Our Lady of the River School eNewsletter

Andrew Chinn and the Our Lady of the River Students, live in concert, all welcome

ReLAT

Each year, the year 4 students from Catholic schools all over South Australia participate in the Religious Education Literacy Assessment Tool.

Religious Education (RE) is a core Learning Area in all Catholic schools. It is a foundation for all learning and is integrated into the life of the school through prayer, liturgy and social justice programs.

ReLAT will focus on knowledge content, which is core to the Year 3/ 4 Crossways Religious Education curriculum.

The data from the ReLAT assessment will be collated and used by the school to inform whole-of-school professional learning needs and the continuous improvement of teaching in Religious Education.

Next week, students can practise navigating the test and answering questions. The formal assessment will take place on Tuesday, 12th September.

Please feel free to make time to chat with me if you have any questions.

Year 1 Prayer Service 

Yesterday, the Year 1 students and Miss Martin hosted a very special class prayer service themed on Kindness.   Kindness is free and can be hugely beneficial to those around us! When we are kind, we can make the world a happier place for everyone. Kindness is contagious; when we do a good deed for another person, they feel motivated to repeat the act. This means that one single act of kindness has the potential to roll through the lives of many. So, let’s spread kindness with everyone we meet. What better way can we live our Call to Community than by showing kindness daily?

Gracious God, 

Guide us to live Your goodness and kindness each day.
Help us to choose our words wisely to heal and build up others.

Remind us that our actions express who we are even more than our words. Shape our hearts to be like Yours and guide our hands by Your Spirit to show kindness and compassion to others.

May we love as you love. Let us be good to those who wish us harm, forgive those who need forgiveness, and reach out in kindness to all we meet so they can experience the unconditional love of God.

Amen.

Rosemary Perre
APRIM

The last two weeks have once again been a whirlwind of activity at OLOR. The different opportunities that students have had to experience and learn from abound this term and we know that there have been many memorable moments for everyone.

Last week we celebrated Book Week, which is always a lot of fun and something to look forward to. The classes all prepared a short item about two shortlisted books to share with the other classes in a short assembly on Monday. This gave us all a great insight into the many varied books that are part of Book Week each year. On Thursday we held our parade and dress up day. There were students dressed as all types of book characters, and it was great to see all of the staff embrace the ‘Grow’ part of this year’s “Read. Grow. Inspire” theme with their creative costumes. A lot of fun was had by all and we thank all students and families for their efforts with costumes. We also had a visit from St Francis of Assisi students on Friday who did some Book Week activities with our Junior Primary classes.

We also had a visit from two special guests last Thursday, Port Pirie Director of Catholic Education Nichii Mardon, and Chair of the South Australian Commission for Catholic Schools (SACCS) John Neate. Our school captains Ishmeet and Isaac showed John and Nichii around the school and they visited classrooms and asked students what they loved about OLOR. It was great to hear the positive responses and enthusiasm for our school that they showed. John and Nichii then chatted to staff at lunchtime, before continuing their visit of our Riverland Catholic Schools. They both commented that they loved the energy and excitement around the school and that the students all were happy and engaged in their learning. We thank them for their continued interest in all of our schools.

Last Wednesday night our school choir was part of the Riverland Primary Schools Music Festival performance at the Chaffey Theatre in Renmark. We would like to thank Miss De-Gregorio, who has been working with the choir all year to practice the songs and get ready for the big night. They all did great job and the night was full of music and fun. Special mention must go to Siri Gudipati, who was a compere on the night, Grace Heuzenroeder, who had a solo part in a fun song about the Charleston, and Lily Fan, who accompanied piano player Catherine Heuzenroeder, on her violin. Well done to all of the students involved. It was a great night!

On Monday our Foundation to Year 4 students had the opportunity to have cricket clinic with representatives from the Adelaide Strikers. They learnt lots of skills and played plenty of mini games and activities. It was great fun for all of them to be part of.

Next week our Year 4 and 5 students look forward to their Flinders Ranges camp. The camp promises to be lots of fun, and a chance to learn about and reconnect with nature in a wonderful part of our state. I look forward to sharing more about the camp in the next newsletter and thank the teachers and ESOs for their efforts getting everything ready.

It is great time of the year to be in the sunny Riverland, as the blossoms and leaves appear back on the trees and vines and the days start getting a bit longer. As we head to the change in seasons though, we are reminded of a few things. There has been more sickness in our community over the last few weeks, which often happens at this time of the year. We thank families who are being considerate and keeping unwell students at home while their symptoms are clearing. This is the best way of stopping the spread. We also have started encouraging students to start wearing hats and put on sunscreen as the weather warms up and the UV levels rise. Before we know it we will be turning the air conditioners on again!

Mr Michael Slagter
Principal

Riverland Primary Schools’ Music Festival

Last Thursday our choir joined with other schools in our region to perform at the Riverland Primary Schools’ Music Festival. Our students sang beautifully and were great representatives of our school. Well done for all of the hard work and dedication that went into making the performance such a success!

Special congratulation go to Grace Heuzenroeder for her solo part in the Charleston; Siri Gudipati for her role as a student host and Lily Fan for her violin solo on two nights of the Festival.

Choir rehearsals have now finished for this year. I will keep you updated if we are given any additional opportunities for singing performances later this year.

OLOR Production 2023 – The Lorax

Dear students and families,

I am excited to announce that this year we will be preparing and staging a whole school production for our end-of-year concert. We will be presenting the story of ‘The Lorax’. All students will prepare a class item in our Arts lessons.

This will be held in Week 8, Term 4 on Friday 8th of December, at 6pm.

Students in Years 2-6 will have the opportunity to audition for a main part in addition to performing in their class item.

Please let myself or your class teacher know as soon as possible if your child will be unable to attend the Production – all students will be expected to attend and perform in front of an audience as part of The Arts curriculum.

We can’t wait to share this story with you next term!

Kind regards,

Miss De-Gregorio
Arts Coordinator

For Book Week, we created posters that explain what Book Week means to us, why reading is important, and we included some of our favourite books. We also explored the theme “Read, Grow, Inspire” and talked about what it means to us.

Olivia: The read part of this year’s theme highlights how important it is for us to read all the time. With more practise, we can become confident, fluent and successful readers.

Bode: The grow part means that books can help us grow as people. By reading, we can learn new things that make us better people.

Xanadu: Books inspire us to fulfill our dreams and help others. This inspiration could help you in all parts of life. When you feel inspired, you want to succeed and books help us to learn, grow and achieve great things.

We made a short video about why we think that Book Week is important.