15th July 2021
Principal News
A Prayer for Healthcare Workers during this time of the Coronavirus COVID-19
Loving God,
we place into your care
all our doctors, nurses and healthcare workers.
Give them courage of heart
and strength of mind and body.
Keep them safe from harm.
May they know our deep gratitude
for all they are doing
to heal and help those affected by
the coronavirus.
God of all consolation
may they know your protection and peace.
Bless them in these challenging days
and bless their families.
Amen.
Welcome back to Term 3 and we find ourselves living with a new set of health restrictions thanks to the pandemic. The students have been happy to be back in their routine of school and to be spending time learning new things and excited to be playing with their friends. Our school is very calm and settled.
May I sincerely thank every parent/carer and grandparent for your diligence with social distancing and mask wearing. The children have done so well in being able to separate well at drop off times. We are always here to support them and our Year 1 and 2 students are now the role models as they have been through this before. There is no room for complacency with this Delta variant of Coronavirus and we must all do everything we can to adhere to the strict health guidelines from NSW Health. Thank you for all you are doing to keep our staff safe. Please refer to my Compass alert last week for all of the important details. Please note St Nic's OOSH also require parents/carers to wait outside the gate to collect and drop off students. We thank you for your patience as the St Nic's Educators manage these changes.
We had planned several events which will now be either postponed or cancelled due to the Health orders:
We had to postpone our school excursion to "Zoom" at the Cessnock Performing Arts Centre next week as other schools were also booked in and the actors are from Sydney.
Grandparents Day will not proceed as planned. We hope to be able to reschedule later in the year.
Our Mary MacKillop Liturgy will be for students only.
I hope that the planned PEG meeting with parents from Abermain & Kurri can still proceed via Zoom on Tuesday 27th in the evening- we will confirm this via Compass.
We thank you for your understanding.
Help Kids to beat Covid induced anxiety
The article below is from Michael Grose, author of the series our school subscribes to. I do hope it may be useful at this worrying time for parents/carers.
https://www.parentingideas.com.au/blog/help-kids-to-beat-covid-induced-anxiety/
Kindergarten 2022 Enrolment Interviews Begin
Kinder enrolment interviews will begin next week. Given the Health restrictions we request that one parent/carer only accompany their child for this visit to Holy Spirit. Parents will need to sign in using the QR code; wear a mask and also social distance staying 1.5m away. We are looking forward to meeting all our applicants for Kinder next year. The school tour will need to be shortened due to Health restriction. It is expected interviews will take approx 20-30 minutes. In the last weeks of August we will be able to offer families a position at our beautiful school and an invitation to the planned transition days in Oct/Nov for all new enrolments and their parents to attend and spend some time at their new school.
Mrs Porter, Mrs Matheson (our new LST) and myself look forward to meeting you!
Staffing News
After recent interviews, I would like to share with our community that Mrs Rebecca Cook has been successful and has been appointed in the position of Primary Coordinator at Our Lady of Lourdes at Tarro to start her new role in 2022. This is a wonderful opportunity for Mrs Cook's career and we take this opportunity to thank her for her work at Holy Spirit in her roles as classroom teacher, Aboriginal Teacher and as Pedagogical Mentor where she works with all our teachers. We whole heartedly congratulate Bec and we will have time to farewell her at the end of the year.
Regional Athletics Carnival
Congratulations to our athletes who represented Holy Spirit Infants at the All Saints Regional Carnival on the final day of last term. Our thanks to Mrs Collingwood who attended as Team Manager on the day. Whilst results have yet to be shared with our school, Noah; Ashton; Xanthie and Kade all enjoyed the opportunity to participate and represent our school. Our thanks to the parents for their support to transport students to and from the event.
Tell Them From Me Survey 2021
Tell Them From Me® (TTFM) is a suite of surveys for measuring student engagement and wellbeing. The surveys can be used to capture student, parent and teacher voices, providing reliable evidence for schools to use in identifying strengths and areas for improvement. Our diocese implemented the use of these surveys to gather data for the first time last year. This year the survey will be open for longer and we really hope that every family will be able to please take the time to provide our school with some feedback so we can continue to improve to be the best school we can be. Last year we had 30 parents respond and we hope we can improve on that number in 2021. The survey will be available from 23rd August for parents/carers to complete. More details will come soon.
Dance! Dance! Dance!
This week we started our new routine of wearing sport uniforms on a Tuesday as every class met our new dance teacher Montana Doyle as we began to prepare our routines for the Showcase/Musical in term 4. Montana put every class through their paces in carefully designed workshops created to encourage skills and for the students to have fun! Montana comes to us with an impressive resume as she works with the Aspire dance troupe and if this week was any indication of what is ahead...parents may just be surprised!
Parent Teacher Interviews
It was great to have so many parents take up the option of an interview with their child's teacher at the end of term 2. During the interview teachers shared student work samples and was able to share each child's strengths and areas for development. If your meeting had to be rescheduled, please contact the school to make another appointment.
Home Reading
Every child will bring home a Home Reader either this week (Kinders next week) and we ask that parents/carers please prioritise time each night for reading with your child. The Reading Log has information to guide parents in this process. Please remember that decodable readers allow students to sound out words however not every reader being sent home is decodable as all students need to learn to read natural readers as well. Sight words or Magic 100 words are words learnt by sight and cannot be sounded out. Children learn when parents read the text aloud using expression and a varied tone of voice.
Our teachers value the feedback parents/carers provide about their child's reading at home so please fill out the child's reading log. As motivation we have linked the return of Reading Logs to Dojo points as well.
Canteen - Coffee or Tea
If you are a volunteer in our school canteen we invite you to enjoy a coffee from our new coffee pod machine or else a cup of tea. It's important to us that our volunteers feel welcome and can enjoy a tea or coffee on the job. Due to covid take away cups are also provided. Thank you for all you do to support our families and enjoy!
Volunteers
Unfortunately once again the pandemic has impacted our ability to have parent volunteers as reading helpers on site until further notice. We are devastated but hopeful that we can go ahead later.
State of Origin
Many families may have watched the third State of Origin played in Queensland last night before a massive audience. You may not have realised but the national anthem was wonderfully sung by Amanda Barrass, a previous parent here at Holy Spirit Infants and her son now is school captain at Holy Spirit Primary Kurri. As a footy loving community it was always Amanda's wish to be able to sing at a State of Origin, Amanda said on breakfast radio today. Congratulations to Amanda for achieving her dream! Great news for her family and for Abermain!
Let's all do what we can to keep one another safe.
May God bless you and your family.
Diane Murphy Principal
Acting REC News
Father of all, You gave us the Dreaming, You have spoken to us through our beliefs, You then made Your love clear to us in the person of Jesus We thank You for Your care. You own us, You are our hope. Make us strong as we face the problems of change. We ask You to help the people of Australia to listen to us and respect our culture. Make the knowledge of You grow strong in all people, So that You can be at home in us and we can make a home for everyone in our land. Amen
Prepared by Aboriginal people for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Alice Springs 1986
Thank you to our very generous families for contributing to the St Vincent De Paul Winter Appeal. Last term our donations were collected by Col Parker a representative from our local area. He was very appreciative and assured us that it will be distributed to those in our community who are less fortunate.
Whilst we were on the school holidays, NAIDOC Week took place (4th – 11th July). The theme for NAIDOC Week 2021 is "Heal Country", and calls on all of us to work towards greater recognition of our First Nations peoples and the protection of our land, water, sacred sites and cultural heritage from further exploitation and destruction. May we walk gently together on this land.
This fortnight our Fruit of the Spirit focus is Peace. Peace means to get along with others, be content and trust in God when we are worried or afraid.
May the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. NUMBERS 6:26
Take care, Meagan Edwards, Acting Religious Education Coordinator
Naidoc Week Celebrations
NAIDOC Week was held from 4th to 11th July, with the theme being Heal Country. ‘NAIDOC’ is an acronym that stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. Its origins can be traced to the emergence of Aboriginal groups in the 1920′s which sought to increase awareness in the wider community of the status and treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (www.naidoc.org.au).
This years theme, Heal Country calls for all Australians to continue to seek greater protections for our lands, our waters, our sacred sites and our cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction. NAIDOC 2021 invites the nation to embrace First Nations’ cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia's national heritage and equally respect the culture and values of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders as they do the cultures and values of all Australians. To Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Country is more than a place and inherent to their identity. Country is like a person, sustaining their lives in every aspect - spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially, and culturally.
Holy Spirit Infants will be celebrating NAIDOC next week within their classrooms on Thursday. Students will take part in reading Aboriginal texts, yarning circle activities, craft and traditional games.
Mr Ozimek and I are looking forward to celebrating with each class next week!
May we walk with care and respect upon this land.
Mrs Rebecca Cook
Awards Week 10 Term 2
No Awards this week.
Canteen News
Dates for your Diary
Community News
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