Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back from Camp Cooba to our Year 5/6 students. Although the weather was wet and cold, they managed to have a great time away with many adventurous activities attempted and enjoyed. A very big thank you must go to our dedicated and fun-loving staff who were there with them for the 3 days and 2 nights.  On behalf of the parents and students of Year 5/6, thank you Anne Barbic, Sally Cameron, Tarthra Kennelly, Nicole Joyce, Natalia Ciuffetelli and Luke Mooney. Your time and effort is very much appreciated.

Mother’s Day

We are looking forward to seeing many of our mums, aunties, grandmothers and special woman here on Friday afternoon. Our Pamper and Play will be in the playground from 3:30 – 4:00pm and while that is happening, our dads will be cooking a barbeque dinner for the family. This will be served from 4pm. If you haven’t sent an RSVP as yet, please still come. We’ve ordered plenty of food so just show up and enjoy the time together celebrating as part of the St Thomas the Apostle community.  

From everyone at St Thomas’ we wish all out mother’s, carers and special women in our lives a very special day on Sunday.

Enrolments

Hopefully you’ve seen the billboards posted around Kambah, heard the adds on the radio and seen the posts on our Facebook page. It is enrolment time for 2022!  If you have a little one ready to start Kindy next year, or you have friends or family in our area with a child ready for school in 2022, please let them know about our Open Days

• Wednesday May 19^th from 9am – 5pm
• Saturday May 22nd from 9am -11 am

The enrolment period goes from 3 - 28 May.

Reporting - Semester 1 2021

Our teachers have begun the process of creating each child’s Semester 1 2021 report.

A team at Catholic Education, Canberra Goulburn have been working over the past year to develop our reporting system and there are major and welcome changes being introduced this year.

In Semester 1:

For Kindergarten students:

• Achievement in each subject will be reported using a four-point scale (Well Above Expectations, Above Expectations, Meeting Expectations and Working Towards Expectations).

For Year 1 to Year 6 students:

• Academic grades for each subject using a five-point scale from A-E will be reported using the Australian Curriculum Achievement Standards.

For all students:

• Strand Achievement will be reported in English, Mathematics, Humanities and Social Sciences, Health and Physical Education, and The Arts using a five-point scale (Excellent, High, Sound, Basic, Elementary).
• Engagement with Learning statements, which are taken directly from the Australian Curriculum, will provide specific information about your child’s Critical and Creative Thinking, and Personal and Social Responsibility, using a three-point scale (Beginning, Developing, Consistently).
• Individual student comments will not be used in the Semester 1 Reports.

Dialogue is an important feature of reporting. At the end of Term 1 we had our Interim Reports sent home followed by Parent Teacher Interviews. The Semester Report in this format encourages the continuation of parent engagement and conversation about student learning. Parents are always welcome to make a time to meet with teachers where we can engage in genuine conversation about your child’s strengths, challenges, effort and areas for growth. We will also invite parents to do this in Week 10 after reports have gone home should you want to discuss any aspect of your child’s report.

The new approach to Academic Reporting is a developing process. Further work will be undertaken in the coming months to determine how progress and achievement is best reported, based on what we know to be important information about a student’s learning and progress.

School Uniform

I am sorry to say that we have many children coming to school in the incorrect school uniform. The main problems are:

• Boys not in long pants;
• Runners being worn with the regular uniform, they are only to be worn with the sports uniform;
• Coloured jumpers and coats. We have a regular and sports jumper. These can be purchased from Savvy. There is no specific coat or parka, it only needs to be navvy in colour.

Students are welcome to wear shorts under their tracksuits on Sports day as they do get hot when exercising.

Thank you to the parents and carers who have let us know that they are having problems buying the correct school uniform but have them on order.

The clothing pools is open on a Tuesday morning from 8:00- 8:45am (entry through the hall doors) and again on a Friday afternoon from 2:00pm – 3:00pm.

Parents and carers we need your cooperation in ensuring that children are in the correct uniform when they come to school each day. We want our students to wear their uniform with pride.

Compass

We are keen to move over to our new Compass Parent Portal and discontinue the SZapp app. However, just under half of our families are yet to subscribe and with communication being so important between home and school we are reluctant to stop using SZapp until we know that we are going to be able to reach you with information. Thank you to those of you who are ready to go with Compass. If you need your log on and password details resent, please email Naomi and Lynette in the front office and they will happily resend it to you. The links to download the portal are below:

Apple 

Android

Additionally, please see the information at the end of this newsletter regarding how to submit an attendance note and see notifications. 

Ursula Jamieson
Principal