New Adventure Playground

 Adventure Playground

The new children's adventure playground, built this year, has been a real hit with the children. They absolutely love this swing in particular and will head straight for it, and queue up, to be able to use it at lunchtime and during golden time.

Sometimes taking your turn fairly by not queue jumping, and spending a fair amount of time on the swing, are issues that need to be dealt with by senior students looking after the swing.

Athletics Day 2014

Our school athletics day went off with a blast last Friday. Tyler shows proudly his 1st place card from the house relays.

Dress up Day - St Mary's 2014

 Dress up Day

Last Thursday St Mary's staff and students came dressed up as their favourite book character. We had all sorts of characters in room 6 as you can see from our photos. Children had to bring a gold coin donation, which will go towards relief efforts for the typhoon ravaged Philippines.

Some of the children put a lot of effort into their costume selection.

A group photo shows the wide range of characters we had in room 6.

Poppy vainly attempts to scare Mr. Bach with her costume.

  Charis

 Veronica

 Koby

 Jasmin

 Naina

 Ria

 Lucille

 Tyler

 Willem

Misty

Andrew Chinn

 Andrew Chinn -  2013

St Mary's was privilèged last week to welcome Australian Catholic Christian singer Andrew Chinn to our school for the day. Children are familiar with Andrew Chinn songs that we use regularly at St Mary's for class prayers, liturgies and masses. Some of the older children will remember Andrew from his last visit in 2010. Andrew spends the day working with the children to include as many as possible for the evening concert. He first works seperately with the junior, middle and senior schools in the morning and then the whole school together in the afternoon. Andrew is an 

ex-primary school teacher and is very patient and encouraging while working with the children.

 Joseph, Edward and Koby made great gophers during the Noah's Ark song.

Andrew performs with the children rather than performing to them.

 There were some great movers and shakers amongst the children during the songs.

 Willem poses with Andrew Chinn. Willem loves Andrew Chinn songs and is always asking for them for prayers during the year.

 Being cool during one of the performances.

Beautiful voices.

Willem boogies down the church aisle.

 Willem and Ryleah thank Andrew for coming and Willem presents him with the gift of a pen (but not in the case though!!!!)

Picture Prompts - writing

 Picture Prompts - Motivating to Write and stimulating thinking

A good way of getting children to write is by using picture (usually photo) prompts. Big pictures are best and they can be electronic or in paper form, as long as the children are able to look at them closely from the place from where they are writing.

Children can be guided to describe the setting or a character in the setting by using looks like, feels like, smells like and sounds like, or they can use the scene to begin a story using who, what where and when.

 The children may have to be encouraged to choose a prompt as procrastination in making a choice is common.

 Room 6 children have chosen their prompts in this picture and are now orgainising their books and other writing equipment.

Some children are very happy and motivated writers - others may need support and encouragement to write.