An excerpt from this weeks newsletter:

Faith:
Community Prayer
This term we instigated Community Prayer on alternate Fridays. It has been wonderful to access the Holy Cross Church each fortnight for this purpose. Our students have run prayer beautifully and I encourage families to continue to come over and join us.

Support of St Vincent De Paul
We were involved in a Vinnie’s Can Drive across the Emmaus Cluster. Some student leaders then helped deliver and sort the cans at Noarlunga St Vincent De Paul. Our efforts will be greatly received by many families across southern Adelaide.
We also raised funds for our local Vinnies based here at the Holy Cross Church in Goodwood.

Cancer Council Fun Run
Beginning with an idea from some 6/7 Students, this term we held our first Fun Run at Orphanage Park. Funds were raised for the Cancer Council in conjunction with Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea.

Staff Retreat
Our staff formation and retreat day was held at the Sanctuary Function Centre at the Adelaide Zoo. As a group we were focused on Laudato Si – Pope Francis call to ecological conversion. We examined our own relationships with the environment and place and began to explore what we can do in our own lives and communities to care for the Earth, our common home.

Soup Making
Our students continue to make soup each week to support the Moore St Shelter. Actions such as these link us with our call to care for others.

Family:
Making Learning Visible
All classes began to use the Seesaw App to make learning visible to parents. This has become a real feature of our school and a means for instigating dialogue between parents and teachers and also parents and children. As a parent, when you have seen some of the exciting learning that has happened during the day – you know when your child says they did “nothing” that this is not the case!

Parent Information Sessions
We ran a parent ICT information night that was very well attended. Our subsequent coffee morning was well used too.We have more planned for term 3 with topics such as Ecology, Positive Education and a parent consultation for our Master Plan.

Playgroup
Our Friday Playgroup continues to be popular. Having recently conducted many enrolment interviews for preschool and reception, many of the children starting preschool already know the environment through Playgroup.

Future:
We continue to focus our learning on being contemporary and reflective of our changing world.

Staff Learning
Teachers are all committed to their own learning that has a particular focus for their classroom. Each teacher has a personal learning plan and have goals they are working towards. Our staff groups have fallen into three main categories: Integration of technology, Wellbeing and Mindfulness and Inquiry Learning.

Oliphant Science Awards
It has been a pleasure to again witness the deep learning that has culminated in students entering the Oliphant Science Awards. Our school wide focus on Science and the personal engagement that I see from each student is a feature of St Thomas. It has been exciting to note the broad scope of works submitted this year.

New technologies
We have purchased some new devices this term that have encouraged children to learn to code and programme. The Spheros have been a hit with many of our classes and tech club. The Blu-Bots have been used for programming from our preschool all the way up to year 3. We have also trialled a product called Fly-Brix. Fly-Brix is a lego type product that has allowed our upper primary students to design and build mini drones. This has been a very challenging STEM focus for them!

There are of course many more events and successes that have been celebrated by individual classes and students this term. I hope you have had many opportunities to hear about these through class communications and your own child’s experiences.