Term 3 Week 2

Hi all,

It's been a huge week as you could imagine, and with lots of up-and-coming events I thought I would focus on what is to come across the course of this term. 

Book Week 

We will be holding our Book Week Parade on Tuesday the 22^nd of August at 9:15am. Students are encouraged to dress up as a character from a book, and all things going well with the weather, we will hold this outside on the basketball courts. If the weather looks challenging with wind and rain, we will hold it in the hall.

I love our Book Week Parade. Every student gets their opportunity to walk down the runway and have a moment and share their love of fictional characters. We have a perfect size school to allow this to happen. It is always full of smiles and humour and often the unexpected. Built into our parade which we have developed over the previous years, is a parade of the local town area. We will do a lap of the block and parade down the main street. We will release the route of this before the day, so we encourage business owners and residents to come out and see the costumes. 

Peter Pan the Musical 

We are jamming a bit into Term 3 and nothing is bigger than our whole school performance of Peter Pan the Musical. Students have been hard at work learning the choreography, the blocking for the acting as well as building the props and set.  

The date of the Musical is Wednesday the 6^th of September. We will be having a daytime matinee, as well as an evening performance. This is a compulsory event for our students. 

If you are a junior primary parent no doubt you have heard the unforgettable chorus of ‘You’ve done it again Mr Smee, Mr Smee’. Thomas my 2-year-old at home can sing the chorus, having never heard the original!  

We will be holding two rehearsals down at the Light Church over the coming weeks which you will receive a note about next week. The Light Church performing space is exceptional and gives our students the experience of performing in a professional theatre space.  

New Students 

We have welcomed a number of new students this term as part of a Mid-Year Reception intake and across other year levels. We welcome them and their families to our school community.  

Announcement 

Across last week you hopefully have read about the announcement of my appointment at St Francis of Assisi Newton for next year. I won’t go over this announcement, except to add some brief context and explain the process going forward.  

We would expect CESA to run a process over the next six weeks, with an appointment towards the end of this term, for a principal to begin in 2024. This is an ideal time frame in a lot of ways and will allow for a smooth transition for the next principal of SCMS.

I would expect this to be a competitive process. I have been talking to the students over the past week about what type of school this principal is entering, and why they might want to come here. We have beautiful students, strong academic results and within weeks, beautiful new classrooms for students to learn in. I would expect this position would appeal to a variety of leaders - young, experienced, up and coming etc. I am looking forward to working with this person in Term 4. 

From a slightly self-indulgent point of view, there will be lots of opportunities to reflect on the past five years as we head towards the end of 2023. Thank you to all those who have reached out. At present though with Book Week, Concert, school camps and Presentation Nights to come as well as the everyday running of the school, there is too much going on to stop still. 

Kind Regards,
Scott March 

Hello!

Welcome back 😊 I hope the school holidays was a time of rest and relaxation for your families and that you are back happily into the swing of school routine.

This term we have some great feasts days with some truly inspirational Saints who have contributed to the life of the Church and wider society. However, of all the Saints coming up the one we need to spend some time reflecting on and thanking God for is St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. Her feast day is next Tuesday, August 8^th. The one thing that amazes me is the vision she had and her commitment and tenacity to see it through. What started as one little country school in Penola had, within four years, grown to 127 Sisters that were teaching in 43 schools and managing four charitable institutions. From this many more schools and charitable institutions across Australia and even overseas were begun and the Sisters influence and work spread and made an impact on many people. When thinking about this, I can’t help but think of the this passage from Matthew 13:31-32, “He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” Our little school is part of the Josephite tree, part of God’s Kingdom, where our students and family can come and make a ‘home’ here and for that, I’m very grateful to St Mary and the Sisters and their work. This quote from St Mary reminds me of her and how she did just this, but also an encouragement that God calls us out in love to be who He has made us to be. Love is willing the good of the other and so that is what He does for us, He wills the good for us too.

“Try to become all that the love of God wishes you to be” St Mary, 1868.

MITIOG is soon to begin, and I want to encourage parents to engage with your children at home discussing further what is touched on in class. As parents, you are your child’s first educator and even more so in this area. We hope that what is explored at school is only a reiteration of what has already been explored at home with you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me either in person (Wednesday or Thursday) or via email, mhonner@scms.catholic.edu.au.

Have a great weekend,

Miriam Honner

APRIM

Last week in maths, the Reception class started learning about 2D shapes. We learnt that shapes have different features that help us to name them. We focused on the size, colour and how many sides each shape had to help us tell them apart. As part of our learning, we went outside for a shape hunt to see what shapes we could find within our school. Students recorded the shapes on their mini-whiteboards and then created a house from natural resources. They had to explain what shapes they used to create their house and describe the different features of those shapes.

This term, the Year Three and Four class delve deeper into their understanding of migration and the highlights of the different cultures that have integrated and enhanced the Australian way of living! 

Each Monday, we are enjoying cooking with Jo as part of our HASS studies. All produce used has been sourced from our amazing green space.

We cover, explore and learn so many skills within this lesson!

Student Write Up:

On Monday the 31st of July 2023, the year 3/4 class has been cooking with Chef Jo. The 3/4s have been cooking food from places around the world. On Monday the we made spaghetti Bolognese with fresh ingredients from our garden including tomato, capsicum, red onion and many other hidden vegetables in the sauce. The pasta was made from plain flour, water and salt. The final product was very delicious. First, we rolled out the dough that Jo had made earlier and put the pasta dough through the pasta machine. Then put it into a different setting. We put the pasta carefully onto the drying rack and let it hand while we cooked the sauce. First, put around 500gm of beef into a pot and start stirring, when it looks half cooked put in the tomato, pumpkin and capsicum in. Make sure that the pumpkin is grated and the capsicum is chopped. Finally, mash it up then add the rest of the ingredients to the sauce and stir it with a wooden spoon. After it looks ready, cook your pasta in boiling water and strain your pasta. When you have them both ready, grab some pasta, put it in a bowl and then grab some sauce and put it on the pasta. If you would like, add some grated cheese on top and grab a fork and dig in. I call it "heaven in a bowl"! By Eddie P

To revisit writing strategies learnt last term for Media Texts, the Year 5’s communicated the best part of their school holidays through a ‘Holiday News Article’. Students focused on creating a short and informative headline, followed by a strong summary lead to engage their audience. To present their news article, students also revisited the art technique of creating tone, sketching an image to accompany their text.

Props for our School Production are a team effort. Our Senior students have been working hard to put these together as part of their Design and Tech lessons. This week we even got our friendly builders on board to make a stand up bed for the Nursery Scene!

In Spanish we finished the “Los Pasatiempos” topic by writing a short piece about things we like to do in our free time. We then shared them with the class, focussing on correct pronunciation.

Could all issue 5 Book Club orders please be in by Monday the 7th of August.

Also our Book Fair will be open next Monday - please come in before or after school to check out the great range of books on offer.

Thank you 

Julie Anderson 

What a difference a year makes! These pictures of the school Green Space are exactly 12 months apart. For many months we have consistently used produce from our garden harvest across into the Home Ec program, sometimes only 2 or 3 ingredients are purchased fur a dish. If you have a few minutes at drop off or pick up time, please head on over and have a look for yourself, it really is a picture of health at the moment!

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