Dear Parents and Carers,

On Monday, we had a very successful Swimming Carnival after a 2-year layoff. I would like to thank Lauren MacDonald and the Swimming Carnival Team for running such a successful day. Congratulations to all our swimmers who participated on the day and to our winning house Cunningham! Ribbons for our 50m events will be given out at Monday morning assembly next week.

Annual Improvement Plan (AIP)

I wrote about the formation of our Strategic Plan in our last newsletter referencing how the Annual Improvement Plan is the first slice of our Strategic Plan and will be updated each year to reflect progress on our Strategic three-year goals. St Francis of Assisi Primary School - Calwell eNewsletter (schoolzineplus.com)

The Annual improvement plan is made up of 3 goals which are short, sharp and easy to remember, ideally 8 words in length. These are then fleshed out with targets, success indicators and strategies for implementation. Our Three AIP Goals are:

1. Initiate a culture of excellence in teaching and learning.

2. Prioritise community well-being and partnerships.

3. Enhance the use of school resources to optimise teaching and learning.

I will unpack each goal separately over the next few weeks by highlighting some key success indicators, targets and strategies you can expect to see from each of the goals.

ELC Update

We are excited to announce our ELC will be opening in 2024! Watch this space for an expression of interest for enrolment that will be available shortly. We have also created a tab on the school website which will be the go-to space for enrolment information.

Fete Meeting

We have booked our Fete for later this year after a covid related hiatus. For our Fete to run successfully we need your support! Please consider volunteering some time to support this worthy fundraising opportunity and community-building activity. The first Fete meeting will be on Wednesday 8^th March in the Staffroom at 6 pm. All are welcome!

Principals’ Retreat

Next Wednesday – Friday, I will be attending the Principals’ Retreat in Bowral, with the Director of Catholic Education Ross Fox, as well as other senior leaders within Catholic Education. The three days are invaluable for the discussion and sharing of system initiatives, strategic planning, and directions, as well as the time spent on faith development.

Lenten Penance reflection from Fr James

“Repent and believe the Gospel” (Mk 1:15).

The season of lent is an invitation to all of us, ‘to step back’ to understand ourselves more clearly and ‘to step forward’ in the path of Christ. It is also an invitation to ‘step out’ of our comfort zones to move a step closer to God and our fellow human beings. The concrete expression of this happens through our Lenten prayers, fasting (self-denial) and acts of charity. In other words, through our acts of going beyond the normal through this season of lent is a way to come closer to God and our brothers and sisters.

Each of the faithful is obliged to receive Holy Communion at least once a year. This is to be done between Ash Wednesday, 22nd February, and Trinity Sunday, 4th June, 2023 unless for a good reason it is done at another time during the year. All the faithful are obliged to confess their grave sins at least once a year.

DAYS OF PENANCE
1. Abstinence from meat, and fasting, must be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. All who have completed their eighteenth year and have not yet begun their sixtieth year are bound to fast. All who have completed their fourteenth year are bound to abstain.
2. On all other Fridays of the year including the Fridays of Lent, the law of the common practice of penance is fulfilled by performing any one of the following:

1. (a)  prayer – for example, Mass attendance; family prayer; a visit to a church or chapel; reading the Bible; making the Stations of the Cross; praying the rosary.
2. (b)  self-denial (fasting)– for example, not eating meat; not eating sweets or dessert; giving up entertainment to spend time with the family; limiting food and drink so as to give to the poor of one’s own country; limiting use of social media, smart phones or television.
3. (c)  helping others – for example, special attention to someone who is poor, sick, elderly, lonely or overburdened.

Absences Email Push Notifications:

We know that every day of attendance at school adds to your child's chances of success and achievement from Kindergarten through to high school. You play a key role in making sure your child attends school every day, and you do this because you understand that attendance leads to success, not just at school but later in life. Every day at school counts towards your child’s learning.

Coming out of the Covid pandemic over the past three years we have seen some students disengage from their learning. To address this, we have implemented a school goal around student attendance, as we know that student attendance is imperative to their learning. 

So, from Monday we will be sending, via email, push notifications that will inform you of your child’s absence from school. In the email, there is a link directly to Compass for you to provide a reason for the absence (It is a legal requirement for all absences to be explained). If you believe the absence to be incorrect we ask that you please contact the child’s teacher.  We are implementing this change to:

Track student absences and encourage students’ attendance at school for the benefit of their learning.

1. Allow you, as parents, to give a reason for the absence, via Compass, quickly and easily and;
2. Increase the uptake of parent engagement with the Compass portal.

We realise some absences are unavoidable due to health issues or other circumstances. However, we also know that when students miss too much school, no matter the reason, it can cause them to fall behind academically. The more absences your child has the harder it is for them to catch up on missed work and stay connected to their school community. Absences add up quickly. If your child is absent just one day every two weeks over the course of a school year this will add up to 20 days of lost learning. This is almost half a school term.

As a school community, it is our job to work together to ensure the best possible learning for our students and so we look forward to continuing to work with you for the benefit of all our students.  Please contact Mrs Annie McArthur if you have any queries about this new school initiative.

Blessings and Best Wishes

Sean Rutledge

Principal

Teachers and students will engage in weekly lessons and activities around the key principles of Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness (GEM) and Emotional Literacy to
build resilience. 

You will start to hear your children talk about "GEM CHAT" and how looking at the positive changes the way we feel and act towards others. There is a flyer attached sharing more information and I will be posting in the newsletter regularly so that you can integrate TRP (The Resilience Project) into your own homes. I will also be setting you a family challenge to try or GEM Chat topic. You will find this week's below.

FAMILY CHALLENGE

At the dinner table each person takes a turn to share their favourite part of the day OR what went well for them today. There is no skipping or saying 'nothing', everyone must share. Even if you have had a terrible day you must find some part of the day that was your favourite, even if it was coming home! Then each person must say 1 thing that they are grateful for. Again, no skipping people and you can't repeat what you said in the best part of the day. 

Take note as to how difficult these thoughts and conversations are when you first begin. Try and complete this task every day for a week and take note to see if the thoughts come easier and the sharing deeper. 

My experience of the challenge

We have recently moved into my parents house as we have knocked down our house to rebuild it. We have dinner together (the 6 of us; me, my husband, 2 children ages 9 and 5 and mum and dad) 4 nights a week and started this challenge 4 weeks ago. It was like pulling teeth at the beginning and very superficial: favourite part of the day for my 9 year old was often lunchtime! But we persevered and now its the first conversation that happens after we sit down together and the children even ask each other when they are having their takeaway in front of the TV on a Friday night! It's become our focus rather than what went wrong in our day and such a pleasure to share!

Please feel free to let me know how your family goes in the challenge. You can email me your experiences sharee.thomas@cg.catholic.edu.au 

Dear Parents and Carers, 

as part of our ongoing plan to build a connected and informed community, we want to invite you into our school to learn a little bit about what happens during numeracy time in our classrooms. As part of this we are looking to host some before or after school sessions which will:

• break down the Curriculum into what we teach in classrooms
• deepen parents’ understanding of early years’ mathematics (and beyond)
• show parents ways to build their child’s number sense 
• provide opportunities for parents to engage with their child through numeracy play at home.

These sessions are done with the support of the Community Council, and we are also fortunate to have received a grant from the ACT Government for this initiative. These sessions will be informative but most importantly interactive, an opportunity to meet some parents in our community across your child's grade, while learning about how StFA teaches maths at our school. They aim to:

To help us understand the needs of our Parent Community, I invite you to fill in the link to the attached survey, so that we can best work out what our priorities need to be.

https://forms.office.com/r/j7kjhThu63

With thanks, 

Jeremy Stevens

Numeracy Coordinator

SFA's MiniLit Program 

Our 8:30am MiniLit Program will be running again this year at SFA. Families will be sent information and asked to provide consent prior to your child being asked to participate in this program. The program will be starting later in the term as we are waiting on student data collection and staff training to be held at the end of the month. 

Kristy Everding

Inclusive Education Coordinator

GWS Giants Visit Stage 3! 

Last week on Friday year five and year six walked over to the Calwell oval to meet some of the GWS Giants! We met Harry Perryman, Finn Callaghan and Matt Flynn. 

To start, we warmed up by kicking and catching the AFL ball, then we played a game called ‘Collect the Coins’. To play this we split into ten teams and took turns kicking the ball from a cone and trying to get it in between the three posts. If you got it in between the middle pots you could pick up the cone you are standing on, it is your coin. If you get it in the outer posts, you get nothing. To win the game, all the cones must be gone, and the team with the most cones wins! 

Toward the end of our session with the Football team, the Giants handed out posters, and some people even got a footie. Everyone was overjoyed when they said we could get signatures! Some people even got body parts signed!! It was a fun day for everyone! 

By Rachel & Millie  

Swimming Carnival Reports: 

McCormack                 27.2.2023 

In McCormack, there was a lot of participation in chants, races and making sure our house was clean. Izzabella and Chloe, as house captains, were happy we could run McCormack at the swimming carnival due to us not having one for a while. We think and hope everyone enjoyed it and hopefully they look forward to other activities with us as captains. We are glad that everyone paid attention to us when we said bring everything you will need, and everything needs a name on it. We thank the teachers who organised for us to have a swimming carnival and we couldn’t have done it without the teachers. In regards Izzabella Comandari and Chloe heron the house captains of McCormack. 

 
Morrison

From the Morrison house captains Matilda Hyland and Shelby Kirby  

In Morrison on the 27th of February at the swimming carnival: 

Morrison students represented their house with a lot of enthusiastic support for the rest of our house group, including us. They were loud and proud to be included and involved in the swimming carnival, and the preparation leading up to the carnival. They were mostly responsible throughout the day by keeping their area clean and tidy. 

Sincerely your Morrison house captains of 2023. 

Cunningham  

Dear teachers and parents, this is Katalina and Amelia the Cunningham house captains! 

On February 27th we had our swimming carnival! 

We had so much fun being house captains and being able to perform with your kids in the Cunningham house! 

We are so extremely impressed with them and cannot wait for other carnivals that are coming up to do together. 

There were a bunch of kids from Cunningham who participated in the swimming races and went out of their comfort zone. We thank the teachers for providing the swimming carnival for us. 

We heard cheering from our team and the other teams. I want to congratulate Cunningham and all the other teams for being a good sport! 

I want to thank Cunningham for making our last year at St Francis with the best last carnival. 

 Sincerely, your winning Cunningham house captains! 

POLDING 

Polding had a great day at the pool filled with chants, swimming, and hot chips!! 

Not all of us did races but we all got our house colour points in some way like, cheering, cleaning, being sensible and more. 

There were less chants than we expected. They were cheering the most when it was the let’s go Polding let’s go chant.  

The canteen was packed! But mostly everyone was still satisfied with the glorious hot chips. 

At the end the scoreboard was: 

Cunningham #1 

McCormack #2 

Polding and Morrison #3 we tied. 

Yes, we came last, but we had a lot of fun and it was a great day for everybody, and we promise Polding will get them next time. 

GO POLDING! 

Sporting Opportunities: 
school Sport ACT team trials  

SSACT 12&U Cricket teams (Boys & Girls)  

Trial 1 – Tuesday, 28th February 4.30pm – 6pm – Cricket ACT  

Trial 2 – Friday, 10th March – 5.00pm – 6.30pm – Neil Bulger Oval, Queanbeyan  

SSACT 15&U Volleyball teams (Boys & Girls)  

Trial 1 – Wednesday, 1st March 4.00pm – 5pm – Lyneham Indoor Hockey Centre  

Trial 2 – Wednesday, 8th March – 4.00pm – 5pm – Lyneham Indoor Hockey Centre 

Laura Hay

Sports Coordinator