Newsletter Thursday 18th July

We the staff of St Patrick’s acknowledge the traditional owners, the Kulin nations, of the land on which we learn and play.

We pay respects to the Aboriginal Elders, past and present, who are our teachers.

We thank them for taking care of children and country for countless generations.

 Welcome to the FKG Newsletter

Our Foundation students are growing up so fast! Our 6 months at school have been filled with lots of learning and new discoveries.

This Term we are revising our St. Patrick’s School Values. Here is our new Poster.

On Monday our Grade 5 buddies helped us learn about Resilience!

Together we learnt that Resilience means to never give up, compromise and that mistakes help us to learn.

We can use words like:

“I will try again”, “I am almost there”, “I am not there yet, it's okay”

We used these words of resilience with our buddies to learn how to skip. Here are some photos.

We are learning about Adjectives!

Adjectives are words that help to describe something. Today we used our listening skills to listen to a story about a green, hairy monster. We needed to draw a picture to match the description.

Here are some pictures of how our monsters turned out.

 

Thank you

We hope you have enjoyed seeing what we have been up to this term.

Remember to NOT GIVE UP!

Dear Parents, Carers and Guardians,

Looking at the Gospel this week, we ask ourselves, whatever the meaning of this miracle, one of its lessons is that God can make much of what we offer. Our attempts to live in his love and follow him are nothing without him. The small offering of the young man fed the people; we never know where our efforts to love, to help, to support others may bear fruit. Just because one person may appear rich and happy, does not mean they can give the happiness that others need. Sometimes, the hardships we bare make us richer for the experience and therefore we learn wholeheartedly about what it means to give of ourselves.

Next Monday our Year 5's head off the Kryal Castle and Sovereign Hill for their 3-day, 2-night adventure. They are most excited about this, and I will also be travelling up to be with them for part of the time. Please ensure that, your children have packed plenty of warm clothes as Ballarat is most certainly not known for its warmth!

This term, I begin to plan for 2025 and will soon be looking at staffing for the following year. If you have a reasonable request for your child/ren in regard to classroom placement, this MUST be put into writing and be emailed to principal@stppakenham.catholic.edu.au. The closing date for this will be Friday 6^th September. Any requests coming to me after this date may not be considered.

Once again, these requests are never guaranteed and ultimately, the final placement of the students rests with me as principal.

Take care and God Bless,

Meg

Year Level Camp/ Fun Day Dates:

TERM DATES 2024

2024 PUPIL FREE DAYS AND SCHOOL CLOSURE DAYS:

The 4 Pupil Free days ensure that we can manage our commitment for all staff to continue to provide activities such as school camps for our students.
Please note, these dates are separate from our 8 Staff Professional Development days. Those 8 days are for our staff professional learning which will focus on Religious Education, Learning and Teaching and Student Wellbeing.

Our Father's Day stall will be held on Thursday 29th of August. The token and raffle tickets must be purchased through CDF-Pay. If you cannot access the account please contact the school office for assistance.

https://stppakenham.cdfpay.org.au 

We are looking for donations for this raffle, if you would like to make a donation please bring them to the school office at your earliest convenience.

On Friday 9th August we are celebrating 100 days of school. Students will celebrate this achievement through dressing up and taking part in fun activities. In keeping with our theme, we would like your child to come dressed as an elderly person or with the number 100 or 100 things.

Here's a snapshot of Year 2 NAIDOC week craft of 'The Rainbow Serpent'

We are now selling school beanies for $12 from the school office! Come by anytime the office is open if you would like to purchase one for your child/ren!

Department of Health Warning for parents and families.

Increasing Pertussis (Whooping Cough) Cases

MAIN POINTS

• The Department of Health, Victoria has issued a health alert, Increasing pertussis (whooping cough) cases in Victoria.

• The key messages are:

       o cases of pertussis are increasing in Victoria, mostly affecting children aged 10-12 years

       o pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory illness known for causing a cough and can lead to life threatening infections in babies

       o symptoms of pertussis may be very similar to other respiratory infections, especially in the early stages, meaning diagnosis by a doctor as soon as possible is             important.

SiMON Everywhere is the new app our school uses to acces PAM and CDF Pay. We will be sending reminders through this app, as such please download and sign in. There is a guide below for your reference. If you are having any issues please contact Alex Taylor in the school office ataylor@stppakenham.catholic.edu.au

Have you logged into your PAM account yet! 

We use PAM as our main form of communication.  All emails, Student Attendance, Sick Bay notes, School Reports, commonly used forms, excursion/camp permission notes and Family Learning conversations, will all be communicated via PAM.  

Access PAM via this link   Link to PAM 

PAM - Parent Access Module

PAM (Parent Access Module) is our Parent to School communication platform.   PAM will provide real time access to keep parents updated with their children’s progress, important dates and messages. Relevant resources – calendar events, student reports, parent notified absences, absence data and sick bay notes will all be accessed via PAM.

Parents will be able to easily book Parent Teacher interviews through PAM, and access teacher email addresses. 

PAM accounts are linked via your email address that we have in our systems. 

If you have recently changed your email,  please call or email us on office@stppakenham.catholic.edu.au

Click on the 'forget password' link to set your password and then verify your email address.  (Email addresses must be verified for PAM to work properly).  Once your email is verified, your email can be used as the username for your account.

Once you have successfully logged in, you can save PAM to your homescreen on your device.

If you have any issues or need help with PAM please contact the school via email, office@stppakenham.catholic.edu.au

PAM Instructions

Parent Notified Absences via PAM

Once you have PAM set up and saved to your home screen you can easily send in Parent Notified absences.   Please use this platform going forward as this automatically syncs with the class roll.   This will fix the issues of receiving SMS notifications even though you had already notified the school. 

Please remember to update your contact details and any relevant medical details for your child.  

Most medical profiles have now been updated. Please remember to keep them up to date and upload any asthma/allergy plans that may be relevant.

To update any contact details please contact the school office. 

You may have noticed that The Avenue has had all new line marking done over the holidays. The disabled parking bays and all other parking bays are now clearly marked, as are the NO PARKING bays. Over the next two weeks, a proper crossing will be outlined in the car park where any families needing to walk across, are only permitted to use this crossing. Staff will be out on patrol ensuring that parents and students are doing the right thing and keeping everyone safe.