College Newsletter | Term 2 - Week 8 |16 June 2023

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From the College Principal

From the College Principal

Mr Matthew Brennan - College Principal (K-12)

Dear members of the St Greg’s family,

Last week we celebrated Champagnat Day as a community. It began with the inaugural Marcellin Walk, held through the suburb of Gregory Hills on Sunday 4 June. The developers, in collaboration with the Marist Brothers, have named some significant landmarks in the suburb, recognising the history of the College. I would like to recognise the work of parent, Ben Smith, for his vision and drive to make this event come to life and to Mrs Clarke for her support.

On Tuesday, at the Mass celebrated by Bishop Brian Mascord, he challenged us with several things. Firstly, he encouraged us to listen and to be inspired by St Marcellin’s example, his values, commitment to education and to his love and trust in God. We were challenged to seek wisdom, to foster a spirit of community, building relationships on trust and care for one another. Finally, the importance to serve, and to do so with humility, is something at the heart of any Marist community. It was a wonderful reminder to all about what we strive for as a faith-filled community.

Mrs Ivancic also gave a report on her recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to the Marist headquarters in Rome before heading to the birthplace of the Marist family, the Hermitage and its surrounds in southern France.

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    From the Assistant Principal/Head of Senior School

    Student Recognitions and New Staff

    Mr Joel Weekes - Assistant Principal

    Dear Members of the St Gregory’s Family,  

    Term 2 has flown on by with so many wonderful experiences, events and most importantly learning that is taking place. The students across the K-12 College have had a strong term and with them has come energy, life and vibrancy. I must say that the College is positively charged and optimistic for a big second half of the year! 

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      From the Head of Junior School

      We have come to find what Marcellin Found

      Mrs Diana Ivancic - Head of Junior School

      Dear St Gregory’s Community,

      Last week we celebrated St Marcellin Champagnat Day, along with fellow Marists across 600 schools and 80 countries. It is a time to celebrate being Marist. But what does that actually mean? 

      For those who were not at the Mass or have not viewed it on YouTube, I share with you a summary of the presentation I made at the end of Mass, where I made connections with my pilgrimage and our Marist Charism.

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        Mid-Year Reports

        On Tuesday 20 June, your child’s mid-year report will be published and available to access via the parent portal. Mid-year reports are an opportunity for classroom teachers to identify your child’s areas of achievement and areas to further develop.

        Last year, the reports were modified to provide language around your child’s achievements, rather than simply reduce them to a letter (A -E).

        I encourage you to take the time to read the reports with your child and talk about their progress and areas to work on moving forward.

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          From the Director of Mission

          A Week of Celebration - Champagnat Week

          Mrs Cathie Clarke - Director of Mission

          Last week was a week of celebration in recognition of the feast of Saint Marcellin Champagnat. We recognised the connection we have here at Saint Gregory’s to the local community and to the wider Marist family. 

          The week began with St Marcellin’s Walk on Sunday June 4. 

          Over the last few years, a host of public artwork has been installed in various positions around the suburb of Gregory Hills. This artwork connects with the rich history of St Gregory’s College and the Marist tradition. A group of staff, students, families and friends gathered for the walk. We began with a short reflection on Pope Francis’ writings on the Marian style of Church. As we walked, chatted and read the stories behind each artwork, we strengthened our understanding of the Marist story in this area, as well as out relationships with each other.

          Thank you to Ben Smith, father of Anthony in Year 8, for proposing this idea and working alongside me to make it happen.

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          From the Director of Teaching and Learning

          Leading from the Middle

          Ms Judith Tolomeo - Director of Teaching & Learning

          To support the College’s Strategic Priority area of being “A learning Centred College”, “Leading from the Middle” has been a critical focus for professional learning and development of Middle Leaders in 2023. Effective middle leadership is a critical component of school improvement strategies and can significantly contribute to raising student achievement in a school.

          Middle leaders play a significant role in shaping student educational outcomes within and beyond the College. These leaders, often in positions such as heads of departments, year-level coordinators, or curriculum leaders, have a direct influence on teaching and learning within their respective areas of responsibility. Their impact can be observed in various ways. 

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          From the Director of Students

          Achievements and Upcoming Events

          Mr Baldino Vetrano - Director of Students

          Dear Students, Parents, and Guardians,

           

          I hope this newsletter finds you all in good health and high spirits. As the term comes to a close shortly, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the achievements of our students and share some important information regarding upcoming events. 

          I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the entire St. Gregory's College community for your unwavering support throughout the term. Together, we have achieved great milestones, and I have no doubt that our collective efforts will continue to lead to greater success in the future.

           

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            From the Director of Studies

            From the Director of Studies

            Ric Bombardiere - Director of Studies

            Upcoming events

            • Wednesday 21 June HSC Minimum Standards Catch-up sessions begin
            • Friday 21 July - Year 7 - 10 Semester 1 Academic Celebration
            • Wednesday 26 July Stage 6 Course Selection Information Evening & Expo.
            • Monday 31 July Trial HSC Examinations begin

             

            For further information, please click below.

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              From the Director of Boarding

              Term 2 Wrap Up and Moving Forward

              Luke Morrissey - Director of Boarding

              Dear Parents and Friends,

              Term 2 has gone extremely fast with so many events and activities to engage our families and your sons. We are at the end of Semester 1 and reports and Semester Awards are currently being finalised, with only a handful of assessment tasks still to be completed. Thank you for all of your support as we have navigated this term and supported your sons on their boarding journey.

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              First Nations - Junior and Senior School

              First Nations Weaving Class

               

              Last week, Audrey, Ayla & Jagger went to St Pat’s College along with Mrs Cosentino. We learned to make Aboriginal bracelets out of raffia. Although it was hard at first we ended up getting it in the end. The art teacher helped us with our bracelets.

              It was hard to form the colours but we worked at it and did our best. The bracelets were colourful, bright and challenging to make. All the St Pat’s girls were really nice and we worked together.

              It was a great opportunity to work with the high school girls. Thanks to Mr Humphries for organising it.

              By Audrey 

              Reconciliation Week BBQ

              Our Senior First Nations Boys held a National Reconciliation week BBQ for the Senior college to enjoy. A gold coin donation was asked for the sausage sandwich with funds being raised to support the Santa Teresa – Ltyentye Apurte community south of Alice Springs. The BBQ was well received after sport on Thursday during National Reconciliation week.

              National Reconciliation Week (NRW) started as the Week of Prayer for Reconciliation in 1993 (the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples) and was supported by Australia’s major faith communities.

              In 1996, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation launched Australia’s first National Reconciliation Week.

              In 2001, Reconciliation Australia was established to continue to provide national leadership on reconciliation.

              In the same year, approximately 300,000 people walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge as part of National Reconciliation Week and subsequently across bridges in cities and towns to show their support for reconciliation.

              Today, National Reconciliation Week is celebrated in workplaces, schools and early learning services, community organisations and groups, and by individuals Australia-wide.

              Mr Shaun Humpheries

              First Nations Liaison Officer

              National Reconciliation Week Morning Tea

              National Reconciliation Week Morning tea and was hosted by some of our Senior College students and learned the ways of baking a traditional First Nations Johnny Cakes (Sweet Bread). The Junior school students worked with our senior boys to create the dough ready for First Nations Liaison Officer Mr Humphries, to cook on the BBQ. All students were then joined in the First Nations Garden to share morning tea and their cooking creations.

              There may be some future chefs in the making, and as discussed at the workshop Mr Humphries said he would share the recipe for the students to continue baking at home with their families.

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              Senior School Sport

              Peter Mulholland Cup - Round 2 Match Report

              Yesterday the boys travelled to Ryde (for the third time in a row - surely the next one we get to host!) to take on Holy Cross in round 2 of the Peter Mulholland Cup. 

              Needing a win, and off the back of some strong form in the PDS competition the boys took little time to get the scoring underway as Heath Mason burst through a gap running 60m to score the first of three tries he managed today. 

              We crossed again shortly after, and 15 minutes in we were up 14-0 before some poor handling and errors left us defending our line for some time. The boys showed great resilience to continually turn them away, and we scored a couple more before the half-time break, leading 26-0.

              After crossing early again in the second half we made a couple of defensive errors letting Holy Cross score a couple of quick tries, before settling again and finishing off the game strong with another long range try, this time to Liam Walsh. The score finished 50-10, however we did miss around 8 kicks for goal from the sideline, something to fix next week!

              There were a number of outstanding performances yesterday, skipper Heath Mason was terrific, Dylan Smith creates opportunities out of hooker all game, Archie Duncombe must have made 45 tackles and Jed Reardon was strong as usual. All boys are improving across the park every game. 

              Next week we take on Blacktown in the PDS Semi-Final, at home, and we want to finish the term on a high. 

              Onto the next one!

                College Senior Athletics Carnival

                The annual St Gregory’s College Athletics carnival will be held on Tuesday 20 June on the College grounds. We welcome parents and guardians to attend the Athletics Carnival to cheer on the students. Your support and encouragement play a vital role in creating a positive and motivating environment. In the case of inclement weather, we may need to reschedule the Athletics Carnival. The back update for this is Tuesday 25 July.

                The carnival will give students the opportunity to be selected for the 2023 St Gregory’s College Athletics Team. The events that will take place are 100m, 400m, 1500m, shot put, discus, javelin, high jump, and long jump. Our College Athletics team have performed extremely well under the guidance of Mr Bullock (Head Coach) over the past 25+ years and we hope to keep that tradition going.

                 

                The Sheaf Cafe will be closed on Tuesday. Lunch orders via Flexischools will be available as normal, but the orders must be collected from the BBQ area at SGC1 from 1pm. Students will be able to purchase drinks and sausage sandwiches from the fundraising BBQ throughout the day.

                This carnival is a compulsory school event. If your son is absent from school on the day, please follow the normal College procedure to report absences.

                If you have any further questions, please contact Mr Mitchell Tyler at mtyler@stgregs.nsw.edu.au

                  Senior School News

                  A Night with a Mentor

                  After many hours of preparation and an enormous amount of anticipation from the boys, the College hosted its first mentoring night for our Year 12 students. The night  kicked off with a masterclass run by John Issa and Anthony Minichiello. The focus of their masterclass was around entrepreneurship, the school of hard knocks and healthy living.

                   

                  We then moved into split sessions for students and parents. The parents engaged in a keynote presentation given by Kelly Whitney from Western Sydney University. Kelly outlined key data and insights into Generation Z and how their work futures have changed. The feedback from this session was overwhelmingly positive. 

                   

                  The second session was the mentoring part of the evening. We had 132 mentors interviewing 128 students. 396 interviews were conducted during the 45-minute time allocation. The interactions, the positive vibe and the insights gained were priceless for our students. The only negative comment was “I wish I had more time for more interviews”, something that will be adapted for next year’s event. Both students and mentors absolutely loved the interactions and were appreciative of the opportunity the event provided them. It was also great to see many of the mentor’s ‘network’ between themselves.

                   

                  The final session of the event was a question-and-answer session with a varied cross-section of the mentors. Great questions were asked by students and parents in an open forum that went over time due to the deep nature of interactions between the audience and the panel of experts.

                  Mr Michael Ivancic

                  Leader of Learning - Careers and Transitions

                  A Night with a Mentor

                  After many hours of preparation and an enormous amount of anticipation from the boys, the College hosted its first mentoring night for our Year 12 students. The night  kicked off with a masterclass run by John Issa and Anthony Minichiello. The focus of their masterclass was around entrepreneurship, the school of hard knocks and healthy living.

                   

                  We then moved into split sessions for students and parents. The parents engaged in a keynote presentation given by Kelly Whitney from Western Sydney University. Kelly outlined key data and insights into Generation Z and how their work futures have changed. The feedback from this session was overwhelmingly positive. 

                   

                  The second session was the mentoring part of the evening. We had 132 mentors interviewing 128 students. 396 interviews were conducted during the 45-minute time allocation. The interactions, the positive vibe and the insights gained were priceless for our students. The only negative comment was “I wish I had more time for more interviews”, something that will be adapted for next year’s event. Both students and mentors absolutely loved the interactions and were appreciative of the opportunity the event provided them. It was also great to see many of the mentor’s ‘network’ between themselves.

                   

                  The final session of the event was a question-and-answer session with a varied cross-section of the mentors. Great questions were asked by students and parents in an open forum that went over time due to the deep nature of interactions between the audience and the panel of experts.

                  Mr Michael Ivancic

                  Leader of Learning - Careers and Transitions

                  Junior School News

                  Year 2 "Sharing the Planet"

                  This term, Year 2 has been inquiring into recycling and repurposing materials under the theme ‘Sharing the Planet’.

                  We have inquired into:

                  • The different forms of materials
                  • The process of recycling
                  • Individual and collective responsibilities towards the planet.

                  Throughout this unit, our students have had the opportunity to conduct experiments to support their learning. These include investigating the properties of materials and creating playdough out of household items.

                  Year 2 had the opportunity to learn how Indigenous communities create objects using materials from the land. This was led by Mr Shaun Humphries, our First Nations Liaison Officer.

                  At the end of our unit, students used their knowledge of recycling and repurposing materials by coming up with designs for something new. An example of this is by using milk bottles, bottle caps and paper to create a toy car.

                  Miss Cefai and Miss Owen

                  Year 2 Teachers

                   

                   

                  National Simultaneous Storytime

                  Each year in May, the Australian Library and Information Association holds National Simultaneous Storytime - the same book is read, at the same time, all over the country. The target for this year was easily achieved with over 2 million students in over 59,000 locations world-wide, reading Rebecca Young’s “The Speedy Sloth”, illustrated by Heath McKenzie.

                   

                  On Wednesday 24 May at 10:30am, all of the Junior School watched a reading of ‘The Speedy Sloth’, not just in English, but also in Spanish, courtesy of Senora Grados. Some sloths (Ms Dodson and Mrs Ivancic) also visited classes, handing out sloth stickers and encouraging the persistence of Spike from the story.

                   

                  During Library lessons in the week prior our students conducted research into sloths, finding out interesting facts such as the reason for their sluggishness - they have a super low metabolic rate. They also did some mindful sloth mandala colouring and read “The sloth who came to stay”, by Margaret Wild.

                   

                  Mrs Rachael Cosentino

                   

                  Year 3 - Influential World of Advertising

                  Did you know that advertising is so powerful that it can tell us we need something even before we think we do! That is why Year 3 decided to explore the influential world of advertising this term. We began by looking at the features of advertisements so that we could understand how advertisers command the attention of their audience.

                  The way they use colour was particularly interesting, we didn’t realise that they chose to use certain colours because of the way they make you feel. We became experts at picking apart all kinds of advertisements and were really intrigued at seeing the creative ways words, images and songs, in particular, are used to leave a lasting impression. It then came time for us to put together our own advertisements.

                  We wanted to choose something to advertise that we all knew really well and felt passionate about so what better place for us to advertise than our very own school! We think you will agree that our advertisements are very convincing. There’s a celebrity endorsement, a call to action, bright images, a catchy slogan, interesting font and emotive language.

                  After seeing our advertisements, we are positive that we will have every family in the area wanting to enroll their child in St Greg’s! 

                  Mrs Amanda Morgan

                  Junior School Sport

                  Independent Primary Schools Sporting Organisation (IPSSO) result for Weeks 6, 7 & 8

                  Winter IPSSO

                  Results for Weeks 6, 7 & 8

                   

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