St Francis of Assisi College - Term 2 Week 2 - 2023

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May is the month of Mary

For May, give Mary a special spot in your prayer corner. It can be a statue, a picture, or some representation of our Blessed Mother. Make it appealing and a real tribute to her beauty and virtue. She was the first disciple, and we hear of her triumphant “yes” to be the mother of Jesus.

A Mother’s Day Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ,

You chose to put yourself—tiny, needy, and helpless—into the nurturing and watchful hands of a human mother. Since then, every act of mothering, both physical and spiritual, in every time and every corner of the world recollects Mary’s.

Inspired by this example, we, too, honour our mothers and mother figures today. Bless these women, that they may be strengthened as Christian mothers and nurturers. Let the example of their faith and love shine forth. Grant that we, their sons, and daughters, honour them always with a spirit of profound respect.

We ask this in your holy name. Amen.

Staff Professional Development Day – 9 June

Families are reminded that Friday 9th of June is a Pupil Free Day, and college staff will be coming together for a professional learning day, with a specific focus on teaching and learning.

I trust students and parents will experience the benefits of the work that occurs on this day through our service to students and families.

Catholic Education Week

May 15 – 19 is Catholic Education Week in all CESA schools across the Port Pirie Diocese, and the Arch Diocese of Adelaide.  To celebrate this, next Wednesday we are hosting St Joseph’s School Renmark, Our Lady of the River School Berri, St Albert’s School Loxton, and St Joseph’s School Barmera.  The day will begin with combined outdoor Liturgy, and then an afternoon of activities students and staff will engage in across the campus.

Stage 2 Building Progress

Mossop Construction and Interiors have now been onsite for several weeks and have made an outstanding start to the programmed building developments.  The major works of this stage includes:

• Year 10 – 12 Learning Building
• Two additional senior science laboratories
• Metal tech fit out to St Joseph’s Technology Centre
• Productive Garden

As further progress is made, continual updates and images will be shared with students and families.

Nathan Hayes, Principal

Tactical Teaching Reading

The College continues to ensure all students are improving their literacy and numeracy learning through investing in professional learning for all staff.  As a literacy focus this year, staff are completing the Tactile Teaching Reading training. This training explores different ways of supporting students in their reading in both their cross-curricular and subject-specific learning. The most recent workshop focussed on the explicit teaching of reading strategies and making these strategies visible. Teachers have been using these strategies successfully across all subject areas by scaffolding the learning through teaching practices such as modelling, sharing, guiding and applying. Students are using a range of reading strategies including, skimming, summarising and paraphrasing, scanning, predicting and synthesis.

The use of SEQTA at the College provides a connected learning community, involving the teacher, students, and families. It enables learning and progress to be visible, including homework. As a parent, you can view the homework set for your child through SEQTA, by accessing the dashboard.  Similarly, students are able to access this through their SEQTA learn platform.

Natalie Meuret, Leader of Learning 

Student Transitions

The College will welcome Year 6 students from all corners of the Riverland during Term 2 and Term 3 in the first stage of our comprehensive transition program. The four catholic primary schools have two Immersion days scheduled and students from non-Catholic schools are invited to be immersed in a day of learning at St Francis of Assisi College.

The College will share further communication via your child’s classroom teacher at all four catholic primary schools. If your child is enrolled at a non-Catholic school, please contact the College on (08) 8585 4500 or via email info@assisi.catholic.edu.au 

Wellness Hub

Exciting news! This term we have commenced running a Wellness Hub, focusing on Women's Health. Each Tuesday lunch time, pop up sessions are held to promote positive body image, confidence, health, and overall well-being for our students. This week, students made their own delicious smoothies with ingredients of their choice! 

Laudato Si’ Action Group

Members of the Laudato Si Action Group have worked with a group of interested students to start up our first student club!  

Dungeons & Dragons

The Dungeons and Dragons Club will meet every Monday and Friday lunchtime to play the game in the Multipurpose Room. Stduents are invited to join by registering their name at the student noticeboard.

If any students are interested in joining the Laudato Si’ Action Group to start their own student club, please complete the form using the QR code above, or click here

Wellbeing Article

Sleep in Teenagers

Dr Moira Junge (Health Psychologist) and Dr David Cunnington (Sleep Physician) host the monthly podcast, Sleep Talk – Talking all things sleep.

Why do teenagers have trouble with sleep? What can be done about it? To help answer these questions we talk with Assoc Prof Margot Davey, Director of the Melbourne Children’s Sleep Centre at Monash Children’s Hospital.

Read & Listen Here

Links mentioned in the podcast: 

• World Sleep Day
• Teens and Screens – podcast episode
• FitBit validity against polysomnography – Journal of Sleep Research
• FitBit validity outside the laboratory – Journal of Sleep Research
• Media article on FitBit research
• The Magic of Sleep – book

“Be happy in the moment; that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.”
– Mother Teresa

Luke Cotter, Leader of Wellbeing 

During the holidays Reece Clark was busy building a trailer to fit our College gator.  Under the guidance of his grandfather, Ivan Smith, Reece spent about 30 hours constructing the trailer using recycled and second hand materials! The materials were sourced from a number of local businesses, to whom we are very grateful: 

• Darran Vanderwoude, River Murray Auto Wreckers
• Dean Smart
• Jack Gale, Jack Gale Welding and Sand Blasting
• Trevor Thorpe, Hoops Auto Pro

This trailer will be towed by our College gator and used to move heavy equipment and sports gear around the College grounds for sports carnivals and other special events.  Reece compiled a power point presentation to show the various steps of the building process. We extend our thanks to Reece (and Ivan) for their generous donation and fantastic efforts! 

This Thursday and Friday Year 7, 8 and 9 students completed in the Mountain Bike Teams Championships.  Full details will be published soon, in the meantime checkout this short video and enjoy photos from Thursday's event. 

Mountain Bike Teams Championships 

New Term Rowing

This term we are offering rowing once a week, predominately on water, as a way of further developing our skills through the off season. We have also welcomed a new group of Year 8 and 9 students who expressed an interest in rowing. This is a great opportunity to not only grow our team, but to allow others to try the sport again or maybe for the first time!

We held our first session last week in the Multipurpose Room, where new students practiced the sequence of the rowing stroke on the erg's and familiarised themselves with some key rowing language. We then hit the water this Monday, and while it was cold, all students did well.

Yr 7 HPE Rowing

This term our Year 7 students are learning to row as part of HPE. Students were introduced to the sport during Week 1 and spent some time practising the sequence of the rowing stroke on the ergo’s in the Multipurpose Room. They also had a play around with some sculling oars, learning how to handle them during the rowing stroke.

This week, both classes had their first on water practical down at the Renmark Rowing Club, the conditions were perfect! Students that went on the water did exceptionally well, with each crew finishing the session rowing all together. While groups on the land were put through a Strength and Conditioning circuit and time on the ergo. Both of which play a key role in our College Rowing Program.

Here is a short video:  Yr 7 First on Water Rowing

First Rowing Regatta

At the start of the last school holidays, 11 of our students travelled to West Lakes to take part in their very first regatta!

We were very fortunate to have Rowing SA assist in organising equipment for us to use on the day. A special thank you to Unley High School, Norwood International High School and Riverside Rowing Club who leant us boats and oars.  This plays a large role in supporting our program as it reduces the workload required to transport our own equipment. The crews that raced were:

3W4x+ (3rd Grade Women’s Coxed Quad Scull) & NW4x+ (Novice Women’s Coxed Quad Scull)

Crew 1: Billie Augey, Imogen Lyons, Riley Broad, Blossom Kimberley, cox: Harry Pfeiffer

Crew 2: Sophie Heywood, Sophie Robinson, Chelsea Docking, Denver Kimberley, cox: Max Hunt

NM2x (Novice Men’s Double Scull)

Brodie Hunt, Harry Pfeiffer

NW2x (Novice Women’s Double Scull)

Billie Augey, Imogen Lyons

NM1x (Novice Men’s Single Scull)

Brodie Hunt

Students each had the chance to participate in two races, with all learning and improving from their first race to their second. This was a worthwhile experience and a great way to end what was a challenging start to our Rowing Program, with students unfortunately spending a large chunk of the season off the water due to the floods.  

The State Go Kart Titles this year was held in Morgan over 4 days, 4th-7th May. Over 305 drivers competed in races made up of 14 different classes. Our own Sienna Reichstein and Declan Swart completed! 

Sienna entered in the Junior Heavy class, she raced in a group of 30 Junior's and only the top 20 make the finals. There are 4 heats (6 laps per heat) and a final (8 laps).  Sienna made the finals and was overall crowned SA #12.

Declan entered in the Junior light class which also had 30 entries. He competed under the same format as Sienna.  Declan also made finals and was crowned SA #13

Congratulations to them both, they  gained lots of experience and had the best time racing with kids from all over Australia. 

(Declan's kart number is #69 and Sienna's is #98)

Despite some injury challenges River Dowing has performed very well in recent athletics competitions. 

River came 5th in the Under 14 100m at the Australian Little Athletics Championships in Melbourne in the second week of the school holidays.  Amazing effort considering he was coming off an injury (hip flexor) and had not run for over two months in the lead up to the comp, even up to the day of the event he had not run a full 100m sprint.

Because of his injury River's Team coach pulled him from his favourite 200m event, that he was scheduled to run the day prior.  This was to give him the best chance at the 100m sprint. River's 100m sprint times prior to unjury were mid 11 seconds and on the day he ran 12.12s. A great result considering he had to refrain from running and training in the lead up. 

Disappointingly, due to his injury, River had to pull out of the Australian Track and Field Championships in Brisbane held in the first week of the school holidays. 

Yates Menswear supply our College uniforms directly to families.  Jenny, from Yates, has let us know they have the following knitwear and softshell jackets available:

Softshell jackets sizes: 10, 12,14,16, XS, S, M and L

Rugby knit jumper sizes: XS, S,M,L,XL and XXL

Knit jumper sizes: 12, 16, 18, 20 and 22

A number of other winter uniform items are due for delivery to Yates in two - three weeks time. 

Students currently attending the College do not need to re-enrol. 

Are you interested in Sports Videography?  This may be an opportunity for you! 

Dartfish film local sport in the Riverland and have vacant part time positions for at least two students or parents/teachers keen on some part time videography.

These are paid positions and may include some editing for interested media personnel (note Dartfish currently employ approx. 200 personnel in similar positions).

Football is one area Dartfish film every Saturday in all the various towns.

For more information contact; 

John Douglas, Dartfish National Manager - Australia
M: 0414 192 324
E: john.douglas@dartfish.com
http://www.dartfish.com

About the parenting program

The program is designed to support parents of teenagers struggling with school attendance (often called ‘school refusal’) due to anxiety and/or depression. The program is self-guided and completed entirely online. 

The program is called Partners in Parenting – Education (‘PiP-Ed’). PiP-Ed is a new, updated version of the award winning, evidence-based parenting program ‘Partners in Parenting’. PiP-Ed provides parents with personalised and practical parenting strategies to respond to their teenager’s anxiety, depression, and school attendance difficulties, with the aim of improving their parenting confidence and supporting their teen’s mental health and education.

You can find out more information about the program on our website 

Who is the program for?

The program is designed for parents/guardians of teenagers aged 12 to 18 who:

Have difficulty attending school due to anxiety, depression, or emotional distress
Live in Australia
Are proficient in English
Have regular internet access.

The program is not recommended as a sole source of support for young people experiencing 'school refusal'. We recommend parents seek professional support from a mental health and/or education professional alongside completing this program. Although any parent can take part, please also note that the program content is not tailored for parents of teenagers living with Autism Spectrum Disorder or an intellectual disability.

Free to join

The PiP-Ed program is completely free. If parents complete the optional evaluation survey at the end of the program, they’ll be reimbursed with a $20 e-voucher to thank them for their time. Some parents may also be invited to complete an optional interview about their experience with the program, for which they will receive an additional $20 e-voucher.

To sign up and access the program as a parent or professional, follow this link.