TERM 3

• Thurs, 31st Aug, Father's Day Stall
• Thurs 31st Aug, Choir Rehearsal @ Loreto College
• Thurs 31st Aug, Year 4 Central Market Excursion
• Fri, 1st Sept, Father's Day Breakfast
• Fri, 1st Sept, Confirmation Ceremony  7pm
• Tues, 5th Sept Confirmation Ceremony 7pm
• Thurs, 7th Sept Catholic Schools Touch Football Carnival
• Fri, 8 Sept - Pupil Free Day - OHSC is available
• Sat 9th & Sun 10th September- Family Mass
• Wed, 13th Sept- School Board Meeting 
• Wed,  13th Sept - Year 6 Assembly
• Sat 16th  & Sun 17th - First Holy Communion Celebration
• Thurs, 21st Sept - Catholic Schools cricket Carnival
• Fri, 22nd Sept - Year 2 Italian Night 5-8pm
• 23rd & 24th Sept, First Holy Communion Celebration
• Mon 25th Sept, The Carly Ryan Presentation - Online Safety Parent Session 6.30pm - 8pm
• Wed, 27th Sept, Reception Assembly 
• Thurs, 28th Sept Choir Performance - Adelaide Festival Theatre
• Fri, 29 Sep - Last Day of School 12:30pm dismissal

TERM 4

• Mon, 16 Oct - First Day of School
• Wed, 1st Nov, School Board Meeting
• Mon, 13th Nov 5.15pm Children's University Graduation
• Wed, 29th Nov, School Board Meeting
• Thurs, 14 Dec - Last Day of School 3:05pm dismissal

Dear Parents and Community Members,

In this week’s newsletter I have decided to focus on cybersafety striving to continue educating our children and parents, as well as, doing my part in helping to provide the safest learning environment possible for our children doing my best to protect them from cyberbullying.

My reason for focussing on this topic this week is due to two events that have recently occurred:

1.      Over the last two weeks, our school has had to investigate a serious cyberbullying issue which included impersonating another child online on Snap Chat. This issue has affected the well-being of several children caught up in this incident and has been very emotional for both children, parents and staff involved.

2.      Last week, it came to our attention that a Year 3 child had set up their own Youtube Channel and breaching privacy laws in the process.

Faced with these ongoing issues, I decided to research and check the age for the following social media platforms and the following are for children 13 years old and over:

·         Snap Chat

·         Discord

·         Facebook

·         Instagram

·         Creating Tik Tok accounts

·         Creating Youtube Channels

I take this opportunity to remind all parents that children below the age of 13, therefore no child of primary school age, are not allowed to be on these social media platforms. If you are allowing your child to be on these social media platforms, you are breaching the Children Online Privacy Act of 1998 and you are knowingly allowing them to lie about their year of birth.

Messenger Kids is available for children below the age of 13, however, it is essential that it is linked in a way that parents can monitor their child’s conversations. Unfortunately, although every parent has reassured me that this occurs, our school counsellor and I, have been made aware of times when children have been unkind and hurtful to one another in their conversations.

Parents need to resist any pressure that your child places on you to begin using these social media platforms as they are not psychologically mature yet. The reality is that children’s ability to navigate through social media platforms can often supersede the ability of the parent. Consequently, parents need to be very alert about the activities of their child as you may not be aware that they may have commenced using these social media platforms. You also need to ensure that mobile phones, IPads and laptops are used in a public space in your home and never left in the children’s bedroom when they go to bed.

Our children at Whitefriars Catholic School are not just raised by their respective parents but they are raised by their village. Their village is every family in our school. Every parent has a responsibility, in fact an obligation, to ensure that you help to provide a safe environment for all children. In today’s technological world, unfortunately, the village is not just the physical school, but it is also the online world.

If your child is currently using any of the social media platforms that are restricted to children below the age of 13, I ask you to ensure that they delete their accounts via the app settings.

I thank you in anticipation for your support in this matter.

Learning Conversations

Starting on Monday the 11th of September, we commence the second round of Learning Conversations. Learning Conversations include the child, the parent/s and the class teacher in a 3-way conversation. I encourage all parents to make a time to speak with your child’s teacher about their learning progress. Your attendance will strengthen the home/school partnership and maximise children’s learning.

Kind Regards

Frank Congedi

 Sebastian receives a Mary Mackillop Award for his kindness towards other during the School Disco.

We congratulate Anthony  on receiving a Principal Award for demonstrating excellent commitment to learning.

We welcome and encourage all parents to attend the below Carly Ryan Presentation- Online Safety -Parent Session -  on Monday 25th September 6.30pm - 8pm

We had a brief taste of Spring weather earlier this week, and hopefully the wet, cold weather is slowly leaving us so that we can start to get outside and enjoy some sunshine.

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

With Spring upon us, and warm weather on the horizon I thought it would be good to highlight that on September 1st, Pope Francis declared this day as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. The day ‘offers to individual believers and to the community a precious opportunity to renew our personal participation in this vocation as custodians of creation, raising to God our thanks for the marvellous works that He has entrusted to our care, invoking his help for the protection of creation and his mercy for the sins committed against the world in which we live’.

I invite you to use this month of September to stop and reflect on your relationship with God, others and creation and how we as individuals and as a community can further contribute to ecological sustainability. Below is an excerpt written by the late Monsignor Denis Edwards which details examples of personal action.

“Pope Francis calls us all to an ongoing ecological conversion, to a spirituality of love and respect for other animals, and their habitats, for the land, the seas, the rivers, in the one community of life on Earth. All of this culminates in our Sunday day of rest and in the Eucharist that embraces all creation and is a source of light and motivation for our commitment to God’s creation.

You may like to think of ways that as a school, workplace and at home we could show our care for creation, and being environmental stewards through recycling, separating waste into landfill/compost/recycling, donating old clothes/workable equipment to charity, focus on reducing the amount of electricity we use (turn off lights, power down devices, etc), and getting active outside in the garden tending to weeds, growing plants, and playing in nature.”

Sacramental Program – concluding over the next few weeks

Over the next two weeks we will be celebrating Confirmation ceremonies at St. Margaret Mary’s church – we are very lucky that Archbishop Patrick O’Regan will be with us to lead the celebration. We congratulate Giuseppe B, Dana B, Ethan C, Nicolas C, Nathaniel D, Aiden D, Marcus D, Adriana E, Alessio F, Hugo F, Reiko G, Phillip H, Santi I, Alexandra J, Jaden L, Alessando M, Patrich M, Hunter N, Joey N, Brooklyn P, Sebastian P, Henry R, Madeline R, Samuel R, Charlotte T, Raymond T, Leroy T and Stella V for completing the 2023 Sacramental Program, and we now look forward to celebrating your Confirmation and First Holy Communions over the next three weeks.

We also congratulate Joel K, Mason T and Zoe T from the 2022 program who will complete their first Holy Communions this year.

Happy Fathers Day

To all the fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers within our school community – we pray that you have a wonderful Fathers Day on Sunday filled with love, laughter and fun – spent with your loved ones where you are celebrated for the important and loving role you play in raising and nurturing your children.

Healing Mass Thursday 14th September Rosary 7pm, Mass 7:30pm  including the Sacrament of Anointing, followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Reconciliation, Prayer Ministry with Candlelit music in the Spirit of Taize, and individual blessings with the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance.

Tea/Coffee available All welcome. At Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church 420 Seaview Road Henley Beach. Enquiries: Pauline 0403002240

Last week in the Reception, we celebrated Book Week every day! Each Reception teacher read a Book Week shortlisted book and the children moved to a new class each day to listen to the story.

With Miss Gipps, we read the story “Where the Lyrebird Lives” and learnt that lyrebirds can mimic the sounds of other birds in the Australian bush.

In Miss Gillard’s class, we listened to the story “Market Day” and made a fruit basket.

With Mrs Davison, we read the story “Bev and Kev” about a giraffe and a bird forming a great friendship.

In Miss Gonos' class, we listened to the story “Lionel and Me” and created a dog out of a paper plate.

We had so much fun listening to new stories!

Through Science lessons this year all students participated in the PRC Reading and Design Challenge in Term 2.

Ms Condo and I were so impressed with student entries, it was difficult to decide on our awards.

Students worked in their science lessons and in class to produce pictures and posters to be very proud of.

Together Mrs Fairweather and Ms Condo had the difficult task of choosing and awarding three students in each class for their effort in class and in producing their best work. Rec to year 2 students awards were based on effort and detail in their drawings. Year 3 to Year 6 had three categories: best effort, high quality and most improved.

Students were presented their awards in science lessons during Science Week in week four as part of the week’s celebrations. A lot of effort was put into the good copy entries that were submitted into the Reading and Design Challenge.

We were also very fortunate that we had three students selected as runners up in the whole state-wide competition. They were Xavier K from 4LK, Zachary B from 3T and Fleur K from 6C.

Mark Williams from the PRC office presented the students with their awards and prizes. Mrs Fairweather got to see our winning entries displayed at ‘Science Alive’ in early August at the Adelaide Showgrounds. It was very exciting!

Well done to all the students for their entries and congratulations to those who received awards!

STEM MAD challenge 2023

STEM MAD is designed to acknowledge and promote STEM learning initiatives that address real-world problems and demonstrate how students in Catholic schools take action that matters. Student teams are invited to design a product, service or innovation to Make A Difference (MAD) to others or the environment.

STEM MAD began in the Melbourne Catholic Diocese in 2018. From 2021, CESA began participating in a National STEM MAD Showcase with many other dioceses across the country.

Our school has participated from beginning, this being our third year of students producing videos for this challenge. With each year the competition gets more advanced. Four Year 6 teams and three year 4 teams worked weekly on identifying an area of need and designing a solution for that problem.

Only three teams per school were able to be submitted per category and one of our teams were selected to present at the showcase last week.

‘The Anti-Polluter 3000’ was created by Fleur K, Lina B and Japjot S. They identified that pollution is a problem in our water ways and designed a device to filter water of large rubbish items. They used a variety of Technology throughout their video to impress the judges such as Minecraft, 3D printing, K’nex construction and clever use of the Green Screen.

I was very proud of all the completed projects, by Years 6s and the Year 4s and they will be displayed at the STEM Expo next term.

From the Sports Desk 

SAPSASA Soccer 

Our school is part of the Western District zone for the State Championships in School Sport. Each year we have talented students going to the trials for a range of sports vying for selection against students from other schools in our area.

To be selected to go to the State Championships students need to be dedicated, skillful and a team player.  

Last week the State Championships for Soccer were held. Whitefriars had 3 students selected, 2 girls and 1 boy.

Ivory G, Stella R and Dion Di M played in games over the 3 days against teams from all over South Australia.

Western Districts are in Division 1 and the Girls team played some great soccer and won 2 games.

The Boys team, after losing their opening game, went onto be joint winners of the whole Championship essentially meaning they were the equal best team in South Australia, what an achievement! 

Congratulations to Ivory, Stella and Dion, what stars!!! 

Each year we have over 100 registered volunteers who help our school in so many different ways, contributing to our school and supporting children and staff.  Registered volunteers contribute to the school community in just some of the following ways:

• School Board 
• Parents & Friends events
• After School Sports (Coaches and Team Managers)
• Canteen
• Learning Assistance Program (LAP)
• Reading with children
• Assisting at excursions

All volunteers are required to obtain appropriate clearances, including a Department of Human Services (DHS) Clearance and Catholic Clearance.

Once submitted, clearances may take up to 6 weeks to process.

When you receive your clearance or card please bring this into the office for us to update to the Volunteer Register.

If you would like to volunteer, please see staff in the front office for a Volunteer Information Pack and support in registering as a volunteer.

Please see below for current volunteers wanted in our school.

Thankyou to the following volunteers assisting in Term 3, Week 6 & 7.

If you would like to contribute to this wonderful school community and spend some of your day making delicious food, chatting and laughing in good company, having fun and of course drinking coffee, whether you are able to assist for both recess and lunch, or just an hour, it makes a huge difference and we would love to have you join us.

• Monday - Friday
• Times: all day (9-1:30pm), recess (10:50-11:30am), lunch (12:50-1:30pm) or just an hour wherever you can!
• Tasks include: Making popcorns, jellies, sandwiches, assembling burgers, serving at the counter, packing lunches and stacking the chip rack.

Tasks are given in very easy, manageable steps so everyone can comfortably learn as you go.  No experience necessary!

If you would like to volunteer some time in the Canteen or would like to ask questions about what is involved, please contact Iris at the Canteen before school.

Iris Mori

Canteen Manager

We acknowledge and pay our respect to the Kaurna people as the traditional owners of the land of Mikawomma on which Whitefriars Catholic School is located.  We come with open hearts and minds to listen and learn from Elders - past, present and emerging.