31 May 2018

Newsletter Articles

From the Principal

Dear Parents and Friends of our School,

Reflection

Today we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Latin term for the Body of Christ. As Catholics, we believe that every time we receive communion, we are receiving the body and blood of Jesus. This is often hard to explain to children because really, we are just receiving bread and wine, however, it is our faith that allows us to believe. I like to explain to our children that when they choose to receive the Eucharist they are choosing to follow the teachings of Jesus and that their actions should always reflect this. Each time you say, “Amen,” you are saying I believe.

The Feast of Corpus Christi is credited to St Juliana of Mont Cornillion in Belgium in the 12th Century. St Juliana longed to have a special day to honour the Blessed Sacrament, which was supported by a vision she had of the Church under a full moon with a dark spot, representing an absence of solemnity. This information made its way to Pope Urban, who decreed the feast we now celebrate. It is a solemn feast and we are all encouraged to attend a veneration of the Blessed Sacrament.

During this week teachers have expressed their concerns over some children being constantly late resulting in them missing learning time. I have done some quick calculations; if a child is 10 minutes late each day, that is 50 minutes a week. Over a term this equals 8 hours, totalling up to over one week of school missed in a year. Image what 20 or 30 minutes late can total up to! It is important for your child to be at school on time, this will not only ensure they maximise their learning time, it can also help eliminate stress some students feel as it can be embarrassing arriving late.

On Friday I had the opportunity to watch our G5/6 participate in their sports Gala Day. On this day I witnessed some great sporting talent from students - however, that was not what caught my attention - it was the way each member of our teams encouraged each other, especially our students who will never be the next sporting superstar. This attitude of sportsmanship is a credit to our students and something I am proud of here at St Thomas More’s.

This week we, as a Nation, celebrate Reconciliation Week. Our theme this year is, "Don't Keep History a Mystery". For myself, even after living many years in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, I knew nothing about the Tasmanian Aboriginal people until the beginning of this year. To be honest I was under the belief that there were no longer Tasmanian Aboriginals, as that is what we were taught at school. The theme "Don't Keep History a Mystery" is important, it is our responsibility to ensure the truth is now told. We also must remember that Reconciliation Week is not just an annual event, it should become part of our everyday lives if we are to truly reconcile with our First Australians.

God Bless,
Mr Shayne Kidd

Captains Corner

On the 18th and the 19th Of May, 5 St Thomas Mores children went to Launceston Church Grammar School for the Grade 6 Grammar Challenge. These five Children were Samuel Lehner, Ella Webber, Imogen Richards, William Barns and Thomas Fryett.

Samuel, Ella, Imogen, and William were part of the St Thomas mores team, and Thomas was part of a composite team. A composite team is a team of people from different schools. He was with Oliver and Loshigan (from East Launceston), and Georgia (from Circular Head).

Over the first day we competed in 4 different 1 hour challenges with breaks for food in between.

Our first challenge was science, which involved building circuits and recording the voltage (volts), the current (amps) and the resistance (ohms). We then recorded that information into a graph to show what we learned.

Next challenge we did was Literature, which included reading a poem from the 1600’s and making a 21st century remake with the same features! Our poem is outside Ms O’Neill’s classroom if you would like to read it.

The next challenge we tried was music. A couple days before the challenge, we were supposed to make some homemade musical instruments. We made a bongo drum, a banjo, some smaller drums and a set of maracas. We had to compose a song about the weekend’s theme, connexion (it was spelt wrong for dramatic effect!). We decided to make a song about people’s connection to music, we called our song Soul Connection! We had to make the instruments fit the sound of the music, it was really fun!

The last challenge for Saturday was art. We had brought a box of materials and stuff supplied by the school. We had to make a collage about connection and it’s meaning to us. Our meaning was people’s connection through interests and thoughts, you could be different races, religions or even in different places but our thoughts connect us!

At around 7:30 that night we had to present our poem and song to the other groups and to parents and friends.

Our first task on the second day was the major challenge; dangerous data. We had to identify a problem with data and find a solution to that problem. Our problem was how vulnerable people get lured into scams and lose their personal information that can get sold or stolen. Our solution was that we would censor the internet with homemade technology and use our superior computer knowledge to track them down and shut them down (you could have futuristic technology in this solution and you could be as smart as you wanted to be, so long as you didn’t involve the government). We then had to present our work to other groups.

On the Sunday our second challenge was called Cyberspace. We were given a load of messages written in binary and we had to decode them, (binary is like 0010 0000 or 0110 1001) every eight binary digits are 1 letter! They scored us on how many letters we decoded. This was really relaxing surprisingly!

Our last challenge for the weekend was mathematics. All this involved was playing a game. We had a sheet of paper that had red and blue dots on it. One person was red and the other person was blue. The one team had to connect the dots with lines, trying to reach the other side in a connecting line. The other person did the same thing, but you could also stop them by getting in their way. And so we played that game against all different schools.

At 2:20 that afternoon, they had the presentation where they would announce winners of each challenge. Out of the first four challenges on Saturday, St Thomas Mores (our team) won the science award for the science challenge. West Launceston won both the music and the literature challenge while Grammar won the art challenge. The major challenge ( Data, maths and cyberspace on Sunday) was judged next and the composite team (Tom Fryett’s team) had won that. Next were the awards for challenge champions ( the team with the most points for the whole weekend) and the spirit award (for the team who worked as a team the best). The challenge champion’s award was judged first and St Thomas Mores won! And Tom Fryett’s composite team won the spirit award.

It was a successful weekend for St Thomas Mores.

IMPORTANT: Unsupervised Students

Before School

A reminder that students who arrive at school before 8:30 are not directly supervised by a duty teacher. Therefore, these students must sit down in the Piazza and wait quietly until the 8:30 bell goes. We ask parents to remind their children as we have had a number of students that have not been following this instruction. If your child/ren must be dropped off well before 8:30 it is preferable to book them into before school care.

After School

Students should not be left at school unsupervised at the end of the school day. There are duties on Abbott St until 3:25pm and on Campbell St until 3:20pm where students that are being picked up should be. No students should be anywhere else in the school grounds unless supervised by a parent/carer (this includes any after school sport training). We thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

School Photos

School photos will be taking place on Monday 2nd July 2018.

Please ensure children are wearing full school uniform.

Family Mass

Community Care Meal Roster

School Uniform Donations

Donations of outgrown school uniforms can be left at the office to be shared with families in our community. Any families needing uniform items please contact Jacquie Wood: jacquie.wood@catholic.tas.edu.au

STM Techspot

STM Techspot: iParent

As previously mentioned in Techspot the eSafety Commissioner's iParent resources are a quick and easy way to keep on top of your child's and perhaps even your own internet use. Below are a couple of the new interactive resources that give you the most up to date information.

This link will take you to the iParent eSecurity interactive guide. This guide gives you a basic run down of many of the technological devices we now use and the risks involved.

This link will take you to the iParent Screen Smart Parent Tour. This interactive tour will take you through a range of issues that can impact young people. It will give you stats and advice on how to tackle these problems.

Finally, the below link will take you to the iParent guide on screen time. Overuse of technology and 'technology addiction' continues to be a major issue.

UPCOMING EVENTS

For upcoming events please see left side bar.

2018 Term Dates

Gallery

Grammar Challenge

Outside School Notices