Week 4 Term 2 2024

Dear Families,

Catholic Schools Week

Last week we celebrated Catholic Schools Week by recognising what’s great about IHM from parents, staff and students. There is much to celebrate about our unique gem of a Catholic school.   We also celebrated World Education Support Staff Day on Thursday May 16^th and thank all our incredible ESOs at IHM. Our students thrive thanks to their care, support and management of our school across so many dimensions; curriculum, administration, health, finance, environment. This term we welcomed Teagan Lypsys to the team as an additional curriculum ESO.  

What is PBIS?

Our staff are engaged in PBIS training in 2024. Positive Behaviour Interventions and Support (PBIS) is a framework for creating safe and orderly learning environments in schools, while improving the social-emotional outcomes for students. It is a proactive approach that relies on research based practices, including developing clear behavioural expectations, teaching these expectations, acknowledging appropriate behaviour, consistently correcting inappropriate behaviour and using data to systematically solve problems.

We are gradually introducing this framework and our next whole school focus will be “We are responsible for our belongings”. We will introduce this to all students in our Week 4 assembly and teachers will explicitly teach the skills involved through lessons in class, regular practice, feedback and positive recognition.

Lunch Clubs

IHM is excited to introduce daily break-time clubs commencing next week (Week 5) - we are calling these Heart Clubs. These clubs are an initiative to help students interact with their peers in traditionally unstructured times of the school day. Clubs are an opportunity for students to have fun and interact with peers, including peers from different year levels, who have similar interests and passions. Clubs promote inclusion and align with our Year of Inclusivity focus. There’s been lots of research into the benefits of break-time clubs including: 

• Improving social skills
• Increased friendships
• Promoting peer social acceptance 
• Creating feelings of happiness
• Engagement in teamwork, co-operation and collaboration 

• Opportunity to increase interests, knowledge and skills 
• Increasing feeling of safety whilst at school 
• Decreasing loneliness Learning social cues and opportunity to practice social skills 

​Break-time clubs can also benefit school staff by providing opportunities to work with different age groups, share their talents and skills, and get to know students outside of the classroom. Our Heart clubs will also involve student leadership and parent help such as our Green Hearts gardening club and cooking. Each term our clubs will change to reflect the interest of students and skills of staff/parents/student leaders.

Parent Engagement

We would love to hear from you if you have a skill, talent or interest you are able to share with our students or have a family member or know someone in the wider community who can e.g. grandparent.

We would appreciate volunteers for Heart Clubs during the year (between 1.10 - 1.40pm) or even for parents to share their occupational skills and knowledge in some way e.g. carpenter who could teach a woodwork club. Volunteers would need to complete the volunteer’s induction in addition to having a current ‘Working with Children Check’ (WWCC).

We would love to explore further opportunities for engaging parents in meaningful and authentic ways which will enhance the life of our students at school.

Technology addiction and social media for young people

You may have recently seen on TV the Channel 7 Spotlight program on the growing challenge of tech addiction in children and Peter Malinauskas recent announcement regarding the proposed restriction of social media for younger children. This is certainly a growing concern for parents, educators and schools who frequently see the effects of excessive and inappropriate use of tech by children on their academic achievement, ability to engage in learning and social difficulties.

Leaders in schools deal with extraordinarily challenging situations for primary students which have all occurred outside of school and on devices; including students falling asleep in class due to frequent night gaming, cyberbullying, access to pornography, grooming by online predators through apps and games, sexting, aggressive behaviour and fixations on violence from online games. These are all very real, disturbing and have significant impacts on students’ mental health and functioning. As a school we teach cyber safety to our students, but parental control is vitally important in ensuring our children are safe.

We are currently exploring some high quality cyber safety education presenters to facilitate some parent workshops in the future. If you have concerns for your child’s tech use please speak to your child’s teacher, leadership, or Suzie Wallace our school chaplain.

5 tips to support healthy use:

1. Build a family media plan that balances time with and without devices
2. Create screen-free times and places in your home, such as meals and bedtime
3. Monitor apps and ensure they are age appropriate and safe
4. Have regular discussions as a family about online activities
5. Make sure your child knows they can come to you about their experiences online, even if they feel embarrassed or worried

• https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents/issues-and-advice/parental-controls
• https://www.internetmatters.org/issues/

Regards,

Julie Hancock
PRINCIPAL

Pentecost

On Sunday 19^th May our Church celebrated Pentecost. This is a significant day in our liturgical calendar because it is when the Holy Spirit first came to the apostles and gave them the courage and strength to speak God’s message to the world.

Pope Francis said: “The Spirit makes us see everything in a new way, with the eyes of Jesus”

3/4P and 4/5F students will leading our Pentecost Mass on the 29 May ay 9am. All families and siblings are welcome to attend.

Laudato Si’ Week - May 19-26: ‘Seeds of Hope’

Laudato Si Week began as a way to celebrate the first anniversary of Pope Francis world changing papal encyclical letter, ‘Laudato Si - Care for Our Common Home’. The Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) Catholic Identity and Mission Team have developed an engaging resource inviting you to connect with God’s beautiful creation.

Mary our Mother Mass

On Wednesday 8^th May 2/3HW led Mary our Mother Mass. Through the scripture reading they led us in reflecting how special Mary was and how our mothers and significant others provide us with love, care and strength. We thank Father Santhosh for being our celebrant and all the families who attended.

TERM 2 - Liturgies: 9am in the HALL

Sacred Heart Church Community Mass: Sunday 26^th May at 9am

All Families are welcome to attend. Our sacramental students will be presented on this day.

IHM Sacramental Program

Our Parish Sacramental Program is family based, facilitated by our Sacred Heart Church and supported by the APRIM’s (Assistant Principal-Religious Identity and Mission) from St Joseph’s School, Hindmarsh, St Michaels Primary Campus and Preca Community.

Please keep Paige (3/4P) Zara (4/5F) and Tiana (5/6L) in your prayers as they begin their sacramental preparation for Confirmation and First Holy Communion. The celebration will be on held on Sunday 18^th August at the Sacred Heart Church, Hindmarsh.

If you are interested in your child participating in the next cycle of the Sacramental Program or would like further information please email Jhovana: jfenu@ihm.catholic.edu.au

Please note that it is a requirement for children who participate in Sacramental Program to be baptised. If your child is not baptised, we encourage you to contact the Parish Office on 8346 3901 or Email: shparish@shphf.com.au

NCCD: The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability

The NCCD is an Australian Government collection of data that counts school students receiving reasonable educational adjustments: an action to help a student with disability access education on the same basis as their peers.

For more information on NCCD click HERE
NCCD Information video for families click HERE

We take this opportunity to thank all our families for their trusted partnership, collaboration and involvement to ensure we are providing the right educational adjustments that works best for their child.

Jhovana Fenu
Assistant Principal-Religious Identity and Mission/Learning Diversity
Ph: (08) 8115 7606
Email: jfenu@ihm.catholic.edu.au

Cross Country Championships

Last Monday 13^th May, 11 students across Years 3-6 ventured to Barrett Reserve, West Beach to compete in IHM’s first Western District SAPSASA Cross Country Championships

The day was a huge success with impressive performances across the board. Congratulations to the entire IHM Cross Country Team who together won the ‘Small School’ category for the day with some individual placegetters.

Congratulations to Julieta L who placed 3^rd and Isla H who placed 2^nd in their respective age groups. Congratulations also to the following students who placed in the top 6 of their age group to secure their position within the Western District Cross Country team who will compete in the State Cross Country Championship at Oakbank in Week 6, Julieta L, Lottie R, Luca T and Isla H.

I would like to congratulate all students on how they represented IHM at the carnival and all the students should be extremely proud of their attitude, commitment and efforts on the day.

A further thank you to Carmel Johnston for assisting with marshalling and stations around the course, and all parents who came to support.

We look forward to seeing the results of the students selected for the Western District Team in Week 6.

Astrid-Marie Powell
SPORTS COORDINATOR

Scholastic Book Fair

Everyone is invited to visit our Scholastic Book Fair which is being held next week.

• When:  Monday 27th to Friday 31st May 2024
• Times:  Before School - 8:30 - 9:00am / After School - 2:45 - 3:30pm
• Where: Library

There are always lots of interesting books to choose from and books always make great presents!  

Scholastic Book Fair brochures will be distributed to all the children this week.

All purchases will benefit the school as we will be able to buy more books for our library. See you all there.

Carmel Johnston
LIBRARY COORDINATOR