Homework at St Benedict’s

Late last term, we distributed a survey to parents to gain an insight and input into the development of a set of agreed practices for our teaching staff around homework. After looking at the responses from parents, developing an understanding of the research around homework and primary school students as well as teacher perspectives, we have developed the following agreements.

Over the next few weeks, you may notice some changes around homework. In order to foster a balanced learning environment, homework will not be mandatory at St Benedict’s and students will not be penalised for not completing any recommended tasks.

Key Recommendations for Homework:

At St Benedict’s, we recognise the significant benefits of regular reading practice. We recommend that students read between 3 to 5 times per week outside of school. Additionally, we encourage parents to read to their children. Even in the primary years, having children read aloud can greatly enhance their fluency.

Timing Recommendations:

• Kindergarten: 5 – 10 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week
• Year 1: 10 – 15 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week
• Year 2: 10 – 15 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week
• Year 3: 15 – 20 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week
• Year 4: 15 – 20 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week
• Year 5: 20 – 30 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week
• Year 6: 20 – 30 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week

Occasionally, teachers may suggest additional activities to develop skills in English, such as speaking, listening, or writing. However, students will not be penalised if these activities are not completed at home.

Extra Homework and Holidays:

During holidays, we encourage our students to continue reading regularly and to write a journal of their daily activities or create a presentation to share their experiences with their peers. Teachers will not provide printouts of worksheets that require prior teaching or feedback.

If parents wish to provide further activities to support their child's learning outside of school hours, they are welcome to purchase resources from stores such as news agencies that are aligned with the Australian Curriculum. We will also offer a range of activities that students can engage in to further support their education outside of school hours.

Thank you for your continued support and partnership in your child's education.

Activities to further support student learning and development 

Sorting and Classifying: Engage children in sorting activities like sorting laundry by colour, sorting buttons, or even sorting leaves collected on a walk. 

Counting: Count steps, plates, or objects during daily activities, like counting steps on the stairs or plates on the table. 

Shape Recognition: Use everyday objects with different shapes (like blocks or stacking rings) and have children match shapes or fit them into corresponding spaces. 

Patterns: Introduce simple patterns, like alternating red and blue blocks or clapping in a rhythm. 

Grocery Shopping: Involve children in grocery shopping, counting items on the shelf, and practicing simple math concepts like adding the cost of different items. 

Noticing mathematics in the real world: Some examples are telling the time, how long it will take to …, how far, heavy or tall is …?, counting stairs or cars, discussing patterns in tiles or spiderwebs, cutting fruit or sandwiches in half, estimating how many biscuits are in the packet. 

Board games: Play board games that involve strategies that involve dice and numbers.  

Kitchen Experiments: Engage in simple cooking activities like baking or making smoothies, discussing the ingredients and how they change during the process. 

Gardening: Plant seeds, observe plants growing, and discuss the life cycle of plants. 

Nature Walks: Collect leaves, stones, or other natural items, and sort them by size, color, or shape. Have conversations about flora and fauna.  

Arts and Crafts: Engage in creative activities like colouring, painting, or making collages. 

Building and Construction: Play with blocks, building kits, or other construction toys. 

Outdoor Games: Any games or activities which involve running, jumping, throwing, kicking, catching, climbing, dodging etc.  

Age-appropriate chores: Cleaning up after play, making the bed, folding clothes, packing lunches, personal grooming / hygiene, washing clothes and dishes, garden cores etc. This will help build independence, responsibility and accountability. 

Catholic Schools Week

From 2 to 6 June, we celebrate Catholic Schools Week—a time to honour the vibrant communities within our Catholic schools in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. This week highlights the dedication of staff, the growth of students, and the shared mission to nurture each child spiritually, intellectually, socially, and physically. Catholic education is about helping every student flourish and become the person God calls them to be, through learning that inspires both the heart and mind.

We have much to be proud of in our endeavours to provide our young people with a

well-rounded education that meets their needs today and for their future. We are deeply grateful for our thriving community, where teachers, parents and parish come together in unparalleled levels of care providing safe, supportive and inclusive surroundings which nurture students’ wellbeing, confidence and hope for themselves.

In this Jubilee Year, we are blessed with opportunities to share the love of Jesus Christ and remind ourselves that growing in faith builds firm trust in God’s promises. It is our trust in God’s promises that fills us with hope—even in our darkest moments, God's faithfulness never fades. May this week inspire us to live each day with joyful hearts and steadfast hope in the Lord.

At Saint Benedict's we will start our celebration with a Mass here at school at 9:15am on Tuesday 3rd June all are welcome to attend. Mass will be followed by other activities that are still in the planning stage. We will notify you of these via our "What's On post on COMPASS and Facebook once they are in place. I also ask that all our families consider joining us for the Parish Family Mass on Sunday 1st June @ 9:00am at Holy Cross Church Glendale. This will be the launch of Catholic Schools week in our Parish. 

Yours in Faith,

Miss Michelle Collins

(Religious Education Co-Ordinator)

Friendship

We all need trusted, loyal and reliable friends, who will stand up for us and be there when we need them. It’s important that we teach our children what a good friend looks like. A friend isn’t someone who breaks our trust, teases us, or is only there on our good days.

Troubles in friendships seems to be a constant problem that arises in schools and St Benedict’s is no exception. Programs like FROGS, Big Feelings and Friendship Dramas are all programs that are used to teach the students who need extra support with social skills, the strategies and language that they need. A constant in these programs is having an expectation with friends and teaching the children “I statements” to resolve a problem. For example, “I feel sad when you treat me like that because it makes me feel scared.” This is instead of yelling “Don’t talk to me like that” and escalating the problem. Letting the students know that they don’t need permission to leave a friendship if the expectation of a good friend is continually not met, is also important. Some children think that it would be rude or mean to tell someone that they don’t want to be friends anymore, but if this is where the friendship is at then if a student uses kind language, then the other person will know why the friendship has reached this point. Most likely, this will have already been talked about. Saying something like, “I don’t think that we can be friends any more, because you keep telling everyone my private thoughts. I can’t trust you.’ Is different to saying, “I hate you. I’m not your friend anymore”.

As parents, we need to resist the temptation to get involved in our children’s dramas. Picking up your phone and calling another child’s parents or talking to your child’s teacher every time there’s a dispute isn’t going to help. In fact, it can often make things worse. If you reinforce the strategies that I’ve just mentioned, helping your child to learn these social skills and build resilience, it will serve them better in the long term. Of course, repeated mean behaviour needs to be reported to school, especially if it is starting to impact your child’s wellbeing.

Medical 

From time to time students may need to take medication at school.

Our office is able to administer medication but requires the completion of consent forms to do this. As we come into the flu season please contact our office if this applies to your child.

If your child requires medication administered daily please supply our office with medication in a blister pack. This is a requirement set by our Catholic School office to ensure the safety of medications and dosages. 

Following on from our initial group of students who completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge for 2025, another 33 students have finished the Challenge over the past two weeks.

They are:

From 2 BLACK: Ruby Allen, Lola Bailey, Sezal Banjara, Alexia Bertwistle, Kierley Chapple, Delta Fenwick, Ashlyn Ireland-Swan, Raina Longdon, Maci Mannix, Spencer Piggott, Lettie Reis, Seraya Wallace-Taylor

From 2 RED: Georgia Cambourn

From 3 RED: Arham Bhutta, Ella Goodwin, Chelsea Hunter, Avitaj Kang, Zaira Thaha, Dexter Thomas, Talia Walker

From 4 BLACK: Charli Maddison, Rhys Toohey

From 5 BLACK: Aryan Biddut, Chevy Byrnes-Steere, Roman Gulabovski, Bonnie Hungerford, Parker Long, Baily Reeves, Hamish Roberts, Sophie Williams

From 5 RED: Henry Bailey, Kiani Miller, Gracie Reis.

Well done.

Mrs Nicolaidis (PRC Co-Ordinator)