The end of Week 3 was celebrated with the reverent and prayerful liturgy offered by our Infants students – Mary Help of Christians. Our littlest students were so solemn and respectful in presenting the different parts of the liturgy. It was so lovely to see the church packed with family, friends and the entire school community to take part in the liturgy. Thank you to our dedicated and enthusiastic Infants teachers who helped prepare the students. The students were a credit to their families and their teachers.

At the conclusion of the liturgy Father Lolesio blessed the new crucifixes for the refurbished Primary building. We are so close that we have started to move resources into the cupboards. On Monday we hope to secure the Certificate of Occupancy and be allowed to move into the premises to start lessons on Tuesday. We are so excited about the prospect of the new learning spaces and we are very grateful for the patience of the Primary students and teachers as we have waited so long for the building to be finished. We look forward to welcoming parents to inspect the new classrooms.

Today many of our students travelled to Canberra to compete in the Archdiocesan Cross Country. We have to wait until next week to hear about all the results but we had one of the largest teams competing at Mt Stromlo and that is a wonderful effort. Thank you to Mrs McLeod for managing the team and all the parents who transported their children to the competition.

Next week the weather forecast is for much colder days and the slightest possibility of rain. This means that we will now be officially into the winter uniform. We will be expecting all students to wear all parts of the uniform, including the tie, and the school jumpers and jackets. We try very hard to ensure that the uniform is maintained. If a student is unavoidably out of uniform then we require a letter/note of explanation from the parent/guardian so that all students are treated with equity and fairness.

This week we were successful in meeting the legislative requirements required by all schools. In the past weeks the Catholic Education Office have read through our documentation, Statements of Practice and teaching programs to monitor the expectations set by our governing authority – NESA. We have no areas of concern and we are grateful for all the professional and thorough documentation that our teachers maintain. This essentially means that we are registered as a school for the next 5 years until the next compliance review.

During the review we went through the attendance data and statistics. Interestingly we have some issues with attendance and patterns of attendance. We have an exponential number of absences on a Friday which is of concern as there is a whole day of learning happening on those days. Many students seem to be away, sometimes without explanation, and they forfeit a whole lot of learning that makes it more difficult to keep pace with the lessons covered on those days. It is so much harder to learn and make progress if students are not at school. There is explicit learning every day and rehearsal of learning every day that is invaluable to meet benchmarks and achieve the growth that each student deserves. If you have any issues with attendance please contact your class teacher or any member of Leadership to discuss. An explanation for every absence is a legal requirement and needed for record keeping.

Next week we will welcome the performers of Wiradjuri Echoes a cultural dance performance that we teach our students about the cultural features of First Nation dancing. We are very lucky to have secured these performers and these will take place next Tuesday and Wednesday. We thank Mrs Maher and Mrs Sannazzaro for their organisation. Our Year 7 students returned from their cultural immersion to Camp Hudson last week where  they camped for two nights and participated in a range of cultural activities. Thank you again to Ms Wade, Mrs Maher, Mr Smith, Mrs Black, Mrs Maxwell and Mr Hennequin for their instruction and supervision.

Over the past few weeks we have noticed an increase in isolated cases where students have not been kind to each other. We need to always remember that we need to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves and that it doesn’t take a lot of energy and time to be kind. We never know what anyone else is going through and we need to ensure that we do not ever deliberately make someone feel bad. We are looking to build a behaviour curriculum that identifies and teaches strategies that help students be emotionally aware of themselves and others and ways and reasons to be kind and supportive of others.

Last Thursday the Primary students had a great time at their Disco. $158.50 was raised from this event, which was donated to the Parish. 

Take care over the weekend and enjoy the last of the lovely autumn sunshine.

God Bless.