Newsletter Term 1 Week 8 2023

At St Paul’s, we are always focused on creating an environment that supports positive mental health for the whole school community.

Investing in our personal well-being allows us to enjoy all the activities we want to participate in. It doesn’t mean we’ll will never be sad or go through emotionally challenging times. However, those with positive mental health will be able to bounce back more easily from these experiences.

In our students, areas of wellbeing, such as gratitude, hope, and emotional regulation, have been found to improve academic performance across several areas. For example, students with high levels of hope can make adaptive attributions and overcome failure by making corrections and see mistakes as a learning opportunity.

It’s normal at various times to feel sad, stressed, angry or anxious. But when these feelings last for longer than usual and start to affect your everyday life, it's important to find out what's going on and what you can do about it.

I strongly encourage you to complete the Wellbeing Barometer Survey. The information gathered will enable us to focus on some of the key issues and highlight where further assistance may be required as we do all we can to support our students and families.

Yours in Christian Service

Brad Moss

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL

HAPPENINGS WITH HOLLIE

We’re still looking forward to many exciting things that are to take place this term. Firstly, we’re looking forward to the opportunity to once again celebrate Easter with our community. We think it’s great to have this opportunity to combine with Henty Public, the Preschool, Pastors and members of the community. We hope you can join us on Tuesday 4th April at 10am.

Also in Week 10 is our school Cross Country. We are holding this at St John’s in Jindera on the last day of school (Thursday 6th April) and really relish the opportunity to combine and build connections with other schools.

Organisation is well under way for our school camps this year. Year 5/6 will travel to Ballarat and Year 3/4 will travel to Echuca, both in collaboration with St John’s.

On our 5th staff meeting each term, we focus on connecting with each other and taking time out to share in experiences. This term, we had a cooking class where I took staff through something that I love doing. Cooking! I lived in China for a period of time and as a result am slightly addicted to dumplings. We spent the hour cooking and laughing together and enjoyed our dumplings later that night when we all went home.

How do you look after ‘you’ and sharpen your body, mind, heart and soul? What’s your spark? Your passion? We are all worth it to God. Proverbs 31:10 says, ‘You are more precious than jewels.’

I hope you all, in the end of term craziness, find time to rest and sharpen your own saw.

Our Well-being Framework has been in action this term and as a staff we are always looking for creative ways to improve and further develop this. Although the focus is on student well-being, once a term we are also allocating a staff meeting to focus on staff well-being. We have been speaking about how necessary it is to ‘sharpen our saw’. If you need to cut wood, you constantly need to sharpen the blades on your chainsaw. We take our vehicles to be regularly serviced. As teachers we’re constantly learning and upskilling so we can best meet the needs of our students. We often spend time focusing on the things we use and not always on ourselves.

YEAR 3 & 4 CAMP ECHUCA

Mon 1 - Tues 2 May

YEAR 5 & 6 CAMP BALLARAT

Wed 24 - Fri 26 May

ATHLETICS CARNIVAL @ SPC

Fri 28 April

MOTHER'S DAY CHAPEL & MORNING TEA

Tues 9 May

RAS NETBALL @ WAGGA

Tues 31 March

ANZAC DAY

Tues 25 April

FIRST DAY TERM 2

Wed 26 April

COMBINED SCHOOL'S EASTER SERVICE @ ST PAUL'S CHURCH

Tues 4 April, 10.00 am

SCHOOL PHOTOS

Thurs 8 June

CROSS COUNTRY @ STJLS & LAST DAY TERM ONEThurs 6 April

GOOD FRIDAYFri 7 April

In Maths, we have enjoyed learning some new games which help us practise our maths skills.

We are looking forward to leading Chapel next week (Tuesday 28th March). You are all welcome to come along and share our Easter message with us.

The K/1 students have been working hard during their InitiaLit lessons. Kinders have started looking at letters, learning m, s and t.

Year Ones have been looking at compound words and nouns.

In our story-time sessions, we have been looking at the book ‘Grandpa and Thomas’ by Pamela Allen. Unfortunately we couldn’t go to the beach, but we showed great cooperation when we worked in two groups to make our own sandcastles in our school sandpit.

Mrs Hollie Kinning & Miss Felicity Habermann

Read and Discuss: RAD is an element of our new Literacy program. The above photos are of it in action.

Years 2/3/4 have been enjoying Big Write sessions. The task was an information text on an Australian animal.

Just look at the study of concentration!

Years 5/6 have started their Project Based Learning unit and had a fun launch day searching for gold! They were given their mining license and went on a search for gold nuggets in the garden. Our PBL unit this semester is all about the Gold Rush and The Eureka Stockade.

Please see the Henty Streetscape page for more Year 5 & 6 photos.

The 2023 Year 6 group received their new T-Shirts at Chapel on Tuesday. Thank you to the parents and the P & F for their contribution towards the cost.

Many blessings,

Miss Katie Ridley

The first meeting for 2023 was held this week, and after a successful 2022 the P&F are looking forward to continuing to support our amazing Staff and Board in 2023 for the benefit of the most important people at St Paul’s – our students!

The Executive Team for 2023 will be:

President – Kerri Klemke

Vice President – Kym Bisset

Secretary – Megan Klemke

Treasurers – Andrew & Rachelle Cunningham

For a small school community, we are incredibly blessed with the big finances that we have access to. Thanks to everyone’s help with two lots of catering last year, selling tickets and donating goods for the raffle, and of course the Henty Machinery Field Days catering, we have an incredible amount of money we can direct back to our students.

Because it is such a community effort, I’d really encourage as many families to come along to the P&F meetings as possible. It’s at these meetings that we decide how to spend the fruits of all your labour so please feel welcome to come along and have a say. We do our best to keep the meetings short but productive, and there’s always a nice supper and great people to spend an evening with.

So far this year we have already hosted our Welcome BBQ and supplied lunch for the Swimming Carnival. We have also decided to continue to financially support the mainly music program. The other big, exciting project we will be financially supporting is the new Outdoor Learning Space the School Board has plans for! It’s going to be very exciting to see how that project progresses over the next year or so and it’s fantastic to be able to say that our P&F have contributed to something that will be here for many years to come.

Over the remainder of Term 1 we would like to start gathering donations for the 2023 Major Raffle. If you would like to contribute, big or small, please get in touch with myself or one of the executive team. We would like to have raffle tickets printed over the Easter holidays and ready to sell in Term 2.

As always, if you have any ideas or see a place where our P&F may be of service, feel free to contact me at any time.

Bless y’all

Kerri

Merit & Learner Profile AWARDS

Week 9 - K & Year 1

Week 10 - Combined School's Service

Up Coming Chapel Leaders:

Pastor Darryl Shoesmith showing his skill with the Parish Pipes.

NETBALL NSW SCHOOLS CUP

On Monday the 13th of March, Years 3 to 6 went to Albury to play netball. Everyone had a lot of fun and the highlight of the day was when the 5/6 team won a game 5 goals to 2. Thank you Kerri and Megan for umpiring.

Micah (Mud Captain) and John (Buck Captain)