School Vision
St Matthew’s School empowers children to embrace life-long learning, and grow and develop as God intends.
Dear Parents & Caregivers,
On Friday 30 July, our wonderful community came together for our Christmas in July Quiz Night. The costumes were incredible! The company was enjoyable! And the generosity is outstanding! Thanks to the hard work of our dedicated P&F, we were able to raise approximately $8000 for the purchase of new Junior Primary Reading Books. A massive thank you to every family, business and individual who donated their time, resources and/or talents to ensure that this event was so successful. A particularly big thank you to the P&F Executive who gave up so much of their free time to this event – including many members that stayed until 12:30am vacuuming up the snow!
Morley Leos
This weekend, St Matthew’s School happily opened its doors to allow the Leos Community Service group to use our facilities for the weekend. Over 40 Year 10 and Year 11 students from Morley Senior High School came to help complete community projects around Narrogin. This included working at Divine You and the Narrogin Community Garden. I am very proud that we have been able to support this initiative and hope to continue this relationship into the future. I also want to extend a big thank you to Sr Sahaya for helping the teens complete the projects and for ensuring that our beautiful school was left squeaky clean and ready for Monday.
Uniform Changes
Many would recall from last year that I invited parents to complete a uniform survey. I once again thank those parents who took the opportunity to share their opinions and thus help us to make community informed decisions. Upon collating the findings from this survey and holding discussions with CEWA representatives, the School Advisory Council, staff, students and our Leadership Team, we have decided to make the following change commencing 2022:
Ties need only be worn by students in Years 4 to 6
Children in all year groups will be expected to wear ties with their formal uniforms for the remainder of Term 3.
Children’s Liturgy of the Word
Children’s Liturgy of the Word was recommenced at St Matthew’s Parish on Sunday. This will be offered on the second and fourth Sundays of the month. Children’s Liturgy is for children approximately aged between 4 and 8 years. The aim is to provide an experience that is enjoyable and more appropriate to their level of understanding. Due to new legislation, parents need to register their children at the Parish Centre before Mass begins.
Parents are requested to:
* Complete and sign the Parent Consent Form.
* Take a copy of the Instructions for Parents and Children.
* Go through the Code of Behaviour.
Consent forms will be used to prepare an attendance roll and an identity lanyard for your child/ren. Children will not be able to attend without a completed Consent Form. The forms are available from the Office, or from the Parish Centre before Mass on Children’s Liturgy days.
This term, Children’s Liturgy will be offered on 22 August and 12 September.
EAL/D Parent Information Session
A big thank you to the parents who attended the EAL/D session on Wednesday afternoon. We hope you found the session informative and appreciate your input into developing inclusive school practices.
In order to provide all of our parents an opportunity to take part in this important session, we would like to repeat it this Wednesday evening at 7pm in the Sr Mary Library:
Do you speak an additional language?
Are you from a non-English speaking background?
Is your family new to Australia?
Do you want to know more about our multicultural school?
Come along to find out more about:
Why a second language is a wonderful thing
What LBOTE & EAL/D means?
How St Matthew’s is supporting LBOTE families
How parents can support their children
Reporting for EAL/D Students
Share your thoughts & Ideas on creating an inclusive community
Registration of your attendance is essential to ensure this session takes place. Please email susan.milton@cewa.edu.au, or phone the school to secure your place. Babysitting is available.
One Big Voice Performance
Our beautiful choir is heading to Perth on Friday 20 August to perform in One Big Voice. This is a fantastic opportunity for our kids to be part of Australia’s largest and most inclusive children’s choir. To help our choir prepare for the big show at the RAC Arena, we would like to invite all of our families to a mini-concert in the Sr Isobel Hall on Wednesday 18 August at 2pm.
Kindy Enrolments
I will commence conducting Kindy interviews for 2022 in Week 6 of this term. These interviews give families an opportunity to learn about our Kindy curriculum and school procedures. More importantly, it provides us with an opportunity to welcome new families into our community. If you know of any families ready to send their little people to Kindy, please encourage them to pop into the Office to pick up an enrolment pack.
Australian Census
The Australian census on 10 August 2021 will provide a snapshot of who Australians are and what is important to us. The census is a key tool that government uses to determine how organisations, schools, church ministries and community groups are prioritised, funded and empowered to best operate in our State.
If your faith is important to you or if you identify with Christian values, please use your voice in the Australian census when asked your religion. This is an important opportunity to demonstrate the significance of faith-based families in our West Australian community and will support endeavours to secure equitable access to opportunities and resources.
Principal Focus – What’s in a Name?
There are many reasons why children might call each other names. Often in learning to navigate their world, little people may resort to name-calling as a way of expressing their anger or frustration or to take back some control over a situation in which they are feeling insecure. Unfortunately, our older students may do it because they think it is funny, in an effort to impress others or even in an attempt to exert some power over their peers. Although this is often very age typical behaviour, it is important that this behaviour not be ignored:
The point is not so much the word the child uses — much of the time kids don’t know what their insults mean. The deeper issue is insensitivity to another’s feelings. Part of discipline is helping your child learn empathy. Help her imagine how the other person feels when he is called that name. Appeal to her sensitivity to her own feelings and those of others as the first step in changing the behavior. (https://www.askdrsears.com/topics/parenting/discipline-behavior/bothersome-behaviors/name-calling/)
The Goodstart Early Learning website goes on to explain:
Building an understanding of what others are feeling, how their own actions can impact on others, and why someone might be experiencing feelings at a particular time is a valuable life skill for children to possess.
Helping young children to develop a strong sense of empathy is beneficial because:
- It helps them to build a sense of security and stronger relationships with other children and educators, positioning them well for learning
- It encourages tolerance and acceptance of others
- It promotes good mental health
- It promotes social harmony and can reduce the likelihood of bullying
The benefits of empathetic thinking flow into adult life too. Empathetic adults may have:
- Greater success personally and professionally
- Higher levels of overall happiness
- A better ability to understand others, like customers or co-workers
- More success in leadership positions
- More satisfying relationships and be better at dealing with conflict
- Lower levels of stress
In a nutshell, developing empathy is a vital building block in a child’s ability to regulate their emotions and is so valuable in being able to adapt and succeed in an ever-changing world.
How can we help children develop empathy?
Parents are children’s first and most enduring teachers, and modelling empathetic behaviour is one of the best ways parents can teach their child this valuable skill.
Other simple ways empathy can be developed include:
- Helping your child to name their feelings, as understanding their own feelings is an important first step in understanding the feelings of others
- Talking to your child about how other people may be feeling, and why. This helps to build their emotional language and think about other people’s perspectives.
- Caring for animals and plants, which helps children understand the role they play in helping another living thing survive, thrive and be happy.
Perhaps one of the simplest ways of all to help children develop a sense of empathy is by reading books together, as children learn to associate feelings and actions with their favourite characters and stories.
As expressed in the last newsletter, creating a safe and kind environment is a priority for us at St Matthew’s. We will continue to adopt protocols and procedures that assist children in developing their empathy and, in turn, help all our students to grow spiritually, intellectually and emotionally. We are committed to employing restorative practices, as is explained in our Behaviour Management Protocols:
The philosophy of Restorative Practices informs a positive and formative approach to student behaviour management and is recommended for Catholic schools.
• A commitment to Restorative Practices has as its aim the promotion of resilience in the one harmed and the one causing harm.
• Restorative measures help students learn from their mistakes, grow in self-discipline, take responsibility for their actions, recognise the impact of their actions on others, and reconcile and resolve conflict with others.
The hierarchy of restorative practices includes:
• Universal – reaffirming relationships through developing social and emotional skills
• Targeted – repairing relationships in the classroom, small groups, individual conferences
• Intensive – rebuilding relationships through community conferencing
In conjunction with this, we will ensure to inform parents if their child does take part in name-calling and follow-up with suitable consequences. We especially have high expectations of our senior students as they are leaders in our school and as such, we expect them to demonstrate behaviours that ensure all of our students feel safe at school.
Empathetically yours,
Susan Milton
Principal
