Thank you to all the families who were able to join us for our Beginning of Year Liturgy this morning. It was particularly great to have Fr Dave visiting us and engaging the children with his magic tricks and talking about how great our school can be when we all commit to being kind and thoughtful. We launched our Way of PEACE initiative where we are planning to build a language culture and a way of being around the words used to make up the PEACE acronym- Positive, Empathy, Accepting, Caring and Engaged.  We certainly believe that by incorporating this language into our daily interactions and building an awareness of the value of these actions, we will be able to deepen our community expectations.

Life Ed

Please note that a few of our classes missed their lesson with Healthy Harold this week due to the Life Education teacher being unwell. These lessons will be made up in March. From all reports of the students who did get to visit the van, thoroughly enjoyed their lesson and were inspired by Healthy Harold.

Supportive Parent Community

I had to speak with a number of parents this week about some children who were demonstrating some challenging and / or unacceptable behaviours. I have to express how grateful we are for the supportive parent community we have at St Benedict’s and for the partnerships we are generating in creating the best environment for our kids. Your support with establishing shared expectations assists so much in making positive changes for our students, your children. We will always advocate for the children in our school and will always work towards positive solutions as issues arise and your support has been much appreciated.

Thank you to those families who responded to our text early in the week reminding everyone that there is no supervision provided at school until 8.00am unless children are going to our Outside of School Hours Care Service. We appreciate your vigilance in keeping children safe and not leaving them unattended.

Please also note that we have many Prep and Year 1 students heading to the playground after school which is causing distress when they are not the designated pick up zone for parents to collect them. Please remind students that they are to head straight to the pre-arranged pick up area as the Playground is not an option after school. I certainly do appreciate how attractive it is to stop off for a quick play before heading home but this draws in students who are not being supervised and are expected elsewhere.

Mad Food Scientist

Science has proven there is a direct link between our food and sleep choices, and the effects of those choices on our behaviour, mood and ability to perform both academically and physically. This program provides a way of partnering with the school to help your children learn and thrive, both in and out of the classroom.

Next week we have the Mad Food Scientist coming to engage our community in learning about the importance of certain foods in our diet. The children will attend a session with their class on either Wednesday or Thursday and parents are also invited for their own session on Thursday at 3.15pm in our Red Block classrooms. I would love to see as many parents as possible come along as this is the first time this program is being run in Townsville. Please see their website more information.- https://therootcause.com.au/childrens-health-program/#

Cheers

Penny

A big thank you to many members of our school community who were able to attend our Beginning Year Liturgy today.  It was led beautifully by our Year 6 students and I thought our choir sounded lovely! As always, we had Fr Dave delivered his homily and as I mentioned to the students, we are lucky to have a parish priest who also doubles as a magician!  At the liturgy we launched our PEACE initiative.

PEACE Initiative

This year we are employing a ‘way of being’ which enables us to be the best members of our community that we can.  This way of being is a ‘Way of Peace’ - Peace being an acronym for Positive, Empathetic, Accepting, Caring, Engaged.

This has been taken, not simply because we like the idea of being peaceful, but because PEACE formed the basis of the teachings of St Benedict.  The Benedictine motto is quite simply the word ‘PAX’ - which in latin means peace.

The idea behind this ‘Way of Peace’ is to give a language around how we speak to students around behaviour (positive and negative) in ensuring we are being Positive, Empathetic, Accepting, Caring and Engaged.  Over the next few weeks, each class will be discussing this and how this works in different contexts. There will be several initiatives run with this as the year progresses.  

I would encourage you at home to use the language of being Positive, Empathetic, Accepting, Caring and Engaged when you see your children using these wonderful traits.  

Assembly 2020

You may have noticed that our liturgy was on a Friday which is different to what we have had in the past.  This is now also the case for a weekly assemblies, as students now have specialist lessons on a Monday. Please see below for a list of when classes are presenting assembly for this term:

Week 5 - Feb 28 - 5/6 Crocodiles

Week 6 - Mar 6 - 3/4 Emus

Week 7 - Mar 13 - 2 Lorikeets

Week 8 - Mar 20 - Prep Bilbies

Week 9 - Mar 27 - 5 Turtles

Week 10 - Apr 3 - No Assembly

Shrove Tuesday/Ash Wednesday

Next week, we celebrate Shrove Tuesday and mark Ash Wednesday as the beginning of Lent.  On Shrove Tuesday (25/02), the P&F will be cooking and delivering pancakes to classrooms between 8:30 - 9:00am.  On Ash Wednesday (26/02) we will gather as a whole school to be marked with ashes at 2:30pm. All members of the community are welcome to attend this liturgy.

Have a great week and God bless,

Nick 

PREP OPEN DAY

We invite all potential Prep families to St Benedict’s in 2021 to attend our Prep Open Day on Thursday 19th March from 9:00-10:00am.  We invite you to attend with your child starting Prep in 2021 and have a tour of our school led by our senior teachers.  You will also be encouraged to book your Prep enrollment interview for 2021 at this time. If you are unable to attend this day, our Principal will be running tours on the following times:

Monday 23rd & 30th March, 9:00-10:00am AND 

Thursday 25 March and 2nd April, 4:30-5:30pm.

Zones of Regulation  – Social and Emotional Learning

Triggers:  Students have been learning about triggers.  They have discussed what events, feelings or behaviours might ‘trigger’ them to be in the yellow or red zone. Initially, they would have looked at their ‘Zones Across The Day’ worksheet from a previous week, to determine when during the day they were in both the red or yellow zone, and what might have caused this.  They would have then discussed what other things cause them to feel frustrated or scared.