20 August 2020

Newsletter Articles

IMPORTANT DATES

Sunday 30th August - Jangawala - Cook and Serve
Thursday 3rd September - Father’s & Mother’s Day Breakfast
Friday 4th September - CTJ Day - Curriculum Teacher Judgement Day - this is a day off for the students.
Friday 7th August - IPRASS Rodeo Holiday
Friday 11th September - Athletics Carnival
Friday 18th September - Last Day of School

PRINCIPALS REPORT

Last week, along with some colleagues from Good Shepherd and St Joseph's, I attended a Framework for Understanding Poverty workshop. It was run by Annette Moes at the Centre of Learning and Wellbeing here in Mount Isa. Annette shared some startling statistics with us about the impacts of poverty on children and that we should expect 1 in 6 of our children to be living under the poverty line. She also explained the fragility of many people’s lives and that in fact we are all one day away from situational poverty based on crises such as natural disasters, family break-up, domestic violence, pandemic or unemployment.

At St Kieran’s we work to support those students and families who may be struggling. Here are a few ways to reach out to those in need:

• Fee concessions for families in financial stress
• Staff roster for preparing meals at Jangawala starting on the 30th August
• Home visits for at-risk students
• Support local charities such as St Vincent de Paul, Mount Isa Parish
• Counselling support for students
• Referrals to Family and Child Connect - support services for family and parenting challenges

Last week I also had the opportunity to visit St John Bosco in Collinsville for their school validation. It is a beautiful school with 60 students and 10 staff. It was a long way to travel, but it was nice to see something different. The reason why I had to go was because our school will start the validation process in Term 4 this year and TCEO likes Principals to be on the panel before they start the process.

Thank you for your continued support in helping us keep our school healthy. Just a reminder from Queensland Health that if children are unwell and have flu-like symptoms they will need to remain home. We will continue with our social distancing practices and ask families to please use the sanitizer provided before moving through the school.

God Bless
Claudine Dank

APRE

This Week’s Gospel Reading

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 16: 21-27

Who Is Jesus? When Jesus and his disciples were near the town of Caesarea Philippi, he asked them, “What do people say about the Son of Man?” The disciples answered, “Some people say you are John the Baptist or maybe Elijah or Jeremiah or some other prophet.” Then Jesus asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter spoke up, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus told him: Simon, son of Jonah, you are blessed! You didn’t discover this on your own. It was shown to you by my Father in heaven. So, I will call you Peter, which means “a rock.” On this rock I will build my church, and death itself will not have any power over it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and God in heaven will allow whatever you allow on earth. But he will not allow anything that you don’t allow. Jesus told his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Jangawala

On the 30th August will be our first time helping out Jangawala. It will start at 4pm at the Parish. I know that many people have placed their names down to help, which is going to be great. Please see dates below for the remainder of the year.

PARISH INFOMATION

Mass Livestream

Sunday Mass from the Sacred Heart Cathedral will continue to be Live Streamed for the community. You can find the stream via the link below:

Prayer resources and other important information can be found via the link below:

National Vocations Awareness Week

This week we celebrated the Feast of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. Our first Australian born canonised saint. St Mary took bold new directions in education and care of children. We know her saying ‘Never see a need without doing something about it’. We pray this week that many young people in our communities may embrace this spirit in response to the call of the Lord to serve as priests or consecrated religious. For more information contact vocations@tsv.catholic.org.au

Catholic Youth Commission, Townsville Diocese

Bishop Tim is establishing a Diocesan Youth Commission and is looking for members. If you love God, care about young people, live in or beyond Townsville and enjoy working in a team to create and develop vision and strategies you may want to put in an Expression of Interest.

Email youth@tsv.catholic.org.au to receive an Information Pack and register for an information session (dates: 18/08/20 or 29/08/20). For more information contact our Youth Office – 4726 3262. Closing date: Friday 4 September.

Alpha Online Youth Series

Join us for 8 weeks of Online Alpha. Every week we meet online to watch a video and have discussions about life, purpose and faith. During week 6 we go away on an Alpha weekend to continue Alpha, experience spirituality and deepen friendships through various activities like hiking, fishing, swimming, games night, campfire and many more activities. If you are aged between 15 and 25 years old, live in or beyond Townsville and want to explore questions about life, purpose and faith with other young people register for Alpha. Email youth@tsv.catholic.org.au to register and receive more information. Alpha starts Tuesday, 25 August 2020.

DIOCESAN INFORMATION

SCHOOL RENEWAL PLAN AT ST KIERANS

BLUE CARD INFORMATION

CURRICULUM

Reflective Practice Day

Friday the 4th of September is our annual Reflective Practice Day. This is a pupil free day as staff across the diocese engage in training and upskilling in various areas of the curriculum. It is important that our staff have an opportunity to work together to improve our practice.

Premier’s Reading Challenge

We have had a large number of students sending in their record sheets for the Premier’s Reading Challenge over the past few weeks. Forms are all due in by Friday the 28th of August. We will have in school prizes for those students who go above and beyond, completing more than one page of reading. For those who have not yet completed an entry it is not too late!!! Forms can still be collected at the office, just have them sent back by the 28th!

PREP ENROLMENTS 2021

Families seeking enrolment of their child into Prep for 2021 are invited to complete an Application for Enrolment, available on our website or alternatively collect an application package from the School Office.

As we are anticipating that there will continue to be strong demand for placements within our Prep groups for 2021, it is important that applications are received by the school as soon as possible.

Please note that if you have a sibling of a current St Kieran’s student you will also need to complete an enrolment application for your child for Prep 2021. Students enrolled at St Joseph’s Kindergarten or St Mary Mackillop Early Learning Centre are also required to complete an application form.

St Kieran’s Catholic School works in partnership with St Joseph’s Catholic School and Good Shepherd Parish to coordinate the Prep enrolment process so that the best opportunity is afforded to all.

ESMART (CYBER SAFETY)

There is a great website called The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) which is based within the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). We provide advice and information about how to protect you, your family and your business online.

One of their sections is about protecting you and your family online. Imagine if all your photos were suddenly taken from your computer, or your personal email contact list was stolen and used to scam your friends and family.

Many Australians may not be aware of the risks we face in cyberspace – but the good news is that you can take simple steps to better protect your personal and financial information online.

Taking care of your safety online is no more complicated than the steps you take in other aspects of your life. We all do things to safeguard our physical belongings such as locking our doors and keeping hold of our wallets. By taking the same care of your devices and accounts when engaging online, you can protect yourself and your valuable online information.

This is where we can help! We provide easy to understand tips and techniques for you to stay secure when working, socialising, banking, shopping or just browsing online. A good place to start is Do things safely.

HPE

Rep sport:

We have some very skilled students who will be representing the Mount Isa region at upcoming regional trials.

• Kaitlyn Lagiono, Charlotte Byrnes and Marnie Caldwell are traveling to Hughenden this weekend to play netball.
• Fletcher Choyce is heading to Longreach in the coming weeks to play cricket.

Marnie and Sienna Wilson are making their way to Charters Towers to represent the Northern Region at the state softball Championships.

We wish all those students the very best luck and we are incredibly proud of you!

School sport:

Our athletics carnival date has been set for Friday 11th Sept. It will be a revised program this year which will be handed out closer to the date.

Our house championship is kicking along nicely with Corella still in the lead!

Our Prep and Year 1 students have been doing the Lap Legends challenge. Both classes have done an incredible job and surprised us all - the Prep students did a combined 63 laps last week and Year 1 did 57 (there's fewer students in that class)! Some students did 5 laps in 5 minutes which is amazing! So proud of their efforts.

INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

Mentor Program

Our mentor program has kicked off this term with some great results already. Every Tuesday our mentors collect their little buddies and they read together in the sacred garden for 15 minutes. This program not only aims to improve the reading skills of all of our Indigenous students it also teaches valuable lessons to our future leaders including patience, giving feedback and ways to be a great role model.

WAHOO

LIBRARY

ECO WARRIORS

Once again our Eco Warriors have been busy in the garden and in the kitchen. In the last few weeks we harvested our beetroot and radishes and made beetroot dip which we served at the Sacred Garden Opening (Father Mick & Bishop Tim thought it was delicious!!!). Thanks Miss Stark for spending time cooking with our Eco Warriors. The 3 new greenhouses have been put together and are already full of seedlings thanks to Mrs L and all of her helpers.

Our bird watching has been a bigger success than expected. Thank you to Mrs Schlencker who made the amazing posters of all of the birds that visit our school grounds. These posters are now a permanent part of our eating area and children are encouraged to come and write their names when they see one of these birds on our playground. So far crows and pigeons have been our most spotted birds! It is wonderful to see the students so engaged in learning about the local wildlife at our school.

Our staff Vs students recycling competition is really heating up with the staff taking the lead having now recycled 540 containers and the students 395. All of the money raised through recycling goes towards projects in our garden space. If you would like to support the student’s team you can collect containers for change bags from the school and drop them back into school. We will add your totals to the kids tally!

TUCKSHOP

Thursday Meal Deals

Term 3

Did you know the tuckshop could make cupcakes for your child’s birthday? $1.00 each, please enquire at the office for an order form.

PLAYGROUP

Monday Mornings between 8.30am - 10am. Open for all community members ages between 1 - 4year olds. While we always have a plan for each week, activities are child directed, letting them explore, create and learn at their own pace.

Last week at Little K’s we had an amazing morning meeting new friends and getting busy doing some drawing and collage. We had a pop-up “Art Museum” followed by plenty of fun exploring the new big kid’s playground.

This week the children busied themselves with cutting and sticky tape, while the parents relaxed and shared their ideas and go-tos for music, both for their kids and for themselves.

COMMUNITY NOTICES