Staffing News
Mrs Lina Christian, one of our wonderful Learning Support Assistants, has secured a new position at Catholic Education as part of the Wellbeing and Diversity Team. She will be greatly missed and we wish her well with her new role.

Following interviews I am very pleased to announce that Mrs Tracey Trewhella will be joining our staff as a Learning Support Assistant and Mrs Barbra Cox will be increasing her hours. Congratulations Mrs Cox and congratulations and welcome to Mrs Trewhella.

Mrs Linda de Salis will be joining us for an extra day a week for the remainder of the year to work with our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Thank you Mrs de Salis for taking on this new role.

Mini Vinnies Sleepout
Last Friday night 21 of our students from Years 4, 5 and 6 participated in the Mini Vinnies sleep out. This meant staying overnight in the Library in a sleeping bag, with only a piece of cardboard to sleep on. The students participated in a variety of activities to learn more about homelessness in Australia. Thank you to Nat Wright for her organisation of the event, and to Alana Quirk, Breena Walshe and Sue Anderson who helped out on the night. Thank you to Josh Mackenzie for cooking breakfast the next morning. Well done to all involved.

School Reports and Three Way Conferences
I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the teachers who have spent many weeks assessing and writing reports about their students. It takes countless hours to collect the valuable data to make professional judgements about student progress. While it is an ongoing practice of teachers to assess how students are achieving it also takes a great deal of time and energy to collate, moderate and then communicate this to parents succinctly and effectively.

Our Learning Showcase was a great success last week. Thank you to all the students, parents and teachers for making it so. It was great to hear laughter, joy and enthusiasm as people talked together about the students’ engagement and learning.

Rostrum
Congratulations to Riley in Year 6 who, after our own Year 6 competition, was selected to represent the school at the Rostrum Quarter Finals last night. Well done! The feedback for all participants on the night was very affirming.

Uniform
Most children are coming to school every day wearing the correct school uniform. There is, though, an increasing number of children wearing non-uniform school shoes and/or non-uniform beanies and coats. Please remember that our policy is for black leather school shoes to be worn with the school uniform.

I ask that all families use the holiday period to ensure all children have all they need to wear the correct uniform to school when we resume on Monday 22 July.

Leaving St Benedict’s
If you anticipate that your child will leave St Benedict’s at the end of this year, could you please notify the Front Office. We need to begin planning for staffing and class configurations for 2019. Thank you to those who have let us know already, this is very much appreciated. Naturally Year 6 parents need not respond to this request.