Week 6 - Term 4

Dear Families,

2023 is reaching its crescendo! In our classrooms there has been a flurry of activity centred around bringing together the threads of all of the learning experiences from across the school year, in order to provide you with a summative report at the end of the year. Your children may have spoken to you about the range of diagnostic assessments we’ve been doing recently. These assessments allow us to monitor and measure growth in learning across the year and assist and inform us in making decisions around learning programs for 2024. Summative reports will be sent home to you-via email-on Monday December 11.

2024

At this time of year we are also finalising class placements and staffing for the 2024 school year. I am delighted to announce the following staff profile for 2024:

Reception - Leonie Fitzgerald

Reception - Renee Cross

Year 1 - Nikki Dytman

Year 1 - Gia Perin 0.8 0.2 Karen Brandwood

Year 1 - Tania Palmato

Year 2 - Marisa Brown

Year 2 - Cheryl Milde

Year 2 - Beck Dametto 0.5 Juliette Passerini 0.5

Year 3 - Chantal Driver

Year 3 - Mark Bowman 0.8 / James Goldy 0.2

Year 3 - Maddie Day

Year 4 - Maria Silvestri

Year 4 - Christie-Lee Hansberry 0.4/ Siobhan Frost 0.6

Year 4 - Marissa Fernandez

Year 5 - Fiona MacDonald

Year 5 - Chloe Auger                            

Year 5 - Corinne McKenzie  0.2 Karen Brandwood

Year 6 - Mary Louise Stoddart

Year 6 - Emma Gill

Italian - Connie Lopreste

PE - James Goldy

Science - Ros Stevens

Arts - Olivia Bozzon

I welcome and congratulate Marissa Fernandez and Siobhan Frost, who will join our team in 2024. Both Marissa and Siobhan are experienced educators who are very much looking forward to being part of our community. I welcome back Chloe Auger, who will be with us in an ongoing manner next year, having held some short term contracts this year.

At the end of 2023, Mrs Sue Beaufoy has decided to retire from St Francis School. Sue has been a much loved and devoted member of the community for many, many years. Her contribution to the fabric of the school has been profound and she will be sorely missed by students, staff and families. We wish Sue and her family every happiness as they begin a new life journey from 2024. I congratulate Mrs Ros Stevens, who has been appointed as Science educator from next year. Ros is passionate about primary Science, and is excited to begin her tenure as our Science teacher next year. We will also farewell Diem Savy next year, as she takes up a position at Our Lady Queen of Peace School Diem has been a valued member of our early years team for some time now and we wish her every happiness in her new role. Jo Harslett will also finish with us at the end of the year, as she takes time to support her family. We thanks Jo for her work with the year 2s and year 4s this year and wish her and her family every happiness.

Parents are advised that 2024 class information will be circulated along with reports, during week 9, with new classes gathering together briefly in the last week of term.

Community activities

Over the next 2 weeks, students will participate in a range of swimming and aquatic experiences. While this will cause some disruption to normal class programming, these opportunities are invaluable in ensuring our young people develop a positive attitude and skills in and around water.

Over the past two weeks, our year 6 students have been taking part in a Drone Academy, under the expert tutelage of Matt Richards of Creative Digital learning. They have been learning all about coding, and flying Drones and about the uses and benefits of this technology.

Our annual end of year concert/carols evening will take place on Friday December 8. This picnic evening is always a great way to celebrate the year, and come together as a school community. The children have been working hard with Olivia Bozzon, to learn their carols for the evening, including our whole school Italian carol, and there may even be a surprise performance from the staff band! I look forward to seeing you all there! Further information will be available very soon.

Building

Families will most certainly have noticed significant developments in our building project, and excitement is building, towards it completion. The new facilities will provide our children and families with a dynamic and contemporary learning and community experience, with new classrooms, Science room, breakout spaces, a sensory room and Maker space all enabling the highest quality learning experiences. A detailed update as to the timeline for completion will be circulated early next week.

Uniform

Our school uniform is smart, robust, flexible and conducive to energetic play, which is so important for children and young people. While the vast majority of children wear their uniform correctly and with pride, I have noticed in recent times, a number of students wearing black sneakers. Our policy states the sneakers should be predominantly white, and as such I ask all families to comply with our uniform policy. Your support is appreciated.

Year 6 Technology

‘SkySTEM Drone workshop’

The Year 6 cohort is currently in the middle of a 4 week workshop working with Matt Richards and drones. Through their sessions, the students had been honing their computational thinking and problem solving abilities through learning how to program drones to execute complex manoeuvres, automated tasks and creating their own flight patterns.

Siena P and Oscar N spoke with me to share their impressions so far:

‘We’ve been working with Matt for the last 2 weeks and we’ve really enjoyed the sessions so far.

Our aim has been to learn to write and use code to successfully manage a drone. Following a number of operational rules (like don’t fly too high and don’t run into other drones), Matt has set us different tasks such as navigating through an obstacle course or landing on a certain point/object. There’s also a lot of measuring we need to do to improve our accuracy.

We use a couple of iPads per group to do the coding and to access a coding help book, and although it was tricky at first, we can feel ourselves getting faster and more confident each week.

Part of the conversation during our sessions has been learning about the different code languages and what you can do with them, such as web site and game design and messaging.  We also talked about some of the applications you can put drones to, such as finding good fishing spots from a boat, looking up at buildings (if you are a builder or architect), getting an aerial perspective and amazing photos when you’re on holiday, and that surf patrols use them for shark spotting.

We have really enjoyed being drone learners, and even making mistakes has been fun as well as being a learning experience!’

Feast of Christ the King November 26th

The Feast of Christ the King is celebrated on the last Sunday in Ordinary Time and marks the last Sunday of the Church’s Liturgical year. When we have celebrated the Feast of Christ the King, we know that the Season of Advent is just around the corner.

In 1925, Pope Pius XI was worried that people were not putting all their faith, hope and trust in Jesus Christ, so he decided to make this special feast to remind us to love and honour Christ more than anything else.

Next Sunday will be the First Sunday of Advent.  Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of Christ and the beginning of the liturgical year in the Catholic Church.

“Each year, Advent inspires us to continually welcome Jesus into our lives, so that the Gospel, through the witness of our words and actions, reaches into our world with the Light of Life.

Christmas Hampers

This year we will be coordinating Christmas hampers for the St Vincent de Paul Society.

Information has been sent home via szapp and Seesaw regarding donations for our annual Christmas Hampers.

Outlined in the letter, were examples of donations for non-perishable food items, gifts for adult females, adult males, kids, 10-16 year old girls and 10-16 year old boys etc. Please give the donation to your child’s class teacher. Social Justice Captains will be visiting all classes to promote the Christmas Hampers.

End of Year Thanksgiving Mass

The End of Year Thanksgiving Mass will be celebrated on Tuesday 12th December.

Sacramental Enrolment 2024

Enrolment forms for the Sacramental program 2024 have been distributed. If you would like your child to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Confirmation and First Communion in 2024, please complete the registration form and return by  November 24th .

SAPSASA Cricket

During Week 5 Connor Robertson and Ollie Atyeo from Year 6 participated in the SAPSASA District Cricket Carnival and over the three days they played 5 games of cricket. They and their team had great success throughout the first two days which seen them play off in the Grand Final against the East Adelaide District on the final day. Unfortunately, the result did not go in favour of the Airport district but the winning experience on the final day was playing on Karen Rolton Oval, the very same oval that the WBBL played the previous night. This came about due to a sprinkler mistake on the oval they were to play on. The boys from our school and all of the team had a wonderful time and should be very proud of their achievements. Well done.

SAPSASA Tennis

Congratulations to Mia Tregoweth from Year 6 who has been selected in the SAPSASA Airport District Tennis Team. Mia and her team are competing this week at the carnival, we wish Mia all the very best and we look forward to hearing all the news of how the 3 days carnival went.

School Tennis Tournament

The annual school tennis tournament began this week and we have already seen some very exciting matches been played. The tournament is offered to our year 4-6 students and operates at three different time slots throughout the day, before school and at both the lunch breaks. We play first to 6 games, with not tie breaks and sudden death at deuce. This contributes to a fast match and a great spectacle for those watching on. Good luck to all students who are still in the tournament.

We would like to congratulate Mackenzie Ridley (RRC), Elyssa Dichiera (RDS), Isobel Wohling (RRC), Zara Dichiera (4RS), Amelia Dichiera (6EG), Alexandra Ross (5FM), Anna Wohling (5CM), Lucy Wohling (5CM) and Ruby Appleby (3MB) for their efforts and participation in their dance concerts this year.

The girls worked hard to prepare for their ballet exams and to perform in various concerts and performances at Brighton Performing Arts Centre and the Parks Theatre. Their latest concert was the Spring Gala in October where Alexandra and Ruby performed their first solo ballet dances on stage. Alexandra also participated in the Dancestep program which is a national program where the girls assist their teachers and provide support to the very young ballet students. In addition to ballet, the girls learn and perform musical theatre, jazz, tap and conditioning.

Congratulations girls and we wish you all the best for your future dance endeavours.