27 June 2018

Newsletter Articles

School Calendar

PRAYER

God, source of our hope,
Through John the Baptist you gave us an example of a man close to the concerns of your own heart, and alive to the needs of his time.
May we too draw on his courage, forthrightness and love of you and your people.
May we have faith like John, to live and proclaim the love of Christ.
We ask this confident of your generosity and encouragement.
Amen.

Principals Report

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Students,

Last Sunday, 24th June the Riverland Parish celebrated the Feast and birthday of Saint John the Baptist. It was also a celebration of Baptism for Lucy Singh, daughter to Mrs. Bonnie and Lachie Singh, as well as a celebration of First Holy Communion for many children from Barmera. This was a beautiful gathering of faith and especially a celebration of bringing families together. I thought I would share with you the wise words from our parish priest, Fr. Paul Bourke spoken to us during his Homily at Mass that day. I believe his words express an important message to all of us.

“Her name is ‘Lucy’, we as a congregation all had names when we were Christened. John the Baptist understood early in life his call of God. He knew that he had to announce the coming of Jesus, the Messiah and he was faithful to that. Faithful to God’s command. The biggest thing you are asked as parents and carers is to be faithful to parenting. We bring the children up in the love of God, the reality of life. We are faced with the dilemma of what we give them. Possession, of course, but that love, that sacrifice, that example. We celebrate that today with John the Baptist. John the Baptist was faithful in showing the way to God. John the Baptist would have found a way to look after people. We are called to look after people, not build walls, not exclude others from the resources we have in our world. All people especially young people need to look for ways to be like John the Baptist, find a way to God’s call and God’s love for all people. This is for each of us, and today Lucy joins us in that journey of life.”

Congratulations to the following families in our school community who have celebrated the Sacrament of Baptism recently.

Addison & Savannah Andrews: Twin daughters of Chelsea and Todd Andrews. Their sister Lily is in our Foundation class.

Lucy Singh: Daughter to Bonnie and Lachie Singh. Mrs. Singh is currently on leave from her teaching role at Our Lady of the River School.

Year 6/7 Leadership Day

On Monday, 18th June the Year 6/7 students were invited to join with other students from St Joseph’s Barmera and St Albert’s Loxton for a combined leadership day. The 6/7’s were treated to workshops lead by Year 11 and 12 students from Marist College in Bendigo.

The day was aimed at how the students can be strong leaders and they learnt about how they can be leaders in everything that they do. The students rotated through 4 stations in mixed school groups. One of the more popular stations was when the students formed a human obstacle course and they had to lead a blindfolded partner through the course without touching any other students. Another was students tangled in a rope and following verbal instructions, they had to untangle themselves.

Thankyou to Mr Abela, Principal of St Joseph’s Barmera, for the invitation to join with his students for the leadership day and the Marist College students from Bendigo. (Reflections from the students and photos are below in the School News)

Schooling after 2020

Recently you may have heard in the media that the State Government announced its intention to transition Year 7 into the secondary arena from the year 2020. South Australia is the last state in the country to do this. This was originally part of an election promise but it was a surprise to many of us to hear this through media communications and not formally from the State Education Minister, John Gardner. Catholic Education South Australia is now meeting with key stakeholders to discuss the impact this will have on schools. How this will roll out and what implications it will have to Our Lady of the River School is too early to say. We are hopeful that this announcement comes with a funding package to support ALL schools with the transition along with fairer funding for non-government schools, like Our Lady of the River School.

New Family

I wish to welcome a new family to our community. I am very pleased to introduce Scott Martin and Tanya Radolovic and their son Harley Martin who is joining Year 1 in Miss Drogemuller’s class. We wish them well as they start their journey in our wonderful community. Harley is already making good friends and is a positive and joyful member of our school. Harley is pictured below with Charlie Wishart.

School Reports

School student reports will be sent home at the end of term, Friday 29th June. In determining the overall achievements of students, teachers have assessed students using a variety of assessment tools, based on essential content set out in the Australian Curriculum. The results from these assessments allow teachers to make a balanced, professional judgement. Tasks include formal assessment activities such as tests, quizzes, projects, presentations, etc. and informal assessment opportunities that include observations, checklists, discussions, etc.

Teachers make consistent and reliable judgements about the student’s work. They discuss consistency across the year level with their colleagues and may also seek assistance and information from support staff and myself. Teachers take into account the student’s knowledge, skills and understandings up to the point the judgement is made. The allocation of A-E depends on the level of achievement as set out in the common grade scale set by the Schools Assistance Act, 2004. At some point, pretty much every parent worries about their child not reaching their potential, especially at school. The reports are about student accomplishment and the efforts of a teacher to guide them in their learning. A reminder will be sent out to parents that under our new A-E reporting that a ‘C’ stands for Competent, not like the ‘C’ many of us would have understood as unsatisfactory. It’s natural, we all want the best for our children, for them to do well, feel confident and experience success. The best way to put to rest any anxiety or questions is through communication with the school and having realistic expectations.

Teachers have put in a lot of hours of preparation, in which I’m grateful. The Reports are part of that important partnership that we share with parents. I certainly hope that we hear from our community if there are any concerns.

Fundraising

' O L O R Helping Hands' is starting to gather numbers and is a group that will co-ordinate school fundraising events including our catering, cabarets, movie nights, raffles and future chocolate carnivals etc.

The aim of the ' O L O R Helping Hands' group is for parents and friends of our community to join together and have fun being involved in;

• Assisting in the planning and organizing of functions associated with the social, sporting, cultural and educational life of the school community.
• Fundraising for particular projects which assist or enhance teaching aids and equipment, or improvements to facilities within the school grounds, buildings etc.

We would aim to have a parent representative from the group provide a report to the School Board when needed and for the group to have a small executive that would communicate regularly with the Principal.

Please, if you are interested in taking part in this group, please call the administration staff.

OLOR School Board

Our next general meeting will be held on Tuesday 3rd July.

Ros Oates
Principal

Religious Education News

Sacramental Meeting

Father Paul, Fr Hau Lee, myself and the teachers will meet for a Sacramental meeting on Saturday 7th July, 5.30pm until 6.20pm. Afterwards families are invited to attend Mass.

Dates for the following Sacraments:

Reconciliation – Tuesday evening 7th August (time to be announced) St Mary’s Church.
First Holy Communion – Sunday 19th August 9am St Mary’s Church.

St Vincent De Paul Society

Please help to support those in need in our community by participating in our OLOR ‘Vinnies Blanket Appeal.’

Donations of good quality blankets, winter linen and pillows would be most appreciated. All donations can be brought to the school front office. At our final assembly for Term 2, we will present our donations to our local ‘Vinnies’ volunteers.

Vinnies 2018 Inaugural Primary Schools Art Competition.

Students are also encouraged to participate in the 2018 Inaugural Primary Schools Art Competition. There are categories in Reception – Year 2, Year 3 – Year 5 and Year 6-7. All interested budding artist need to see Miss Kayla Jones for entry details. The competition opened on 14th April and close on Friday 20th July.

The latest edition of the Southern Cross features all the latest news and information on our Catholic community. Click on the following link below.

The latest edition of the Witness features all the latest news and information on our Port Pirie Catholic community. This issue there are a number of articles and features from Our Lady of the River School.

SCHOOL NEWS & EVENTS

Interesting Email

On the weekend, I received a lovely email from Year 5 student, Ryder Hunt sharing his excellent writing that he had completed in class. I was so impressed with his work, and with his permission, I would like to share his outstanding work with the community. See the attachment below.

Year 6 and Year 7 Excursion to Barmera – Leadership Day

On Monday Week 8, the senior students went to a leadership day at Camp Kedron. It was a day filled with fun and learning. A group of Year 12 and 11 students who call themselves Remar, travelled over from Marist College, Bendigo to lead the day.

We were filled with suspense as we entered the camp and we saw the schools had already arrived. Personally, I was filled with a tingling sensation seeing the area was amazing there was a large cabin, and in the background, there was even the lake! The fun part was Meeting old friends and some people possibly making new ones. We kicked the day off with a game called heads and tails. The Year 12 and 11 students flipped two coins and you had to decide which side the coin would land the choices were: heads and heads, tails and tails and heads and tails. The advice I give is ‘tails never fails!’ after that, we split up into groups and each group had a mixture of all schools. There were four different workshops each taught us how to improve our leadership skills and give us a broader understanding of how to be the best leaders we can be.

Workshop 1: was about the different types of leaders namely, strict leaders these are leaders who are focused on one point, usually don’t take people’s opinions in and sometimes aren’t approachable.

Workshop 2: was about decision making and peer pressure. In this station, we had to make a decision about what to do with the year 12 and 11 kids pressuring us by saying things like “take this because of these benefits” and thinking that they knew best we took in the answers they gave us and started feeling confident that we were right. In the end, however, we saw that they had pressured us into thinking the wrong answers, in the end, it just comes to show that you should always make decisions with a cool head.

Workshop 3: was about servant leadership we watched a little video that taught us precisely that. In the video, there was a mention of Jesus and how he washed the feet of his disciples. It tells us we should always play on an even field with everyone feeling safe and that they belong.

Workshop 4: it was about teamwork and one prominent aspect of teamwork is to trust one another. In this station, we had to rely on each other as we were blindfolded and had to listen to instructions that would lead us through the maze to the finish line.

The last activity was watching a skit performed by the year 11 and 12 students it was about an eagle that was kicked out of his home and was picked up by a farmer who thought he was a chicken. The eaglet was treated like a chicken, so he thought he was a chicken. Later, the eaglet saw an eagle flying in the sky. He wanted to be that eagle but his chicken friends said he couldn’t, so he didn’t even try. But the second ending was that his friends said that if he wanted to be like that eagle then why couldn’t he? So, filled with confidence he tried and tried to fly. At first, he couldn’t, but after a bit of practice he too was up flying.

We finished the day with a barbecue; it was a chance to catch up with friends and share stories about the day. Overall it was a pretty fun filled day with lots of surprise around every corner!

Ranveer Singh - Year 7

Year 6 and 7 Mass

On Thursday 21st June, the Year 6 and 7 class celebrated Mass at 9.00am in St Mary’s Church. Mass was celebrated by Father Cletus. The focus on Mass is Prayer. How to pray and importance of prayer in our lives. Prayer can be a part of our hearts and minds which opens our world to new opportunities or helps us deal with a difficult world, or be a time of joy and gratitude. Prayer is a time to be with God: by yourself or with others.

Image 6/7, Group photo of 6 & 7 with Father Cletus, Gurshaan on drum, Jaden reading, Ranveer reading, and Year 6 & 7 Mass

Year 2 Classroom News

In Catholic Education week we celebrated a Gratitude Gala. In the Year 2 classroom we have been growing with gratitude and are learning that gratitude is acknowledging the things we are thankful for and it makes us and other people happy when we spread this happiness and gratitude. We have started a blessing wall down by our classroom inspired by the song 10,000 reasons. We are trying to think of as many reasons we have to be thankful in our lives.

In Week 6 it was World Environment day and Mrs Oates made it look after our school week where we had to remember to put our rubbish in the bin and make sure the yard looked good. As a class we learnt about the affects littering has on the environment. We also learnt about persuasive writing and how to try and persuade or convince someone of my opinion or that they should believe or take action because of what we're saying. We wrote persuasive writing pieces about not littering and looking after the environment. We had some technical difficulties at assembly and were unfortunately not able to share it. We have uploaded a link below.

OLOR Sports News

SAPSASA

State SAPSASA Hockey/Soccer Carnival Monday 25th June – 29th June held in Adelaide.

There is a ‘winter’ canteen list out with today’s newsletter. New items for purchase are lasagne and spaghetti bolognaise due to popular demand from our tastings.

Playgroup

Come along to B.O.P.P.E.R.S. (Berri OLOR Planned Playgroup Early Readiness for School) on Tuesdays 9am till 11am. There are a lovely group of young children and their carers enjoying our opportunity for free play, structured games and craft activities. Please let friends and family know in the community.

Premier’s Reading Challenge

A reminder that the Premier’s Reading Challenge is well under way for 2018. I would appreciate if parents could encourage their child/ren to participate in the Challenge. Children only need to read 12 books, 8 of them being from the Challenge.

The books cover 3 reading year levels: R-2, 3-5 & 6-9. Children may read above but, not below their level.

Please visit the website if children would like to rate a book or check the top 10 books in each level. The Challenge closes on 7th September. Sandy Sando

Fortnight Reminders

Community News

Lilly Andrews in our Foundation class at Our Lady of the River School. She is one of JDRF’s members. (JDRF is the leading global organisation funding type 1 diabetes (T1D) research). Lilly has been chosen as a Government Advocate who will be attending ‘Kids in the House’ in Canberra, under JDRF’s Promise to Remember Me Campaign on August 22nd and 23rd. Please support this fundraiser to help to get Lilly’s family to Canberra to support Lilly in her Advocacy.

Berri Primary School has a Vacation Care Program available during July School Holidays. Bookings 8582 3995 or email: be41592@bigpond.net.au

AUSTRALIAN AIR FORCE CADET (AAFC) RECRUITING PACKAGE

The AAFC is a youth organisation, predominantly by volunteer efforts, dedicated to training young Australians aged between 13 and 18 years. The AAFC develops qualities of leadership, self -reliance, confidence, communication and teamwork.

This July school holiday RYT have brought Cirkidz up once again to teach circus skills.
Holiday Workshop have 3 classes, ages 5 – 8, 9 – 12, & 13+.

Berri Library is offering an activity morning for 2-5 year Thursday 10.30am during school Term

Happy Birthday!