HOLY ROSARY NEWSLETTER
Term 1 Week 9 - 3 April 2020
FROM GEORDIE:
Hey there everyone,
How are you all?
I hope that this week you have been able to create a routine with your families, get some work done if you are working from home, complete some remote learning tasks with your kids, made time to enjoy each other’s company, laughed and also been able to switch off, take a breath and relax. Like many of you, my wife Nicole and I found Monday and Tuesday tough as she began to work from home with George and Audrey. For those who are finding it difficult – I understand! Nicole and I have talked it out regularly, both made compromises, shared the teaching and learning of the kids, relaxed our rules on the Disney Channel, kept exercising and drank a bottle or two of our favourite red. All these things seem to have helped and I hope like many of you, we are trying hard to make the most of it.
Here at Holy Rosary our staff have been working very hard on what Term 2 will look like from an Teaching and Learning perspective. We have used expertise from within and outside the school to learn many new things and come up with a plan. This plan will continue to evolve as we go, however, we believe that we have the resources and awesome teachers to make Term 2 a really successful one for all our Holy Rosary students and families. You will all receive communication relating to this later next week but for now, please don’t let it worry you – happy, smiling children are the priority!
We have received some AMAZING feedback from parents in regards to their children’s home learning so far. Obviously, our goal is to continue to improve and grow. Remembering that we are catering for a very wide variety of family situations, we would love any extra feedback you might have - to know what we are doing well or suggestions as to how we might make it easier for parents. I can’t promise anything, however we do value all the feedback we receive!
I have created a Google Form to be filled out below and your comments can be completely anonymous if you wish.
Below are a few really nice comments from some of our parents that really made our teachers week!
‘To Holy Rosary – Thank you so much for all your time and effort in ensuring our kids continue their academic journey in these unprecedented times, especially when you have families yourselves to worry about. There are not enough words to describe how grateful we are. Congratulations on a great job on the transition and thanks again!’
Many families in our community have lost their support networks (grandparents and babysitters), thereby placing a greater work load on top of their normal work requirements and may well have lost their sources of regular income. All these, along with the perceived demand that they must also take not he additional role as the full time educator for their children (which for non-teachers even homework takes considerable patience at the best of times), must be putting an immense amount of pressure on our parents in the school community. Your compassion and empathy in removing one stress of demanding a seamless shift to home learning for our children will be well received by many at this very challenging time. I'm sure we will all navigate our way through this over coming weeks, but just wanted to say thanks all the staff at Holy Rosary, whom I'm sure are all dealing with the similar challenges with their own families.’
Keeping on the theme of feedback, I had a number of emails from parents alerting me to some disappointing comments that were made on a Facebook account this week. As a staff we can’t help parents to fix issues within the school unless we know about them and a call or email through the office is always the best way to let us know. I would like to gently remind everyone to be careful in the way they model appropriate use of social media and technology to our children, to choose your words carefully and respectfully and to think of the impact your words might have on others. This is true all the time, however, especially now when everyone has heightened emotions.
As you are now aware, today is the final day of Term 1 for students and therefore there will be no work sent home for students next week. This is to provide teachers with the opportunity to upskill themselves in the remote learning space. We were due to have Professional Development days on Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th of April, however, as we have the extra days next week we have decided to move these student free days to later in the year. Therefore we will now start Term 2 on Tuesday the 28th of April.
I want to again thank you all for helping to make our community the safe, calm and vibrant place that it continues to be, even if you’re not physically here. I could not be more proud of our students, staff and families in banding together during such a difficult time. You are just the best! So finally, in recognition of the start we have made to our remote learning journey, I was hoping you might like to take a pic of you and your family in their home school environment. It could be at their desk, in the yard, cooking dinner, a cuddly reading corner – it doesn’t matter. If they are emailed to Michele in the office, we will put them together into a short movie for next week.
Thanks again, look after yourselves and I will be in touch next week.
Geordie Thuijs
Principal
Can you guess who the teacher is?
A game for families to play together… Go to the website below and enter the game code. Use your family name to identify yourselves and see if you can work out some unusual facts about the Holy Rosary Staff Team.
While I was creating this I definitely learnt a few new things!
Mr T
DATES TO REMEMBER
- Start of Term 2
ABSENTEE EMAILS:
Please include your child's NAME, CLASS (e.g. 5C, 6D) and REASON FOR ABSENCE in the email. admin@hrs.wa.edu.au
You can also submit an Absentee form by clicking on the 'Links' tab on our website https://www.hrs.wa.edu.au/
ABSENTEE SMS
P & F NEWS
HOLY ROSARY 2020 ENTERTAINMENT BOOK
HOW TO PURCHASE:
Like last year, go to the following website / link and enter your details. 20% of all sales through this link go towards Holy Rosary. Last year Holy Rosary raised $1484 from Entertainment Book purchases - which was fantastic! So please continue to support our school and purchase through the following link. Share this link with your family and friends!
https://www.entertainment.com.au/orderbooks/8437a8
Any questions, please email: holyrosaryhelpers@gmail.com
Please keep supporting our school’s events and fundraisers!
Please click HERE for Holy Rosary Facebook page.
HOLY ROSARY BUSINESS DIRECTORY
As a Parent Community we would love to see a culture of thinking Holy Rosary first! Please have a look through the directory to see what these businesses might be able to do for you. If you would like to be listed please contact Mark Nolan at holyrosaryhelpers@gmail.com
Pastoral and Well-Being News
I hope this finds you all well. It’s been a big week for everyone navigating a new world as well as initiating remote learning. Our amazing staff have been working hard to make sure there is a good balance of work and enough time for fun, so please try to remember, mental health is priority for all through these uncertain times. Each week in these newsletters, I will been providing info and links that will hopefully be a help to you. If you ever need any extra resources, please email me and I will see what I can find. It is a wonderful time to ‘go back to basics’ especially on the weekends, when for most of us, the pressures of work are gone. You are all doing such a great job of keeping the kids feeling happy and safe, so be kind to yourselves too. Here are some very wise words from Maggie Dent, along with some amazing links to other ideas.
https://www.maggiedent.com/blog/top-tips-for-families-in-isolation/
Please take care, stay well and keep smiling.
Holly Butson
LIBRARY NEWS
Hope you are enjoying your library books! Your books are due back when the school re-opens, so don’t worry, just enjoy them. When you are not reading them, try to keep them in a safe place, like your library bag, so that you know where they are and so they don’t get damaged.
Don’t forget you can access our eBooks and audiobooks on the Wheelers ePlatform found as an app of your iPad. Remember to view the books before you click borrow as we only have so many loans per month. To log in, firstly find our school, then use your Mathletics username and password - email me via admin if you need any help.
Storyline Online is a fantastic way to listen to books being read https://www.storylineonline.net/ and for our older children, David Walliams is releasing a new story every day for free for a limited time https://www.worldofdavidwalliams.com/elevenses/
Stay well and have fun!
Mrs Butson
“Well, I've listened to the audiobook, if that counts.' 'It definitely counts,' Tilly said.”
― Anna James, Pages & Co.
CANTEEN
PARISH NEWS
Our Lady of the Rosary Parish
Parish Office - 9446 2055
Father Peter Hoang OP - 0411 381 199
Contact us:
Email: admin@hrs.wa.edu.au
Website: www.hrs.wa.edu.au
Location: 35 Williamstown Rd, Doubleview WA 6018, Australia
Phone: 08 9203 4500
Facebook: www.facebook.com/holyrosaryschooldoubleview/