St Benedict's Catholic College
Newsletter - Friday 7 December
PRINCIPAL'S REPORT
Dear Parents
It always feels like “the holidays” are around the corner when we come to the first weekend of Advent. Even as a teacher, I have always been in denial about the impending end of Term 4 amongst the examinations, marking and reporting, the Parent Teacher Interviews, annual awards and prizegiving – the list goes on. That first week of Advent though, coinciding as it does this year with the first weekend of summer, heralds a change of thinking as we start to focus on a spirit of gratitude with gift buying, participation in Kris Kringle in our workplaces and possibly even opening Advent calendars.
This is the season of new beginnings – Advent calls to us with images of transformation and hope, it is the season of the impossible becoming the possible. In the scriptures over the next few weeks we read of dry, barren wilderness bursting into bloom, of broken hearts healing, of a barren woman and a young virgin both conceiving children. It is the season of light and longing and we light a candle each Sunday signifying our longing for the light of Christ as the time of His birth draws near. This is the mystery at the heart of our faith and the real cause of our joy at Christmas.
This week at Bennies we hosted our incoming Year 6 students to a day of get-to-know and orientation to high school life. It was wonderful to see so many of our current parents amongst the adults and to connect for the first time with our new families. One of the highlights of the day was the excitement of the Year 6 students about our “Electronic Sorting Hat” which placed them into their Houses and will form the basis of their homeroom groups next year. More Bennies than Hogwarts, the students were introduced to our new houses and the House Cup that all students will be competing for next year, as well as a host of minor trophies which will all contribute to the overall points.
Congratulations to Director of Wellbeing Mr Turner and the 2019 Year 7 Coordinator, Mr Morris and his AC tutors, on a fantastic day.
*********
As flagged a fortnight ago, St Benedict’s was proud of our students who were presented with Diocesan Sports medallions at the annual awards ceremony last Friday night. Congratulations to Madelyn Manny (Year 10), Courtney Schonell and Jared Madsen (both Year 12).
**********
The Harrington Grove Christmas spectacular featured a number of St Benedicts students (and staff) last Saturday night. Congratulations to Mr Davidson for his organisation, Brooke Charlton, Morgan White, Erin McWhirter, Hannah Dowling, Taylah Blanchette, Charlotte Ciappara, Mia Gibbs-White and Olivia Dowling for their beautiful singing.
**********
A reminder to all families that meaningful work is still occurring in all classes. This week all students undertook the all important Progressive Achievement Tests which staff use to measure improvement and milestones in learning across a range of skills. The College does not take this time as “busy work” time (a la many Primary schools) and hence, being absent from school means students are missing work for the following year and important data to assist staff to assist your child cannot be collected.
***********
A final reminder that our Academic Awards ceremony will be held on Monday 17 December after our closing Mass. Each year we have a significant speaker at this event and this year is no exception with our guest inspirational tech start-up entrepreneur Brandon Cowan.
Brandon is one of Australia's leading app entrepreneurs, without knowing how to code an app. The 20 year old (slightly older than our Year 12s!) co-founder and Director of Crazy Dog Apps has been responsible for successfully creating and marketing four top-100 apps on the entire Australian Apple App Store. Brandon has won and been nominated for a large variety of entrepreneurial awards, including being ranked as one of the youngest top 30 entrepreneurs in Australia under 30 for the past three years in a row, by Anthill Magazine, and has been nominated for ICT Entrepreneur of the Year.
It should be an inspirational story for our families. We look forward to seeing you there.
Michael Hanratty
Principal
DATES TO REMEMBER
HSC Results released - Thursday 13 December
HSC Celebration Breakfast - Friday 14 December at 10:30am
Awards Assembly and Closing School Mass - Monday 17 December
Reports Distributed - Monday 17 December
Beach Day - Tuesday 18 December
Parent/Teacher/Student Interviews - Wednesday 19 December
2019 Years 7, 12 and new students start - Wednesday 30 January
All students return - Thursday 31 January 2019
DAILY ATTENDANCE
The last day for attendance for students is the Beach Day, Tuesday 18 December. Please note that it is a legal responsibility for parents to ensure that students attend school up to the last day.
If leave is to be taken earlier, the College must be notified in advance, and suitable paperwork completed where necessary.
Beach Day to Austinmer Beach - Tuesday 18 December
Year 9 Students
A reminder to all parents and carers of Year 9 students that the 3-year lease of your child’s MacBook Air will finish next week. All machines will be restored to factory settings starting Monday 10 December.
Students should make sure all backups are on Google File Stream or an external hard drive and are completed before this time. As per school policy, an identical arrangement (ie a three-year-leasing program) will occur with all students commencing Year 10. This coincides with the 3-year warranty on all MacBooks and completion of senior schooling.
FROM THE ACTING DIRECTOR OF MISSION AND VISION
Advent - a time for joyful expectation!
This week marks the start of the season of Advent in our church calendar. But what does this truly mean for us? The word advent translates to ‘coming’ and marks the start of our preparation and excitement for the celebration of the ‘coming’ of our saviour Jesus Christ.
Pope Francis this week proclaimed that the time of Advent is a time of “consolation and hope,” the beginning of “a new liturgical year, which brings with it the newness of our God, who is the ‘God of every consolation.’ He encourages us all to take the time to “being active in love.” So as we start to decorate our homes and get caught up in the excitement of writing our Christmas cards and buying the gifts, we are encouraged by Pope Francis to live Advent “as a time of consoling newness and joyful expectation.” So consider, this Advent are we in it for presets or are we going to be present? How can we be active in our love and present in this festive season?
Catechist Training Day
Last Thursday I had the privilege of taking ten students to the Catechist Training Day at Micah House Campbelltown, to be trained to deliver Scripture lessons to students in Kindergarten to Year 6 in some of our local primary schools. During this training session students joined representatives from other local high schools to discover the responsibilities and joys that being a catechist can afford. Students were made aware of the responsibility they have in teaching the good news to these students and were informed on the importance of the Church’s mission.
The day was not all just lectures! The students were able to be “teachers” and worked together to prepare lessons plans and even got to figure out what resources they would use. The popular items were definitely the puppets to help tell Scripture stories and the extra large picture books!
We thank the students for volunteering their time to be a part of this important ministry.
Harrington Grove Carols by Candlelight
Back row: Mr Craig Davidson, Brooke Charlton, Morgan White, Erin McWhirter, Hannah Dowling.
Front Row: Taylah Blanchette, Charlotte Ciappara, Mia Gibbs-White, Olivia Dowling
On Saturday 1 December, a small number of students from the school choir accompanied Mr Davidson to the inaugural Harrington Grove Carols by Candlelight. These students became the first choral group to perform publicly for the school and represented the College proudly.
The group comprised of eight students from years 7 to 10 with a number of students singing solos throughout the evening. Our choral group were invited to lead the singing of the community carols, leading the residents and their families in the singing of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and “Silent Night”. These songs were then followed by “White Christmas” sung as a trio by year 10 students Brooke Charlton, Olivia Dowling and Tylah Blanchette. Charlotte Ciappara then sang the Pentatonix arrangement of “The Little Drummer Boy” before we closed the first set with a full choir version of “Mary Did You Know” led by Erin McWhirter as the soloist.
The second set of songs opened with a community song, “Joy to the World” followed by a solo rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Hannah Dowling and then the community song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.
The group sang beautifully and were congratulated by residents and organisers who have already asked the school to be involved in the Carols next year.
YEAR 9 CHILD STUDIES
As part of our final unit, ‘Play and the Developing Child’, students have been looking at play and sustainability. They spent some time on Monday afternoon using recyclable materials to make toys and activities suitable for “play”.
From Foosball Tables to Guitars, the students did a wonderful job!
DIGITAL LITERACY – RESEARCH SKILLS
How can we help students develop research skills that will serve them practically at school? In the classroom, we teach it using the process of Information Fluency. This is the ability to interpret information in all forms and formats. It helps students extract essential knowledge, perceive its meaning and significance, and then use it in school tasks. It’s about being able to find meaningful information and then use it constructively.
There are five distinct stages to Information Fluency (The 5As).
Ask—Asking involves fully understanding the problem being solved, identifying key words, and then forming questions around them. Striving to ask meaningful and purposeful questions to obtain the most relevant and useful data possible.
Acquire—This involves determining where our information is, and the skills needed to find it. We build solid research skills by giving ourselves enough data to work with. Students should acquire information on what we want to know from traditional and digital sources.
Analyse—This stage is about organizing and summarizing the collected information. Students should always check the content for relevancy and credibility.
Apply—For students, this usually involves responding to some type of Assessment or class task. It could mean an essay, a report, a presentation, an experiment, or a multimedia project. At some point the knowledge students gather must be used in the context of the original purpose for conducting the research.
Assess—Here students ask questions about the processes and the information gathered. What was learned and how it was learned, what worked, what didn’t work, how could the process and the product be made better next time.
More information on this topic can be found at the Literacy Matters webpage (http://www.literacymatters.org.au/digital-literacy.html) and the ASLA (Australian School Library Association) webpage (http://www.asla.org.au/)
THE HOUR OF CODE
The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities.
St Benedict’s celebrated the Hour of Code today with some Year 7 students focusing on an ‘Introduction to Programming (Python)’ through GROK learning.
I would like to thank Mr Dempsey for sharing his wonderful coding skills.
Mr Gallagher
Teacher in Charge
SCIENCE HAPPENINGS
The last couple of weeks have been very busy in the Science department. First, I would like to congratulate the following Year 10 students for achieving Distinction awards for the STANSW Young Scientists Awards: Darcey Christl, Indhi Downie and Braydon Haskett. All three students carried out an independent scientific investigation and presented it in a formal report which was submitted for judging. The award recognises their ability to work scientifically, effectively analyse results and think logically.
On Thursday 22 November, a selected group of high achieving science students from Year 9 attended a Spectacular Science Outreach Day at Sydney University accompanied by Miss Hermis and Miss Wojcik. The purpose of the day was to highlight the many opportunities that the study of science can provide.
The following week, on Thursday 29 November, we had Education Interactive come in and present a Forensic Science workshop to the Year 10 classes over a double period. This was a culmination of the Year 10 science course to demonstrate how the various fields of science can interrelate to solve a crime.
The next day, the whole of Year 8 and Science teachers spent an enjoyable day at the Science Space Centre in Wollongong as part of their studies on the Solar System.
Below are some reviews from our students.
Maria de Lima
Science Coordinator
Spectacular Science, Sydney University
On 22 November, 21 students attended the Science Spectacular at the University of Sydney. The day was full of fun experiments about science topics that can change the future for the better. In particular, we got to experience the science of Physics and Veterinary Sciences. We learnt how magnets create electricity (a thought for an innovative renewable source of energy), the unconscious movements our bodies, how wastes can be examined to find the cause of death, and how parasites can be found.
We also had Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, well known science communicator, speak to us about the future of science in terms of the environment, economy, the human body and engineering. It was interesting to learn that our generation may be the first to live for thousands of years as the bio-informaticians are estimating that we will live to 40-50 years before our cells will settle to a comfortable 18-25 year old for the rest of our lives. That's pretty cool!
The 'Science Spectacular Chemistry Show' was awesome to watch. The experiments that were done were all examples of chemical reactions. We had bubbles that were sent into flames producing heat, two reactants which caused a luminescent light, and lots of other reactions producing sound and heat. Then the liquid nitrogen was brought out and was one of my favourite demonstrations because of its smoky effect.
The whole day was very exciting, interactive, intriguing and enjoyable.
Sienna Rixon (Year 9)
Forensic Science Workshop
Last Thursday, our year were lucky enough to take part in a Forensics Workshop. We were partnered with another class over two periods. During the workshop, we were given the task of solving the murder case of schoolgirl, Sally, using different types of tests and observations. These included using a microscope to classify fibres, identifying stages of maggot life cycles to determine the time of death and testing for the presence of drugs to see whether a substance was involved in the murder.
All of these activities were very interesting, and were used to discover exactly how Sally died, including the events leading up to her death. It was a fun experience which opened our eyes to the possibility of becoming a forensic scientist.
Indhi Downie, Year 10
Science Space Centre, Wollongong
This was our first time at a planetarium and it has us wanting to go back already. The first part of our visit was free for anyone to walk around and look at the scientific, interactive demonstrations which was of course, the favourite section for most students. They were all very attention grabbing and answered questions ranging from “what is sound?” all the way to “why do we see faces?”. One of my favourite parts of this was the space and light themed rooms which immersed you in a beautiful, otherworldly environment. There were so many hands-on games that were fun, but I was still learning at the same time.
The liquid nitrogen show was very cool! We got to see an explosive experiment, learn about frostbite, discover what really happens when liquids boil and we also found out why metal shrinks in cold temperatures. It was amazing to see a leaf placed in liquid nitrogen and when removed, it shattered by just touching it.
The last (and our favourite) part of the trip was the planetarium dome which had everyone in awe as soon as they walked into it. The room darkened once we were seated. It revealed to us all of the galaxies and all of the constellations found in the night sky. It submerged us in the centre of galaxies and deep in supernovas which inspired such beauty and wonder despite being so dangerous.
Altogether, it was a great day that every student enjoyed, leaving everyone with a million questions answered, but a tonne still to ponder about.
Sienna Messina, Abbey Newton, Lucia Pisciuneri, Year 8
COLLEGE SPORTING WEEK
The GIANTS appearance!!!!
For the past 8 weeks, the students in year 7 that do AFL for sport have been taught the basic skills required in the sport: kicking, passing, bouncing and spatial awareness. Tuesday was no different, until four players from the Greater Western Sydney Giants AFL team made a special appearance to our students at Brabham Oval. Not only were the students super excited, but Miss Kelleher couldn’t hide her excitement of seeing the AFL Giants herself. She is a massive fan!!!
When the Giants players arrived, the students were surprised to see how tall and down to earth the boys were. Not only were the students happy to meet them, but also eager to play a game of AFL with them. The students participated well and gave it their best, even asking the players all sorts of questions.
I would like to thank Zach Langdon, Nick Shipley, Daniel Llyod and Aiden Bohar for taking time out of their busy training schedule to come and visit with our students.
Yours in Sport,
Miss Liska
Sport Coordinator
Congratulations to the following students who were nominated as MVPs for Week
AFL:
Luca Williams
Cricket:
Jake Lomm
Martial Arts:
Tahlia Basa, Mya Romeo
Netball:
Charlize Zuvela, Thomas Hardy
Soccer:
Michael Pavey, Emily Fiumara, Michael Baxter
NRL:
Manuel H, Katelyn Lal
UFC:
Jamie Bond, Daniel Sharkawy
Indoor Sports:
Michael Popovic, Angus White
Crossfit:
Joshua Palmowski
Gym:
Max Surace, Ayehsa Conate
Kickboxing:
Ethan Lane
Skating:
Alicia Marshall
Bowling A:
Lachlan Grana
Bowling B:
Alicia Xerri, Kallan Crawford
MISA Sport
Our MISA teams had their final week of competition against Broughton Anglican College
Year 7 Boys Cricket Win
MVP: Jayden Shields
Year 7-9 Boys Oztag Loss
MVP: Zach Newman
Year 7-9 Girls Oztag Win
MVP: Jayme Willingham
Year 7 Boys Basketball Loss
MVP: Ashton Comer, Lachlan Hort
Year 7 Girls Basketball Loss
MVP: Madeline Birkbeck
Year 10-11 Boys Volleyball Loss
Year 10-11 Girls Volleyball. Draw
MVP: Leah Brown, Skye Slattery,
Moira-Kelly Cruz & Lara Rofe
Yours in Sport
Miss Liska
Sport Coordinaotr
P & F Clothing Pool
The clothing pool is run by appointment only. You can contact Mel on 0410 486 083. Please try and keep calls, texts and messages between the hours of 9-5 Monday to Friday.
If you make an appointment please be on time and, if unable to keep an appointment, please let Mel know.
We would also welcome any donations of uniforms, school bags, lap top bags etc. as stocks are running low.
LOST & FOUND
We have a growing number of clothing items, jewellery, lunch boxes and drinks bottles in the office. We would really like to return them to their owners. Students are welcome to come and collect them at recess, lunch and home time.
We would like to remind parents to please put students names on all items to enable us to return them.
ABSENCES
Please telephone or email the school office to notify daily absences. If a student has a planned absence of more than 2 days please notify the office by email with the dates and explanation of absence.
For absences of 10 days or more an Application for Extended Leave must be completed and are available from the College Website. If your child is ill, please keep them at home and notify the school.