Dear Parents & Carers,

Last Sunday marked the beginning of the Advent Season. Advent is a time of preparation and prayer whilst we await the birth of Jesus at Christmas. Advent also means, new birth or new beginning. 

Sunday’s Gospel tells us to “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33). These words are a great reminder during Advent to ‘keep awake’ to the presence of Jesus who comes to us. As our students begin to get excited about Christmas, we hope to focus them on the presence of Jesus in their lives each day. Quite often, we can fall asleep to this presence because we are consumed with all that life brings us.

I encourage all parents to connect with the parish through this season of Advent. And together, parents, parish and school, we can form in the children a deeper understanding of the true meaning of Christmas.

Mrs Kaylene Duffin,
Principal

Student Leadership 2021

On Wednesday, speeches and voting took place to elect 2021 School Captains and Vice Captains. 

Many of our Year 5 students nominated for a position and presented a speech to their peers. We congratulate all of these students for the content of their speech and the manner in which they were delivered. 

Congratulations to the following students who were elected Captains and Vice Captains of Holy Cross for 2021:

Captains - Matilda and Dominic

Vice Captains - Kitty and Keegan

Early in Term 1, all Year 6 students will nominate for a leadership position in one of three student leadership teams linked to our School Improvement Agenda and vision. Each team will be mentored by a member of the School Leadership Team:

• Leaders of Community & Wellbeing 
• Leaders of Living the Faith
• Leaders of Learning

Christmas Celebration 2020

The easing of some restrictions to allow parents to attend specific end of year celebrations, means that we have amended our original plan for our Christmas Celebration. 

Our whole school Christmas Celebration will be held on the final day of school, Wednesday 16 December from 11.30am. However, there are many restrictions that we must abide by.

Most significantly, we have been advised by Catholic Schools NSW that at this point in time, we still must adhere to the 4 sqm rule. 

Therefore, at this point in time we are only able to invite one family member or friend per family onto the school site to watch the celebration. This means that siblings who do not attend Holy Cross are not able to attend. We realise the inconvenience of this restriction but it is the best we can do at the moment. We will also live Zoom the celebration so that other family members can view from home. 

A letter will be sent home to all families next week with more information regarding the organisation and running of the Christmas Celebration. 

Formal School Finish Time for 2021

Since returning to school from Remote Learning in Term 2, we brought forward our school finish time to 3.00pm (from 3.10pm). This decision was made to allow parents greater time to park and pick up their children before the buses arrive at 3.20pm. 

We have monitored this situation, and by 3.20pm when the buses begin arriving, there are usually no more cars parked to pick up children. We believe the extra 10 minutes provides a safer environment for our students. For this reason, the official end time of our school will be 3.00pm from Term 1, 2021. We remain compliant with NESA face to face teaching and student break times.

We certainly hope that parents will be able to enter school grounds to collect their children from 3.00pm in Term 1 next year. Please note, student supervision will continue until parents pick them up or until they board buses each afternoon.

It is timely to remind parents to please maintain social distancing whilst waiting for their children and once children have been dismissed vacate the area so that other cars can park to pick up their children as quickly as possible. Thank you for your understanding and support with this.

Semester 2 Reports 2020

Semester 2 Reports for all students in Kindergarten to Year 6, will be available to parents via the Parent Compass Portal on Wednesday, 9 December 2020.

Due to Covid-19, the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) has permitted schools to select the content that will form the basis of educational programs for Kindergarten to Year 10 students during 2020. As a result, not all syllabus content will be reported upon in Semester 2. For this reason, the Semester 2 will look different to those of former years.

Staffing and Classes 2021

Teachers have been allocated the following grades to be taught in 2021:

Kindergarten - Mrs Tiana Cardamone

Year 1 - Mrs Tami Hennock

Year 2 - Mrs Anne Rowles

Year 3 - Miss Elise Facci

Year 4 - Mr Jeff Bõdy & Mrs Lucy Barbuto (Middle Leader Release one day/week)

Year 5 - Miss Emily Costello & Mrs Lucy Barbuto (Religious Education Coordinator release one day/week)

Year 6 - Mr Chris Whitehall

Instructional Coach - Mrs Natalie Baker

Intervention Support Teacher - Mrs Bernie Baker

Music/Drama Teacher - Mrs Melissa Sommerville (each Friday)

PE Teacher - Mrs Kate Boyle (each Friday)

Over the next two weeks, teachers will spend time meeting their new students in readiness for a successful start to the new year.

CONGRATULATIONS - ALICIA

An awesome effort by Alicia in Year 6, who has been awarded with the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge PLATINUM AWARD. This award is presented to students on their seventh successful year in the Challenge!

Great work, Alicia!

HCH 2020 Talent Quest

SPLICED 2020

This year we had a small group of select students from Years 3 to 6 who were involved in the Diocesan SPLICED Program for Gifted and Talented students. The theme, Contemplating Connections was to be addressed through a project of work which they submitted early in Term 4. 

I would like to congratulate the following students on their successful completion of the program this year and I am very excited to share that all students were successful in being selected to have their work published for a worldwide audience through the SPLICED Website. LINK: https://spliced2020.dow.catholic.edu.au/ 

Congratulations to Ripley, Mia, Tom, Mia, Kitty, Daniel, Nate, Joseph, and Alex on their hard work and perseverance throughout the year.

This year the launch will be streamed. The Online Launch will become live on Tuesday, December 8, at 7:00 pm and will include messages from our Director Peter Hill, Bishop Brian Mascord, Dr Bronwen Wade-Leeuwen (from the Macquarie University), and the SPLICED tutor team. The link to the Launch will be sent out to the relevant families once it has been received.

Certificates of Achievement and copies of the Contemplating Connections Book will be presented to the students at school next week.

Natalie Baker, SPLICED Coordinator

FEEDBACK FROM THE WAR ON WASTE WARRIORS

As part of the SEMP ( School Environmental Management Plan), Holy Cross has been implementing  Trash Free Tuesdays where students are encouraged to bring a lunch - free of packaging or ‘trash’ to school every Tuesday.  We have been conducting waste audits, photographing the contents of bins and lunch boxes to record the amount of waste being created at our school each week and tallying results.

After 2 terms of focussing on reducing waste and composting, we have noticed that the whole school has greatly improved in their efforts to have consistently trash free lunches, especially Year One. Well done, Year One! You are certainly leading the way in waste reduction!

As a school, we are positive that what we are doing will benefit the environment, wildlife, community and future generations. We are going to continue caring for the environment and aim to create a better future by doing our part to make the school a better place with our focus on Tuesdays. 

Our SEMP has many great initiatives planned and at Holy Cross we will respond to  Pope Francis’ messages in Laudato Sí where we are called to action to care for our common home and all of God’s Creation.

Year 5 Waste Warriors Charlotte, Claire, Jacob, Kai

RECOGNITION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION  

The Staff and Students of Holy Cross  take very seriously their call to care for our Common Home and have recently introduced a special award that recognises those students in our  community who have demonstrated their commitment and care for the environment. 

At Holy Cross we have a team of Year 5 Waste Warriors who have been leading our environmental work. These students were the first to be given our new Environmental awards. Congratulations and a big thank you to Claire, Charlotte, Jacob and Kai on their wonderful dedication and enthusiasm with our Holy Cross War on Waste initiatives.

We would also like to recognise and thank the Year 3 students who were also  presented an Environmental award for caring for our school environment on a regular basis. Congratulations to Ella, Oliver and Darcy on responding to Pope Francis’ Call to Care for Our Common Home. 

Year One received the Holy Cross Environmental Class of the Week Trophy for being the class that consistently produced daily Waste Free lunches. 

Mrs Lucy Barbuto, Teacher 

Spotlight 2021 Logo Competition

Mr Jeff Bõdy, Middle Leader & Classroom Teacher

GARDENING CLUB – School Safari and Weed Attack!

Year 1

Week 6 was Year 1s first session and what an action-packed session it was. As part of the ‘Living Things and their Needs’ Science Unit, it was off to Yalunga Garden to observe some living things in action. Students explored the garden to find snails, lizards and birds and recorded their findings. Of course the highlight was spotting cicada shells and the myriad of places they can be found.  In Week 7, students undertook a School Safari to investigate habitats – students explored both Yalunga Garden and The Patch to record habitat features within these spaces.

Lunchtime Gardening Club

This fortnight Leaders decided that our gardens needed a bit of a tidy up so it was Weed Attack time! Students enjoyed pulling out the endless grass that continually seems to pop up as well as pull out vegetables that have finished seeding. There was one particularly stubborn parsley plant that refused to come out – parsley has extremely long tap roots and this fellow was not prepared to budge to the point that three of our members ended up on the ground once it finally gave way – there was lots of laughter to go with this battle of wills!

Stay tuned to see what we get up to next.

Mrs Sue Murray, Gardening Club