As we pass the halfway mark of the term, again our students and staff have engaged in a range of activities aligned to their learning and wellbeing. Year 7 immunisations took place last Monday and saw NSW Health implement an online system for booking and recording. Followup dates in June and October will be available for those students who may have experienced some difficulties in enrolling for the first date. Year 9 students attended a seminar on the influence of Social Media in Alcohol use and abuse. Year 11 & 12 Visual Arts students attended Art Express, the annual exhibition of HSC works from the previous year. Today, on our Student free day, staff and students attended the Girls' Diocesan Touch trials. Thanks to all staff and students for their participation, planning and involvement in each of these initiatives.

Both Interline and Busabout are experiencing some issues with bus numbers and students tapping on and off in the morning and afternoon. The use of cards is compulsory and ultimately the responsibility of the student to ensure that they are being used. The cards are also important for tracking bus use so that companies can lodge an application for extra services, particularly in our area which is still experiencing rapid population growth. Could students and carers please ensure that they have an Opal Card and tap on and off each time that they use the free travel to and from school. If you have any issues regarding the acquisition or use of an Opal Card, please visit School Student Opal Card

The College is undertaking Compass online approval for our annual CEDoW Responsible Use of Technology Consent form this year. On Monday, all students will be walked through the first step of the online process in Pastoral classes. Once this is completed, a notification will be shared to parents and carers through email and the Compass App to complete the parental/carer section of the registration process. 

Thank you for your assistance with these matters. Please contact the College if you have any questions regarding them.

Mr Simon Huntly

The New College Candle		The Lenten Sacred Space
We commissioned the new College candle at the Opening College Mass last week. The bottom band has a Marist quote, while we have added a new quote at the top - a Carmelite quote. After mass, it took 4 goes to extinguish the flame - perhaps a strong sign that the College light does not want to go out.		To mark the commencement of Lent, the space in the front office is a centre for hope. Hope that the collections for Project Compassion bring about a positive future for the recipients. we are encouraging students to bring $1 per week; a total of $6 per student this year. A massive $6600 of donation power. There is hope!

Mrs Christine Meharg

Over the past years I have filled a number of reading journals with ‘magic grabs’ or quotes from some of my favourite books and literary encounters. These journal entries have sometimes captured pearls of wisdom which resonated with me at the time or a particular way with words that caught my attention. I have up to twenty such journals which have served to plot my varied reading experiences over many years.

As I’m sure some people do with their diaries or journals, I sometimes take down from my shelf a particular one and sit with it. Categorised by the year of composition, I have my reading journals stored in chronological order. This week I looked through my 2009 journal and found an interesting selection of grabs from an autobiography by Thomas Merton called The Seven Storey Mountain. Published in 1948, this fascinating book tells the story of a young man’s search for meaning and purpose. In his early twenties, Merton’s curiosity about life led him first to be baptised a Catholic and later to enter a Trappist monastery – ‘the four walls of my new freedom.’ Labelled an ‘autobiography of faith’, The Seven Storey Mountain has been recognised as one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.

My 2009 reading journal contains the words that Merton chose to conclude his story: Sit finis libri, non finis quaerendi. Translated, these words state: ‘Let this be the ending of the book but by no means the end of the searching’. I shared this quote with my Year 12 English Advanced class on Wednesday and discussed its relationship to the two books we are currently studying – Albert Camus’ The Stranger and Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation. I also mentioned another Merton quote I had recorded: “…most honourable reader, it is not as an author that I would speak to you, not as a storyteller, not as a philosopher, not as a friend only. I speak to you, in some way, as your own self …if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book.’ These magic grabs generated some wonderful thinking and insightful connections were able to be made with our own HSC texts.

This week’s class discussion which emanated from my reading journal entries recorded fourteen years ago – entries taken from a book published in 1948 – proved to be highly relevant, productive, and instructive. The power of storytelling!

Clare Murphy

English Coordination and Literacy Instructional Coach

This term has signified a fresh start for the Mathematics department. The recent renovations to our block have brightened the learning environment, and will only continue to improve the teaching and learning strategies and atmosphere led by our staff. 

Our Year 7 classes have recently been working on their mental arithmetic within the topic of Computation with Integers. During this topic, students review a variety of strategies to help with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as delving into the exciting world of directed numbers such as negatives and their appearances in the contexts of temperature and money.

On Tuesday Year 7 Jade completed a 'treasure hunt' activity to practice what we have been learning in Maths in recent weeks. Working in pairs, the students needed to remember the order of operations and the rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing positive and negative numbers, to solve a series of questions. Each answer they found led to the next question they needed to solve, which eventually led to the 'treasure' - a small prize for the groups with the most correct answers. Well done to Austin JoJo, Dylan Phillips, Christian Kassiotes, Matthew Attard, Maher Hanna and Roy Alashkar for completing the most questions correctly!

By Mrs Marianna Morris and Mrs Campbell

Year 8 have been expanding their knowledge of algebraic techniques, creating expressions, collecting like terms and substituting to evaluate expressions. Some classes have taken this somewhat abstract concept and engaged students in manipulatives such as dice and cups to represent unknown quantities, whilst others have embraced the concept using matching activities to solidify their understanding.

Coming up for students in stage 5 (Years 9 and 10), Mount Carmel will be engaging students in two workshops run by Talk Money. Talk Money with Ecstra Foundation is a free financial education program that teaches young people money lessons for life and helps students be confident when talking about money and making informed financial decisions. Delivered by trained facilitators, the workshops are aligned to the Australian curriculum and the National Consumer and Financial Literacy Framework. We are looking forward to the workshops and, if you would like to know more, check out their website at Talk Money

Students across all stages have embodied the theme of growth mindsets, particularly when using the mini whiteboards to demonstrate critical thinking and reasoning. The use of these whiteboards within mathematics classrooms has enabled students to take chances and make valuable mistakes, allowing them to better understand concepts and engage in learning activities. Students in the Year 11 Advanced Mathematics class have even gone as far as using the main whiteboard in front of their peers as a place to elaborate ideas and collaborate with other students to problem solve. 

Student Responsible Use of Technology Agreement

Each year CEDoW requires parents/guardians and students to renew the Student Responsible Use of Technology Agreement. This has previously been distributed in a hard copy which parents/guardians and students signed and returned to the College. 

To make this easier for parents and students, the process has now been moved to Compass. On Monday morning during Pastoral, teachers will assist students with accessing this agreement, reading through it together and the process of accepting the agreement. Once the student has accepted the agreement, parents/guardians will be sent a notification via the Compass app and email. At this point, parents/guardians will be asked to read and accept the agreement, which will appear in the form of a Compass upcoming event. Parents will also be sent a copy to them that they must read and accept, which will appear as an upcoming event on their compass app or dashboard via the web browser on a computer. We are happy to assist if you require assistance with the process. Simply call the main phone line and speak to a member of the front office.

1. Select the Event from the Compass Dashboard
   
2. Select the "CEDoW Responsible use of Technology Agreement" by clicking on the arrow pointing to the right of the screen.
   
3. Read the agreement and scoll down to the bottom of the page.
   
4. Type for full name and select "Submit Consent"
   

These now appear in the side panel of the newsletter.