From the Principal 

Dear Families, 

Welcome to the first day of summer and all the excitement that the month of December brings with it, especially the season of Advent. This newsletter contains lots of important information and I encourage you to read each section to ensure that you can participate in all that is happening in the next fortnight. 

Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony 

Please enjoy some of these amazing photos from Friday 18th November by our resident photographer Di Snape.  It was great having our students, staff and many families join us for this traditional and sacred ceremony. 

Democracy Sausage Sizzle

Our Democracy Sausage Sizzle last Saturday was the St Mary’s Primary School community in action. At the risk of leaving someone out I won’t thank people individually but what an event it was. We are so appreciative of everyone who contributed in their own way to make it the success it was. Thank you to those who donated food, set up, packed up, bought food, lent barbeques, moved barbeques, barbequed sausages, onion, egg, bacon, stacked bread with a serviette underneath, warmed muffins, shopped for more produce to cook throughout the day, helped clear out the hall, ducked out to do a transfer station drop off and the list could go on and on. Students, families, extended families and staff were involved and all of this will help us with our landscape gardening project 2023 and beyond. This event was ably led by Kasia and Louisa and the teams that wrap around them. They should both feel very proud of what they achieved and we are most grateful that they share their God given talents with us. 

Shared Stories 

We congratulate Oriana Littlewood for being the recipient of the Shared Stories St Mary's Primary School award, for her art piece “Sunflower Patch”. Please read more about this from Miss Paula in Around the School. We are very proud of you Oriana! 

St Mary’s Got Talent , Friday 2nd December 10am

Tomorrow our School Leaders; Ivy, Emelie, Jake and Leo are hosting our St Mary’s Got Talent. We congratulate the students for having a go and look forward to seeing the following students represent their year level. Please come and join us in the hall from 10:00am. The purpose behind this event is for students to share their talents with each other and celebrate these gifts. The students performing on Friday will receive a participation certificate as it is not a competition but a sharing of talent. The class reps are as follows:

Prep -  Orison, Joshua, Owen and Harrison

Year 1 - Samuel

Year 2 - Archie and Charlie

Year 3 - Sebastian 

Year 4 - Chiara

Year 5 - Anthony and Jasper

Thursday 8th December - Feast Day 

We are really looking forward to celebrate our feast day of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Please join us at Mass at 9:15am, where the whole school will gather. As always all members of the family are welcome. This will be a special day for our community and one that we look forward to celebrating each year. 

Introducing Sienna Miranda Schultz 

We congratulate the Schultz family; Steph, Aaron, Isaac, and Harvey for their new arrival. Steph has let us know that Sienna's brothers are looking after her beautifully and being very gentle with her. 

Sleep Over

Last Thursday after the P & F Annual General meeting I had the pleasure of joining our year 2 students on the St Mary’s Primary School inaugural sleepover. Although I am not sure how much sleep was had. At times it felt like I had several meerkats in the sleeping bags around me! A huge thanks to Daniela Borgese, Naomi Raffaele and Nick Burgess our ACU placement student and many of the parents who supported with meal preparation and setting up the room. Building independence is so important and school camps are integral to this. The Year 2 Sleepover is great preparation for our Year 3 & 4 camp next year at Lake Dewar. 

Mathematics Escape Room

Last week, I met with some very enthusiastic Year 3 Maths students. I learnt a great deal about the Mathematics Escape Room from Zelie, Scarlett and Olivia. 

As part of numeracy, our task was to save the principal from an alien abduction. We did an escape room with four maths tasks and each one had a code. There were lots of addition, subtraction and decoding activities. What I enjoyed about this task was celebrating after we won and dancing. My group was laughing a lot  and we got really stressed but we pushed through and DID IT! GIRL POWER! - Zelie

I enjoyed doing it with my friends and dancing and celebrating after it.I also loved learning

about maths with my friends, it's much more fun learning with your friends and I loved laughing with them. Even though there were some points where I got a bit stressed, my friends were there to help me. - Scarlett

My favourite task was task 4. We got to do addition and subtraction worded problems and decode the numbers and it said GOOD WORK TEAM! I got really stressed at times but we worked it out.  We submitted the answer and once we saw it was correct we were so happy that we danced for a long time. - Olivia

It was very exciting to be able to work with  friends in different classes and share different ideas on how to solve the puzzles. By Zelie, Olivia & Scarlett

Our wonderful learners 

So much learning is happening around the school. I have had the pleasure of sharing Sophie, Kayla and Karsten’s learning. The pride in which they shared their writing pieces made my day! 

Prep & Year 1 Master Chef

Last term Steve, our maintenance officer, put an oven into the Community Room. Look at our clever Prep and Year 1 students and what they produced. You can almost smell the magnificent pizzas through the photos. 

Stay, Chat & Play

Great to see more families joining us. Please feel free to bring your littles ones to join us on a Wednesday morning. 

Building Update 

For a number of years our school has been blessed to use the Parish Hall. Due to the change of governance structure in Catholic Education the management of parish and school properties has had to be clarified. An arrangement has been made whereby the school has the  use of the community room or St Vincent de Paul room (it has many names) in the Specialist Campus. The parish will take over the hall and the upgrade that is required and for this we are grateful.  Our school parish partnership will continue with  continued use of the parish hall for events in the future. Next year we will make greater use of the Specialist Campus lower level. This space will be flexible and used by Their Care, for assemblies and school events such as the student disco and movie night to name a few.

2023 Staffing 

I am very pleased to announce our staff for next year. We also welcome several new staff members to St Mary’s Primary School. We look forward to working with this dynamic and enthusiastic team as they strive to find the light within each student and each other next year. 

Administration Team:

Erica Nastopoulos - Administration and Finance 

Janelle Adams - Library Assistance on Thursday & Office Administration on Friday 

Leadership Team: 

Deputy Principal - Anthony Speranza

Religious Education Leader - Anthony Speranza & Cathy Ferrari  

Learning & Teaching - Anthony Speranza 

Wellbeing Leader - Anthony Speranza 

Literacy Leader - Angela Mason 

Maths Leader - Catherine Le Hunt

Learning Diversity Leader - Catherine Le Hunt 

eLearning & Community Leader - Daniela Borgese 

Classroom Teachers: 

Prep B - Daniela Borgese & Rosemary Perri

Year 1R -  Naomi Raffaele 

Year 2J - Jacquie Fleming 

Yr 3A - Grace Accetta 

Yr 4McG- Aoife McGuinness 

Yr 4McM- Maureen McDonald & Rosemary Perri

Yr 5M - Angela Mason

Yr 6M - Melissa Mabilia 

Specialists and Support Staff:

Art Teacher - Rosemary Perri 

Performing Arts - Jessica Earle  

Italian Teacher - Carmela Vozzo 

Physical Education - Chris Kidman (Wednesday) Prep - Yr 3

Physical Education - Simon Addicoat (Wednesday) Yr 4 - Yr 6  

Maths Support Teacher - Catherine Le Hunt

Support Teacher - Anastasia Romios

Learning Support Officers:

Melody Caprio

Melissa Eyers 

Sarah D’Mello 

Katherine Reade

Other Curriculum Specialists: 

Music - Ian McCulloch

Chess - Flinder Hiew 

Taekwondo - Jarek Heares 

Kelly Sports - Emily South

God Bless each of you,

Cathy