St Finbarr’s Student Protection

Contacts: Genny McNair

Melissa Moran

St Finbarr’s Parish School

Jabiru Street, P.O. Box 34 Quilpie, QLD, 4480

Phone: (07) 46561412—Fax: (07) 4656 1306

Email: Quilpie@twb.catholic.edu.au

Attachments

Yr 5-6 Camp

raffle tickets

Important dates

MAY

15th – 16th

Hearing Screen-

ers

15th - 17th

NAPLAN Yrs 3 &

5

18th Pentecost

Assembly

23rd Brave-

hearts—P-2

29th Governor’s

Visit

JUNE

8th Pirate Day

for Kids Cancer

12th Arts Coun-

cil Junk Yard

Beats 11.30am

27th Mike

Thomason -

School Counsel-

lor

JULY

20th Quilpie &

District Ath-

letics

22nd - 28th Yr

5/6 Camp

.

Dear Parents and Friends

The final day of the Year 5-6 Reading Improvement Strategy rollout was held in Roma last week. The topics covered

included ideas and requirements for planning and assessment in the Reading Strategy as well as great ideas for engag-

ing students in reading in the classroom including inferring and visualising strategies. This information reinforces and

builds on that presented to the teachers in the lower P-4 Reading Strategies held last year. The reading strategy has

been a great initiative of the TCSO. As I mentioned previously, we began our reading improvement journey in 2013. .

‘Reading is the foundation of learning. Ensuring that children can read in early grades will determine their future

educational success’. Jim Midgely 2018

This has been a belief of mine since my early days of teaching and is the reason behind the emphasis we put into the

explicit teaching of phonics, phonological awareness and spelling across the school, explicit teaching of reading strate-

gies, the use of high quality texts to create a print rich environment, the focus on whole class, group and individual

daily reading and tracking of student progress. The Reading Improvement Strategy has given us the framework to

structure and further develop reading in our school. Student’s ‘reading’ ability is very good in this school but as chil-

dren get to the high level readers, I have found in the past, that their comprehension often doesn’t match the level at

which they can decode text. The focus on reading comprehension through the Question Answer Response (QAR)

strategy has overcome this, with our students not only reading, but understanding comprehensively, high level texts.

We are planning a parent information session for parents on Reading and Comprehension in the upper school before

the end of term to share information about the QAR strategy.

The Mother’s Day High Tea was held last week and was a wonderful opportunity to open our school and welcome

ladies of our community. The students presented a Mother’s Day Liturgy based on the theme of ‘Butterflies’. The

students were complimented on their poem recital and singing, and the ladies had a pleasant afternoon of cake and

companionship. Thankyou to the school staff for all of the extra work they have done in preparation of the day.

The Charleville and District Cross Country was held in Tambo on Friday. Bella won the 10 year old girls competition.

Joachim came second and Kaino fourth in the 10 year old boys. Bella, Joachim and Kaino, together with Aimee from

the Quilpie College have all been selected to compete at the Regional trials next month.

Mia competed at the Charleville and District Softball Trials last week and was successful in selection for the Regional

competition in St George on the 1st June.

Bella will also be competing at the Regional Touch Football Trials in Charleville on 21st May.

Well done to all of our great athletes and thank you to the parents who travel vast distances to enable their children

to compete.

Thankyou also to parents who have provided feedback in the survey for my Principal Review. Paul Murphy, Terry

Carter and Mary Porter will visit the school on 29th and 30th May as part of the review process. They will be meeting

with myself, staff and parents to discuss aspects of the school and my leadership. More information will be forthcom-

ing about this visit.

Thank you to all of the staff, and particularly to Mrs Moran, who kept the school rolling along in my absence. Mrs

Moran has been very capable and mature in her decision making during this time. Melissa is currently involved in the

Deputiser training program offered by the TCSO.

Warm regards

Genny

‘Challenges are what makes life interesting, and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful’ – Joshua J. Marine

Volume: 7

Issue: 8

Date: 17th May 2018

Hearing Assessments

Hearing assessments have been con-

ducted at the school this week. Thank

you to Breandan, Amy and the Quilpie

Hospital for making this possible. Reg-

ular screening at least once per year for all stu-

dents is required to identify students at risk of

fluctuating conductive hearing loss. Hearing loss

even for a short time can have major impacts on

student learning.

TERM DATES

TERM 2: 17th April - 29th June

TERM 3: 16th July - 21st September

TERM 4: 8th October - 6th December

Snack Attack & Tuckshop As snack attack is no longer provided on Monday’s, parents are asked to provide a platter of fruit for each class at 10am as part of their tuckshop duties. These can be prepared before school and left in the tuckshop fridge .

Tuckshop is now $9 because of the extra cost of fruit.

Thank you

St Saviour’s College

St Saviour’s College is an all-girls Catholic secondary

boarding school that has been educating young women

from this region for decades. The College will be

hosting an information stall at our up-and-coming

Charleville/St George Show. The current Head of

Boarding, Mrs Suzanne Coulter, and her husband Gary,

will be manning the stall and are keen to share the ex-

citing new changes taking place at the College, as well

as speak to prospective families about scholarship op-

portunities.

It is anticipated that the College host a local, informal

gathering/drinks for any former SSC students during

Suzanne and Gary’s stay. If you are a former student,

or know of any former SSC students, please con-

tact Suzanne.coulter@twb.catholic.edu.au, or current

Principal, Ms Sharon Col-

lins Sharon.collins@twb.catholic.edu.au to register

your interest. It would be wonderful to catch up with

many of our past students at this event.

> St George 6th

May

> Taroom 7-8th

May

> Charleville 17-19th

May

Bravehearts

The Prep to Year 2 class will be participate

in the Bravehearts visit Wednesday 23rd

May at the Quilpie College. Bravehearts

specialises in providing personal safety ed-

ucation programs for children to support,

encourage and empower children with per-

sonal safety skills.

More information about Bravehearts can be found at

https://bravehearts.org.au.

Mothers day

A very big thank you to every one who sup-

ported this years mothers day stall and raffle

at the high tea. The stall raised $158 and the

raffles $215. The money raised will be put to-

wards helping pay for both this years 5-6 Can-

berra Camp and next years whole school

camp.

Thank you !

Canberra Camp 2018

Please help raise money for the Yr 5-6 Camp to Can-

berra by selling some tickets to win a BMX bike. All

your efforts are appreciated!! Thankyou

Prep – 3 News

Welcome to week five!

We are lucky to have Miss Corrie join our classroom for the next five weeks. The

students are enjoying spending time with Miss Corrie and getting to know her. The

students last week thoroughly enjoyed preparing for Mother’s Day, in particular

creating the beautiful marble painted pot plants. I hope they have found a warm sunny spot in your house to grow.

This week the year 3’s are participating in NAPLAN testing. At the beginning of the week, they joined the 4-6 classroom to

practice NAPLAN style questions and prepare for the remaining few days. I wish them all the best of luck!

In English, we are learning how to visualise a text to allow the students to create a picture in their mind. This will assist them

to enhance their creative writing by engaging the reader to imagine that they are at the scene through integrating the five

senses. The students are enjoying viewing short Pixar films that have no words. They have to use their own imaginations,

experiences and the skill of visualising to create an interpretation of what is happening.

In Science, the students have enjoyed exploring how various temperatures can change materials into a solid, liquid or gas

and whether they can be reversible. This week the students have investigated different materials and the effect that tem-

perature has on them including eggs, pasta, bread, water, ice, chocolate, butter, ice-cream, popcorn seeds and a candle. The

students had great discussions throughout the experiment and were fascinated to see how some materials were able to re-

verse back to their initial state.

Have a fantastic week!

Kind regards, Melissa Moran

Miss Corrie

Student teacher

My name is Tayla and I am in my final year of

a Bachelor in Early Childhood and Primary Ed-

ucation at the Australian Catholic University.

I am from Brisbane and as part of my final

placement I wanted to experience the differ-

ence of a rural school setting. I was very for-

tunate to be placed in the community of

Quilpie and be given the opportunity to teach

and learn from your amazing children. I am

here for the next 5 weeks and I am looking

forward to meeting

the families of St.

Finbarr’s School.

Thank you

Ms Corrie

APRE

Pentecost is the Church’s birthday and in 2018 is

on the 20th May.

The word Pentecost is Greek and it means "50th

day." Fifty days after Easter Sunday, we celebrate

the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles

and their followers, and the beginning of their

Earthly ministry to make disciples of all nations.

Pentecost is also a Jewish holiday, which the Jews

use to celebrate the end of Passover. Jews celebrate

the gift of the law to Moses at Mt. Sinai on this day.

At Pentecost, the Apostles and their followers were

gathered in a room. Jews from all over the world

were gathered with Peter, the leader of the Apos-

tles and the Eleven. At this time, a great wind blew

and a flame appeared as a tongue of fire, which

split itself into many individual flames above the

heads of all those present. The Holy Spirit came

upon these people and each began to speak in

tongues. Despite the fact many had no common

language, they were perfectly able to understand

one another. https://www.catholic.org/lent/pentecost.php

What does this mean to us today. The holy spirit

guides us, helping us to live like Jesus, and Pente-

cost is an opportunity to consider how we are living

each day. Are the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy,

peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness, and self-control) growing in our lives?

The school will celebrate Pentecost this Friday at 9

am with the year 3-6 class conducting a prayer as-

sembly.

Mother’s Day

High Tea

2018

Students of

the week

Congratulations to Bella, Jonah, Ardie

and Elroy.

Keep up the good work!