Week 4, Term 3 2024

Dear Parents/Carers,

Weeks 3 and 4 of Term 3 shaped to be busy ones for the St Bernadette’s community. Both the R/1M class and 1H class hosted liturgies in Week 3, celebrating the lives of St Mary MacKillop, Australia’s first saint, on Wednesday, and St Dominic on St Dominic’s Day on Friday. Our students participated in these celebrations reverently and respectfully, highlighting what an amazing community we have. Following a beautiful morning tea led by our school board, St Dominic’s Day also consisted of our Reception-Year 2 students and Year 3-6 students working together in their House Teams for Dominican-themed rotations. This is a great way for students to build relationships with peers who are not in their year level, grow house team spirit and develop leadership skills. Thank you to our teaching staff for organising such enjoyable and engaging learning experiences for our students.

As well as these celebrations, 13 of our Year 3-6 students travelled to the East Parklands in Week 3 to participate in the Catholic Primary Schools Cross Country Carnival. The group of students performed admirably, achieving our best results at this carnival in recent memory. We had a number of Top 10 finishers, including a 1^st place in the Year 4 Girls Division C race. Congratulations to all involved on this day!

In Weeks 5 and 6 of Term 3, our Year 1-6 students will be learning content from the Being Sexual strand of the Made in the Image of God (MITIOG) curriculum. Letters to families have been distributed for each year level via School Stream, outlining what content will be taught to your child’s class. Please make sure you read the School Stream note and attached letter containing this information, as your child may have questions to ask you throughout the program. As always, we will continue to work in partnership with our families. If you have any questions, please contact your child’s teacher.

By now you would have seen the letters sent on School Stream from Dr Neil McGoran and Ray advising of his secondment to the Catholic Education Office for the next 6 weeks.  The 3 of us are very confident that it will be ‘business as usual’ for our thriving community in Ray’s absence and things have been put in place to ensure Michelle and Matt are well supported as they lead the school through the next 9 weeks.

We are looking forward to seeing all our students dressed up for our Book Week celebrations next Thursday and hope as many parents as possible can join us for our assembly and parade from 9am. We are also excited about the beginning of our book fair - thank you in advance for your support of this fundraiser.

God bless,

Matt, Michelle and Ray

In the year 1 class this term we are lucky enough to have a student teacher, Ms Cara Dyer-Steel working in with us. In science Ms Dyer-Steel has introduced us to the topic of Forces.

In this unit, Year 1 students will explore the concepts of forces, focusing on pushes and pulls. Students will develop an understanding of how forces affect the movement of objects in their everyday lives.

They will learn to recognise, describe, and predict the effects of push and pull forces, using appropriate vocabulary to articulate their observations and experiences.

By the end of the unit, students will be able to relate their understanding of forces to real-world examples and personal experiences.

Below are some images of us investigating / describing how different pushes and pulls change the motion of objects.

By Noah Alexander, Gold Medal Winning Article.
During the last few weeks, 5/6D has been home to Olympic artists, journalists, and athletes.
In art we’ve made our very own pictograms of the sports played at the games. We’ve also made figures of the players competing using something Mrs Kim, our classes pre-service teacher, taught us.
Something else we have begun is reading articles to prepare for writing about things happening in our school for our Journalistic Writing unit this term. Another thing we’re doing is interviewing people about something significant in their life to write about.
On top of all that, some students in our class have held their very own Olympics on our courts at play times. Here are just 2 of these fan-made games. First up is the handball Olympics, held on one of the handball courts and run by a small group of boys. The second of these are the basketball Olympics, played on the basketball court, this game was run by a larger group of girls.
One more thing we’ve done for the Olympics is watch the Australian teams’ highlights. We’ve seen swimmers take first, narrowly winning the competition. We saw people in canoe slalom, speeding through the course. Teams kicked and shot goals. Here are a few people’s favourite sports. 
Johan-Soccer, Millar-Water Polo, Martin- Water Polo, Miss Driscoll- Canoe Slalom and Swimming. 

By Samreen Kaur Randhawa, Silver Medal Winning Article.
The Olympics has been consuming a majority of our time in 5/6D for the past few weeks. We have Olympic reporters in our class and we have been creative with the Olympics. We made pictograms, athlete art, a medal tally graph, and even competed in the handball Olympics. We have been also watching the Olympic highlights at recess and lunch which was an awesome experience. Mrs Kim has been a new edition in our class. She has been working with us for four weeks and has helped us a lot, even teaching us some lessons. She is a really nice person and taught us how to draw an athlete moving. We even did some maths with her. It was really fun with her and we will all miss you!

What kind of phone does an Olympic gymnast have? 
A Flip phone!

By Raj Basnet, Bronze Medal Winning Article.
Students in 5/6D have been watching some Olympic Highlights. From Canoe Slalom to Water polo, it has been a memorable time for our class discovering their new favourite Olympic sports. 
For the past couple of weeks we have been creating our own Olympic games which include basketball, Handball and AFL between the teams consisting of St. Dominic & St. Catherine and their opposition St. Bernadette’s & St. Catherine. Currently Dominic and Bernadette’s are tied but not for long.
In 5/6D we have been lucky to have Mrs. Jennifer Kim (student educator) to teach us to draw Olympic athletes in proportion. We have drawn some silhouette artworks. Here are some we made below.
On 14^th of August, we had a vote for a competition which included writing a newsletter for the school while students voted for the one they thought had the most potential. The students came to the consensus of Noah Alexander in 1^st place, Samreen Randhawa in second and Raj Basnet in 3^rd.
In maths, we have been learning to create graphs and as a result of this we have created a medal tally in Excel®.
We have created picograms in 5/6D of our chosen Olympic sport, and we were glad to share our special artworks with the St. Bernadette’s community.  

Special Feature Article Awarded for Effort and Enthusiasm
The Olympics had started in the 5/6D class with a wide range of subjects to rule and dominate in, such as maths, art, writing and even sports. Our class contains several talented contenders, aiming to achieve the gold medal in their respective subjects. The competitors have made excellent progress trying their best to score remarkable results. 
During our Art lessons, the Olympic artists have been drawing Olympic sports silhouettes to match the sport. Other illustrations include pictograms. We have extraordinarily smart mathematicians who have calculated the medals won by countries such as Australia who have 53 medals and 18 of them are gold. The class also has countless strong, and capable athletes. During this time the class viewed the highlights of the Olympics during recess and lunch eating-time. We discovered new kinds of sports such as breaking dancing and water polo.
For the first 4 weeks, we have been taught by another student teacher, Mrs Kim. Mrs Kim has been coaching the Olympic artists who have drawn impressive silhouettes of athletes. Mrs Kim has been teaching us ways to draw a whole portion of the human body, with simple techniques. Mrs Kim has also been teaching us on how to interview people properly and with this information we have made news reports. 
By Sakar Sapkota

Finally, a joke from Sienna to finish…

Why does Cinderella never win the Olympics?
She has a pumpkin for a coach and runs away from the ball. 

Below: Pictograms of gymnastics (Santa), Rugby 7's (Xavier) and Wrestling (Jampleen) and Athlete Movement Artworks - a work in progress - by Johan, Sakar and Aarav.