Dear Parents,

Book Day

What a wonderful, positive day last Friday was here at St Mary’s. It was oozing with fun, laughter and positive relationships as we celebrated literacy through our Book Day celebration. Thank you to the learning team for organising Book Day activities and for all parents who came along to the parade to celebrate a love of books with your children.

We had a special visit from Natalie Peterson from Peterson’s book store who presented us with a voucher for $1000 from an anonymous donor. WOW! We can’t wait to see all the new books for our school library and we thank this person wholeheartedly for their kind donation and passion for ensuring the children in our school have access to the highest quality literature.

The day concluded with our Disco which was such a wonderful event. Thank you to Lisa, Stacey, Christine, Grant and all parents who helped on the day, and an extra special thanks to Jamie for his amazing talents leading the disco. What a special day for all our students!

Home learning

We continue our 2023 focus on Literacy and Numeracy and practising our basic skills. It is so important for students to be in a routine of doing their home learning to practise these basic skills and embed them in long term memories. We do not want this to be an arduous process, but rather recall and practice which requires a regular routine.

Please make sure your child is doing the following each week:

Reading daily and signing the diary
Weekly word work
Maths fluency work

If you can not manage the home learning schedule, please email your child’s teacher so alternative arrangements and support can be put in place. If you require additional tasks, there are always tasks on the Home Learning Portal for your child to access.

Week 8 Focus

We continue our focus this week on using a kind heart and ensuring there are no put downs being used in our school. Please read the slide show below for our focus.

Marketing and promotion

The best marketing tool for our school is word of mouth. We would love you to promote our wonderful school to any interested and potential families. Please let them know all of the wonderful things we are achieving in our school.

Please promote that we are an inclusive community where all families are welcome and we have a concessional fee policy for all health care card recipients and any families suffering financial hardship.

We are having a dedicated marketing campaign where we are offering a chance to win a scholarship for any parent who successfully refers a family to our school. If you refer a family, you will go in the draw to win a scholarship for your family fees for the 2024 school year. As places are limited for 2024, please let any prospective family know so they don’t miss out. We will be keeping our class sizes to a minimum to ensure we provide an excellent learning environment for all.

MACSSIS Survey

Every year, we gather feedback from our school improvement surveys. The link will be emailed to all parents and we ask that you take the time to let us know your valuable feedback on our school performance and your child’s success.

Save the Date! Youth Mass

There is a Youth Mass planned for Sunday 22nd October at 4pm. This will include a disco and sausage sizzle for our senior students. More information will follow next week.

Finally, I invite all in our community to our Father's Day celebrations on Friday. Please invite Dads, grandparents and any special men to join in the celebrations as outlined below. Also just a reminder that the Father's Day stall will be running as well. Please see all notes regarding the Father's Day events on Operoo.

Yours in Partnership,

Gab

Faith at St Mary's

with Miss Natalie Dullard