School Newsletter

To book a Principal Tour

To Register to attend a Liturgy/Mass/Assembly

https://www.stcaths.catholic.edu.au/community/mass-liturgy-assembly-attendance

This term we have focused a lot of our learning around St Dominic and his significance to the Dominican heritage of our school. Working in our sporting house teams students rotated through 4 learning experiences which were focused around the Dominican Pillars of Spirituality being study, prayer, service/ministry and community with activities including making rosary bead symbols, letter writing, team games and stitching bookmarks. One of the highlights was seeing students engage in new learning about St Dominic and Dominican Spirituality. These aspects continue to be as important today in the Catholic Education received at St Catherine's School, as they were in the early years of schooling at St Catherine's. While we were also hoping to conclude the week with a celebration at Morialta Conservation Park, the weather meant that we had to postpone our Whole School Excursion. We are now looking forward to sharing in this experience on Friday September 4th.  

A very big welcome to Harper and his family who joined our class at the beginning of this term. 

Our learning this term has a focus on the environment around us and looking at plants and flowers.  We have been investigating what is living in our environment, what living things need to survive.  This has then led to investigating kinds of seeds and seedlings that we can plant which grow in Stirling in August/September, are bee friendly, produce colour, produce food.

We have been a little disappointed to find out that our favourite fruits of mangoes, pineapples and bananas will not grow well in Stirling. 

We have picked flowers and have begun the process of pressing them and drying them for an art project later in the term.

To link with this learning, our art has a focus on flowers and plants where we are looking at various techniques artists use to create flowers.   We have used wool to wrap cardboard to create our own blossom trees.  

SACPSSA Netball Carnival 2020

On Wednesday 29th July, our year 6 students participated in the annual SACPSSA Netball Carnival at Price Line Stadium, Mile End. Each team played 6 matches on the day against various Catholic Schools across the state and although the teams participated for fun and didn’t keep score, if there was a trophy at the end, I’m certain we would have won it!

This year there were some restrictions implemented by SA Health meaning our school could only take a limited number of individuals and students. This meant that unfortunately most of our students and all parent helpers as well as spectators had to miss out. Hopefully this will change by next year and we can include everyone.

Thank you to Mrs Nikki Hall and our fantastic Cabra umpires for their assistance on the day .

Our year 5/6 students will participate in the Hills Regional Carnival in week 8 this term - look out for the QKR and skoolbag notifications on this.

Regards,

Steven De Giovanniello (Physical Education Teacher/Sports Coordinator).

Student wellbeing is centred around empowering our children to have confidence in their ability to manage life’s bumps and to come out stronger.

Life has changed over the last 40 years, with our lifestyles becoming very busy. The changes in life have not always resulted in a greater quality of life or better wellbeing.  It is well documented that depression rates have actually increased about ten times in the same period of time, particularly in young adolescents.  In 2020, we have also been faced with unprecedented changes due to coronavirus (COVID-19). This year many people may be feeling overwhelmed, anxious, scared, uncertain or wondering what life will look like in the next few months. 

Thankfully there are some simple things we can do to help our children cope with busy lives, friendships, school, big feelings and just feeling overwhelmed and overloaded. We teach them how to manage feelings by providing them with age appropriate strategies and tools. Social and emotional learning is carried out in all classes through ‘What’s the Buzz’ lessons, Circle time, Mindfulness, ‘Peaceful Kids’ and other learning experiences that allow children to become more aware of their feelings and manage situations that they are faced with.

Melinda James (Leader of Inclusive Education and Wellbeing)

Resources for Kids:

www.smilingmind.com.au

www.youthbeyondblue.com

www.kidsmatter.edu.au

www.reachout.com

www.kidshelp.com.au

Friendships and Conflict

by georgina@wellbeingforkids.com.au | Jan 17, 2018 | Blog |

During primary school children go through many stages of making friends and along the way will experience conflict at some stage. It is very normal for children to experience conflict from time to time as this a way of children discovering what works with friends and what doesn’t – put simply children are developing their social and emotional skills. Some children may get confused when they have a disagreement or conflict with another person and may call this bullying. There is a great difference between conflict and bullying and here is a simple way to differentiate between them:

·  Misunderstanding – usually problems around communication.

·  Disagreement – do not agree on something and both want their own way.

·  Conflict – people usually want to solve the problem. Can be over a period of time if not sorted properly.

·  Bullying – threatening, repetitive, targeted, deliberating wanting to harm, abusive, no attempt to resolve issue.

If your child does experience conflict, this is a wonderful teaching moment to guide them and help them learn about how to get along with others. Sometimes children can resolve conflict themselves, particularly as they grow into the upper years of primary, but when they are young they may need guidance, and most importantly emotional support.

The best way to give emotional support is to use ‘reflective listening’. When we practice this type of listening, we listen to the content of what your child is saying and listen for the emotion and then we reflect back what they are saying e.g. “it sounds as though that really frustrated you when you did not get to play your game”. We can then try to help them problem solve the situation by giving them lots of opportunities to brain storm a solution without stepping in too early to solve it for them.

Conflict teaches kids:

·  How to give and take

·  How to come to an agreement

·  How to compromise

·  How to solve problems

·  To build empathy

·  To understand others and their needs

·  How to get along in a group

·  How to develop successful, loving and healthy relationships as adults.

The Australian Curriculum is designed to teach students to become critical and creative learners who are active contributors to society as informed citizens. All around Australia, from the first year of schooling until Year 10, students work towards knowledge and skills in eight learning areas:

·         Mathematics

·         English

·         Science

·         Humanities and Social Sciences

·         The Arts

·         Technologies

·         Languages

·         Health and Physical Education

At St Catherine’s School, students also are engaged in Religious Education. Each of the learning areas contain achievement standards which describe what students should typically be able to do, know and understand by the end of the year level, at each year level. The achievement standards along with the content descriptors provide the broad curriculum from which teachers design learning opportunities and assessment. The sequence of achievement standards across the Australian Curriculum describes and illustrates progress in the learning area. This assists teachers to plan for, and monitor learning, enabling them to make judgements about the extent and quality of learning. In addition, the achievement standards support formative and summative assessment and provide a basis of consistency for assessment and reporting.

How can I help my child at home?

As a parent or carer, you can support your child’s education by familiarising yourself with the Australian Curriculum to gain a general understanding of what your child is learning at each stage of their schooling. Please go to https://australiancurriculum.edu.au/parent-information/ for more information.

Corey Lewis (Leader of Professional Practice)