St Pat's Shamrock: Week 2, Term 3 2018

Principal News Jenny Hawkins
Reconciliation

Our Year 3 children are ready to make their First Reconciliation on Tuesday 31st August at 7pm. Bishop Elliott and at least two other priests will be meeting with the children and families of both Year 3 classes.
Please keep the children in your prayers.

Parent Education Evening - Mental Toughness and CyberSafety Thursday 16th August
In last week's Shamrock, you will find the details around the Parent Education Evening. Please keep Thursday 16th August free to come along. You can read more if you scroll down at this link.

PLAY Positive, Leadership and Activated Youth
Miss Marischiello and some of our Year 6 leaders trained a group of 30 Year 5 children to take on the role of PLAY leaders.
As an outcome of participating in the Glen Eira Resilient Youth Project last year, our current Year 6 leaders were trained to be PLAY leaders. PLAY is student - led creative play and helps to enhance resilience and a range of life skills for our children.
Training children to become PLAY leaders develops greater responsibility and self-worth in a leadership capacity.
PLAY supports all students to enjoy their break times and it contributes to safe playground behaviours by engaging children across year levels to interact positively with one another.

Playground Safety Videos
I am currently working with a group of Year 6 leaders to create a range of short videos for our children with messages around child safety in the playground. This follows on from the Peer Mediation training with the current Year 6's last year. We will share the videos with you over the coming weeks.

Science Club

Following on from the success of the Year 6 Science Expo, these Year 6 girls will run a Science Club during the term. They are keen to share their learning with other children from across the school.

Thankyou to the many parents who attended the Year 6 Chemical Science Expo last week and witnessed the amazing work the students have done in this field. The Yr 6s also presented to grade levels across the school, and were enthusiastically received. As a result, a Yr 6 group has initiated a Science Club at lunchtimes- further testament to their confidence, skills and initiative.

Today, 7 of our Yr 6s are attending the Full STEaM Ahead program at Melbourne University. We were lucky to be one of the selected schools, and a grant was provided by CEM to further develop our STEaM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) initiatives. The focus on the day is Designing for a Disability. Look out for a report from the participants next week.

Parish Education Board News
Andrew Cerres, the Director of Learning for Team Kids at St Patrick's spoke to the board about his role. Team Kids has got off to a great start with positive feedback from both children and parents. They will be running a holiday club and will open on school closure days too.

John O'Sullivan, Stephen Peters and Jenny Jones will join me to form a Grants Committee. This will help plan and prepare grant applications in relation to our masterplan.

The board are taking the initiative to develop a register of parent skills. You will hear more about that very soon.

As part of the staff professional learning in relation to the Schools That Deliver network, three of our leadership team and I attended the Delivering Innovation conference. You can learn more at this link.

Secondhand Uniform Shop
Please note change of day for the secondhand uniform shop. It is now WEDNESDAY from 3 - 3.30pm.