Senior School News
Gee whiz, time is absolutely flying by, can you believe it is almost the end of Term 1 already!
We are very excited to be welcoming back Trent Thiessens after a well deserved break celebrating his wedding and we say a huge thank you to Mrs Biffin for stepping in for Mr T while he was away. The wheels in Grade 6 kept turning in her very capable hands and we hope to see her back upstairs throughout the year.
We congratulate our Grade 5’s who completed their NAPLAN testing last week. We understand this is only a snapshot of our students' learnings and are proud of each and everyone of them for the effort and attitude they had towards the tests each day.
We continue to see a huge turnout to Sacred Heart’s extra curricular clubs from our senior school body. It is great to see their enthusiasm to better themselves. Running Club hit 50 students last week! We hope this continues and would love some extra parent helpers to run with us on a Thursday morning.
Our Grade 6 student leaders have continued to step into the junior classrooms, practicing their leadership skills and running lessons. Recently we have had the Art and Respectful Relationship captains stepping into classrooms to run a mini lesson on positive thoughts. They are hoping to create a whole school art piece based off these lessons so watch this space to see what is created!
We thank the parents who were able to make our open afternoon of Respectful Relationships last week. These lessons are so powerful in the classroom and we are seeing a big shift in our students over the past few years since we began implementing them. The work both the 5s and 6’s have done on emotional literacy is so valuable. Being able to identify an emotion is the first step in creating healthy pathways when dealing with big emotions and allows us to put many more strategies into place. After exploring emotional literacy, having a big focus on positive coping has been perfect for the Grade 6’s as it is so incredible seeing these strategies get used in real time as they begin to face greater adversities.
“Catch Groups” have continued in the senior school with a small hiatus being taken during NAPLAN last week and Grade 6 Camp this week. This hiatus has allowed the Grade 5s to spend a little extra time exploring fractions in a more hands on manner. Prior to that, we had been focusing on “Time”, in particular 12 and 24hr time, elapsed time and problem solving within different time zones. These will start back up next term as we are seeing some great results from this targeting teaching approach. In English we have continued with the Spelling Mastery program and have recently retested our students. With lots of growth to be seen we can really be sure we are on the right track in improving our student spelling skills.
2023’s Stations of the Cross performance is set to be the best one yet! The students have done a great job interpreting, summarising, comparing and contrasting the stories across the different Gospels and have written excellent scripts. However this year we plan to go one step further. The students have also recontextualized their story and written a 2nd script to perform on the day, of what their particular story could look like in a modern day context. A reminder, our Stations of the Cross performance will be performed on Thursday 6th April at 9:30, all are welcome to come and view!
Finally, the news you’ve all been waiting for. CANBERRA CAMP! The grade 6’s have had an absolute blast in Canberra. They attended The War Memorial where our school captains participated in the wreath laying ceremony. This involved the laying of the wreath, thanking a war veteran and reading the Ode of Remembrance.
The students then had a tour and explored some of the artefacts. They visited Government House where we were lucky enough to meet and speak to our Governor General, the honourable David Hurley, before heading to Parliament House to see Anthony Albanese in action speaking about energy in Victoria. The students were also able to re-enact the process of passing a Bill, linking with our Civics & Citizenship unit.
They learnt about the history of Australia’s currency at the Royal Australian Mint, visited the Australian Institute of Sport and spent some time exploring the ANZAC Parade. Just when you thought they couldn't pack any more into a 1 week camp, they managed to go to the High Court of Australia, Questacon and still had the energy to burn off bowling and swimming at night. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE!
Well, that’s all for now, so until next time,
The Senior School Team
Jayne McKay
jmckay@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au
Trent Thiessens (no emails while on leave please, you can send them to Jayne McKay)
Dara Blake dblake@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au
Simon Brown sbrown@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au
Lisa Biffin lbiffin@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au