leader and what they want to bring to the SRC group and the broader school community. These children are full of fantastic ideas, and we look forward to bringing these ideas to life throughout the semester.

Alice the Musical

Mark your diaries – Thursday, 4th September 2025 – Edithburgh Light Church

The students have been busy rehearsing for this year's musical, Alice – the Musical. There is so much enthusiasm and energy in the room, and it’s wonderful to see everyone getting involved.

Over the coming weeks, the older students will be auditioning for major and minor roles, and we look forward to announcing the cast shortly.

I am also looking for parents or friends who would be willing to help with props and costuming, starting in Term 2. I will organise some sessions on Thursday afternoons where we can meet in person to delegate tasks, work on-site, and create or sew from home. If you are interested in getting involved, please email me at abuchanan@scms.catholic.edu.au

Regards,

Alex Buchanan

Leader of Learning and Performing Arts Teacher

This year a group of 8 advanced students are working together with me on extending their written language. These students have not been chosen by teachers, but have chosen themselves, by being good spellers who have completed all of our spelling levels.

We have started with an examination of what we each think GRAMMAR is. We are researching the various parts that together comprise Grammar. We are all mindful that plagiarism is to be avoided, so we collect our information from the internet or texts books, but we use our own words to present these facts.

We will read our findings to the other members of our group, and receive feedback that will improve and extend our thinking.

Regards,

Mandy Thompson

The first half of term one saw plenty of action and learning in Food Tech, particularly across R-2 classes. 

Students have created a Junior Primary Kitchen Safety wall, students worked on individual safety flags as well as a class poster, and familiarised themselves with the kitchen space and joined a kitchen garden sensory tour. Students were able to implement their safety knowledge in following weeks - Food Tech lessons included writing their initials in pikelets (lots of fun!), preparing their own healthy lunchboxes and making healthy food choices for healthy bodies, and this week JP classes created dishes together, making pizza from scratch, and zucchini slice using our very own school garden produce.

As everyone knows, this past season has been extremely dry. The Green Space isn't looking as green as usual! During break times many students consistently join in working in the garden, helping with much needed tasks like watering, preparing garden beds, raking paths and trimming plants in readiness for autumn planting, and hopefully autumn rain. 

We have made simple lemon and mint water during lunchtime breaks, and this has been a surprising hit! The lemon tree is still producing very well despite the dry weather, look out for our own school lemons featuring on Shrove Tuesday pancakes next week. We have enjoyed the simple pleasure of picking, slicing and eating apples fresh from the tree - they've been delicious. The HUGE zucchinis have also been a source of much excitement, these will be shredded and stored in the freezer for cooking projects in terms 2 and 3.

Both the kitchen and garden spaces continue to be used for 1:1 and small group wellbeing sessions, we have cooked delicious fritters, made egg carton flowers, researched and written recipes, as well as used the garden to promote emotional regulation and foster positive mental health.

Do you need plant pots? There are plenty to spare at school and you would be welcome to take as many as you like!

There is some exciting news ahead regarding a program for next term regarding sustainability, and also food wastage prevention - think brand new resources and much more!

If you have dietary restrictions or food allergy considerations for your children in relation to the Food Tech program and food preparation at school, please feel free to contact Jo at any stage.

Happy gardening!

The student are enjoying the start to their Library learning year! We have been exploring many aspects of Literacy and research! 
This month is “Love your Library Month”.
We illustrated and recorded our responses and they are on display in the Library!
Mrs. G-O and the Library Lovers of St Columba’s Memorial School.
 

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P&F are hosting a Monty’s Colour Fun Run on Friday 4th April 2025!

Fundraising has kicked off and sponsorship booklets and information to get started was sent home last Friday. Students can create their fundraising profile at www.myprofilepage.com.au. Keep an eye out on seesaw and facebook for updates and volunteer sign up in the coming weeks.

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We are very excited to share that Yorketown Area School is now taking OSHC enrolments! St Columba's will be running a bus service after school to allow our families to access this new service. If you are interested, please contact OSHC Director, Kristy Evans for an enrolment form.

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