26 November 2021

Newsletter Articles

IMPORTANT DATES

Thursday 25th November - St Kieran’s End of Year Mass @ 8.30am
Monday 29th November - Bowling Day
Monday 29th November - Yr 6 Graduation Dinner
Tuesday 30th November - St Kieran’s has Talent Show @ 11.30pm
Wednesday 1st December - Wet Wednesday
Thursday 2nd December - Year 1 Nativity Play
      • Principal Awards (Last ones)
Friday 3rd December - Last Day of School @ 12pm

St Kieran’s Community Gatherings Term 4

PRAYER / SPECIAL MESSAGE

The Francis Factor (Reflecting on the Words & Wisdom of Pope Francis)

What Kind of King is Jesus?

But what kind of king is Jesus? Let us take a look at him: he is riding on a donkey, he is not accompanied by a court, he is not surrounded by an army as a symbol of power. He is received by humble people, simple folk who have the sense to see something more than Jesus.

(Pope Francis, homily, 24 March 2013)

Reflection

What is the relationship between your simplicity and your ability to accept Jesus? What is Jesus asking you to put aside to receive him? Where is Jesus asking you to be humble so that you are more like him?

ATTENTION ALL PARENTS

We are giving away $ MONEY $, but there is a catch. If you are able to recommend our school for an outside family particularly in the Prep to Year 3 levels for 2022 and the family accepts the position. Then you will receive a $100 gift voucher from Kmart.

PRINCIPALS REPORT

Dear parents and Careers

Reflection Time: At this time of year, particularly in schools, it is a time to reflect and look back on the year that was. In my case, it has been a very rewarding and enjoyable experience filled with challenges but also times of great celebration. Reflection is a healthy and growth filled process where you can really renew, recharge and set new goals for the future. There has to be honesty and true self reflection if growth is to occur.

As we move closer to the Church season of Advent, the same process must happen. Advent gives us all an opportunity to look back and prepare for the joy that is Christmas and the birth of the Christ Child, our saviour, Jesus. By preparing through stillness and prayer we can look back and see how the year has gone.

The birth of Jesus signals the beginning of what was a remarkable life. It also gives us hope and joy knowing that through Jesus, we too can ultimately join him when we pass on. So let’s prepare ourselves for Advent with a willingness to honestly prepare and reflect in readiness for Christmas so that it truly is a festive time for us and our families.

I would like to take this opportunity to say how grateful and proud I have been to lead this great community over the last 5 years. I have enjoyed every moment and will look back very fondly on how we have grown together and shared a common vision of doing the very best for your children’s educational needs. This is a very special school and I am humbled that you have trusted me and supported me in such a personal and encouraging way. One of my early career mentors once told me to treat each appointment as if you are entering a house for the first time. When you finally leave, make sure you leave it in better condition than when you first arrived. I believe I have done this with a very supportive parent community and the new look surrounding the school.

I would also like to say thank you to all who have given me well wishes from the announcement of my new job as APRE at Star of the Sea, Hervey Bay. This was a decision that was hard for me to make, but one that I know is good for my family. St Kieran’s is such a beautiful place with a community that I truly love and enjoy coming to work for. Over the next week it will be very emotional for myself, as St Kieran’s, Good Shepherd Parish and the Mount Isa community have been my family for the last 20 years. Next year I will be a “fi fo” wife (coming back in holidays) while Gary will be finishing renovating the house and working at the mines. Throughout the next week I hope to see you at the end of year functions and celebrations. I know that as a community you will welcome the new principal in 2022 and help him/her to live out the school mission and values.

God Bless and have a very Merry Christmas and spend some special time with your family.

Claudine Dank

RELIGIOUS LIFE OF OUR SCHOOL

The Word

Jesus said, “Strange signs will happen to the sun, the moon and the stars. On earth, nations will be in despair, afraid of what is coming, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The Son of Man will appear in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin, stand up, because your redemption is near.” (Luke 21:25-28, 34-36)

ADVENT IS COMING!

This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent in our Church calendar. This is the start of a brand new Church year. During these weeks, we turn our thoughts to the coming of Jesus, who is the saviour of the world. Jesus is the Son of God, present among the people God loves. That is good news!

Advent is what makes the Christmas season so special. It comes from the word ‘Adventus’, meaning ‘coming’, and is the first Church season leading up to Christmas. It is the hopeful waiting of Jesus coming to dwell among us. The colours of Advent are pink and purple, like the colours on an Advent wreath.

In the words of Andrew Chin ‘Watch out! Wake up! You never, never know when the Lord will come! Watch out! Wake up!

Thank you to our enthusiastic Minni Vinnies team who turned out on our Social Justice Evening to p[ut together our care packages. Also a big thank you to those who made donations.

Thank you for a wonderful 2021. It has been an honour to see our Year 6 students grow into amazing young adults! Enjoy the Christmas break. Make sure you come and join us for our last get together and final farewell to the Dank family.

May you be held in the palm of God’s hands!

PREP ENROLMENTS 2022

IS YOUR CHILD STARTING PREP IN 2022?

Families seeking enrolment of their child into Prep for 2022 are invited to complete an Application for Enrolment, available on our website below 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 2022, 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 2022. 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.

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Each fortnight we will profile a section of our Annual School Improvement Plan for 2021. This is the document that guides our plans and priorities for the year. We prepare this document based on initiatives set by the Townsville Catholic Education Office and through consultation with our school stakeholders: parents, staff and students.

Focus Goal Strategies What it looks like in our School.

Professional Teaching Community Inclusive Communities

An inclusive education culture highlighted by a culture where all students, regardless of any challenges they have, receive

high-quality instruction, interventions and supports that enable them to meet success in the core curriculum.

LEARNING AND TEACHING

Semester Two Reports

Your child’s Semester Two report will be available on Compass after school on Wednesday the 1st of December. These reports are an opportunity for you to have a snapshot of your child’s progress throughout the year. For any families leaving the school to a new school outside of the Townsville Diocese please be aware that you will lose access to your child’s reports on Compass at the end of the year. So please remember to print out any past and current reports that you would like to keep. If you are unsure about how to access Compass or your child’s reports please contact the office.

INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

Tips for Beginning 2022!!!

Communication is essential for ensuring both home and school remain informed. Communication is active, personal and frequent. Communication is culturally appropriate. Communication is a two-way exchange, where families and school are equal contributors. It is vital that a trusting, respectful relationship is developed between you and your child’s teacher. The Positive Partnerships’ Communication Tool can be used to support home-school partnerships to plan and implement effective communication. These are available in the office and your child’ teacher for 2022 will discuss this with you.

The Planning Too - What is a Planning Tool?

Positive Partnerships has developed this tool to help summarise all relevant information about an individual and share it with those that need it. This planning tool will capture the characteristics of your young person, the impacts of these characteristics, as well as strategies and adjustments. The Planning Tool may guide priority areas for support at school and home.

It is important that this tool also captures the strengths of the individual. The Planning Tool can be completed by a team of people including family members and the individual themselves. This is an excellent resource for parents to be empowered to advocate for their child. Please visit the Positive partnerships - Planning Tool website to see how to fill this out step by step for your child’s 2022 teacher.

I would strongly urge parents to put aside the 17th and 18th of May 2022 as the Positive Partnership Delivery Team will be here in Mount Isa to run the two day Parent /Carer Workshop - to empower parents to advocate for their child. This is free to all!

WAHOO/STEM

If you are starting to think about Christmas gifts and wanting some of the newest and coolest STEM gifts, I found this link for the STEM Toy Gift Guide for any Budget, perfect to help you find that just-right gift for any little STEM enthusiast! The guide is broken down into price ranges.

Please be aware that it is an American source, through Amazon, however many of these items can be purchased through the Australian website or you may wish to source elsewhere. Nevertheless, there are some great ideas to get you started!

LIBRARY

This year is nearly at a close and what a year it has been! Between Book Week, the Book Wish Box and Book Fair we have seen an increase in student’s interest in reading, borrowing and received so many requests for books for our library!

Library borrowing is also coming to an end. All library books and Home Readers are due back as soon as possible. We still have quite a few overdue books outstanding so please have one last look and check under beds, bottom of cupboards, behind drawers, in the car and all other hidey holes.

A big thank you to all parents and care-givers for supporting your kids in their reading. Remember to visit the Town Library when the kids run out of books!!!

Merry Christmas and safe travels!

HPE

This term in PE, the Junior students have had fun playing cooperative games and doing scooter board challenges. The senior students have enjoyed playing tennis, table tennis and bowling.

We have also had the opportunity to play in a friendly gala day with St Joseph’s Catholic School. Thank you to Mount Isa Basketball Association for their time and effort and allowing us to use the basketball courts. Our Year 5+6 students spent the day playing basketball and volleyball and did really well all whilst developing their skill sets.

In representative sports, I would like to congratulate Fletcher Choyce who has again represented the North West Region at the State Schools Cricket competition in Bundaberg recently. Fletcher was also nominated as team captain which is a significant achievement - well done Fletcher!

Representative Sports

For those students who are turning 10, 11 or 12 next year, there will be opportunities to represent our school/district/region in a range of sports. Please keep an eye out for emails as this is the main form of communication in regards to these events. The first representative event for next year is the Regional swimming trials in February. I will email out more details as soon as I receive them. If your student is currently a part of the Mount Isa Swim club and would like to trial to represent Mount Isa at the Regional Swimming trials, please email me. clloyd@skmtsv.catholic.edu.au

If any parents would like to see our representative sport calendars, this is the link:

St Kieran’s are a part of MISSA - the Mount Isa School Sport Association.

Other

We have had such a busy and fun year of PE and sport and I have enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you to all parents, carers and staff who have helped out with our various events throughout the year!

I will sincerely miss our Year 6 cohort - I have come to cherish our PE lessons together as they are all such amazing young people and I wish them all the very best.

INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

This week we submitted our finalised RAP to Narragunnawali . This allows us to hit the ground running next year with all of our goals and actions. Thank you to the parents who came along to our RAP meeting last week and offered great ideas and suggestions. Thank you to our amazing team including Ms Laylee Armstrong and Miss Nikki Martyr for all of the work you have put in with our awesome kids throughout the year.

YOU CAN DO IT

Our final topic for the older grades this term is Success.

✦Helping your child to experience success:

Teaching your child how to set goals and achieve them by making a plan, working hard, solving problems and not giving up helps them to build life skills that are important for their future. These life skills build their self-confidence and motivation and enhance their ability to persist when they find things difficult. An important starting point is to help your child identify their particular character strengths and ability strengths. Character strengths are personal attributes like being brave or kind, or being a hard worker or a good organiser. Ability strengths are things that they do well such as writing stories, doing complicated sums, drawing cartoons, playing sport, playing a musical instrument or understanding and working with animals.

✦✦Key messages to communicate to your child about being successful:

Stick with it and don’t give up.

When something proves hard to do, stick to your plan and don’t give up. If an obstacle gets in the way, see it as a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes you may have to try a new way to solve the problem.

Mistakes help you to learn.

Everybody makes mistakes when they are trying to achieve their goals. Try to learn from mistakes even if you don’t feel happy when you make them. You may not be able to do something YET but with practice and hard work you can learn.

No one is good at everything. Everyone has different strengths.

Everyone has their own strengths. Keep looking for evidence about your character strengths (the kind of person you are) and your ability strengths (what you can do well).

Make a plan.

To achieve a goal you need to make a plan before you start. A plan helps you decide the best steps to take to achieve your goal.

Remember to try hard and work hard.

Trying hard and working hard make it more likely that you will succeed at what you are trying to do. Your brain develops when you work hard to learn new things and this helps you to become ‘smarter’.

Have a go and believe in yourself.

Even if something is hard to do and you wonder if you will be able to do it, believe in yourself, take the risk and ‘have a go’. You can’t be successful if you don’t try. You won’t always succeed but at least you can say you have given it your best shot.

Try to be well organised.

It’s important to be well organised if you want to achieve your goals. Find ways to remember the things you have to do, to find the things you need, and to be on time.

✦✦What can you do to help your child learn the skills that underpin success?

● Encourage your child to set a goal and to plan what they need to do to achieve the goal. For young children goals need to be simple, specific and very short term (e.g. reading to you for ten minutes each night for two weeks, making their bed every day for a week, improving their knowledge of specific number facts). Help them to think about what they did to achieve their goal. (Ask them: What steps did you take? What was hard for you to do? How do you feel now that you have managed to do it?)

● Provide lots of opportunities for your child to take on tasks and challenges that they can do (mostly) by themselves (e.g. make a cubby, bake a cake, put on a puppet play, make birthday cards or organise a game). Only give them help when they ask.

● Encourage your child to make, do or organise something a bit complicated and challenging that may be frustrating but will be rewarding when completed (e.g. making a pop-up card, organising an outing or completing a challenging word or number puzzle). Congratulate them on their persistence.

● Do a challenging jigsaw puzzle with your child to show them how to stick with it until it is finished.

● Avoid doing things for your child that they are capable of doing for themselves (e.g. making their bed, packing/unpacking their schoolbag, preparing their breakfast).

● Share your own story about how you achieved a goal that was important to you, stressing how you made a plan, worked hard and persisted despite obstacles or mistakes.

● Help your child to look for and collect evidence that tells them what their strengths are. Evidence could include feedback from other people or ongoing improvement in their ‘personal bests’ (e.g. in a sport or in music exams) rather than a comparison with others of the same age.

● Give your child more feedback on their effort and the processes they used than on ability (e.g. ‘Well done, you really worked hard on that project and didn’t give up when some bits proved to be frustrating. You also planned well and were very organised.’). When you focus on effort and the processes used, your child will learn that successfully achieving a goal happens mainly through hard work, persistence, good planning and believing in yourself and is not just based on ability.

● Help your child understand the power of ‘not yet’: they may not be able to solve a difficult maths problem yet or play a challenging musical piece yet. Adding the word YET – ‘I can’t ... yet’ – focuses on growth and learning, and helps them to understand that with time and lots of practice and effort, they can accomplish these tasks.

● Encourage your child to be organised, and provide materials that help them to do this (e.g. colourful or see-through folders, labelling devices, and containers). Show them how to organise their things, pack up their games and toys before bedtime, identify and collect what they will need for school each day, keep their schoolbag in order, remember to pack their lunch in their schoolbag and (for an older child) help them to regularly block out time for homework.

● Play ‘Beat the timer’. Use a timer and encourage them to complete an activity such as cleaning up their toys, getting dressed or setting the table before the timer goes off.

ECO WARRIORS

What a year for the Eco team!

2021 has been a great year for our Eco Warriors team. It has been a year full of gardening, cooking, eating, collecting seeds, recycling and composting. We have had our most successful pumpkin crop of all time as well as the introduction of our sensory garden space. We have loved all of our happy little faces that come to visit every time one of our team members are in the garden space. A HUGE thank you to Mrs Agnes Lagiono and Mrs Jo Schlencker for their endless ideas, time and energy. Without these ladies the garden wouldn’t be the happy place it is every day. We have some very big plans for 2022 so stay tuned!!

PRINCIPAL AWARDS

Sponsored by Mount Isa Coffee Club

Congratulations to;

1st Principal Award
Maddison Greenland
Franklin Hughes
Kyesiha Daley

2nd Principal Award
Willow Donaldson
Alexis Clarke
Samantha Taylor
Lennox Dank
Kamea Grieve
Lachlan Allen
James Flood
Charlie Crawford
Jarquase De Stage- Ambrum
Talei-Rose Henley
Dean Hicks
Lily Rose
Meaghan Hayes
Aryan Sharma
Ryu Ibardolaza

3rd Principal Award
Louis Choyce
Andre Brauer

4th Principal Award
Micah Smith
Chelsea Saldana

These students have worked so hard with their learning and the effort they have placed in their work. We are all super proud of them.

TUCKSHOP

The tuckshop is closed for the remainder of the year. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

FROM THE GUIDANCE COUNSELLOR

School holidays are almost upon us and this means people are starting to relax, enjoy fun events and plan exciting trips away. While for most people this sounds like fun and a break from the stress of the normal hustle and bustle of our daily lives, for some people holidays can bring on a whole new load of stress and anxiety.

Some people find it difficult to cope with the lack of routine or the amount of unfamiliar people that they have to spend time with (including family who they only see once or twice a year). Others do not like having to be away from home, their familiar, safe and comfortable place. While for others, Christmas is a time that reminds them of the people who are no longer in their life.

If you, or any of your loved ones, are struggling over the break, it can often be hard to access support, especially if you are away from home or the usual supports in town have left for their own holidays. Rural health connect ( https://www.ruralhealthconnect.com.au/ ) is a platform that links people in rural and remote Australians with psychologists via phone calls and video calls. To access this service at little or no cost you can get a referral from a local GP.

Have a wonderful break and take time to relax. See you in 2022.

REBECCA GREAVES
GUIDANCE COUNSELLOR

PLAYGROUP

Last week we started the Christmas countdown with some Christmas themed crafts. We decorated egg carton Christmas trees and made salt dough Christmas ornaments using handprints. This week we missed out on our Christmas cooking, so we will be doing it next week along with our Christmas party, full of music, games and food! We also said farewell to the beautiful Musgrove family, who have been coming to Playgroup for the past two years - we will miss you!

COMMUNITY NOTICES