St Francis Catholic School - Hughenden eNewsletter

From the Principal

Dear Parents, Carers and Community Members,

Next week sees the beginning of lent. We will celebrate Ash Wednesday with a liturgy in which everyone is welcome. Keep an eye on our communication platforms for more information. Miss Howie is also on pancake duty for Shrove Tuesday next week. We look forward to celebrating these important events on our liturgical calendar with everyone!

Yesterday we had a visit from our blue team- Kath Tartellin, Kate Seargent, Lee-Ann Barton and Kim McCosker. They worked closely with me on developing our Annual School Improvement plan for 2024 and will visit up to twice a term throughout the year. Fun Fact: Kath Tartellin was my Teacher/Principal here at St Francis in Year 5! I look forward to working with these ladies in 2024.

I am away Monday and Tuesday next week attending Professional Development in Enhancing Catholic School Identity (ECSI). The course is designed to develop my capacity to read and interpret our schools’ ECSI data and consider the implications of the data for the enhancement of Catholic identity in our school.

If you missed our information evening on Tuesday keep an eye out for the booklets being sent home early next week! These booklets have all of the information from our teachers that was presented on Tuesday evening. We appreciate you taking the time to read through these so you are aware of all the things happening in our school and in particular your child's classroom.
Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs Sharn Greenaway

Principal

Please come along Friday morning at 8:30am and hear about all the exciting things our 2/3/4 class have been up to!

Additional Pupil Free Day 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

Townsville Catholic Education Office has approved an additional professional development day in 2024. The date will be Friday 26th April, 2024 and will be a pupil free day. This day follows on from the ANZAC day public holiday on Thursday 25th April. The reason for granting this additional professional development day is to provide the time and opportunity for all teachers to prepare for the implementation of V9.0 of the Australian Curriculum at the commencement of 2025. This planning day will focus on supporting teachers to have a deep understanding of the changes to content and assessment from the current Australian Curriculum to the newly revised curriculum. There is much planning already occurring in all schools to ensure all teachers are well placed to provide rich learning experiences for their students. This additional professional development day (pupil free day) will only occur in 2024.

Student Of The Week

P/1 - Hanna Price

2/3/4 - Arley Peddle

5/6 - Kopelyn Brennan

School Captains Report

On Monday & Wednesday this week we attended the Ylead workshops at Hughenden State School. We learnt a variety of leadership skills that will help guide us this year in our School Captain roles. One of the big lessons was that little things mean a lot. As School Captains we feel that little acts of kindness will have big outcomes. As a leader we need to be able to work with all of our peers within the school and Ylead was a great opportunity for team building and learning new strategies that will assist us throughout the year.

Our message for our school friends this week is: Treat others how you would like to be treated.

Prep/1 Happenings

We have been doing a lot of hands-on Mathematics this week! From tessellations to working with our number puzzles we have been incredibly busy. The students have had so much fun learning all their numbers!

Miss Brown,

ebrown17@sfsh.catholic.edu.au

It's been another busy week in 2/3/4! In Science, we have been learning about the characteristics of living things. We went exploring outside to find different living things in our school and discussed how they met those characteristics. We are also making some cool posters about these characteristics for Spotlight this week. Also, in English, we have been learning about Persuasive writing! 2/3/4 collaborated together to create a persuasive letter to send to Mrs Greenaway, convincing her to give 2/3/4 students a chocolate every Friday! Miss Allison is super proud of all their hard work this week.

Year 5/6 Happenings

In 5/6 Science we have been focusing on what is a fair test and have been undergoing an investigation. Over the past few weeks, the students have been deeply engaged in exploring the effects of sunlight on the growth of carnation flowers. Before diving into the hands-on experiment, students spent time predicting the potential outcomes and planning their investigation in small groups. They carefully considered the variables that could influence the growth of the carnation flowers, such as the amount of sunlight they receive. They came up with group names for their plants and we started to watch the experiment unfold throughout the week. We are all looking forward to seeing some growth. Our year ⅚ also enjoyed half the day on Wednesday over at the State school. They were engaged with a program called YLEAD. This valuable session gave the students the opportunity to team build with their classmates as well as network other students from the state school. They acquired insights into the characteristics of effective leadership and the importance of collaborative teamwork to achieve collective goals.

Miss Rowe,

growe@sfsh.catholic.edu.au

Library News

This term in the library we will be reading and learning about diversity and inclusion.Each week we will have a focus book . The children have really enjoyed the books and discussions and activities relating to books we have read so far. The first book that we read was My Bindi written by Gita Varadarajan. This is a beautifully written book about a little girl not being afraid to accept her culture and diversity.

My Bindi
I see a shining star
My mothers joy
My fathers Pride
I see Me!

Specialist Lessons- Miss Eriksen

This term for Art we are exploring visual Art. All of the students have been enjoying using different mediums of painting and drawing to create artworks. With the students in Year 5 & 6, we are exploring artworks created by different artists. One artist which we looked at was Andy Warhol and his creation of pop art. The students then used their hand prints to create their own unique pop art picture. Check out the ⅚ classroom where these are on display.