Dear Parents,

Thank you to all who could make it along to this morning’s Father's Day breakfast. The children love seeing their family here and are so proud to show off their work, especially to their dads. I hope you all had a lovely morning and I wish all the dads a fantastic Father’s Day on Sunday.

In the last few weeks, Kinder, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4 have all been on excursions. The feedback from the organisations where the students participated in various activities was amazing. The way they participated, encouraged and looked after each other and the respect they demonstrated for the excursion leaders is a credit to you as parents and to our school community. We should be and are proud of our children.

7 Steps - Writing

A few weeks ago the vast majority of the teaching staff participated in professional development aimed to arm the teachers with strategies to motivate and engage all students in the creative writing process. This professional development, called ‘7 Steps’, has been implemented by the teachers upon their return.

“Sizzling Starts”, “Tightening Tension”, “Ban the Boring” and “Show Don’t Tell” may be some new phrases your children may be coming home with. These are all part of a systematic way Holy Cross will be working towards continuing to improve students’ creativity and writing skills through the use of the Seven Steps to Successful Writing program. At Holy Cross teachers have been involved in professional development around the Seven Steps for a continued and consistent language approach around writing acquisition. 

So what are the Seven Steps to Successful Writing?

Think of them as the building blocks to great writing. Isolating writing skills into individual steps ensures students don’t get ‘bogged down’ with writing the whole piece. They gain confidence in each building block, and then they pull it all together to become creative and engaging writers.

Seven steps is seven Writing crafts that are needed to create engaging written texts across all texts types. The steps are:

Craft One - Planning for Success

Craft Two - Sizzling Starts

Craft Three - Tightening Tension

Craft Four - Dynamic Dialogue

Craft Five - Show, Don’t Tell

Craft Six - Ban the Boring

Craft Seven - Exciting Endings

During student’s writing lessons, they will explore, create and critique these writing crafts and use them to create a variety of written texts. These crafts will work with the school’s consistent approach to teaching Spelling using the Sound Waves Spelling Program.

Below is a Sizzling start created by Mia in Year 2:

Splish, splash, splosh! “What’s that sound?” muttered Lucy. She looked through the dimly lit window of the washing machine. There she saw green glowing sock fish! What? Was it true? She opened the washing machine door and jumped inside.
 

Literacy and Numeracy Week

With only a few weeks until our Book Parade and Literacy and Numeracy Week celebrations, it’s time to think about what we can come dressed as, representing some of our favourite book characters. Parents, grandparents and friends are warmly invited to all of our Literacy and Numeracy Week celebrations highlighted in the attached flyer. The children will compete next week in their classes to find spelling champions who will then compete in the finals during Week 8.

Staff Development – Pupil Free Day - Friday 27 September

A reminder that the last day of the school term, Friday 27 September, will be a staff development day and a pupil free day. The staff will begin the day at 7.30am and spend the second half of the day off-site.

Parents and Friends Meeting

The next P&F meeting will take place in the school library on Wednesday 4 September at 7:00pm. Come along and hear what is going on in our school community, have your say on fundraising and community building issues and activities.

2020 Fete Update

ICAS International Competitions and Assessments for Schools

This year, we have a number of children who will sit the ICAS International Competitions and Assessments for Schools Tests in Year 2-6. They have been very popular and many students have participated in the past. This year, there have been a number of changes to these tests. Previously, all testing was in the form of a paper test. This year all tests will be online, with the exception of the Writing test for Years 3 and 4. Students will use an iPad, provided by the school, or their own iPad to complete the test.

One of the biggest changes is the timing of the tests. This year all six tests will occur across a three week period. If your child is absent on the sitting day, they will have the opportunity to sit the test on the next day. This is a recent change that has been made regarding the sitting dates.

Mrs Dimitra Vezinias, Assistant Principal

COMPASS UPDATE

CHANGES THAT WILL TAKE PLACE FROM MONDAY 2 SEPTEMBER

Student Absences

Parents can now enter student whole day absences by accessing Compass.

Partial absences (eg. arriving late or leaving early) will be fully managed by the school.

If your child is away from school and you have not entered them as absent, or let the school know, an SMS message will be automatically transmitted to parents advising you of the absence and prompting a Compass link for you to complete.

Please ensure students who arrive late to school come through the school office to avoid being sent an SMS.

Unexplained Absences

For all unexplained absences, an email will be sent to parents at the end of each fortnight asking for you to complete the details in Compass.

You can always still contact the school office to advise any absences.

Extended Leave (Family holidays etc, during school term)

This leave is fully managed by the school.  Parents must first complete an Application for Leave form available from the school office and submitted to the Principal for approval.

Fees

Statements are now fully managed by the Catholic Education Office, Wollongong.  Correspondence was sent to all families advising of this update.  Payments can still be made at the school office using EFTPOS however Bpay is the preferred payment method.  Contact the school office if you have any questions.

Many thanks for your patience and support as we transfer to this new system.  If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact the school office for information.

THANK YOU HOLY CROSS FOR YOUR GENEROSITY

Thanks everyone for the wonderful response to our Mufti Day last week.  All the supplies have been collected by Mrs Wallace and donated to the Children's Hospital.   

Grandparent's Day is coming up on Wednesday 11 September. Next week, the P&F will put out a call on the Facebook group for some bakers to whip up some home-made treats to offer our visitors on the day. We're hoping for 10 to 15 bakers, so please let us know if you can help out.

Our Holy Cross dads recently held their inaugural Dads Night. While sharing dinner, drinks and a few laughs, they raised $141 on the night for the P&F. We'll be using this money towards the purchase of a Buddy Bench for the infants' playground. Thanks dads!

This term's P&F meeting will be held next week, on Wednesday 4 September at 7pm in the school library. An agenda will be published on our Facebook page prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome, hope to see you there!