St James' Primary School Yamba eNewsletter

Congratulations

To our students who represented the Diocese in Swimming this week in the Polding Championships.

The reports from the Pool Deck ( look at me pretending I know terms!) was that all the children competed with great support for their peers and that they all swam well. PB's were swum and I know that the families all made a huge effort to make sure the boys were there and well settled for the competition. Mr Dougherty has details in his section below.

What is On?

March

Tuesday 29th March - Incitare - Year 6

April

Nuts and Bolts- Kinder families- Wednesday 6th April- 6:30pm ( save the date details to come)

School Awards Assembly - Wednesday 6th April

Thursday 7th April - School Cross Country

Friday 8th April - Holy Week Liturgy in hall, 10:00am

Friday 8th April - Last Day Term 1 for students

Dear Parents and Carers

We have two weeks of learning for Term 2 to go. How the time has flown.

Staff have completed the Parent Interviews ( Conferences in COMPASS) and I thank all families who engaged in this process. The relationship with parents and staff is very important when we are building learners in the school. If you miss an appointment or a chance to catch up please contact your teachers by email or phone and they will happily meet to support the learners in their care.

This week you might notice that there are materials in the front of the school library. These are for the long awaited Kiss and Drop roof extension. While I will still get wet on the microphone, this addition will assist us in better organisation for the safe departure during the 3pm afternoon storm!

Can we claim a date?

Tuesday 3rd May. The school would like to invite families for an afternoon BBQ to celebrate Catholic Schools Week and get our whole community together as we need to work to rebuild a community which has been impacted by restictions.

There are more events on the horizon but this is a school event to begin the renewal. Still to come are a Disco with a family event and a captains conversation and a bit more!!!

Stay tuned.

Talk soon

Ann

Sport Dates 2022

Cross Country

-School - Yamba, Thursday 7th April

-Zone - Grafton, Wednesday 4th May

-Dio - Grafton, Tuesday 24th May

-Polding - Tuesday 7th June

Athletics

-School - Yamba, Friday 24th June

-Zone - Coffs Harbour, Wednesday 20th July

-Dio - Lismore, Friday 12th August

-Polding - Newcastle, Friday 9th September

School Awards Assembly - Save the Date

We will have a double Awards Assembly in the last week of term on Wednesday 6th April at 9am for S3 & S2 students and 9:30am for S1 & ES1 students in the hall. Parents of awardees will be notified earlier that week and are warmly invited to attend. There will also be a recorded viewing that you can access if you are unable to attend.

SACRAMENTAL DATES 2022

Confirmation- Thursday 30th June, from 5:30pm at St Mary’s Church, Maclean.

Reconciliation- Wednesday 24th August, 11:40am in school hall.

First Holy Communion- Saturday 27th August, 5:30pm at St James Church, Yamba

Sport News

Swimming

On Tuesday this week we had 3 students competing at the Polding Swimming Carnival in Sydney. Harlan Bews was 5th in the 8yrs Freestyle, Clarence Dougherty 2nd in the 9yrs Freestyle and Kydan Jones 7th in the 11yrs Butterfly. A great effort from all the boys, in particular Clarence, who has now qualified to represent Polding at the NSW PSSA carnival in Sydney in a fortnight's time.

Touch Football

Last week the Diocesan Touch Carnival was held at Iluka. 4 students from St James played as part of the Clarence Zone teams on the day. Levi O’Shea and Eamon Mawn in the boys and Willow Seivers and Marlie Zvatora in the girls. Whilst none of them were selected in the Diocesan team to compete at the Polding carnival, they all played really well on the day and enjoyed being able to show their skills at a higher level.

Cross Country

Students have begun their Cross Country training this week during P.E lessons in preparation for our School Cross Country carnival on Thursday 7th April. Everyone is looking forward to being able to run through the new bush track this year to add a bit of adventure to the course. The Zone carnival will be held early in Term 2 on Wednesday 4th May in Grafton.

NAPLAN Online Practice tests

NAPLAN assesses literacy and numeracy – important skills that each child needs to succeed in school and life. The NAPLAN tests are designed to help us make sure students are on track with their literacy and numeracy development. Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 participate in NAPLAN tests for reading, writing, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy.

On Tuesday, 29th March, our school will participate in the NAPLAN Online Practice Tests. This is a part of student’s preparation to transition to NAPLAN Online in 2022. The Practice Test is an opportunity for students to become familiar with the test environment and to test the school technical infrastructure, test administration process, procedures and logistics, connectivity, number of devices and bandwidth issue that may arise in preparation for the 2022 actual online examination.

Students do not need to be computer experts to take the NAPLAN test online. Making sure students have computer skills is part of our school curriculum, and our teachers will ensure your child is familiar with the online format. To see the types of questions and interactive features of NAPLAN Online, visit the public demonstration site.

For more info:

Technology:

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) who are conducting NAPLAN ONLINE have developed a locked-down browser (LDB) that will allow the students to run the testing on a secure testing platform. When students use the Locked Down Browser to access an online exam they are unable to print, copy, go to another URL or access other applications.

If you have any questions about NAPLAN Online, please contact your child’s teacher.

Christine Jeffrey

RE News

LOP News

Maths fun with your children

You will need to think like a mathematician to solve the following problems and find multiple solutions. Have a go at these with your children and bring in your answers to share with Mrs Dougherty.

You may need to use concrete materials such as blocks, pasta shapes, beans or straws to help solve.

Have Fun.

Lisa Dougherty

ES1

This week in ES1 we have been busy creating storytelling boxes based around our favourite books! Students helped to create and put together props for the books Dear Zoo, Owl Babies and Patroosh the Cheeky Pelican. A special thanks to Renee James (parent & author of Patroosh) for kindly donating her book. These boxes will be sent to St Joseph’s School at Woodburn who lost everything with the recent floods.

In the words of the students -

Tippi - It makes my heart so happy to help them.

Anthony - I want to be their friend and help the school!

Christopher - It makes my heart melt to send them books.

Liv - I hope they really like the books and it makes them smile.

Stage 1

It has been an exciting week in Stage 1! This week, we have added two investigation stations, the tadpole station and the water play area. Students have created a habitat for the tadpoles and will monitor the growth and change over the next few weeks and record this in the classroom tadpole diary. The water play area has been a very popular station and students have been working on their engineering skills, changing the path of the water using plastic tubes. We are all looking forward to continuing to explore these stations next week. In English, we have been creating some ‘wild’ imaginative stories using the book “Where the Wild Things Are” as our inspiration. Keep an eye on SeeSaw for these amazing pieces of work.