AGGIES ARTICLES - Term 2 Week 2 - Friday 30 April 2021

Term 2 - Week 3

Dates For The Diary

Dear Parents and Carers

Catholic Schools Week is a time to celebrate our shared faith, educational excellence and the importance of every student. Catholic Schools offer an educational foundation for living life to the full through the development of the student’s spiritual, intellectual, physical, moral and emotional growth. We are blessed at St Agnes’ Primary, well served by dedicated staff who are determined to provide a high quality education and to accompany students on their faith and educational journeys. This week we have had an opportunity to celebrate in various ways.

In celebrating Catholic Schools week, our Year 6 attended a parish mass with their grade cohort from St Peter’s and St Joseph’s Primary Schools. This was a fantastic opportunity for mixing with prospective grade buddies at high school next year. We were so grateful to have Connor and Ella, the YMO’s from Newman, MacKillop and St Joseph’s Regional Colleges who facilitated fun games for the students after their picnic lunch. Thanks also to Father Paul for saying mass and trying to create chaos with his football kicking skills whilst students were eating lunch!

Our Kindergarten and Year One students also had an opportunity to have special loved ones join them for a picnic lunch in the Sensory Garden. It was lovely to see the beautiful connections being shared during these experiences on Wednesday and Thursday.

We are not sure who enjoyed today’s 200 Years of Catholic Education more, the staff or students. All looked the part in our historic costumes. Thank you to all parents who sourced outfits to ensure our students looked the part in our mock classroom of early years.

Parent Reading Picnic

Thank you to all of the parents who joined us for the reading picnic afternoon on Wednesday. There were many smiles, snuggles and lots of great stories shared. We were very blessed to have the sprinkling of rain hold off, to ensure that we had enough time to finish our stories.

Staff Development/Pupil Free Day

We would like to remind all families that Wednesday 5 May is a pupil free day for the staff Proclaim day across the Lismore Diocese. Please see the link for child minding if you need to book in schoolinterviews.com.au and use the booking code a2bft

Important Safety Message Regarding Drop off and Pick up

On Tuesday morning at drop off, we had a near miss incident with a parent getting a child out of the car and another parent hitting them with their vehicle. We ask all parents to slow down and take the time to ensure the safety of everyone. This incident could have been far worse and we are so thankful that no one was badly injured.

We also have had reports of another parent feeling unsafe crossing the road at drop off time, due to the speed of other parents along the road. Please also remember that you must walk your child across the road at drop off. No child should be crossing Boronia St without an adult.

All parents who use car park pick up should have their sign displayed. As well as supporting a fluid process to get you all home quickly, they are also an important safety tool as it helps the staff on duty to identify you.

Sacrament of Penance

New dates for the Sacrament of Penance have been planned, with a google form shared to the families of candidates via email to register for one of the evenings. Please note that each evening has a limit of 53 candidates, so candidates are advised to get in early to reserve their preferred date.

The dates for the ceremonies are Tuesday 25 May, Wednesday 26 May, Wednesday 2 June and Thursday 3 June, commencing at 6:00pm (please arrive at 5:30pm to enable COVID-19 check in and seating).

Due to COVID-19 and social distancing requirements placed on churches, it is still necessary to restrict the numbers attending our Penance ceremonies to the following - 2 parents/carers of the candidate and any siblings under 12 years of age that need to attend.

Should you have any further questions, please contact Peta Rourke at the Parish, or phone the school.

Uniform Requirements

This is a reminder to all families that hair for students is to be tied back off their faces. Hair bands and bobby pins are available for those students who forget to tie their hair back. Also hair cuts with ‘cut out designs’ are to be limited to holiday periods. Whilst some hair cuts look amazing, we ask that they meet school requirements.

Some Mums and other loved ones are going to be overjoyed with the beautiful gifts being purchased through the front office for Mother’s Day presents next weekend. Our talented craft makers, along with Aunty Michelle from the office will continue creating these gifts throughout next week to ensure some of the most special people in our lives are appreciated on their special day. Profits from these purchases will be donated to the flood appeal.

We will have gifts that are being made available throughout Term 2.

Safe On Social Media

The Catholic School’s Parent Assembly, on behalf of St Agnes’ Parish Schools, have secured Kirra Pendergast, from Safe on Social, to speak with parents and guardians on the topic of Parenting and Cyber Safety. This seminar to be held at MacKillop Senior College at the Lochinvar Centre on Wednesday 19 May at 6:00pm and it will provide parents and guardians with ‘the most in-depth and current online safety education’ to support the development of young people as safe, responsible and ethical users of digital technologies.

This seminar is particularly relevant to our senior primary grades as we have had several issues regarding social media posts. Please see the attached flyer for further information. To RSVP please click HERE

St Agnes' Golf Day

Please remember to register your teams for our fun Golf Day on Sunday 16 May. Registrations can be lodged either through the Emerald Downs Golf Club or our school office. 10:00am is the tee off time for our shotgun start. Requests for helpers on the day went home earlier this week. This has always been a fun, community building day with great prizes on offer. We look forward to seeing everyone on the course again this year ‘doing it for the kids!.’ A copy of the note is below.

NAPLAN

A reminder to our Year 3 and 5 families that NAPLAN begins in Week 4 of this term. The first test begins on Tuesday 11 May. All of the tests are now online, with the exception of Year 3 Writing. We ask all families to please check that their child still has a working pair of headphones to ensure a smooth process during this time. Please do not feel that you need to do anything extra to prepare for the NAPLAN assessments. All your child needs is plenty of sleep, a healthy lunch and a positive understanding that it is just a snapshot of their learning at this time. Any NAPLAN questions can be directed to your class teacher or Kate de Bressac.

• This week Mrs Northey gave thanks for Jaysen Wei and Eamon O’Sullivan for being respectful in the library
• Mrs Sprague thanked God for Year 6 students who willingly offer to help, but especially students who helped set up the hall for our "Catholic Schools in History" display this week.
• Thank God for our staff who are so eager to help our students learn through fun activities, including dressing up in crazy outfits.
• It is wonderful to see our senior students playing soccer games before school on the bottom oval and including others in the younger grades so responsibly and respectfully.

Indigenous Education Worker (IEW) Role change

We are very excited to announce that after much planning and coordination, Mrs Sharon Hugo will now be working with all children K-6 as part of her IEW role. Previously, Sharon was attached to Year 3 and only had cultural time with the other children. She will now have a timetable that reflects support for all K-6 children that identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. Sharon will also be having more consistent contact with families as part of this role update. Please feel free to contact Sharon if you would like to know more about our activities at school.

Staff Update

Following a successful recruitment process, we have two new team members joining our staff at St Agnes’ this term. We would like to congratulate Mr Bruce McConnell and Miss Annie Bligh-Jones on their new appointments. Bruce has been a long term casual employee and very familiar with the students. He is working with the Year 3 team. Annie comes to us with a range of experience working with children with additional needs. She will be working with the Year 2 team. We welcome them both to the lovely Aggies community.

Welcome New Students and Families

Since the beginning of Term 2 we have welcomed the following students to the St Agnes' family:

Jho'Arryn Chatfield, Ella McNally and Patrick McNally, Thomas Spithill and Andrew Spithill, Macey Singh, Nathaniel Pohlmann, Alexander Vaquerisaz Canivilo and Liliana Vaquerisaz Canivilo

Thank You From St Agnes’ Catholic Parish

On behalf of Fr Paul and St Agnes’ Catholic Parish, I would like to sincerely thank the school community for the incredibly generous donations to the Parish Pop Up Pantry.

The Parish is liaising with over 60 local families affected by the floods, as well as many others from the wider community who drop into the Pop-up Pantry, to support their recovery.

Many who have lost some, or all, of their possessions, cars, homes, treasured mementoes are unable to return to work until the clean-up is complete and their homes are liveable again.

The assistance given ranges from providing shopping vouchers, shoes, hampers, groceries, cleaning supplies to school fees assistance, transport, and accommodation.

The Parish is also providing practical support to the affected residents of Riverside Village, Edgewater Caravan Park and Brigadoon Caravan Park.

The Pop Up Pantry would not exist without the generous donations from our schools and parishioners.

This all happened in the last week of term, so it was amazing to see the tremendous support we were given.

Great work staff, students, and families.

THANK YOU

Anne O’Brien

Assembly Awards

Congratulations to the following students who received an award at todays assembly: