Term 1 Week 8 2024
From the Principal
Holy Name School has a long and proud history. Since 1919, we have shared the Gospel Values in the Mercy Tradition with the young people entrusted to our care. As the world changes, it is essential that we share prayer and faith formation in a way that enables everyone in the Holy Name School community to encounter Jesus and make connections to the Gospel message in their own lives. At Holy Name School, these Gospel Values in the Mercy Tradition are called the Powers of the Heart. They are how we follow in the footsteps of Jesus and live his commandment to love one another, just as he loved us, in our modern context. Compassion, Hospitality, Justice and Excellence. Throughout the Gospels, we hear how Jesus demonstrates these values through his actions. When we live these values out in our own lives, we are, like Jesus, using the Powers of the Heart.
Today, we launched our Powers of the Heart videos and our new school prayer. I would like to acknowledge and thank Mrs Manthey for her tireless work in this space over the past 12 months. This has truly been a labour of love that reached a culmination today with the beautiful launch celebration. It was wonderful to have the support of the leadership team from the Toowoomba Catholic Schools Office, the parish and our school board and P&F.
Congratulations to those students who received the Footsteps of Jesus award at our celebration today. This term, our focus Power of the Heart has been Compassion. The students receiving the award today were selected by their class teacher as a shining example of compassion in the school. Well done to all of our young people – this is something to be very proud of.
Harmony Week
Holy Name School is blessed to have such a rich and diverse community, with families from many cultural traditions attending our school. Harmony Week is a time for us to celebrate this diversity. Throughout next week, each class will be participating in some Harmony Week activities as part of their learning. These activities will include each class plotting on a world map where their families have come to Australia from – and where in Australia families originate.
As part of our Harmony Week celebration, each student will be creating a LOGO for the Harmony Week slogan – Everyone Belongs at Holy Name. These LOGOs will be created as a poster competition to be judged next Friday by Mrs Manthey and myself. We will have two categories – Prep-Year 2, Years 3-6. The winning designs will be turned into posters for display in our school and used as part of our electronic signature on our emails.
Our culminating activity for Harmony Week will be a free dress day on Friday the 22nd of March. Students and staff are invited to wear orange clothing (the colour of Harmony Week) or cultural dress. All clothing options are to be sun-smart, with closed in shoes (no thongs) and students are to wear their Holy Name School hats in the playground.
On Friday, we will also be creating a video of students saying the Harmony Week message in the languages families speak at home. Families are invited to practice the phrase below with their children in readiness for Friday.
Everyone Belongs At Holy Name
NAPLAN
This week, the NAPLAN testing window opened, and our year 3 and 5 students have begun sitting the annual tests. These tests offer us a point in time reference of the learning of our students. The NAPLAN tests also offer us insight into the growth of students as they travel through their schooling. I am looking forward to seeing the results of the Holy Name students when they are released later this year.
I end my report this fortnight with our newly launched school prayer.
God Bless.
Lisa Cavanagh
Principal
APRE News
Powers Of The Heart and Mind Launch
On Thursday 14 March, we gathered together to mark a significant milestone in the journey of our school community, launching our Powers Of The Heart and Mind, and our School Prayer; frameworks designed to guide us in both academic growth and spiritual reflection, empowering us to live full and flourishing lives.
These Powers Of The Heart and Mind, developed in 2018, and recently refreshed, form the foundation of a transformative educational experience – one that prepares our students not only for success in the classroom but also for a lifetime of learning, growth and service to others.
In 2023, as part of our commitment to enhancing our Catholic identity, we began the process of rewriting our school prayer. We wanted to frame prayer in such a way that it invited participants into a recontextaulisation of the Catholic perspective, highlighting our Mercy Charism, in an inclusive and contemporary environment. Using the wisdom of Catherine McAuley, who said, ‘Prayer is a plant, the seed of which is sown at the heart of every Christian, but its growth depends on the care we take to nourish it...’ we begin our preparation to prayer by placing a seed in a bowl with the following words…
We now prepare a symbol, reminding us of God’s love.
Holy Name Primary School acknowledges the deep spiritual connection and relationship of the First Nations Peoples to this country on which we gather to pray. We welcome and embrace all members of our community.
Take this moment to become still and make your presence known to God.
You are invited to be fully present, to listen deeply and join together as we pray the Holy Name School Prayer.
We thank all members of our community for their contribution to our refreshed Powers Of The Heart and Mind and our School Prayer, and thank our invited guests for joining us for our launch.
Blessings.
Kerri-Ann Manthey
APRE
Term One Date Claimers:
Monday 25 March Mindfulness Monday
Thursday 28 March New Life Prayer Celebration 2.00pm (MEAC) Holy Thursday
Friday 20 March Good Friday
Sunday 31 March Easter Sunday
Year 3 Blue
Year 5/6 Gold
Teacher: Mrs Sophie Elmes
Year 5/6 creating a Visual Timeline to display the movement of tectonic plates:
Years 2 -5 Enrichment classes with their finished task 'Doggie Tale'.
News from the Library
Wheelers ePlatform
There are many ebooks and audiobooks, as well as decodable readers available from the TCSO Resource Centre link, via the Wheelers ePlatform. To access these, use this link to our Accessit - Holy Name Primary School (accessit.online).
Please bookmark this page if you wish to use it regularly. To log in, students will need to enter their username@twb.catholic.edu.au, then their password, which will log them in to their Microsoft 365 account. At school, this will happen through Single Sign On (SSO).
When logged in, scroll down the home page to the link to wheelers eplatform. Click it, then go to log in at the top right hand corner.
When you click that, the sign in button is then at the bottom left. Click to log in. You may be required to re-enter the username and password.
I hope students make use of this wonderful resource!
Please contact our Teacher Librarian, Mandie Tindall in the library if you have any difficulties.
Sport
Hello everyone, isn’t this term flying!
We have now wrapped up our Soccer unit with all children seeming to enjoy learning some new skills! We had Steve attend our lessons for the first 4 weeks of the Term, teaching us how to dribble, pass, throw in, and many other valuable skills I have seen the children practicing in their lunch time soccer games. We are also very lucky to have been gifted from the P&F, our new soccer goals!
We now progress onto Cross Country training as a lead up to our end of term Cross Country, which will be held on our school oval this year. Over the next few PE lessons, we will be doing various running activities, and will hopefully have time to run our course before the main event. Most children have enjoyed testing themselves in our Beep Tests, with a number of children excelling at this! I know running isn’t everyone’s favourite thing to do, but fitness is key to all aspects of life, and I have tried to incorporate this into our various games and activities!
Our Cross Country will begin at 9am with our Prep students starting us off. We will then progress through the age groups and should be finished by around 11am. Prep and Year 1 students will run 1 lap around the oval, Year 2 and Year 3 students will run 2 laps around our oval, students born 2015 will run 1km, students born 2014 will run 2km and students born 2013 and 2012 will run 3km. Only students born 2014, 2013 and 2012 are eligible to attend Central Zone Cross Country trials. If you are willing to help out on the day with course supervision, please email me and let me know!
I would like to make mention of our Holy Name swimmers who attended the Central Zone Swimming Trials a few weeks ago. Archer and Ruby Breeze attended these trials and did exceptionally well representing Holy Name!
If your child plays club sport or club representative sport and wishes to attend trials for Zone for their sport, please let me know asap. Children who attend these trials, generally are excelling at this sport already, these trials are not for children who just wish to have a go. We wish Ella Larkin good luck at the Central Zone Touch Football trials, and Archer and Ruby Breeze good luck at the Central Zone Hockey trials also!
Please email me with any sporting questions, enjoy the term!
Jenna Taylor
PE Teacher
Weather Kid Wednesday
This week Year 4/5 B student Lawrence Wall read the morning weather on local radio station Triple-M Darling Downs. As part of being chosen to speak on-air, Lawrence also got to look around the studios and received his own desk-top weather station, as well as a special certificate. What a great opportunity - congratulations Lawrence!
