Principal's News
Dear Parents and Carers,
This week in Australia we celebrate “Harmony Week”. Australia is one of the world's most successful multicultural countries and our cultural diversity is at the heart of who we are. Over half of Australians were born overseas, or have at least one parent who was born overseas. As recently as 2017, only 1% of our students here at Sacred Heart were from a home where the first language was NOT English, so around 4 children. In 2022 I am delighted to say that figure is now 9% (approx. 40) and growing.
Harmony Week is also about inclusiveness, respect and belonging for all Australians, from the Traditional Owners of the land to our most recent arrivals. Celebrating that no matter where you come from, we're united by the Australian values of freedom, respect, fairness, democracy and equal opportunity.
We will be taking our whole school to Mass this week, Thursday 23rd. at St Mary’s Church for the 10:00am Mass to celebrate Harmony Week before returning to school to participate in some Harmony themed activities and art.
Children are encouraged to wear a “splash of orange” in support of Harmony.
2023 LEADERS Our Year 6 students spent last Friday working with their teachers on Leadership and at the end of the day picked their Student Leaders for 2023.They are as follows:
Arundell House (Gold) Fletcher Tomkins, Jesse McCarthy, Stella Foley, Scarlett Gibson, Matilda Gibson
Marian House (Blue) Reuben Duncan, Emmanuel Robb, Evie McDonald, Layla Harty
Mercy House (Red) Fred Melville, Leon Whitehouse, Charli Doyle, Astin McCrimmon
Congratulations to all of these children who will be officially presented to our school at the 10:00am Mass - Thursday 23rd March, St. Mary’s Church.
RECONCILIATION CEREMONIES Children in Grades 2 and Grade 5 (primarily) who have been preparing for the Sacrament of Reconciliation this term will participate in the sacrament next Tuesday or Thursday (March 28th & 30th). Fr Michael has made himself available at both 4:00pm & 6:00pm on both of these days to allow families to be as flexible as they need to be and still support their children in this important step on their faith journey.
KANA STARS Congratulations to our Grade One classes and their representation of us in last weekend’s Kana Procession. My thanks to our staff for supporting the kids on Saturday in my absence - family celebrations in Bendigo took me out of town.
N.A.P.L.A.N. Children in Grades 3 & 5 will be finishing up the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy testing, with Numeracy testing taking place yesterday. Some “catch up tests” may be done this week where students were absent on the day the tests were administered.
If you have any concerns, please contact your child’s teacher.
FUN FACT: When National N.A.P.L.A.N. results are released, it is common for politicians or others with an agenda - like selling software to parents, for Australian results to be compared with countries overseas. Australian students can’t spell like those in other countries for instance. What’s wrong with us?
As is often the case, it’s not quite as straight forward as this and I offer the following fact that you should feel free to share at the next BBQ where this topic comes up.
The German language, for example, has 34 phonemes. That is, there are 34 distinct sounds made when speaking German. If we want to spell those 34 phonemes (sounds) there are 39 letter combinations to choose from.
However, in English there are 44 sounds or phonemes and our little kids get to choose from 1200 possible combinations of letters to represent that sound. 1200! So “sounding out” an unfamiliar word IS definitely a helpful strategy (please keep doing it) but you can see how limited this approach only is.