Week 4, Term 2 2025

Another busy 2 weeks for our wonderful school! Last week we celebrated Catholic Education Week with the theme for 2025: “Shine with Open Hearts.” This theme beautifully captures the spirit of our schools—where students are supported to shine, live, and lead with open hearts through high-quality teaching and learning. At St Bernadette’s, we marked the occasion by reflecting on how Catholic education helps us to shine. You’ll see some of our students’ thoughtful and inspiring responses in the photos below. It’s a joy to witness the many ways our students shine every day!

Yesterday we joined an estimated 2 million students across Australia for National Simultaneous Storytime, an annual celebration of literacy organised by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA). This nationwide event brings children together to listen to the same story on the same day. This year's featured book was "The Truck Cat" by Deborah Frenkel. Our Year 6 students embraced their role as leaders, visiting younger classes in small groups to share the story. It was wonderful to see these older students bringing the picture book to life for our junior students. We're proud of how enthusiastically our students participated in this wonderful literacy event.

It's also been a busy couple of weeks on the sporting front. Last week, 5 students from Years 4-6 represented St Bernadette’s at the SAPSASA Cross Country Carnival at Belair National Park. In what turned out to be perfect weather conditions, our students completed the 2km or 3km course with great success. We had a number of outstanding results on the day, including the following students who had top 20 finishes in their respective races:

Essa – 13^th place
Sanaya – 8^th place
Isaac – 5^th place

This week, all students from Years 4-6 are travelling to the Woodville Lacrosse Club for the Catholic Primary Schools Lacrosse Carnival. The carnival places an emphasis on maximum participation and having fun, and so it is a great opportunity for our students to demonstrate a range of fundamental movement skills in a fun and competitive setting with their peers. Good luck to all students attending!

As the colder weather sets in, we’ve seen a rise in colds and flus. To help keep our staff and students healthy, please keep your child at home if they’re experiencing symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat, or gastrointestinal issues. Allowing time to rest at home helps with recovery and reduces the spread of illness. Thank you for your continued support in keeping everyone safe and well this season.

God bless,
Michelle, Matt and Ben

In science this term we have been exploring how living things live in different places where their needs are met.

To give us first hand experience and an opportunity to research the habitat of a variety of native Australian animals, we took an excursion to Cleland Wildlife Park in the Mount Lofty Hills.

We were able to make observations on how Cleland supports animals to meet their needs in habitats which replicate the natural environment they commonly live in.

We could also touch and feed Kangaroos, Wallabies, a blue tongue lizard and a turtle!

Cleland’s education officer ran a 60 min session with us where we discovered some of the amazing Australian animals that share our home and school environment.

The key messages we took from this wonderful excursion were:

• People, animals and the environment are all connected
• Living things live in different places where their needs are met
• People use science in their daily lives including in caring for their environment and living things
• You can care for native animals’ homes
• We can all respect and care for the environment

In the lead-up to Reconciliation Week, our Year 1 students have been diving into the rich traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture through the lens of art.

Students in 1M explored the use of traditional symbols, the meanings behind the colours and the stories told through Indigenous artworks. 'Tiddalick the Frog' and 'How the birds got their colours' were just a few stories listened to by the class. They then put their learning into practice by creating their own unique designs on kangaroo and boomerang templates.

It was a wonderful way to deepen their understanding and appreciation of the world’s oldest continuous culture, while also expressing their creativity. We look forward to sharing more of their beautiful work as we continue our journey of learning, understanding, and reconciliation in the coming week. 

Mrs McMillan