Term 4 - Week 6
Message from the Principal
Dear Parents and Carers
Welcome to Term 4 Week 6 newsletter.
It is hard to believe we are at the end of Week 6 Term 4. The year is just flying past and before we know it, it will be the end of the year. Our newsletter is going home today as Rachelle is away tomorrow.
Last week I had the pleasure of joining Year 5 and 6 at the Great Aussie Bush Camp in Kincumber for three days. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to connect with the students in a different setting. I am so proud of the way our senior leaders represented St Pat’s with excellent behaviour. Some of the activities were quite challenging and required the students to find the courage to step outside of their comfort zone. At all times the students supported each other and offered words of encouragement. The highlight of the camp, for me, was watching how much fun the students had in the mud on Lost Island. The smiles and laughter were priceless. You may have had to throw some of their clothes and shoes away!
I would like to thank Mrs Walker, Mrs Ogden, Mr Lockwood and Mr Mac for giving up time with their families to attend the camp. Their dedication and commitment to the students is greatly appreciated.
The next four weeks are shaping up to be very busy indeed with many exciting events to look forward to. I hope you are able to join us for some of them. Coming up is:
Friday 29th November: Captains 2025
The Year 5 students are currently preparing to undertake the student leadership roles for 2025. On Friday 29th November at 1:00pm in the hall, the students who wish to be considered for the leadership position of School Captain will deliver their speech to the school community. The students from Year 2 to 5 will have an opportunity to vote for the students in their nominated roles. Parents are most welcome to join us for the speeches.
Monday 2nd December: P&F AGM with special input from Steve Todd
Next year will be our last year with an operating P&F committee. As per Diocesan guidelines, all schools will replace the P&F model with a FACE (Family and Community Engagement) model. We are extremely grateful for all the work our P&F do to support our school and therefore I encourage you to join us for the AGM on Monday 2nd December at 6pm in the Library or via Zoom, to ensure a final successful year.
Now that the Admin refurb is complete, I have commissioned Mr Steve Todd to create an artwork to hang in the office to represent the heart of St Patrick’s. To ensure all key stakeholders in our community have input into the artwork, I have asked Steve to join our P&F AGM to discuss the project with you. Steve will also be speaking to our Year 5s as leaders for 2025 as well as meeting with the staff. Our aim is to have the artwork presented at St Patrick’s Day celebrations early next year. Please join us on the 2nd of December to contribute to this important project.
Tuesday 3rd December: Annual Awards Assembly
The Annual St Patrick’s Awards assembly will be held on Tuesday 3rd December at 9:30am in the hall. As has been traditional at St Patrick’s, our awards assembly will acknowledge individual students in each class across 3 domains: Academic Achievement, Consistent Effort and Application, and Community Building.
The Academic Achievement Award is presented for exceptional academic achievement throughout the school year. The Consistent Effort and Application Award acknowledges an individual student who throughout the year has demonstrated consistent effort and application in all facets of their work. The Community Builder Award acknowledges an individual who has consistently and actively demonstrated how to be safe, be respectful and be responsible and on a daily basis they help build a positive school community.
The awards assembly will also include an acknowledgement to the overall Sportsperson on the Year and The MacKillop Award. The MacKillop Award is given to a student for dedicated service to our school community. Mary MacKillop’s Congregation of Sisters of St Joseph founded our school in 1952. Both Mary MacKillop and our founding Sisters lived by the motto: “Never see a need without doing something about it”. This award will be given to a student who has applied this motto to his/her daily work here at St Patrick’s.
We will also announce the School Leaders for 2025. All are welcome to this special event.
Tuesday 10th December: Advent Liturgy
Our Year 3 students are preparing this year’s Advent Liturgy. We hope you can join us for this liturgically important event at 9:30am in the Hall.
Thursday 12th December: Year 6 Rite of Passage and End of Year Liturgy
Come join us as we farewell our Year 6 students and give thanks as a community for the 2024 school year. The liturgy will commence at 10am in the Church.
Friday 13th December: Reports
The Semester 2 reports will go live Friday 13th December. If you wish to discuss your child’s report with their class teacher, please make an appointment for Week 10.
Friday 13th December: Swimming Carnival
All students will be attending the 2025 swimming carnival at Swansea Pool. We need parent / grandparent volunteers to assist with starting, marshalling, timekeeping and novelties. If you are able to assist in anyway, please contact admin. Please complete the event nomination form for students in Year 1 to 6. Event permission and nomination for are available on Compass.
As you can see there is much happening at St Patrick’s. As well as organising these extra special events, teachers are still busy teaching, assessing and completing Semester 2 reports. Our priority continues to be providing a quality education for our students in an environment where they are engaged, safe and supported.
Have a great week ahead.
Lucy Harvey
Principal
School Fees
School Fee payments are due in FULL by the 30th November 2024. If you unable to meet this commitment by the due date please contact Rachelle in the school office.
Whooping Cough
We have had a reported case of whooping cough in our school community.
Whooping cough starts like a cold and progresses to bouts of coughing that can last for many weeks. The infection can occur even in fully-vaccinated children. Older children may just have a cough that is persistent and may be worse at night.
- Children with these symptoms should see a doctor.
- If your doctor diagnoses whooping cough in your school-aged child, please let the school know and keep your child at home until they have taken 5 days of antibiotics. Keep coughing children away from babies.
- Whooping cough vaccines give good protection against infection but immunity fades with time. Check that all your children are up to date with their vaccines, due at 6 weeks, 4 months, 6 months, 4 years and 12 years of age (offered to all Year 7 students through the NSW school-based vaccination program). A booster is also recommended at 18 months of age.
Please see here for further information.
The Friendship Chronicles - End of Year Concert
Term 4 Week 7
Term 4 Week 8
Message from RE Coordinator
Year 5 Leadership Day
During Week 4, the Year 5 students from the three parish schools gathered at St Pius Primary School Windale for a leadership formation day in preparation for their Year 6 leadership in 2025.
The program formed the students in servant leadership. Servant leadership is about leadership for others. It’s about focusing on the positive impact we can make, rather than on what we get out of it for ourselves. It is about making a contribution, lifting other people and doing good. Often, this will come without recognition. Servant leaders use their strength for others. It is not about power and control. It is about influence and service.
This program focused specifically on building upon students understanding of ‘servant leadership,’ which is grounded in the life and mission of Jesus Christ. This formation opportunity enables all participants to engage in dialogue with their peers, work in a team, and builds confidence in the leadership space. Through the activities and content, students will gain a deeper understanding of teamwork, leadership and commitment.
Wishing Tree
As we enter the festive season, it is important to remember that not all families in our local area are as fortunate and may be struggling over the Christmas break. The Swansea Vinnies Conference assists many families in a number of different ways. To assist the conference, we are setting up a Wishing Tree for families to donate small gifts that can be given to these families at Christmas. If you would like to donate a gift, we ask that it be wrapped, with a label indicating the gender and the intended age range. Gifts can be placed under the Christmas tree in the office. Thank you for your support of this initiative.
Mr Daniel Lockwood
RE Coordinator
Save the Date
- 26th November Years 3 & 4 Excursion
- 27th November Year 7 Orientation Day at St Mary's
- 28th November Kinder 2025 Buddy Picnic
- 29th November 2025 Leadership Speeches 1.00pm in the Hall
- 2nd December P&F AGM 6pm
- 3rd December End of Year Awards Assembly
- 8th December P&F AGM
- 10th December Advent Liturgy
- 12th December Rite of Passage 10am
- 12th December Christmas Concert
- 13th December 2025 Swimming Carnival
- 13th December School Reports go live
- 16th December Year 6 Dinner
- 17th December Year 6 Big Day Out
- 18th December Last day for Students
- 19th December Last day for Staff
From the Diverse Learners Team...
Learning Support – MiniLit
MiniLit is a small group reading program specifically aimed at Year 1 and 2 students who require intensive support to develop decoding skills. The program provides explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, systematic synthetic phonics for reading and spelling, letter formation, and connected text reading.
A placement test will indicate the ideal starting point on the program for each student. Regular assessments administered throughout the program will monitor progress.
The program is designed to be delivered in a 45-minute session, 4-5 times per week. These sessions comprise:
- A Working with Sounds and Words component (30 minutes), focusing on developing phonemic awareness and decoding and encoding skills for reading and writing, and
- A 15-minute session comprising either practise of reading sounds and words and/or connected text reading for improved reading accuracy and fluency.
For some students this maybe broken up into shorter sessions throughout the day or across the week, depending on the needs of the individual student. While a program like this provides a strong scaffold for addressing reading and spelling issues, other factors are often a consideration in the delivery of the program, e.g. attention span, movement breaks, sensory needs, student dynamics. We aim to accommodate student needs as much as possible.
Colour Run Sensory Space
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Education
Recently, our primary aged Aboriginal students had training around what an AECG is (Aboriginal Education Consultative Group) and how to set up and run a Junior AECG at St Patrick’s! This is also part of our Powaikaliko Malang Community of Schools initiative and Junior AECG representatives will attend regular meetings with our cluster of schools in East Lakes, including St Mary’s high school.
The aim of having a Junior AECG is to ensure that student voice has a platform and our Aboriginal students can have a say and share ideas around what experiences they would like and what they would like to see happen in our schools in the area of Aboriginal Education.
Huge thanks to Dannielle Peachey (Aboriginal Education Teacher at St Paul’s Gateshead) for getting this off the ground. And massive thanks to Alex Milles, from Minimbah AECG, who has been so generous with time, expertise and guidance for our students.
This week we held our inaugural Junior AECG meeting with Alex’ support. We elected our student leadership team for the coming 12 months, shared some exciting ideas and looked at some fabulous locally created resources for our library.
Congratulations to the student leaders – a presentation of badges will be made at the end of year formalities.
Cooper B-T – President/ School Representative
Will B – Vice-President
Ryker – Secretary
Mrs Jo Simes
Learning Support Teacher
Mrs Anne Turner & Mrs Karen Devlin
Aboriginal Education Teacher
Aspire News
ASPIRE AUDITION SUCCESS FOR IMOGEN
Auditions for ASPIRE’s 2025 production took place a couple of weeks ago. We are very excited to announce that Imogen Walker, in Year 5, was successful in obtaining a place in the Junior Drama Ensemble. This is a wonderful achievement for Imogen, and we wish her all the best in her creative pursuits in 2025.
DANCE CHOREOGRAPHY WITH LAUREN HARVEY
In Week 4, every class had the opportunity to work with Lauren Harvey, Dance director of ASPIRE. We had fun learning movement sequences to our songs which will accompany our class script for “The Friendship Chronicles” production in Week 9.
On Wednesday and Thursday this week, Lauren visited us again to help with ‘blocking’ our script for the stage.
Library News
Last week for borrowing...
Week 7 is the last week for borrowing. Library lessons will continue but we will no longer be loaning out books for 2024 to allow for annual stocktake.
Returns
Please make sure all books have been returned to the library by 4th December. They can be returned any day of the week in the returns trolley in the library.
Book Club
The final catalogue for the year is out and will be going home soon.
Important: If any of the books you are ordering are presents, please mark as a gift when you order. If marked as a gift, we can keep them in the office for you to collect or tape them up in a paper bag and send the order home with your child.
Sport News
Save the Date: Swimming Carnival
A Compass event has been posted for our Swimming Carnival. Students need to be registered for swimming races via the google form in the event no later than Friday 6th December. If you are available to help on the day please email me. We are looking forward to another successful and fun Swimming Carnival!
Weekend Sports Stars
On Saturday 9th of November Frankie (Kindergarten) competed in the Newcastle Open Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tournament, along with a number of other St Pats students. She won her first fight and lost her second, walking away with a silver medal in her category. We are very proud of her achievements. Congratulations Frankie!
If your child is a Weekend Sports Star, please email details and a photo to so we can celebrate their success in our next newsletter.
Mrs Claire Browne
Sport Coordinator
Office News
School Fees payments are due in Full by the 30th November 2024.
Please contact the office if you are unable to make this commitment by the due date.
For those families experiencing financial hardship, or wishing to discuss other payment arrangements, please contact the school office to arrange an appointment with the Principal.
Volunteering at St Patrick's
We have many events still planned for the remainder of the year. Please get in early and register so you won't be dissappointed in missing out.
If you would like to register to volunteer at St Patrick's, can you please complete the "Volunteer Registration Form" by clicking on the link here.
WWCC exemptions apply for volunteers who are a close relative of a student enrolled at the school. There is a "Statutory Screening Selection Tool" included in the online registration process to assist you with this.
St Patrick's will be notified by the Catholic Schools Office once you are cleared to volunteer.
If you are unsure if you have clearance, please email the office at admin@swansea.catholic.edu.au to enquire.
Rachelle McKenzie
Senior School Officer
P&F News
Year 6 Farewell
Parents of Year 6 students who are planning on attending the Year 6 farewell at Belmont Golf Club on December 16th are asked to RSVP on Qkr by the end of November. Our P&F have again this year committed to covering the cost of each Year 6 student and their teachers in 2024.
Canteen Volunteers
WE REALLY NEED YOUR HELP!
We understand we're getting closer to the silly season and our spare time becomes more limited, however our volunteer numbers in the canteen are dwindling this term. If you are able to assist on any Fridays for the remainder of the school term, please reach out to our coordinator Elizabeth via email stpatscanteen1@gmail.com. Canteen volunteers are required to be approved with the front office & have a valid WWCC certificate. The time each week is 9am until 11:30am.
If we cannot get at least 2 people to assist each week we will close the canteen.
If you have any questions for our P&F in the meantime, please send them to stpatrickspf1@gmail.com
Thankyou
Elise Moncrieff
President
St Patricks P&F Committee
P&F Treasurer Update:
Uniforms
Preloved Uniforms
All hand me downs welcome. If you have any uniforms no longer being used, please drop them off to the front office so they can be put to good use.