Dear Families,

How nice is it to experience some slightly warmer weather over the past two weeks! Nature is certainly letting us know that Spring is well and truly around the corner. As always it is a busy time here at St Luke’s with different events happening across the school. Sporting events, excursions – both local and out of town, classroom programs – all make for a busy time. We thank parents and caregivers for all your support with these.

For families managing illness, or have recently experienced a bereavement with the loss of a loved one, please know you are very much in our thoughts and prayers.

Congratulations also to families who have recently welcomed a new addition to their families with the birth of a child. We wish you every happiness and joy at this special time.

ICAS Assessment Tasks 2023.

ICAS assessment tasks are currently taking place for those children enrolled by their parents.

The tests take place over a four-week period. Individual tests take place as follows; (at a designated time set by the school each week.)

Writing: Monday 7th August.

English: Monday 14th August.

Science: Monday 21st August.

Maths: Thursday 31st August.

If a child is absent on the day of a task, I will try to arrange another time for them if practical, however each task has to be completed in the allocated week they occur. Eg: If a child is absent for the English task, a follow up can only happen in that same week for that task – it can’t be arranged for the following weeks.

If you require any further information, please feel free to contact me at school.

Book Week 2023:

Book Week Parade – Monday 21st August.

Book Week is fast approaching! This is a great opportunity for us as a school to celebrate together a love of reading as well as an opportunity to dress up as favourite characters from much loved stories. Book Week officially takes place from 21st August till the 25th of August. The theme for Book Week this year is ‘Read, Grow, Inspire.’ As a school we will be having our Book Week Parade on Monday 21st August, starting at 9:15 am. This is the day when children can come dressed as a favourite character from a story. We will begin our day with a whole school parade for children to share their costumes with everyone. Parents/families are welcome to join us for this and the Community Group will be having a cuppa morning as well. Staff are busy planning their costumes for the day as well. I wonder who Mr Watts will come dressed as this year? He always sets a high standard!!

We look forward to seeing the children's costumes as a part of our school’s celebration of the joy of reading.

Alpha Show:

On Friday 18th August, the Alpha Shows Theatre Group will be coming to St Luke’s to perform for our children. The performance for this year is Beauty and the Beast.

Alpha's Beauty and the Beast combines all that is loved about any version of the classic fairy tale you could imagine. The show helps the audience believe in themselves through a process of letting go of negative emotions by feeling them fully, so they can feel happy easily, treat others with love and have fun.

All children will be attending the performance in the stadium. We look forward to a great production.

St Luke’s Pie Drive:

A reminder about our pie drive happening at St Luke’s. A great opportunity to stock up the freezer with some great savoury and sweet treats. Instructions for ordering are on the form that came home recently. All orders need to be returned to school by Thursday 17th August.

Thank you to the Community Group for organising this.

Grade 5/6 Story Writing competition:

The Greater Shepparton Book Bag Story Writing Competition is happening again this year. This writing competition is open to students in Grade’s Five and Six to enter. Students wishing to enter are asked to write and illustrate an original picture story book. The winning story will be professionally printed and included book bags for the next twelve months. Entries for the competition are to be in by Monday 11th September by 5pm. All conditions for the competition are as below:

All entries need to be given to Mr Mac at school by the end of August. As a school, we select three entries to be entered into the competition.
The target age group (audience) for the story is 3-5 years old.
The word limit is 200 words and it can be either handwritten (using a dark coloured pen or pencil) or typed.
All stories need to be illustrated with original pictures (using pencil, crayon or paint,) not with downloads from programs like CLIPART or the internet.
No pop-up or lift-up style illustrations.
For printing purposes, the pages for the story need to be in multiples of four (eg: 4 pages, 8 pages, 12 pages) with a maximum of 16 pages. This number includes the front and back cover of the book.
The front cover needs to include a title, name/s of the author/s and illustrations. Students are encouraged to include illustrations on both the front and back cover of their book.
Students can partner up with a friend to co-author a book.
Entries need to be submitted in hard copy on unstapled single sided A4 sheets of paper.
The winning illustrated story will be professionally printed and included in the 3 1⁄2 year Best Start book bag for 12 months, from October 2023 to September 2024. A book voucher to the value of $200 will be awarded to the school of the winning student, along with a certificate for the student/s.

So, to all our budding authors in the Senior school, if you’d like to enter the competition, start thinking of an imaginative idea for a story you think a younger child would love to read and treasure. If you need any further information, please see Mr Mac.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy fortnight ahead.

Kind regards.

Tony.

LIBRARY NEWS

During library time this week students from 1/2 have been very excited to share what costume they might like to wear for Book Week. We have some fabulous drawings of Bluey, Jack and the Beanstalk, Footy players, Alice in Wonderland, Moana, the Rainbow Serpent, Ninjas, TMNT and Frozen, just to name a few! Students can come dressed in the theme "READ, GROW, INSPIRE" or their favourite character/book. It doesn't matter as long as they have fun. We look forward to seeing some of the wacky and wonderful ideas.

Religious Education

St Brendan's Parish Bulletin - 13th August 2023