24 February 2021

From the Desk of the Principal

It is so good to have a bit of normality back when it comes to school sport and sport in general!

Today we held our annual Swimming Carnival at the Long Tan Swimming Pool. Thank you to Mr Wilson and his band of helpers for organising such a great event for our students and our school community. Thank you also to the many parents who attended, supported and helped out to make our carnival such a great event. Congratulations to Bohle who took out Swimming Carnival Trophy and to Ross for winning the Spirit Award.

Last week we also had the pleasure of welcoming back our Adopt-A-Cowboy Kyle Feldt as well as welcoming Jeremy Marshall-King and Joseph Tapine (Maori All Stars) and Andrew Fifita and Jamal Fogarty (Indigenous All Stars) ahead of their NRL All Stars game on Saturday. It was wonderful to welcome these five NRL players into our community and peak the interest of our students ahead of sport coming back in 2021. Unfortunately in 2020 a number of sporting opportunities for our students were cancelled. We have been informed that at this point in time they will be going ahead in 2021. We look forward to our students participating and competing at a number of interschool sporting events including the Bill Nettle Rugby League Challenge, the Kathy Tarpaullin Netball Challenge, the White Ribbon Touch Gala, the Schools AFL Cup and the Obe Geia Rugby League Challenge. We are also fortunate to have many of our students participate in Interschool Horse and Pony events outside of regular school hours. We also look forward to holding our Athletics Carnival in Term 2 and our Rainbow Run in Term 3 which are events for all year levels and ages.

Enjoy the rest of your week :)

Glenda Scrase

Principal

gscrase1@gstsv.catholic.edu.au

From the Desk of the Assistant Principal Religious Education

Parklands Aged Care Visit

On Saturday morning, eleven of our Mini Vinnies visited Parklands. They met and shared stories with a group of lovely residents. It was great to see the smiles on the faces of these ladies and gentlemen who commented on how much they had missed interacting with the students last year due to Covid. Our Mini Vinnies did us proud and told me they were looking forward to visiting again.

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Parish Mass

On Saturday evening, some of the Prep C and 5A students, along with their parents and teachers, attended Mass at the Good Shepherd Community Centre. They had special jobs to do and also sang a beautiful song called ‘The Wonders I See’. Thank you to all the families and staff members who came along to celebrate Mass – what a great way to build community!

Project Compassion
Each year the Catholic Schools in the Townsville Diocese support the fundraising ventures of Caritas through Project Compassion. This is Caritas’s biggest fundraising campaign for the year and coincides with the season of Lent to highlight one aspect of Lent which is giving to others.  This year’s theme is: BE MORE
This Lent our fundraising for Project Compassion will go towards assisting Caritas to provide decent housing, schools and hospitals in Bangladesh.
Each student has been given a Project Compassion money box. These are to be returned to the office any time before the end of this term. The money will be counted and recorded against your child’s class. 

For every $5.00 that a class raises they will receive a picture of a house. 
When they have 5 houses, they get a school. 
When they have 10 houses, they get a hospital. 
Let’s see how many houses, schools and hospitals each class can get.

Second Week of Lent 

This week through Project Compassion we learn about 39-year-old Margret, a teacher at a vocational school for deaf students in the Solomon Islands. She was born deaf, so she knows the challenges it poses to education and employment. Apart from the difficulties the students all have, the school also faced water shortages, with not enough to supply staff and students with safe water for drinking, cooking, washing and growing vegetables.
Watch a short film about Margret’s story here.   
“Aspire not to have more, but to be more.”

Judy Bell
APRE
jbell17@gstsv.catholic.edu.au

From the Desk of the Assistant Principal Administration

Good Shepherd Catholic School needs you! Educating young people is a partnership between parents, teachers, other school staff and the wider community. One way to get involved in your child’s education is volunteering at school. Volunteers are welcome in all classrooms, as well as in the Tuckshop on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Volunteering at school does not require a big time commitment, and could take a number of forms from helping with in-class groups or listening to children read, to helping with art and craft. Also think about your own special skills and interests. Tapping in to these can be helpful to the school. For example, an artist might want to share their skills and techniques, or a keen gardener could talk to students about growing a sustainable garden. Some year levels have made use of the particular employment of parents, such as a soil engineer speaking to students about erosion during a Science lesson.
All volunteers are required to undertake a brief online induction, which can be accessed via the School’s webpage, under the “About” tab, volunteer inductions. Once completed, the certificate can be emailed or brought into the school office.
Please consider volunteering at the School – even an hour a fortnight can have a huge impact!

Maxine Nolan

APA

mnolan@gstsv.catholic.edu.au

What's Happening in Our Year 4 Classes

The students have spent the last few weeks developing team work skills and finding out more about each other. One of our favourite times of the day is Brain Boost and fitness time. Exercise increases blood flow to the cortex of the brain. Physical activity improves children's concentration, attention and reasoning ability. The students are currently learning about the Townsville City Council and how it helps our community. Did you know that the Bible is like a library? There are maps, a timeline and books written by many different people. The students are currently developing their confidence in using the Bible referencing system to locate particular passages.  During English activities we are practising the creation of complex sentences that include noun, verb, adjective and adverbial phrases. The students are using their imagination to come up with amazing phrases that add more detail and interest to their sentences. We are also in the process of creating an information text. So far we have watched the teacher model one for us and we have sat with a friend to write some informative paragraphs. We have been learning to take notes and turn these into our very own informative sentences. Identifying whether to apply an addition or subtraction operation to solve a word problem has been challenging us for the last few weeks. We have attempted to solve problems that have numbers well into the tens of thousands! This week we will move on to identifying and using odd and even numbers and patterns to help us check our work. You may have heard the children talking about Dojo which is an award system that we are using in Year 4 this year. It also forms part of the Growth Mindset program that has a suite of short videos on helpful concepts, such as perseverance, challenging ourselves, trying our best and being the best we can be. Its main focus is the very strong message that our brain is like a muscle, the more we use it, the stronger it gets. The students are learning that a positive attitude is very important.

My New Gallery

Awards For The Week

This Week's Birthdays

~Danielle  1B    ~Arielle   2A      ~Callyn  2C     ~Harry 3A     ~Kohen  5B       ~Kenneth  6B

Assembly

1B will be presenting our Assembly this Friday in the BBC at 8:40am.

Our lucky Praise Note winners for last week were: Tui (PrepC), Michael (1C), Willow (2A), Delaphine (3A), Ally (4B), Melanie (5B) and Jack (6A)

The Good Shepherd Way

This week our Good Shepherd Way Gospel in Action value is Inclusion where we are encouraged to involve and accept others.

Our Inclusion prayer is also 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 Showing Respect: Before School, Classroom, Eating Area, Playground, Oval, Library and Toilets.

FACE (Family And Community Engagement) Network News

Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday 16 March at 7:00pm in the Staffroom.

School Fees Update

Townsville Catholic Education is in the process of implementing a new finance program into our school system.

If you have any queries about your school fees, please don’t hesitate to contact our Finance Secretary Sheridan Turner at sturner9@gstsv.catholic.edu.au

School Photo Day

Our school photo day will be held on Monday 8 March. We have changed photographers this year to QLD School Photography. Please place your order online using the below details. If you would like a sibling photo please place your order online by no later than Thursday 4 March at 5:00pm. Due to our growth within the school sibling photos will be before school starting at 7:45am in the BBC. Siblings are only students that attend Good Shepherd Catholic School. 

FYI - Address Collection Data

Year 3 to 6 Swimming Lessons

Year 3 to 6 Swimming Lessons have commenced  at Little Snapper Swim School and will continue for the next few weeks. Here are the remaining dates for students.

Year 3 and 4 students will be attending on the following Tuesdays:

• Tuesday 2 March
• Tuesday 9 March

Year 5 and 6 students will be attending on the following Mondays:

• Monday 1 March
• Monday 8 March

Tuckshop

Opening Hours

Wednesday - Thursday - Friday

Please place your order with Flexischool no later than 8:30am on the day you wish to order. You will find a menu on our webpage. If you wish to place an order of cupcakes for your child's birthday please place your order the week before.

Can You Help?

Ann-Maree is always looking for helpers in the tuckshop, if you are able to spare some time please give her a call on our office number or email rsmssn@tsv.catholic.edu.au She would love to hear from you. 

Environmental Tips

Clean up Australia Day - Sunday 7th March
Clean Up Australia is nearing!!! Good Shepherd will once again “step up to clean up” our school environment on Friday 5th March. We know Australia's waste challenges can't be solved in just one day but we can do our bit in cleaning up our own local environment. Each class will be involved in going outside to clean up a designated area as part of this initiative. To reduce the amounts of disposable gloves we use, this year all students are encouraged to bring along their own reusable garden gloves to use on the day. 

Litter Free Lunch Tuesdays

Each Tuesday is "Litter Free Lunchbox Tuesday". We encourage our children to bring along a litter free lunch.

Tucker Time

This year we are excited to continue our very popular Tucker Time Activities. 
This initiative is held twice a term during lunch times and creates inclusion for all Good Shepherd students while also promoting regular exposure to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island culture. 
We look forward to welcoming our Prep-Year 3 students tomorrow for our very first activity for 2021. 'Hand Print Art' will be held in the shelter shed during first break and we can't wait to see all your Deadly faces there!

Can you support Emmi?

Our School Captain Emmi is taking part in the Leukaemia Foundation's World's Greatest Shave. Emmi will shave her head  here at school on Friday 19 March.

Please click on this link below to support Emmi's Greatest Shave. 

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