St Finbarr’s Student Protection

Contacts are as follows.

Genny McNair ~ Melissa Moran

St Finbarr’s Parish School

Jabiru Street, P.O. Box 34 Quilpie, QLD, 4480

Phone: (07) 46561412—Fax: (07) 4656 1306

Email: Quilpie@twb.catholic.edu.au

Principal: Mrs Genny McNair

Newsletter Checklist

Term 1 School fees

& statements

Book Club

Admin officer adver-

tisement

Triathlon poster

Important dates

FEB

8th—P & F AGM

and parent info

night 6pm

9th District Swim-

ming Charleville

13th Shrove Tues-

day– Pancakes for

Hummingbird

House

14th Ash Wednes-

day

23rd Regional

Swimming Charle-

ville

28th Directors visit

2pm

MARCH

2nd Soccer, Net-

ball, Rugby league

trials Charleville

16th St Joseph and

St Patrick Liturgy

21st Harmony Day

28th Easter Liturgy

28th Last Day of

term

29th Pupil free Day

30th Good Friday

Dear Parents and Friends We have a great start to the school year. Our new students have settled in very well. Last year I spoke of one of my goals for the school this year …’ for students to be actively engaged in their own learning to be ‘teachers of their own learning’, to develop cognitive skills to enable them to be successful lifelong learners. My obser-vations in classrooms and around the school make me feel positive we are well on the way – the teachers are very organised, providing high interest activities with specific learning intentions and success criteria and our students very engaged and motivated in what they are learning. The students and teachers have responded very well to the flexible learning groups in maths and the movement between classes for History and Social Sciences (HASS), Science and Religion. These groupings have enabled the students to access curriculum skills and knowledge more appropriate to their needs, abilities and interests. We are very fortunate to have Mrs Moran and Miss Jaeger who work so well together to enable this to happen. Thank you to the flexibility of all staff, including Mrs Haylock, Miss Belinda and Miss Janell throughout the last two weeks as we have been trialling this new structure. Last year the Toowoomba Catholic Schools Office (TCSO) asked us to nominate ourselves for a ‘Lighthouse Pro-ject.’ These projects include Numeracy, Visible Learning, Wellbeing, Digital Tools, STEM and eLearning. As Nu-meracy, like Literacy, is an essential area of learning, we are keen to put in similar practices to enhance student achievement and outcomes in all areas. This will involve reviewing our whole school teaching and assessment practices, ongoing analysis of student data and development of teacher capacity in planning, teaching and as-sessing. This process has already begun with the implementation of our flexible learning groups in math, week-ly meetings to review lesson successes, student response and understanding, and planning and resourcing the lessons for the coming week. This is done collaboratively between the teachers and myself in the weekly PLC meeting. In this manner we are all responsible for the learning of mathematics for all students in our school. The Reading Strategy will be ongoing and we are happy with the progress of our programs and students as a result of our efforts in this area over the last 4 years. Miss Jaeger has been attending two days of reading strat-egy training in Roma. Although we have already been applying the Prep to year 4 Reading Strategy to year 5 and 6, the two days are specifically designed for developing comprehension and thinking skills in older, more independent readers. Marcus, Kaino, Joachim, Hunter and Bella will be joining students from Quilpie College to represent Quilpie and District in the Charleville and District Swimming Carnival on Friday. If successful on Friday they may be selected to compete at the Regional Competition in Charleville on Friday 23rd February. We wish all of our Quilpie com-petitors success in Charleville. Everyone is welcome and indeed encouraged to attend the P&F Meet and Greet this Thursday night. The even-ing will begin at 6 pm with a BBQ dinner and refreshments and P&F AGM at 6.30 (approx). Following the AGM we will be holding a parent Information session where the teachers will present an outline of their programs, routines and expectations for students and parents and Sr Marg and I will provide an outline our school goals and priorities for 2018 and general information sharing. This night is always well attended and we are looking forward to all of our families coming together to kick start the year. Looking forward to seeing everybody on Thursday evening, Genny ‘Coming together is a beginning: keeping together is progress; working together is success.’ Henry Ford.

Volume: 7

Issue: 1

Date: 7th Feb 2018

CHARLEVILLE AND DISTRICT SWIMMING CARNIVAL

Friday 9th February

Congratulations to Marcus, Bella, Hunter, Joachim and

Kaino, for producing great times in the pool last Wednesday

so that they can now compete at the Charleville and district

Swimming carnival to be held this Friday. We wish you the

best of luck. Have a great day, go and show them exactly

what our Quilpie athletes can do. Book Club

Book club is back for another year!

If you wish to purchase from the cata-

logue Please return to school by:

Friday 16th Feb 18

Thank you

** SNACK ATTACK **

As part of her role as the Health

Promotions Officer, Michelle

Donohue will again be providing

Snack attack for students on

Mondays. This will begin during

week 2. Thank you to the

Quilpie Shire and especially to

Michelle for the great work she

does in this area for our commu-

nity.

Give Away

For any one interested there is an interactive

touch screen white board on offer as the one in

the 4-6 class room was upgraded last year. It

works perfectly fine just needs a replacement

bulb. If this is of interest to you please contact

the school.

Term 1 School Fees

School Fees have been sent home this week and we would appreciate if these accounts could be settled by 23rd Febru-ary. Please contact the Principal if you have any concerns with fee payments.

Account details are:

St Finbarr’s Parish School

BSB 084 829

Ac No 50 886 7529

Thank you!

P & F BBQ, AGM and Parent Info Night

Thursday 8th of February, 2018 6PM

Every one is welcome to come along for the beginning

of year meet and greet.

BBQ and refreshments 6pm

P & F AGM 6.30pm

Information for parents provided by Teachers

7pm

PUBLIC NOTICE

After School Craft Activities

After School Craft Activities for 2018 has

commenced. Craft Activities are for

school aged children.

Join us every Monday afternoon from 3.30pm—

4.30pm at the Quilpie Shire Library.

Come along and have a great time.

For further information please contact Michelle

Donohue (07) 4656 0500

P-3 News

Welcome to week three! In English this term we are undertaking an Author study unit on Mem Fox. This week the stu-

dents have had fun researching information about Mem Fox and have been exploring and reading the different books that

she has written. In Prep, the last few weeks we have been working hard on learning to identify and use the golden sight

word ‘a’, ‘I’ and ‘the’ and write and sound the letter ‘s’ and ‘a‘. The whole school Math groups have been going very well!

The last two weeks in Math, the focus for all groups were learning whole numbers. This involved identifying, counting, or-

dering, partitioning and representing numbers. This week the focus is learning efficient strategies to solve and represent

addition and subtraction algorithms. During the last three weeks in Prep, we have been participating in learning activities

on the numbers 1 to 5 that involve identifying, counting, modelling and representing the various numbers.

This term our History unit for P-2 students is called ‘The past and the present’. We will be identifying and comparing the

past and present features within the local community of Quilpie to explore the inquiry question ‘What remains of the past

are important to the local community today?’. In Religion, we will be learning about God, Jesus and the Church. This will

allow students to explore the sign of the cross, the church and why we go there, why and how we pray and who is God and

Jesus.

Have a great week!

Mrs Moran

melissa.sherman@twb.catholic.edu.au

LIBRARY NEWS

Students have been exploring the world of science with the p-3 class

discovering and learning the difference between Living and Non-

Living, and the 4-6 class exploring the tiny world of micro-organisms.

Mrs Haylock and Miss Belinda.

Parish News

Hummingbird House

Hummingbird House was built in 2016 to provide short stays

and care for children with a life- limiting condition and their

families.

Up to 3700 Queensland families are living with, loving and sup-

porting a child or teenager with a life-limiting condition. Hum-

mingbird House helps these families by providing paediatric

palliative care, access to short stays, family support services,

creative therapies and works to meet the needs of each individ-

ual child and their family. It offers children a break from hospi-

tals and is a medically supported home away from home where

kids can be kids, families can reconnect and memories can be

created to last a lifetime.

Next Tuesday, 13th February is Shrove Tuesday, or otherwise

known as Pancake Tuesday. The St Finbarr’s Friends in Action

group will be making and selling pancakes for morning tea.

Please bring a gold coin donation to enjoy our delicious pan-

cakes and raise financial support and awareness of Humming-

bird House.

Marcus and Mrs McNair

CATHDIOCESE OF TOOWOOMBA

CATHOLIC EDUCATION OFFICE Applications are invited for the positions of:

School Officer – Administration (Level 3) – 20 hrs/wk Fixed Term

School Officer – OHS Coordinator – 7.6 hrs/wk Fixed Term

Both positions have the possibility of becoming Continuing

at

St Finbarr’s School, Quilpie

Start date 26th February, 2018

End date for Fixed Term positions 7th December, 2018

The appointment is under the terms and conditions of the relevant industrial awards and agreements.

A Position Description, selection criteria, suitability declaration and employment collection notice can be obtained from the school office.

Further details can be obtained by contacting the school Principal.

Application, including résumé and names of three referees should be forwarded to:

The Principal

St Finbarr’s School

PO Box 34

Quilpie Qld 4480

Closing Date: Friday, 16 February 2018

Lunch Time Fun It has been a great pleasure to watch

the students during lunch and morning

tea breaks making the most of it.

From great team work during exciting

games of cricket, to the use of con-

struction skills and imaginative roll

play building trenches and carrying

out re-enactment's from history with

great accuracy.

Illustrator Visit

Craig Smith a well known children’s book illustrator visited St Finbarr’s last week. He is known for his illustrations of books including Where’s Mum? By Libby Gleeson; The Unforgettable and the Cabbage Patch Fib series by Paul Jennings; Billy the Punk by Jessica Carroll and many more. All of the students enjoyed his illustration demonstrations and drawing work-shops. He complimented all students on how well they inter-acted with himself and each other and the quality of the work they completed. The children’s drawings will be displayed dur-ing the parent information evening, this Thursday.