Dear Parents and families,

It's been another wonderful few weeks at Sacred Heart, despite some illness in our community. We thank the wonderful teachers for stepping in where needed. It is most appreciated and shows what a caring and considerate teaching community we have.

It has been extremely busy with Mr Collis out this week and we look forward to hearing about his adventure up in the Northern Territory next week. What an amazing educational opportunity for him. This week we have had more school tours, thanks for spreading the word about the amazing things we are doing at Sacred Heart. We've also had the much anticipated announcement of our school production, the educational program of observing the lifecycle of chickens in our Junior school, the Sacrament of Confirmation, a jam packed assembly celebrating all the wonderful things we are doing at Sacred Heart including our Junior school choir performance.

Confirmation

Last night we had a beautiful evening celebrating the sacrament of Confirmation with our Year 6 students. Bishop Tony Ireland and Father Andrew Choi made our students feel so comfortable. It was such a special and personable evening. Our Year 6 students were so well prepared and could answer all Bishop Tony's questions so confidently. The students have also worked tirelessly on their Saints projects, so please come along and have a look in our foyer. We thank all the families and sponsors for coming along, some from quite a distance to be here. We also thank our Religious Educational Leader Dara Blake and the Year 6 teachers Jayne Mackay, Trent Thiessens and Louise Robertson for their exceptional preparation of our students for this sacrament.

Embrace Kids Movie

Last Sunday afternoon Liz Hyslop, Jayne Mackay and I attended the Embrace Kids movie at Dendy cinema. Embrace Kids empowers young people to Embrace their bodies and themselves, so they reach their full potential. It was so pleasing to see so many Sacred Heart families in attendance. The message from this movie was to really celebrate difference and include everyone and embrace them for who they are, whether it is a different culture, a different body type, different interests, clothing etc. If you would like any more information on this topic please look at this website.

Writing & comparative judgement

This week our teachers have worked tirelessly during our Literacy meeting moderating our writing pieces from Prep to year 6 using a new online platform for moderation. Comparative Judgment is an assessment method that involves evaluating the quality of a set of items by comparing them to each other with an online system and an algorithm. Kate Stroud and Sarah Rafferty have lead us superbly in using this new innovative program to assist us with our report marking this semester.

Coaching Professional learning

Last Friday Sarah Rafferty and I attended a Culture of Coaching professional learning day at Brighton Grammar school. Coaching is a strategy used in educational settings to ultimately improve student outcomes, by starting by working with teachers to improve their practise. At Sacred Heart we are always striving for school improvement. We learnt about the importance of connectedness between staff and the importance of trust and the strength in relationships across our settings. It was a great opportunity to discuss with teachers in both primary and secondary settings how coaching works in their schools. This was a most worthwhile day exploring the power of student to student coaching and teacher to teacher coaching. We were able to observe some classroom practise and reflect on our own teaching and goal setting. Sarah and I look forward to implementing some of these strategies at Sacred Heart in the future.

Junior school choir

This morning in assembly we witnessed a gorgeous performance from our Junior School choir of 'Bare Necessities' from Jungle book. Miss Robertson and our school leaders Keira, Levi, Alice, Bella, Ellara, Finn and Felix and have been working on this for many weeks. It was an absolute delight to see!

Peter Pan

It is very exciting that Miss Roberton has announced our school production this year and has started rehearsals in each class. I look forward to being part of the audition process next week.

More details in Music News.

Kinder visits

We had another special visit to Nagle Kinder last Wednesday 17th May with our Year 4 students. Many of the students who came along this time were ex Nagle students so it was lovely for the kinder teachers to reconnect with them. The kinder students love the older students visitng them. This time we taught the kinder students how to play ball games, focussing on throwing and catching and dribbling the ball. Many of our Year 4 students are keen basketballers so they were the perfect teachers. They also enjoyed some outdoor play on the play equipment, stilts and swings. The Year Four students were also great companions in playing board games and joining in some imaginative play in the kitchen.

BOOK FAIR

Our annual Scholastic Book fair is on again this year. It will be held in the library from 13th-16th of June.

It ties in beautifully with Grandparents day on the 16th June so Grandparents will also get an opportunity to buy books if they wish. The book Fair will be open every morning before school at 8:15am and every afternoon from 3:15pm from the 13-16th of June. We are looking for parent volunteers to assist on the mornings and afternoons. Please contact me if you are able to assist.

LITTLE HEARTS PLAYGROUP

Next Sessions:

2nd June 10am
28th July 10am

We had another wondeful morning at Little Hearts playgroup this morning. Our year 6 students were once again complimented by new families on their exceptional manners, respect and kidness towards our Little Hearts. A wondeful example of our Respectful Relationships program in action. The Litte Hearts played, did drawings and were read stories by our senior students. Then they went out to our playground to play ijn the sunshne and get used to our school yard. It was lovely to welcome some prospective preps to playgroup today. Family and friends are most welcome to attend. No age limit on toddlers or pre-schoolers.

Writing in Year 1

The writing is exceptonal in Year 1 and Ella proudly shared her work with me today. Clearly the work with The Writing Revolution on questioning with 'Who What When' is working with our Juniors. Well done Ella!

Harrison's surprise performance

Miss Robertson had a lovely surprise this week during her Year 2 music class. Harrison played the violin so beautifully to his classmates, I could even hear it from my office!

Well done Harrison!

Finally.......

We wish Miles, Sidney, Kate & Jarrad a wonderful experience in moving to Copenhagen, Denmark. We hope to stay in touch and see all those incredible experiences you will have in the Northern Hemisphere. You will certainly be missed by our community and we welcome you back anytime to Sacred Heart when you are visiting Melbourne.

Wishing you all a well deserved weekend, stay warm and stay healthy,

Brigid Pennington

Deputy Principal, Learning Diversity Leader and 3-6 Literacy Leader

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