St Mary's Newsletter

Term 3 - Week 8 (10 September, 2021)

Dear St Mary's School Community

Value in Focus: Sportmanship

We play fairly for the enjoyment of all and encourage each other to do our best.

James 2: 14-18

In the second reading on Sunday, St Paul challenges the believers to demonstrate their faith through good deeds.  A living faith will foster a yearning to do acts of kindness and care for others.

St Mary’s Day

We had a wonderful day celebrating our school today.  Fr Andrew celebrated Mass with us, which was led by the staff, this morning.  After recess, the students all got together in their factions to explore what their faction and its values meant to the history of our school.  Following a sausage sizzle lunch, cooked by our Head Boy and Girl, the students played 'old-fashioned' tabloid games in their factions.

Year 3/4 Reading at Mass

The Year 3/4 Class will be Reading at the 10.30am Mass on Sunday.  All are welcome to come along and support them.

WAYJO

The Western Australian Junior Orchestra will be coming to Merredin as part of the Gateway Merredin Festival.  They will also be performing on Friday, 24 September at 2.00pm in the Undercover Area.  All parents are invited to come and view the performance also.

Learning Journeys

Learning Journeys are scheduled to take place at St Mary’s School on Tuesday, 21 September for all students from Kindy to Year Six.  Learning Journeys are part of our school’s reporting and assessment schedule.  They complement the school’s reporting and parent-teacher interview processes.  During this event, which is similar to an open night, your children will take ownership of sharing about the work they have done this term.  They will also pre-plan which pieces of work they will show and tell you about. You may also work together on a problem or an activity. 

While your child’s class teacher will be in the room – the Learning Journey is between the child and their family.  This is not a time to discuss your child’s progress with their teacher – if you wish to do this, please make a separate time to do so. Learning Journeys will occur between 3.30 and 6.00pm and families are free to come when it is convenient during that time.   

Busy Bee

The Busy Bee to gut the specialist room took place today.  The room is now a 'shell' of its former self thanks to Meg, Marcia, Dee, Ian, Michael and Leigh who worked industriously throughout the day to complete the necessary works.  Thank you to Ben Jardine for overseeing the works and to Ben's dad who did all the tip runs throughout the day.  The next step is for the ceiling to go in and I will let you know when that is to occur.

P and F Meeting

The next P&F Meeting will be held on Monday night at 7.30pm in the Library.  This will be the last meeting before the St Mary's School Fair - please come along and support our P&F.

2022

We have started to plan for 2022 and to ensure that we are adequately staffed and resourced please advise me via email (adriana.coniglio@cewa.edu.au) if your children will not be returning to St Mary’s School in the new year (not current Year Six students).

God Bless and have a lovely weekend with your families,

Ms Adriana Coniglio

Principal

Religious News

First Holy Communion

Please keep these children in your prayers as they prepare for the sacrament of First Holy Communion on 19th September;

Chloe Bartlett, Caitlin Bisset, Korben Cooper, Beau Criddle, Maya Dean,  Jack Kermode, Angelica Kraske Beck, Mitchell O‘Neill.

 

Food Hamper Donation

Have you donated yet?

Please drop your contributions off to the box in the Library. Thank you for your support.

Kind regards,

Mrs Pauline Riethmuller

Assistant Principal

Class News

Year Two RE Corner

During Religion In Year Two, we have been learning about the importance of belonging. We have explored what groups we belong to and how a sense of belonging means being accepted by others and building relationships. We have found lots of common interests and created an awesome display of our pets! We have had lots of great conversations with each other to learn about our similarities and differences. 

Year One Class News

In Mathematics Year One has been working on subtraction.  We have looked at the different words that we can use for subtraction such as:  take away, minus, delete and so on.  Using different strategies such as counting forward, friends of ten, and place value knowledge help us to solve problems successfully.

In Literacy, we have just finished our writing from our model text, 'Katie and the Crocodile'.  Our stories were really good and some included characters that were talking.  We used our dialogue toolkit to help us remember what to do when writing speech, which is very tricky, but we are pretty clever at working it out.

In HASS, we have been looking at natural, constructed and managed environments and went on a walk to find these environments at school and discussed and named their features.

In Religious Education, we have been looking at choices, and we know that through our prayers we can ask for God’s guidance for more difficult choices. 

All of this has been happening with heaps of discussion, fun, doing and learning.

Health

This term in Health we have been focusing on changes, being physically active and influences from media on health issues.

Pre Primary, Year One and Year Two have been working on changes. How we change and grow and what we can do at different stages of our lives.

Year Three, Four and Five have been focusing on being physically active and where this can happen in our community. We have made pamphlets advertising places where we can exercise and looked at all sorts of ways we can keep active.

Year Six have been working on how media influences our approach to health and how our beliefs can be challenged by what we see and her through these channels. 

Drama

This term the Pre-Primary class have been playing lots of fun drama games that focus on becoming confident to speak in front of the class using loud and clear voices.

They have been doing lots of imagining and practising using facial expressions and movement to show different characters!

This term in Year One they have played lots of fun games to warm up their voices and bodies. They have read “Where the wild things are” and used the different parts of the story to imagine and create scenes. They have loved being the characters of Max and creating lots of mischief!

This term the Year Two class have been using their warm up games to start to learn to improvise. They also read ‘Where the wild things are” and have enjoyed lots of activities involving the characters and situations. The Year One’s even created their own first sketches using the characters from the stories.

This term the Year 3/4 class have enjoyed playing ‘space-jump’ a game that asks the students to use their improvisation skills to come up with different situations and characters. They have also been reading through scripts in groups and rehearsing for an end of term performance!

The Year 4/5 class have been rehearsing their voice, movement and facial expressions to take on different characters in various games. They have also been rehearsing scripts within groups for an end of term performance.

The Year Six class have loved being involved in various drama games that focus on improvisation- this can lead to some hilarious situations. Through mime they have looked deeply into different thoughts and emotions of well known fairy-tale characters. Currently they are also rehearsing for an end of term performance.

Other News & Important Dates

St Mary's Parish Merredin - Mass Times

Saturday - 6.30pm

Sunday - 10.30am

Kellerberrin: Sunday 8am

Let Us Pray

Lord Jesus,

You love us so much that you died for us.

Give us a living faith.

Amen.

Community Notices