St Bernadette's Primary School Dundas Valley

On Tuesday, 2 March, we held our first Parent Community Group Meeting. Thank you to all those who were able to attend. In the future, it may be possible to Zoom these meetings so even more of our community are able to join us. The main function of the Parent Community Group is to assist the school with fundraising activities so that we are able to make our school an even better and more engaging learning experience for the most important people in our community, our children. We had some discussion around what activities would be viable this year (taking into consideration the latest COVID advice from CEDP and NSW Health) and how they could be managed. We also discussed other alternatives to fundraising and what your fundraising efforts would be directed towards. We always appreciate having a Class Parent representative who can be a contact point for parents. At the moment, we still require a Parent rep for Yr 5. If you would like to take on this role, please contact your class teacher ASAP so we can get your details out to your class. You would have seen our Parent Contact list request go out to families yesterday. This is another important way we can build our community so please add your details if you feel comfortable in doing so. Moving forward, we develop a list of suggested activities on a Parent Calendar and we will invite volunteers to help run these. The first of these is the St Patrick's Day canteen stall, which is traditionally run by Kindergarten parents. We are happy to be having a COVID safe St Patrick's Day this year.  We will let you know when our next Parent Community Group meeting is, in Term 2. We hope to see you there!

In Kindergarten we are learning to discover who Jesus is. 

Jesus is the Son of God.

Jesus was a baby just like I was.

Jesus played and learnt and cried and ate dinner just like I do.

Monday 19th April will be a Staff Development Day and no children will be at school. 

Students will commence Term 2 on Tuesday 20th April 2021.

Please remember not to park across the corner of Cox Crescent near the crossing while waiting in the Drive Through line. This is extremely important as it causes the visibility of the crossing to be obstructed. Needless to say it puts those using the crossing at risk, which is unacceptable.

Please remember that using Drive through is a privilege not a right and unsafe behaviours will result in a drive through ban.

We understand at times it is difficult for families to know when your child needs to stay home when they complain of feeling unwell. We ask that if your child displays any symptoms such as coughing, sore throat, sneezing, runny nose etc that they are kept home. To return to school they will require a clearance certificate from the doctor or a negative covid test. We thank you in advanced for your cooperation.

We are currently working with SkoolBag to sync our Google Calendar to SkoolBag so parents are able to stay up to date with events happening around our school each term. Whilst we are waiting for this to be set up, all of the events for each week have been listed in this newsletter. We hope that you find this helpful. An alert will be sent once the calendar is up and live. This is how all events will be published to our parent community as it is the most accurate way to stay up to date.

Please be aware your 2021 School Fees Statements have now been sent out.

Please contact the office if you haven’t received your statement, or have any queries in relation to your fees.

Your cooperation is greatly appreciated!

CBA School banking is available on Friday!  

Please remember to drop your bank books into the canteen between 8:30 and 9am.

This week has been the first week where children have been able to order Welcome Easy meals for lunch. So far so good is the general consensus from most of the children. These meals are now available Monday, Wednesday and Friday currently with the potential to increase days if the community is interested. We as a school make no profit from this and we are just providing a service to make it easier for those parents who wish to purchase lunch for their children.

We will hold our next assembly for this term tomorrow under the COLA. Once again it will be attended by students only but we hope that we will be able to hold an open Assembly soon. Thanks for your ongoing understanding and support.

Over the past few weeks we have been doing a stocktake of the books in our library as we prepare for our Library refurbishment. It has come to my attention that quite a number of books are borrowed and not returned. Due to the hardship that Covid has caused for many families financially, I have chosen not to chase these books or ask for the money to replace them. As you can imagine this has been quite a considerable loss if it happens each year. As a school we value reading and encourage the children to have voice and choice in their selections. If you do find any of our books tucked safely away on your shelves, we would greatly appreciate their return.

Thanks so much to those of you who have volunteered to take on this role. However, we are still looking for volunteers to work with Year 5. Anyone interested in this role please contact Mr Southwell-Keely directly.

On Tuesday 9th March 2021 from 9:30am to 11am we will holding our open day for prospective parents. If you know of any family members or friends who may have a child starting school in 2022 and are interested in our wonderful school please let them know.

They will need to register their details via our open day registration page on our school website. https://www.stbernadettesdundas.catholic.edu.au/Enrol-Now/Open-Days

For our existing families who have a sibling starting in 2022 please ensure you collect an enrolment form from the school office and return to us as soon as possible to secure your place in Kindergarten for next year.

Now that several people have asked about what my new Instructional Leader role is about, I thought it would be a good time to share some of my experience thus far.

The role of the Instructional Leader is focused on improving mathematical outcomes for the children of St Bernadette’s. This will be achieved through teaching shoulder to shoulder with the class teachers, as well as coplanning and having rich discussions around what will drive student learning in the classroom. This is partnered by a whole school approach through Agreed Practice and Professional Learning Meetings.

At this early stage of the year I have had the opportunity and privilege to work with our Infants teachers and children. Each day I have come into these classrooms for the Mathematics block to work alongside our talented teachers. I have to say it has been amazing to see the enthusiasm towards Mathematics from both teachers and students, as it has to see how quickly these young minds can take up and apply new ideas and skills!

In the weeks so far, I have seen our Kindergarten children organise and count collections of varying size and accurately use informal methods to measure their ‘Woolly Worms’. They have also experimented with 3D objects in order to classify, sort and manipulate them to build structures to set criteria.

I have watched as our Year 1 students organise collections with a focus on groups and structuring by tens. They have experimented with geoboards and other materials to organise, sort, classify and name 2D shapes. They have also used a range of materials to create amazing patterns, where the next step will be doing this with numbers.

In Year 2 the children have been consolidating their knowledge of the array structure using the language of rows and columns. This knowledge has then been applied to promote multiplicative thinking by solving challenging ‘times as many’ problems. They have also been making connections between 2D and fractions by dividing and labelling these shapes.

So as you can see, it’s not all sleep-ins, coffee breaks and long lunches - it is far better than that! I also take an EMU Middle Years group each day to support our primary children and am currently seeing a small infants group to support their learning.

I am very excited for what this year will bring and look forward to working closely with our primary teachers in the near future!

Mr Kensell