Newsletter 27th November

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.

Dear Parents, Carers and Guardians,

This week, the Gospel tells us that Advent reminds us to be alert and to be prepared all the time, for God can break into our lives at any moment. Advent also affirms that a crisis can mean breakthrough as well as breakdown. The birth of God in Jesus is the beginning of our own rebirth into life with God. Here Jesus is encouraging all of His faithful disciples – “stand up and lift up your heads” – look heavenward in faith and hope with great joy when these things begin to take place because our redemption is near. We have no need of fear.

Luke 21 also tells us that people will know fear, that earth and heaven will be traumatized, and that “'Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and glory.” A difficulty, of course, is that there have been (and presumably will be many more) times when there is distress among the nations and the heavens ...

When we think about Christmas, would distress be a word associated with it. Highly likely. Be prepared the Gospel says. Prepared for what? Joy, disaster, love, loneliness. Does Christmas bring all these elements up? And yet it is meant to be the most wonderful time of the year?

Can we look at the words of the Gospel and hope and pray and believe that God is going to break into our lives and show us the way. This is our faith that He will be one with us.

Today I am pleased to announce our House captains for 2025. Congratulations to

Malsawm and Charlotte for Flynn - Blue 

Paul and Winter for Burke - Green

James and Abuk for Hunt - Red

Thon and Amity for Ahern - Gold 

A huge thanks to Rosa Mitchell and Shiny Antony for the preparation of the students for the presentation. Every student who made a speech is to be congratulated on their outstanding work and I am so humbled as a principal to have these students as my school leaders next year.

Our Year 6's are currently off at Camp Coonawarra in Gippsland. It is warm and muggy and lots of flies, but they are having lots of fun. We have some photos this week, but next week will be a big spread on camp.

It is important to keep an open discussion with your child/ren around their expected behaviour and work ethic as we enter the last few weeks of term 4. Even though the year is winding down, the staff of St Patrick’s will continue to insist that all 5 values of RESPECT, SAFETY, CO-OPERATION, COURAGE AND RESILIENCE will be adhered to both inside and outside the classroom.

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.

Mini Golf/ Sport    27/Nov/2024 

In P.E we had 2 HOURS! 
We had to make our own mini golf courses.
Some of the items we used were:
Tubes, Skipping ropes, hurdles, and many more!
We had to make it accessible to everyone!
After troubleshooting we started!
It was so fun doing other people's courses!

By Isabel 4AT

Hi,I'm Lucas. I will be talking about mini golf in sport…

In PE we had a great day. Let me tell you about it.So we had special items such as A-frame,tubes,mats for jumps  and many more.Evie came and joined us in sport,my group had the job of walking around and looking at the courses that were accessible for Evie.There was two courses on the stage so it was my job to find a way to make Evie get on the stage so I did.go up the ramp outside.Evie and the class had a great time at 2 hour! SPORT 

Thank you for reading my recount

Mini Golf experience!

At 9:00 am Mrs. Breeden and Jack picked us up from class for a fun double session of PE. When we arrived Mrs Breeden had set up objects to create a fun mini golf course for us and other friends to enjoy.

My friend jack was my partner, he was a amazing parter, firstly we had drew a park course for mini golf course, we used many items like pool noodles and cones to create a absolute amazing experience, when we finished our course we had been playing it for 10 minutes listening to music.

we were definitely ready to play other courses. The time had passed and we’d got to try other people's mini golf course, my friend Amelie’s was amazing! She had set up mats, tubes, pool noodles, and even cricket bases.

 After that, time has flown by and we’d have to pack up for recess. At first I thought it would be boring, but I thought wrong!

Shaylah 4JD

 Mini golf experience!

At 9:00am Mrs Breeden and Jack picked us up from class for a fun double session of PE. When we arrived Mrs Breeden had set up objects for us to create a fun mini golf course for our friends to enjoy!

With my mini golf course my friend Bawi was my partner, first we drew a par 3 course, we used items like hurdles, ladders, cones, floor mats, tubes and  beanbags.

Then everyone was ready to play on each others course, when i was testing my course i got a hole in one try, and then i did it again. My course got to easy for me so i try my friends courses and crushed it.

Sadly our time was up ? so we had to pack up, it was really fun and hard at the same time. Big thanks to Mrs Breeden for an awesome time at sports today. I really enjoyed myself.

Aden 4JD

Our campers are still away having lots of fun, here are just a few pictures form the camp so far!

I am asking please that all students, in particular our Senior school, to be wearing our proper School Uniform this final term. It is important that we still maintain a high standard of uniform and not use Term 4 as an excuse to become complacent about what we wear to school.

I will continue to ask all students to be wearing proper school shoes and uniform right up until the end of the year. I understand that students are growing constantly, however they will continue to grow for many more years and so I cannot always accept this as an excuse. We must remember that many students are adhering to the correct standards of school uniform and therefore, it is important that the students and their families please respect this. Secondary schools do not accept poor uniform standards.

If finance is a concern when it comes to uniform, please speak to your classroom teacher. St Patrick’s has a very good second-hand uniform shop that you can top up your child’s uniform with. It is a third of the price you would pay at the normal uniform shop, and the money goes straight back to the school.

No doubt that parents are hearing all the conversations around the agreement by the government around increasing the age of children to 16 in order to access social media. I am extremely alarmed by the volume of students who are on social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok and using these platforms unsupervised! Unfortunately, I am dealing with this more and more and even though, I am unable to control what goes on outside of school hours, the fall out is happening here at school. As parents and guardians, you need to be on top of your child/ren’s use of social media all the time.

I have included a link below to the e-commissioner website which contains excellent information on how to keep your children safe online. I urge all parents to take the time to look at this.

https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents

Dec 2nd- Monday Advent wreath candle- Year 5

Dec 3rd-Tuesday- Jesse tree - 4AT

Dec 6th -Friday - Nativity - 3TA 

All assemblies begin at 9 am

Parents who would like to have their children baptised are required to attend baptism preparation. Please enroll through the parish website https://stpatrickspakenham.com.au/

For further details and assistance please contact

Mary Tresa Andrews

Religious Education Coordinator

mandrews@stppakenham.catholic.edu.au

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. 

SiMON Everywhere is an 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.