Welcome to all our families. It has been a wonderful first week back, and the smiling faces of the children attest to this. It has been lovely to see so many parent faces in the Hall in the morning and afternoon also. Your positivity adds to our parent community and assists the children to be ready for a great day of learning and engagement in class. Thanks also, for remembering not to attend classrooms as we prefer to all gather in the morning. This also allows our teachers to complete their final preparations ready for the day. If you need to chat to your teacher, please send them an email to make a time that suits for a chat.

Afternoon PickUp Times - Sport in the Hall

To assist with the smooth transition of students leaving the school in the afternoon, we do have our Preps and Year 1’s coming to the hall a little earlier. Our Year 2’s will also be escorted to the hall in the afternoon. We do ask however, that parents and carers be mindful that sport lessons are taking place in the hall until 2.50pm. There is no need to be at school from 2pm each day, and we do need to have the hall space available for classes to engage in learning. If you do need to arrive a little early, we ask that you be respectful of the hall as a learning space and keep to the sides.

Please also remember that supervision starts in the Hall each morning from 8:00am. Obviously as the new year starts, everyone is trying to settle into routines and get settled. We urge parents/carers looking to drop students off in the morning to not do so until 8:00am, as before this, it is unsupervised and unsafe for our students. Please also note that OSHC is licensed to use this space in the morning until 8:00am, and as such, we need to keep this area as free as possible for OSHC.

Building Project Update

We have received the final approvals from the Diocese to proceed with our final building stage. We are awaiting the final sign off from the Queensland Catholic Education Commission. Once all paperwork is collated, we anticipate works for the final stage to commence this term - hopefully only a few more weeks.

Playgrounds

We are looking forward to Urban Play returning to complete our new Tower Playground at the back of the Teal/Orange Blocks. We are confident that the Year 3 - Year 6 students will enjoy this space. Our wooden fort outside the Yellow Block is currently closed ready for some maintenance works to take place. Our Year 2 and Year 3 students are able to access the Early Years Precinct and the Top Ovals for play at break times whilst we await this maintenance.

Dogs on school grounds

We are blessed this year to have Mrs Barb Salisbury, our Guidance Counsellor, onsite full time this year. Ms Barb also has a Therapy Dog Companion - Honey, who will be working alongside her and visiting students/classes. As part of Honey’s very strict accreditation, we are unable to have additional dogs on site at school. Your support in adhering to these accreditation guidelines is appreciated. There is further information in the newsletter about Honey for you to read.

Many blessings

Ros

A great big welcome back to 2023! It’s been so wonderful to see so many new and familiar faces at St Benedict’s to start the year. It seems like it's been a relatively smooth start for most of our students, and I’m sure many of them will be looking forward to the weekend to recover from the first week back (teachers included!)

Parish

You may be aware that our school is a part of the Ministerial Region of the Good Shepherd (parish), which is overseen by two priests, Fr Clement and Fr Joseph. We do many things to support the parish, and also have fortnightly visits from our priests to do special prayers for masses with selected classes.

Each year, the Parish runs a Sacramental Program for students to prepare for the sacraments of Reconciliation, Confirmation and First Holy Communion. If your child is in Year 3 or above and would like to participate in the Sacramental Program, you will be required to attend an information evening either next Monday 30th Jan at the Ryan Community Centre or Tuesday 31st Jan at the Good Shepherd Community Centre at 7:00pm. If you require any further information, please don’t hesitate to contact either myself at school or the Parish Office on 47239844. I have also attached a letter containing information about this below.

ALSO - the parish is seeking volunteers to assist with Masses on the weekend. If you would like to volunteer to become a reader or a Eucharistic Minister, please contact Kathy at the Parish Office on 47239844. Mass times on a Sunday are 9:30am and 5:00pm at the Ryan Community Centre.

DATE CLAIMER

Our assemblies this year will remain on a Friday at 8:45am in the Hall. I will include a timetable with classes in next weeks newsletter. These will begin in Week 5, Friday 24th Feb. Our Beginning Year Liturgy will be taking place on Friday 17th Feb at 9:00am in the Hall - our entire school community are invited to attend this event. I would particularly like to extend a welcome to our parents of Year 6 children, as we will be recognising them as leaders in front of the school for 2023.

Pax,

Nick

Sacramental_Program_2023.pdf

Straight into Learning!

Wow! What a wonderful start back to the year. I have been through many classrooms and it is very exciting to see so many eager students already. Everyone is getting to know their new class, their teachers, and moving into routines and structures to enable a successful term. I can’t wait for the next step in the learning journey.

Parent Engagement

As parents and carers, you play a primary role in supporting your children’s wellbeing and learning, guiding and supporting them successfully through educational processes. At St Benedict’s we recognise and value the partnerships between parents and carers, the community, and the school to promote student learning and high expectations for student success and personal growth. We foster positive parent engagement through a variety of ways, some of them being:

Class Newsletters: These are emailed by each teacher on a fortnightly basis. These newsletters have important information, please take the time to read them each fortnight.

Open Classrooms: From week 5, we will roster 2 classes each week to invite their families to the classroom to engage in learning activities. Students will generally share their learning portfolio and other work they have been doing throughout the term.

DATES TO NOTE

Open Classrooms for this Term will be:

Week 5 (Friday February 24th) - 6 Crocodiles and 2 Kingfishers

Week 6 (Friday March 3rd) - 3 Emus and 5 Dolphins

Week 7 (Friday March 10th) - 4 Dragonflies and Prep Bilbies

Week 10 (Friday March 31st) - 5 Jellyfish and 1 Bandicoots

Open classrooms occur after Assembly each Friday morning.

10 Questions To Ask That Gets Kids Talking About School

Tell me about the best part of your day.
What made you laugh?
Who did you play with? What did you play?
What are you looking forward to about tomorrow?
What did you learn about in PE/Music/Drama/Dance/Spanish/Technologies?
What games did you play at lunchtime?
Tell me about what you read in class.
Can you show me something you learned (or did) today?
What was the most interesting thing you learned today?
What was the hardest/most challenging thing you did today?

Yours in Learning,

Aleesha Rockemer (Learning and Teaching Adviser, and acting Assistant Principal Administration)

The_Zones_of_Regulation.Wk1.pdf

Therapy_dog.pdf

Therapy_dog1.pdf

Tuckshop.pdf

P & F Event Organising Group

This year I would really like to organise a group of parents to form an Event Organising Group. This will take a lot of pressure off myself and Ros to organise events like discos, carnivals & the fun run.

There is no official committee or positions, just a group of people who are willing to work together to produce fantastic events. No one will be expected to run or organise a full event by themselves, instead working together to share the load. If you wish to get involved we would need a commitment from you to participate in meetings either online or in person and be able to catch up before events to work out logistics.

If this is something you are interested in please get in contact with Renee Neville or Ros Baumann.

NQ_Blast_Cricket_Registrations.pdf