Year 6 Debating

This week our Year 6 students hosted our first debate, competing against a team of students from St Jude's Primary School. The topic of the debate was "Australia needs to stop sending waste overseas". Both teams presented a number of strong and creative arguments but happily our affirmative team were awarded the winners. The judges from Mackillop College offered each speaker some individual and constructive feedback which we know will assist us in future debates. Congratulations to Hannah, Claire and Liam from 5/6 Red. A special congratulations to Claire who was also awarded "Best Speaker" for the debate. 

Next week our second team will be arguing that single use shopping bags should no longer be sold.

Ms TL

Book Week 2019 

Dear Families,

We love Book Week @ Holy Trinity and celebrated it over a six week time frame with lots of library lessons, our Big Dreams Production, a visiting author, a fabulous Book Week parade and then finished off with a rather entertaining staff performance.

Below are a selection of photos and a few reflections of the celebrations from our senior students….

 Book Week 2019 by Harry O.

Today we celebrated Book Week 2019. It was a fun filled day with lots of different characters, from Dorothy Gale to Mary Poppins to Harry Potter. We had our annual parade and had lots of funny, great and amazing costumes. We could all tell that every costume was hard work. We were very lucky to have the best DJ in Canberra Michael Feerick hosting our music and dancing. We would like to thank and congratulate Mrs Mertz from organising our fantastic event and all the books around it. We all enjoyed the funny play performed by our teachers entitled Too Many Elephants In This House. We all had fun and are looking forwaard to Book Week 2020 next year. Thank you also to all of the parents who came
along and helped make our fantastic costumes.

One of the many examples of how we use technology at Holy Trinity was on display yesterday during our Book Week celebrations. Students from 5/6 Green were asked to create book reviews which would entertain the rest of school, highlighting the book nominated for awards. Here is a sample of some of those reviews:

'I felt really comfortable with the people because they also loved engineering and robotics. It was fun looking at all the different capabilities and designs of other robots' AJ S

'I liked how we could battle and then return to rebuild and engineer our robot. It was nice to be able to share parts with other teams.' Oscar H

'We had lots of fun at Daramalan. I liked how I could see how people were coding and what their robots looked like. We had a good time and had fun.' Olivia M

'I was worried at first about the robot competition however it was so friendly and fun to work with other teams.' Asha WW

We are looking forward to our next scrimmage at St. Clare's College on Saturday 26th October.

Regards

Rebecca Casey | ICT Coordinator 

rebecca.casey@cg.catholic.edu.au

RE NEWS

Confirmation Presentation Mass

Last weekend we celebrated our Term 3 Parish School Mass. During this Mass, candidates for the Sacrament of Confirmation in our Parish were presented. I am sure we will join together as a community to pray for them all as they continue along their faith journey. Confirmation will be celebrated at Holy Trinity on September 17^th, and at Saints Peter and Paul on September 19^th. Also a warm thank you to our ¾ families who provided supper.

Book Week in the ELC

Thanks to all the families that worked hard to deliver some amazing little book characters for Book Week. All the children looked fabulous and such celebrations ignite a love of books in our early readers. Below is a link to Mem Fox's 10 Read-Aloud Commandments to inspire and encourage reading with your child at home.

Mem Fox's Read-aloud Commandments

Stay and Play

Playgroup for pre-preschoolers and their families. Wednesday mornings from 9am-10.30am in the ELC Playground (weather permitting). Parents, grandparents, carers and children are all very welcome.

When relationships go wrong for girls

by Collett Smart

Girlhood relationships are so important, yet they can be both wonderful and awful in the same week. A friendship fallout hurts, but children need to know that arguing doesn’t have to be the end of the friendship. Developmentally, some squabbling is vital because it helps kids learn about respectful conflict resolution. Here’s how parents can help at these difficult times:

Listen to their story

When inevitable conflict arises, girls can often get caught in a ‘rumination loop’ replaying the scene over in their minds, like a song stuck on repeat, which makes things feel catastrophic. As a girl’s brain is still learning how to interpret some responses, she may be misinterpreting a friend’s words or signals. If this is the case, ask her to look for evidence to support her interpretation. Suggest your daughter talks to her friend privately in an assertive way. Help her plan the conversation beforehand, starting with ‘I’ words, which encourage her to own her feelings. She could say, ‘I felt let down when …’ Model apologies at home. Help her think of ways to say, ‘I’m sorry. Can we fix this?’

Discuss the shifting nature of friendships

Relationships don’t always last. As girls grow their tastes and interests change. They want to explore the possibilities of new people and activities. This often leads to hurt when one girl is not ready for a shift.

Parents can help by explaining that changes in friendships are a part of growing up (although never an excuse for meanness). Rather than simply dismissing a girls’ feelings as silly, acknowledge the hurt and gently reassure her there are many new, interesting people she will meet.

Expand her village

Ensure your daughter has friends in a few settings – a neighbour, a team mate, a family friend. They can provide a different connection and helps girls realise they are not alone.

Discuss toxic friendships

Most girls will experience the pain of interacting with a toxic ‘friend’ during their school years. This type of interaction is called relational aggression and serves to damage a person’s sense of social place. For instance, a girl may appear to be friendly but she may use passive-aggressive strategies such as gossip, ostracism and online exclusion. These actions can be very confusing, leading to feelings of shame and loneliness.

When not given healthy ways to express their pain, girls can often internalise their emotions in unhealthy ways like such as through self-harm, anxiety, eating disorders and self- loathing.

Allow her to express hurt

Allow your daughter the chance to process pain, vent or cry when they are hurting. Adults may not be able to change a toxic person’s behaviour, but shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening and being available. Don’t assume that you know what your daughter needs. Rather ask, “What do you need from me in this situation?”  When a relationship problem escalates it may need to be taken to the school for further intervention.

Provide growth opportunities

Help your daughter develop the skills for developing healthy friendships. Explicitly teach your daughter to think about what compassion, kindness and empathy look like in a friend and helps her recognise what it means to be a good friend herself.

Helping girls manage friendship issues can be exhausting so parent self-care becomes a priority during these times. Girls benefit enormously from having a caring, emotionally healthy adult in their lives who can support them and help them process their thoughts and emotions when peer relationships turn sour.

(Source: Parentingideas.com.au)

UPCOMING WEBINAR FOR PARENTS

Attend a webinar for parents at no cost
Our school has a membership with Parenting Ideas, one of Australia's most trusted sources of parenting education and support.  Great news - through this membership, you can attend all of their webinars for parents in 2019 at no cost! Here is the information about the next upcoming webinar:

Step back so kids step up
Children and teenagers are capable of so much more than they are often given credit for. Closing the expectation gap between what adults believe kids and young adults are capable of, and allowing them to create their own solutions to the challenges they face will greatly impact their resilience, and society as a whole. In this webinar, Dr. G will outline the practicalities of doing that, and the guiding principles that will make it possible.

When
Wednesday 18 September 2019 8:00pm AEST

How you can register

1. Click this link: https://www.parentingideas.com.au/parent-resources/parent-webinars/webinar-step-back-so-kids-step-up
2. Click ‘Add to cart’
3. Click ‘View cart’
4. Enter the voucher code STEP and click ‘Apply Coupon’. Your discount of $37 will be applied to the order. This voucher is valid until 18 October 2019.
5. Click ‘Proceed to checkout’
6. Fill in your account details. These are the details you will use to login to your account and access your parenting material
7. Click ‘Place Order’

The Obstacool day last Friday was a fantastic day! Firstly a HUGE thank you to Cath Day and Jennifer Graham for all the hard work leading up to this day and on the day! Thank you to all the students and families who completed and returned sponsorship forms. There may be a lag between forms coming in and amounts being reconciled with Qkr. We apologise if we have sent forms home and you have already paid. Can you please send the form back into school with a note on the front or back that you have paid via Qkr (or sent the cash in). Thank you again. We are having an assembly on Monday 16 September at 2:30pm to announce final monies raised, and provide a wrap-up of the day. 

Catholic School Netball Carnival

The Carnival is set for Saturday 19^th of October, end of week 1 term 3. All registration forms are now due. Thank you to all the families who have registered and offered to umpire, coach and manage. The teams are currently being formed and will be sent home over the coming weeks.

Bike Program

Students from 3/4 commenced the Cycle Safety Program. On Friday 5/6 will start with Mr Bugden. If permission forms have not been completed they are due now. To complete the Bike Program Permission form, please click here. Students involved with the bike program will have an opportunity to go for short bike rides during lunch around our local area on their nominated program days.

Future of ACT Catholic School Soccer and Netball Carnivals

Regretfully, this year is the final year for the ACT Catholic School Soccer and Netball Carnivals.

This decision was carefully considered and was made unanimously at the recent ACT Catholic Primary Principal’s Meeting.

Although these are great community days and have been going for many years, the huge workload on staff, increasing costs, complexity of indemnity and insurance and a lack of volunteers to assist has necessitated the decision to no longer host these events.

Schools are rostered on to coordinate, run and volunteer these events and are run, entirely, by the host school, irrespective of the school size. Parents volunteer on the day and staff work all weekend on these events. In the past few years, some executive staff have worked nearly fulltime in the lead-up to pull off these carnivals, along with many staff who commit their time to support the planning and preparation, all of which is impacting on the teaching and learning agenda of the host school. 

ACT Principals acknowledge that there may be some parents and students disappointed by this decision, however, we have agreed that the future of hosting and leading an event such as this is untenable.

This year, Holy Rosary Watson will host the final ACT Catholic School’s Netball Carnival.

ACT Primary Principals

TERM 3, WEEK 7 - WED 4 SEP

Team Leader: Greg Bayada, Duncan Meagher, Tom Green, Stephanie Lehoczky, Ben Williams