Dear Families,

Welcome back after what we hope was a relaxing and blessed Easter holiday break with your children. 

Staff Professional Learning 
On Tuesday 26 April, the St Mary’s teaching staff attended a Catalyst professional learning day in Canberra with several Catholic schools from our diocese. The focus of the day was embedding High Impact Teaching strategies to improve student outcomes and was conducted by Associate Professor Lorraine Hammond AM, PhD, CF from Edith Cowan University, WA. This was a wonderful opportunity for the staff to engage in high-quality professional learning to further develop the quality of learning offered to our students. 

On Monday this week, Jordan O’Sullivan from Shaping Minds returned to St Mary’s and worked in our Year 3-6 classrooms demonstrating the strategy known as Daily Review. This strategy will become an important part of our daily routine to address reducing cognitive load and supporting the retention of knowledge.

ANZAC Day 
Our nation commemorated ANZAC Day on Monday 25th April, and we thank the students who participated in the ANZAC March in Moruya and the services at Tomakin and Tuross Head. The school held our own ceremony with the children last Thursday. Commemorating this important national event is very important so that our students can learn all about what the thousands of men and women sacrificed during the Gallipoli event.

In Pope Francis’ Easter message he names the numerous countries suffering war around the world today and there are surprisingly so many. Pope Francis reminds us that, “... every war brings in its wake consequences that affect the entire human family: from grief and mourning to drama of refugees, and to the economic and food crisis, the signs of which we are already seeing. Faced with the continuing signs of war, as well as the many painful setbacks to life, Jesus Christ, the victor over sin, fear and death, exhorts us not to surrender to evil and violence.” 

May God bless people of goodwill everywhere and may God give them the courage to continue to fight for justice and peace in our world. 

Let us reflect on and acknowledge the bravery of all these men and women and all those who have lost their lives in pursuit of peace and justice and safety for others. Let us also pray for the thousands of service men and women and their families currently serving in the Australian Defence Force.

Open Morning - Kinder 2023
2023 enrolments for Kindergarten (and other grades) are now open. If any family has a child to commence school next year, please download and complete the enrolment form available on the school website as soon as possible so that we know how many places we will have available for new families in 2023. 

Please notify any new families interested in attending St Mary’s to register their commitment to join our St Mary’s community.

We already have a number of new and existing families who have enrolled their children for 2023.

Teddy Bear’s Picnic
Kinder had a very exciting day on Wednesday at the Teddy Bear’s Picnic hosted by St Bernard’s School at Batemans Bay. We travelled by bus with lots of Kinders and teddies on seats. The children were not disappointed on our arrival at St Bernard’s when we were greeted by the friendly, welcoming staff and students. Our morning was packed with lots of engaging “teddy bear” activities. The children rotated from room to room, participating in teddy bear parachute games, Art Works - designing their own teddy on ipads, decorating teddy biscuits, paper plate crafts and teddy bear dancing. 

Lunch was a very welcome sausage sandwich in the sunshine before we departed St Bernard’s with a small bag of goodies and some very sleepy passengers.

We thank the St Bernard’s Principal, Mrs Wain and the Kinder teachers, Mrs Brady, Mrs Beattie, Mrs Hicks and all their helpers for their hospitality and for such an enriching and fun day. 

Year 6 Combined Schools Leadership Day
Year 6 students from St Bernard’s travelled down on Wednesday and together with our Year 6 students, enjoyed a combined schools Leadership Day. We were extremely fortunate to welcome two former St Mary’s students as guest speakers. Carolyn Turnbull, Managing Director of Tourism WA, joined us via Zoom link as our first guest speaker. She spoke to the boys and girls of how she always dreamed big and worked hard to achieve success throughout her career so far. Carolyn was very engaging and left the students with an inspiring message to reach high, dream big and always know they can achieve great things in this big wide world. Michael Weyman joined us as our next guest speaker and had the students hanging on his every word as he talked about the importance of working together as a team to achieve success and some key leadership figures who were integral to his successful playing career. Following our guest speakers, students took part in a number of team building activities such as a water marathon and tower building task. This was followed by a BBQ lunch and we finished the day with a beautiful liturgy. We thank our guest speakers for sharing their wisdom and to our new friends from St Bernard’s for sharing in the day with us. 

Totally Terrific Thursday
On Thursday, St Mary’s staff shared their crafting expertise with the students. It was a wonderful opportunity for students with similar interests across the grades to come together and share the experience. Students spent the time making a variety of different gifts for Mother’s Day. We hope you enjoy the special surprise from your child/ren for Mother’s Day.

NAPLAN Timetable for Year 3 and Year 5
Next Tuesday NAPLAN assessments begin for Year 3 and Year 5 students. A reminder that these assessments are a snapshot of what your child can do across various domains of literacy and numeracy. These assessments will be held first thing in the mornings so please make sure your child arrives at school on time prior to the bell.

Below is the NAPLAN timetable for the next two weeks. If your child is unable to attend one of the tests, then they will have time to complete a make-up test. Year 3 students have until the Friday of the first week (13 May) to complete a writing catch-up test on paper. For online tests, Year 3 and Year 5 students have until the end of the test window (20 May) to complete catch-up tests.Students who are absent on the above dates will sit the tests from Monday 16/05/2021 to Friday 20/05/2021. In the event of technological issues, we also have these dates as back-up for the whole grade/s. If you have any questions, please contact Mrs Heffernan or Mr Bateman.

Mother’s Day Breakfast and Liturgy
This morning we celebrated our beautiful Mums! It was wonderful to see so many mums and grandmothers come along to join us for a delicious breakfast. This was followed by a lovely liturgy in honour of our mums, presented by Kinder. Thank you to Mrs Stephens for her preparations with the children and also a very big thank you to Mrs Croese who stepped in to prepare with the students this week in the lead up, while Mrs Stephens was away. Kinder did a wonderful job leading us in music and prayer. 

Additional Pupil Free Days – Term 2
As communicated earlier this week, Catholic Education is expanding on the support offered to schools to facilitate professional learning due to the pandemic. This term, Director Ross Fox has provided each school with an additional two days of Professional Learning. The additional pupil free days for St Mary’s Moruya, St Bernard’s Batemans Bay and Carroll College Broulee will be the last two days of Term 2. These dates are Thursday 30 June and Friday 1 July 2022. The additional days will certainly support us in planning for Term 3 and focusing on Catalyst initiatives.   

Special School Assembly -  2021 Awards
On Monday May 16, we will be hosting a Special Whole School Assembly at 12:45 pm in the  Performing Arts Centre (PAC). We are finally able to gather together as a community and announce our Class Award recipients from last year.

Please join us if you can to share in this special occasion. Parents are welcome to stay on and have another family picnic on the front lawns. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us!

School Winter Uniform
By now, students should be transitioning into their full winter uniform.The mornings are certainly getting cooler. We ask that by Monday 16 May all students are wearing the correct winter uniform in time for our special awards assembly. A reminder to please that students wear black school shoes with the winter uniform and sneakers on sports days. Please follow the link to see the full list of winter uniform clothing. Please also ensure that children are wearing correct footwear. Black shoes are to be worn with school uniform and sneakers are to be worn on sports days.

Confirmation Enrolment Meeting
If your child is in Year 6 and will be making the sacrament of Confirmation this term, there is an information and enrolment meeting which will be held this Wednesday 11 May here at school. The meeting will begin at 5:00pm in the Year 6 classroom.  Please come along if you would like to enrol your child to be confirmed.