Remembrance Day
This morning at 10.55am, St Anne’s held a Remembrance Day service and students and staff stood for a minute’s silence on the lawn under the oak tree. The Year 6 Defence students lead the service and the wonderful Brad Cruickshank played the Last Post/Rouse. In Mrs Canfield’s words, ‘I’m very proud of the Year 6 students for their leadership and responsibility running the service on their own’. Thank you Mrs Canfield.
House Handwriting Competition
This morning we held our House Handwriting competition. This competition is an opportunity for our students to demonstrate their ‘personal excellence’ through handwriting. The key criteria included correct formation, sizing and placement of letters, with our older students including joined writing. Overall, it was a tight competition, with Wellington Binks winning this year. Congratulations to our students below who came first for their year level.
Foundation: Elizabeth Keen
Year 1: Annie Van Berkel
Year 2: Emily Millar
Year 3: Lexie Elliman
Year 4: Charlotte Greenwell
Year 5: Milla Said
Year 6: William Edgar
Grandparents & Special Friends Fellowship
We had overwhelming support for one of our most important Fellowships of the year, our Grandparents & Special Friends Fellowship, which was held last week and even included visitors travel who travelled from interstate for the occasion. Our guest speaker Don Burns shared his wonderful insight into being a grandparent. He spoke about how grandparents ‘slow’ things down for their grandchildren in such a busy world. Don spoke from the heart and shared his special connection with his three grandsons. Our Junior Choir and Strings ensemble performed for our extensive audience and our special guests were invited to visit classrooms after Fellowship. Small picnic packs were also organised for our families to share; the food was delicious and I’d like to thank everyone for their patience as it took longer than expected to get these packs to our families. The feedback from our Grandparents is that they loved the opportunity to spend some special time with their grandchildren. Thank you to those who helped organise the day and to those who attended.
Fellowships
Between newsletters, we have also had wonderful Fellowships from McCubbin, Barton and Bradman students. These Fellowships have focused on resilience, personal excellence and treating others how you wish to be treated. Our Fellowships allow our St Anne’s community to come together. They are student-centred and include a key message, musical items and prayer. Afterwards, our visitors are encouraged to have a cup of tea or coffee and an opportunity to socialise with other parents.
2023 staffing
Planning for 2023 has been well underway. I am excited to announce our teaching staff, which includes some new teachers joining our School Community.
Anna Duffield will teach in Foundation, Kate Burgess in Year 1, and Jackie Schuback and Shauna Drew in Year 4. Sadly, we also have some staff leaving us at the end of the year. Louise Sullivan has already started her maternity leave and we are super excited about the impending arrival of her new baby!
Linda Vale is also retiring at the end of this year after a long and distinguished teaching career and Liz Foat, Amy Laverty and Ellen Condron have resigned as they seek a range of different opportunities and adventures. I will be communicating more about our leaving staff closer to the end of the year to outline the positive impact they have all had on our students and culture at St Anne’s.
For the remainder of this year, Nicky Roberts will continue in her role as Acting Deputy Head of St Anne’s, Shauna Drew will teach Foundation Mawson and Anna English will continue to teach Year 3 (Tasman). I am delighted that we have two experienced teachers who are able to step in at both Mawson and Tasman and I thank these teachers for liaising closely to ensure continuity of learning for all students.
The teachers for next year are as follows:
Foundation: Bree Alexander and Anna Duffield
Year 1: Sophie Keen and Kate Burgess
Year 2: Sarah Wheeler and Rebekah Tayler
Year 3: Nicky Roberts and Kristen Rich
Year 4: Anna English/Katie Howard and Jackie Schuback/Shauna Drew
Year 5: Liz Dawson and Lisa Goode
Year 6: Julie Jago and Toni Hutton
Art: Louise Hulls
Music: Katie Germaine
Library: Eliz Noble
P.E: Simone Langshaw
Japanese: Jan Chalmer
Digital Technology: Evan Lamb
Learning Support: Linda Lothian, Louise Anderson, Michelle Thompson and Vanessa Walsh
Sporting Success
We had seven students recently represent Gippsland Grammar at the Sports Victoria State Athletics Carnival. This is a huge achievement for these students to compete against the top athletes in the state. Melina Beanland ran the 100m and came 7th; Ryan Berton competed in the high jump and cleared 1.36m to finish 10th; Cruz Duck came 14th in the 800m and 7th in the 1500m; Jack McLay ran the 100m and placed 12th; Henri Duggan came 3rd in the 200m sprint and 5th 1500m; Charlie Strachan came 8th in the 800m and 9th in the 1500m and Charlie, Fletcher Wynne, Henri and Jack ran the 100m relay and finished 4th in a close race. A huge congratulations to these students!
Camps Program
As you have already read in our Bairnsdale Campus section of the newsletter, our School’s camps program for our Year 3 to Year 6 students provide unique experiences for our students. Since the beginning of Term 4, students from St Anne’s and our Bairnsdale campus have combined at various camps within Gippsland including at Gelantipy, near Buchan (Year 6), Coonawarra, near the Den of Nargun (Year 5) and Camp Rumbug, near Foster (Year 4). As our camps program was paused during Covid, which also led to many students having had minimal sleepovers during this same period, spending multiple nights away from home was challenging for many students.
The aims of our camps are to:
- Broaden our students’ understanding of themselves.
- Foster growth in resilience, self-esteem, confidence, independence, leadership, and the ability to get along with others.
- Gain an increased ‘natural awareness’ through extended exposure to their natural world.
Feedback about our camps program from our teachers, students and families has been very positive. Personally, I would like to thank the staff and parents who provided the organisation, care and support for our students during these camps.
Spring Concert
Our St Anne’s Spring Concert will be held on Thursday November 17 in the Lorna Sparrow Hall from 5.30pm. This event is a wonderful celebration of music that will showcase our junior campus ensembles and choirs including: Foundation to Year 2 Choir, Junior Choir, St Anne’s Singers, Rock Band, Year 2 Strings, Year 3 Strings, Year 4 Training Band Chamber Strings and Concert Band. All of our students have been working with enthusiasm and dedication towards this much anticipated event and we look forward to sharing the growing talent of our St Anne’s Campus musicians with our whole School Community.
Important Dates
* Spring Concert: Thursday November 17
* Staff Professional Learning Day (student-free day): Friday November 18
* ELC Christmas Concert: Friday November 25
* 2023 Year 7 Orientation Week (November 22-25)
* St Anne’s Orientation Day: Friday December 2
