30 August 2023

From the Desk of the Acting Principal

We’ve all been frustrated or angry and said something we later regretted. We may have sworn or lashed out with an insult. For some people, swearing and inappropriate language is their normal way of communicating. While this may be acceptable for some, it is not acceptable at school, from students, staff or parents.

Promoting the use of kind, respectful language is part of our GSCS Way of “Give My Best; Show Respect; Compassion and Care; Safe, Responsible and Fair”. We will be focussing on the use of appropriate language in the coming months and ask that you speak with your children to emphasise that swearing or other inappropriate language should not be used at school. Inappropriate language includes racial slurs, insults, derogatory comments and put-downs, noises such as grunting when someone speaks and swearing.

Rather than inappropriate language, we are promoting the use of kind words, build-ups and genuine
compliments, as well as alternative and more acceptable ways to express frustration or anger. More
information about this focus will be shared with you in coming weeks.

On another note, I would like to advise that Glenda Scrase has extended her leave until the end of
the 2023 school year. I will be continuing as Acting Principal, with Ms Rebecca Rowan as Acting
Assistant Principal Administration. Mrs Rebecca Kershaw will, of course, continue in her role as
Assistant Principal Religious Education.

AP

mnolan@gstsv.catholic.edu.au

From the Desk of the Assistant Principal Religious Education

FATHER’S DAY

We celebrate Father’s Day this Sunday, 3rd September. We think of the strength of a father, his guiding hand, his wisdom, his help. God the Father gave up his only Son, Jesus Christ, so that we might be saved through him. He provides an example of the very vocation of fatherhood. Fathers are to sacrifice their lives for their families.

They do this by:
• Being the spiritual leader and guardian of their families.
• Praying for and with their families.
• Being a courageous witness to the Gospel.
• Providing care and support for their families.
• Serving as an example of goodness and truth.
• Leading with courage and accountability.
• Laying down one’s life for another.

Today, in a special way, let us be grateful for:
• Our fathers, by birth or adoption, who love us and support us through life.
• Our Church leaders, who take on the paternal role of guiding us through life.
• And God our Father, who will always teach justly and grant us boundless mercy.

Rebecca Kershaw

APRE

rkershaw@gstsv.catholic.edu.au

Year 6 Mini Vinnies Visit
Tuesday 22 nd August

This year our Senior Mini Vinnies students have been going to visit our Parklands friends on a Tuesday.
The residents love having us visit and it is wonderful to see the blossoming friendship between them and
our students. The highlight of our visit is getting to join in with bingo. Our Mini Vinnies students are
becoming very good at calling numbers with a LOUD and CLEAR voice!

My New Gallery

From the Desk of the Acting Assistant Principal Administration

Talofa lava parents, carers and students!

As we steamroll towards the end of a very busy Term 3, there is still so much happening in and around our wonderful school community. Check out below for what’s happening in curriculum, sports and events.

Curriculum News 👩‍🏫🍎📖

The PAT testing window opens for Years 2-6 this week. On Tuesday, our Prep to Year 2 teachers met with our TCE Learning and Teaching Adviser Katherine Nelson, our Speech Language Pathologist Tamara Bosnjak and our Shepherd teachers to interrogate Early Years Post-Test data. In analysing this data as a professional learning community, we can collectively celebrate student growth and identify continued, targeted learning and teaching foci for the remainder of the year.

Sports News ⚽️ 🏀 🏈 ⚾️ 🎾 🏐 🏉 🎱

Our GSCS sports stars continue to shine on and off the fields, ovals, courts and pitches. Last week saw our all girls cricket team take out the Cricket Blast competition at Gill Park. Congratulations to all the competitors and many thanks to Ms Foord for preparing them.  

School Events 📅🗓📆

If you visited our school last week, you could have been mistaken that there was some kind of emergency happening! Fear not, it was just some of our Emergency Services visiting Year One. The Qld Fire Services firemen brought their big, red fire truck to our oval and students got to tour the truck and equipment and even had a go at using the fire hose! Prep and Year One also had a visit from RACQ for their Road Safety Education Program. Year Two enjoyed a wonderful excursion to the Strand and Jezzine.

Every student loves to get out of the classroom and explore. Great school incursions and excursions take planning and effort but the rewards can be huge for both students and teachers and something that students will remember for a long time. 

 The Benefits of School Excursions are:

• Provides another dimension to class based learning and helps reinforce what has been taught in the classroom - Students may get to learn in a new environment with new teachers or instructors.

• Students are excited and energised by the anticipation of leaving the classroom and school environment.  Fun school excursions will help students retain the information they have learnt on their trip.

• Children have the opportunity to learn about and see new things in a less structured environment with more learning styles available - student learning can be hands on or interest-driven and they may be excited to learn something from someone new who is an expert in their field.

• Exposure to new experiences - outside the classroom students have the opportunity of being exposed to new experiences and observe new things that are not available at school, such as rare and exotic wildlife and plants, different cultures and tours/visits to iconic buildings and areas. 

• Social skills - Getting out of the classroom gives children an opportunity to spend time with each other in a new environment without the structure of the classroom. School excursions often require students to spend time in small groups, observing, chatting and learning.

(Source retrieved from: The Australian Directory of School Activities, Excursion and Accommodation)

Have a wonderful week ahead and please come and say talofa or hello when you see me around!

Rebecca Rowan

AAPA

rrowan6@gstsv.catholic.edu.au

What's Happening In Year 1

Year 1 has been privileged to experience various community visitors over the past few weeks. RACQ brought their Streets Ahead Program to our school to teach us all about being safe pedestrians, safe passengers in a car and how to be responsible bike and scooter riders. We also welcomed the firefighters from the Kirwan Fire Station. They taught us about fire safety and what to do in the case of a fire. We learnt to ‘Get Out and Stay Out’, ‘Get Down Low and Go, Go, Go’, and ‘Stop, Drop and Roll’. We were also lucky enough to explore their fire truck and have a go at spraying the fire hose!

The students have become explorers this term and as we have investigated various minibeasts and their habitats. We have learnt all about ants, spiders, silkworms, ladybugs and worms! As we are now ‘experts’ on these amazing creatures, the students will be using their knowledge to write information reports about their chosen minibeast. This will also be linked to our upcoming art show with the students designing and creating a minibeast from clay and a habitat diorama using shoeboxes. You are all invited to view our creative designs at our Year 1 Art Show. It will be running from the 4th - 7th September in the BBC. Come and see our amazing, artistic creations!

What's Happening in Year 6

Year 6 students worked hard throughout the term learning about structuring Information Reports, Adaptations in Science, The Holy Spirit in Religion, Consumer Needs and Wants in HASS and Measurement and Decimals in Maths. Many of our students have also been busy participating in the Interschool Athletics Carnival, an AFL competition, and last week many of our students competed in the Cricket Blast competition. Where our tier one girls team took out the winning spot. In Science this term we have been conducting a range of different experiments where we have  been investigating the different factors that affect the growth of living things.

My New Gallery

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Breakfast Club and Running Club

Both Clubs will run every morning. Breakfast Club will run from the Tuckshop from 8:10am and Running Club will be held on the Junior Oval from 8:10am as well.

Indigenous Literacy Day

We are excited to be celebrating Indigenous Literacy Day on Wednesday 6th of September by hosting a Great Book Swap.
Do you have any new or used books you would like to donate?
Donations can now be dropped to the office or with any IEW Staff at the Deadly Learners Room.
All funds raised go directly to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

The Good Shepherd Way

Week 8

This week our Good Shepherd Way Gospel in Action value is Reconciliation where I am fair, forgiving and respectful. 

Our Reconciliation prayer is below:

Week 9

The Good Shepherd Way Gospel in Action for Week 9 will be Service where I help and respond to the needs of others. 

Our Service prayer is below:

The GSCS Way

The GSCS Way is our positive behaviour support program here at Good Shepherd Catholic School.

All in our community are encouraged to:

• Give My Best
• Show Respect
• Compassion and Care
• Safe Responsible and Fair

Each week we focus on a different area of our matrix.

This week we are focusing on:  At the tuckshop

In Week 9 we are focusing on:  At the Office

Parent Library Borrowing

Environmental News

Threaten Species

Be aware of and respect all creatures and their environments.  Avoid products that result in a loss of habitat for threatened species. 137 species of plants and animals are estimated to go extinct each day – that’s 50 000 species each year.

Tuckshop

Wednesday - Thursday - Friday

Please contact the school office or Ann-Maree at Tuckshop with any enquiries.

CUTOFF time to order TUCKSHOP
from FLEXISCHOOLS
is 8:30am.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL ORDERS ARE TO BE PLACED ONLINE AT THE LINK BELOW. Please visit the website to set up your account if you are new to Flexischools.

Flexischool How To Guides for Parents and Caregivers
• Online help is available any time at Flexischools via the link below.
• Phone between 8am - 12pm (AEDST) on weekdays or on the parent phone line (1300 361 769). 

How-To Guides for Parents
Flexischool has spent some time over the holidays developing some quick how-to guides for  parents. If you'd like to see these, please click the link below.
They include: 
•    Introduction to Flexischools;
•    How to Register; 
•    How to Top-Up;
•    How to Place an Order. 

Teacher Contacts

Parent Portal

If you have any problems accessing please send an email to the school office at rsmssn@tsv.catholic.edu.au. 

The Parent Portal allows you to:

View your child’s timetable and the school calendar
View up to date attendance information for your child
Enter details of upcoming absences or explain past absences or late arrivals for your son or daughter
Access your child’s Semester reports
Make bookings for Parent Teacher Interviews
View a news feed of school announcements, alerts and updates
Provide consent for school events/excursions
Communicate by email with your child’s teachers
Update your contact details (email and mobile phone number).

The parent portal is a web-based system that can be accessed by clicking this link:

An app called Compass School Manager is also available for both iPhones/iPads (via the App Store) and Android phones/tablets (via the Google Play Store). When you have installed the app, search for “Good Shepherd Catholic School – Rasmussen”.
The browser version of the Parent Portal contains more features than the app.  Please click the link below to access the Compass website which has an online guide and video for the Parent Portal.

Community News