Marion Catholic Primary School Sowing Seeds For Success Thursday, June 22, 2017 Newsletter No. 2017 / 10

We acknowledge the Dharuk Clan and custodians of the land. May we walk gently and respectfully upon the land. Dear Parents and Guardians, Thank you to the parents who attended our Parent Learning Walks this week. It is great to see parents in the classrooms observing the excellent teaching and learning happening in our school. Our Parent / Teacher Interviews are next week. Please ensure you book a time to discuss your child’s learning with the class teacher. Take this opportunity to discuss any future learning goals for your child. Punctuality is an important quality to instil in our children. Children learn from our actions and copy our behaviours. It is extremely important that children are at school on time. Classes begin at 9am. By law, any child who arrives after 9am is to be marked partially absent for the day. In our classrooms, learning starts within the first five minutes of the day, and if a child is habitually late, they are missing out on important instructions for the first lesson. If, for some reason you are running late and the gate is closed, you must walk your child into the school office and sign them in. Please be mindful that this is disruptive to your child’s learning and the learning of the entire class. Following on from this, if your child is absent from school for any reason, please send a note to the class teacher explaining their absence upon their return. These notes are required for teachers to complete attendance rolls accurately. These attendance rolls are legal documents and must be accurate at all times. 1788 The Horsley Drive Horsley Park NSW 2175

At a previous P&F Meeting a request was made to explain the award system in the newsletter. Each week, at assembly, children are given awards for the following: Peace Award, Uniform Award, Certificate of Achievement, SRC Award, Library Award, Sport Award. In addition, twice a year I give attendance awards to children with perfect attendance for a semester. Any of these awards are then kept to work towards a Principal Award. Children require 10 of these awards to receive a Principal Award. After three Principal Awards, the child then receives a Marion Medal. If you require any further clarification, please contact me. A reminder that our Athletics Carnival will be held next Friday 30th June at Rossford Oval, Smithfield. Please note this is a different venue from previous years. Another reminder that our Term 3 Staff Development day will be held on Monday 17th July. All staff will be off site that day. Students resume for Term 3 on Tuesday 18th July. As this is our last newsletter for Term 2, I would like to wish all our families a safe and restful holiday time. Enjoy your time with your families and we look forward to continuing working together next term. We thank you Lord, for this term. For the challenges, successes and the mistakes from which we have learnt. God be with us as we spend our time with family and friends. Telephone: 9620 2045 Fax: 9620 1012

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Give us strength and courage to do what is right, Help us to appreciate what others do for us, help us give time and effort to others. Help us be the peacemakers in our family. Keep us safe, give us rest and bring us back refreshed and ready for a new term. Amen Therese Gaunt Principal

P&F MEETING Term 3 P & F meeting is on Tuesday 22nd August.

CAR PARK Thank you for an improved effort in the car park. Please do not become complacent about our car park safety. All children and parents in our community need to feel safe.

SCHOOL ENEWS APP One of the best ways to keep up to date with school news is through the School eNews app. Attached are the instructions for anyone who has not yet downloaded the app. Please subscribe to this app to allow you to receive notifications and news from the school regularly.

SCHOOL FEES If you still have outstanding fees can you please arrange payment as soon as possible. Payment may be made using EFT, BPay, cash or cheque. If you are experiencing difficulty, please make an appointment to meet with Ms Gaunt as soon as possible so that suitable arrangements can be made.

FROM THE REC Dear Parents and Carers, Thank you to the families who attended our Family Mass on Sunday 18th June. The choir sang beautifully and the students who read and participated in the Offertory Procession did a most wonderful job. We are very grateful for the wonderful partnership that we uphold with the Our Lady of Victories Parish and look forward to further opportunities for the faith formation of our students and their families. Thank you also to Mrs Lombard and Mrs Capolupo for their preparations and to the staff of Marion for attending.

CLOTHING POOL Thank you to Mrs D’Emanuele for running our second hand clothing pool. If you have any items in good repair to be donated, please do so to provide another alternative for clothing for our children. The next clothing pool will be held in Term 3.

Class Visits I have thoroughly enjoyed visiting classrooms this term and sharing in the rich learning experiences that our teachers are providing for our

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students in Religious Education. We now make use of warm ups, explicit teaching, plenaries, meditation, prayer experiences and scriptural response tasks; just to name a few! We will continue to develop our Religious Education lessons to provide a range of rich experiences for our students in the coming terms. As this term draws to a close, I would like to thank all of the staff at Marion, who continue to nourish the hearts of the students with a rich diversity of faith-filled experiences. In addition, I would like to thank you, the primary faith models of the students. It is you who began your child’s faith journey, and I hope you can continue to nourish that in all that you do on a daily basis. Help me, O Lord, That my hands may be merciful And filled with good deeds So that I may do only good to others And try to take upon myself The more difficult and toilsome tasks.

Amen Mrs Deborah Stone Religious Education Co-ordinator

Literacy News!!!! New South Wales Premier’s Reading Challenge The 2017 PRC has begun. Please take some time to read through the PRC website. The challenge encourages a love of reading and promotes good quality literature. If you have any questions about the challenge, please don’t hesitate to ask. More information can be found at this site link: https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html

Marion Literacy Statement Comes Alive! At Marion, all teachers enable literacy learning when they . . . continually evaluate and adjust teaching practice. As educators, we the teachers at Marion are always looking for ways to improve our practice for the benefit of our students. Our Learning Walks each term enable us to reflect, evaluate and use research to develop our own practice and to share good practice with our fellow teachers. One quality above all which makes a good teacher is the ability to reflect on what, why and how we do things and to adapt and develop our practice within lifelong learning. The photos included were taken in each classroom during our learning walks. The focus of our Learning Walks was to view and discuss authentic reading tasks. The tasks which our students complete each day are full of challenging, purposeful and relevant activities which support the reading development of our students.

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Parent Learning Walks It was lovely to see our parents visiting the classrooms for our Marion Parent Learning Walks. These learning walks occur each term in every classroom to give our parents the opportunity to experience the classroom and share in their child’s education and learning. We have included some of the ‘happy snaps’ from our day.

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enjoyment and appreciation of reading. Please take some time to ask your child about their reading; choose a few each night to engage in conversation with your child about their nightly independent reading.

Winter Reading Challenge Curl up with a good read this winter! An exciting new challenge will be sent home for our students over the holidays. Please encourage your child to borrow extra books and participate in our Winter Reading Challenge. Each child will receive a Winter Bookmark with 12 challenges on it. The aim of this challenge is to read as many texts as they can on the Winter Bookmark. The bookmarks are then returned back to school in Week One Term 3 where each child will receive a ticket to go in the draw for our Reading Challenge movie tickets, kindly donated by Hoyts Wetherill Park. Look out for the Winter Bookmarks which will be coming home over the next week. Good Luck!! Happy Reading! Mrs Virginia O’Connor Literacy Coordinator/ Reading Coach Email: [email protected]

Family Educator News How can I help my child become a better reader? Over the next week, each family will receive a yellow ‘BOOK TALK’ resource with questions to support reading comprehension and encourage an

Marion Unplugs A few weeks ago I sent home some information about Family Week. Some families did ‘unplug’ from electronics and played board games, went to the park or took their dog for a walk. One family even went away for the weekend without their

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ipads! From all reports the children loved spending time just with their families without electronics involved. Maybe this could be a ritual once a week or a day in the school holidays.

own scratch Australian animal. We all had lots of fun this term.

Mini Vinnies Our Mini Vinnies will be holding a pyjama day on Monday. Children can wear their pyjamas to school in return for a gold coin donation. All money will go towards the St Vincent de Paul winter appeal.

St Vincent de Paul Sandwich making Thank you to the parents and grandparents who have helped make sandwiches this term. Also thank you to those parents who could not help make the sandwiches but donated money towards this worthy cause. It is much appreciated. Our dates for Term 3 are: Week 1 20th July and Week 7 31st August. Your help on these days or any donations are appreciated.

Grandparents Mass and Morning Tea We will be celebrating Grandparents Day on Thursday 27th July. The day will start with Mass, open classrooms and a morning tea. Mark the date in your diaries.

Marion Minis We have had an exciting and fun time in Marion Minis. We got new equipment this term so we were able to make and design lots of things. On Monday we celebrated NAIDOC week by reading a Dreamtime story and then the children made their

Thank you, Mrs Capolupo

SPORT NEWS A reminder of change of venue for this year’s athletics carnival to Janice Crosio Oval, Rosford Street, Smithfield being held on the last day of school, Friday 30th June. Ms R Anderson Sports & ICT Co-ordinator

YERONGA UNIFORM STORE CAMDEN STORE will be closed from Saturday 1st July 2017 and will re-open Monday 10th July 2017. Please visit the website to place orders during this time.

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CANTEEN THURS 29/6 Gloria Mihanovic Tanya Curic

FRI 30/6 NO CANTEEN

DIARY DATES TERM 2 Week 9 Fri 23/6 Week 10 Mon 26/6 Tues

27/6

Wed

28/6

Thurs

29/6

Fri

30/6

TERM 3 Week 1 Mon 17/7 Tues 18/7

Year 1 Assembly 2.30pm Parent/Teacher Interviews Captiv8 Joy Day Parent/Teacher Interviews Parent/Teacher Interviews Parent/Teacher Interviews School Athletics Carnival Last Day of Term 2

Staff Development Day Students K-6 Return to school - Start of Term 3

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