6 September 2018

Newsletter Articles

From the Principal

Reflection

When I read this Sunday’s Gospel about Jesus healing a deaf and mute man, I immediately think of Jesus’s great healing power, but upon further reflection, I realised that this story symbolises for us our Baptism promises. When thinking of Baptism, we often think of water, however other parts of the Sacrament include the priest touching the person's ears and mouth saying:

‘The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the mute speak. May He soon touch your ears to receive His Word and your mouth to proclaim His faith to the glory and praise of God the Father. Amen.’

Let us reflect on our own Baptismal promises, renewed through our Confirmation, and openly receive and share God’s word.

Dear Parents and Friends of our School,

It was a great start to our week with our Father’s Day Breakfast. I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with so many dads, and I hope you had the time to share an activity or two with your child/ren. Events like these don’t just happen, a big thanks to our P&F and G1/2 team for coordinating the morning and to all our volunteers on the morning who were at school very early to ensure the bacon and eggs were cooked and the tea and coffee were hot.

Over the past month, I have had several parents seeing me about classes for next year, so I wish to explain our intended process for class selections for 2019. In the first instance, I will be asking the teachers to form the class lists, based on a multitude of factors, including each child's ability to work with others and friendship groups. At this initial stage, we are unable to any assign classes a teacher. As a school, we will do our best to accommodate the needs of all our students, and we will listen and take your request into consideration, however, due to the complexity of creating classes we cannot promise that we will be able to fulfil your requests. Any request must be submitted in writing to your child’s teacher with a detailed reason on how this request will benefit your child’s learning. Any parent that has already met with me has had their request noted.

Last week it came to our attention that St Patrick’s College will be moving from iPads to Chromebooks in 2020. After considering the purpose of our iPad program here at St Thomas More’s, we have decided that we will continue with iPads as this resource provides greater flexibility for learning within our context. From my understanding our BYOD iPad program in G5/6 was introduced to support parents and students with their transition to St Patrick’s College, however as St Patrick’s College will no longer be using iPads we will be suspending the BYOD program as of 2019 and students in G5 will be loaned an iPad from school. We will be sending home more information to our G4 parents about this in the near future.

God Bless,

Shayne Kidd
Principal

Family Mass

Important notice:

Monday the 15 October will be a pupil free day in lieu of the Launceston Show public holiday.

Students and staff will return to school on Tuesday the 16th October.

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School Uniform Policy

Our St Thomas More’s school uniform is a proud symbol of who we are. It proudly proclaims who we are and what we represent.

We ask all families to continue to support your child/ren and our school by providing them with the correct uniform. Please see attached booklet for information about the required uniform.

STM Techspot

STM Techspot: Gaming Addiction

Many of you would have seen the recent 60 Minutes feature on gaming addiction. If you did not see it, it would be worth watching on catch up TV. A link to this episode is below.

Gaming addiction is becoming an ever increasing problem and like most other addictions it can hook people in, particularly children, very easily. So what is the answer? Put preventative measures in place to stop it. We are not saying to remove games completely, but like most things in life, a healthy balance is needed. For gaming, this often requires that strict guidelines are set particularly around times and length of use. The websites below offer some helpful hints and advice on creating healthy online and gaming habits.

If you find that your child is not sticking to the times agreed to, you can now get apps that allow you to set up an automatic schedule that will turn your internet connection on and off at certain time and many Internet providers also have this feature built in which you can change by logging into your ISP (Internet Service Provider) account (they will provide documentation on how to set times). Either way, ensure that you have the conversation with your child/ren so that you are all on the same page.

NAPLAN ONLINE - TRIAL OF THE NEW ONLINE ASSESSMENT PLATFORM

You may have heard that NAPLAN Online is being introduced across Australia over three years from 2018. Tasmanian schools will be administering NAPLAN online from 2019.

NAPLAN Online will provide better assessment, more precise results and faster turnaround of information.

Our school will trial the new assessment platform (the computer system the test will be taken on) and assess our readiness to participate in NAPLAN Online from 2019. This trial is called the School Readiness Test (SRT).

The SRT is not a test of student achievement and results will not form part of a student’s overall assessment.

Participating in this trial is important as it will help us ensure we have adequate internet connectivity, and whether students have access to sufficient number of devices for NAPLAN testing. During the trial, our school will have the opportunity to practice managing the classroom logistics for an online assessment and the new test administration processes.

Feedback from schools participating in the trial will inform transition to the online assessment as well as provide valuable feedback to shape the final development of the NAPLAN Online platform.

The SRT has not been constructed to assess curriculum knowledge, but rather to provide students an opportunity to experience the types of questions that will be included in the new online assessment.

During September 2018, selected students in Years 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 will participate in the trial of the assessment platform, by undertaking two online tests that include examples of the new NAPLAN Online questions. Each test will take approximately 45 minutes to complete.

Participation in this trial is a key step to ensuring a successful NAPLAN Online experience.

If you have further questions, please contact Kurt Atkins at the school or email kurt.atkins@catholic.tas.edu.au

Messages from P & F

The next P & F meeting will be held on Wednesday the 26th September at 7 o’clock.

All welcome.

Thank you

Thank you to all the loved men who were able to join us on Monday morning for our Father’s Day breakfast.

Thank you to P & F for organising and a huge thank you to the volunteers who came and helped.

Awards

Congratulations to the following children who have received an award this fortnight:

Prep Foot

Prep Greig

Chloe
Lola
Rosie

1/2 Carr/Rooney

Archer
Ella
Amelia

1/2 Tams

Charlie
Nixon
Isobel
Sebastiano

1/2 Scharapow/Atkins

Taj
Matilda

3/4 Love/Chugg

Lexi
Lucas
Patrick
Madeleine

3/4 Morgan

3/4 Wilson/Edwards

5/6 Healey

5 / 6 O’Neill

5 / 6 Pearce

Japanese

Library

School bus from Carrick/Hadspen to STM

We are looking at organising a school bus to/from Carrick/Hadspen to/from STM

If this service would be of interest of you please contact Miss de Quincey, in the school office via stm@catholic.tas.edu.au to advise days to/from and number of children.

Competition Time!!

2018 Term Dates

Term One - 8 Feb – 13 April
Easter - 30 Mar – 3 April
Term Two - 1 May – 6 July
Term Three - 23 July – 28 Sept
Term Four - 15 Oct – 20 Dec

Gallery

Father’s Day Breakfast

Outside School Notices

Meningococcal

Meningococcal W A3 poster.pdf

Legonauts

St Patrick’s College Rowing: Coaching staff expression of interest

Launceston Grammar Spring Fair.

Just Swim- school holiday program