Beginning of Year School Mass

School Mass on Friday 8th February, 10.30am.

First Day Information 2019

Thank you all so much for making the time to come and connect with us over the last two days.

Sunday Gospel

For a couple of weeks now, our readings, especially the Gospels, continue to tell us
that Jesus is the bread of life. This is simply to remind us of the importance of the
Holy Eucharist in our Christian life.
Eucharist means thanksgiving. So, filled with the Holy Spirit, we give thanks to God
for inviting us to share in His wisdom, and in the Body and Blood of Christ.

                                                                                                    (Gods Word 2018- Daily Reflections , St Pauls Publications)

• What makes you happy and joyful in your life?
• What are the most important of these?
• Why are they the most important?
• Jesus tells us that we should seek things that will last. In today’s Gospel what does Jesus give us that will last forever?
• How do we show we are happy and thankful for this great gift?

Sunday Gospel

On this Sunday the Church invites us to focus on Jesus who continues to draw us to himself so that we can be nourished and strengthened like Elijah in the desert.
Jesus tells us that if we eat the Bread he gives us, we will live forever. Jesus requires us to have faith in God’s love and care for us.
Jesus asks us to have faith: after all, we have to take it on his word that we will live forever if we eat his bread.
We believe that God loves us, so we know that God cares for us even when things don’t work out as we would like.This is what it means to have faith in God: to love God and hope in God even when everything is going wrong.
This is the faith and trust that Jesus had in God. Jesus died on the cross still believing and trusting God.  Jesus draws us to Himself every day through the Eucharistic table in order to nourish and strengthen us for our journey.

Let us pray that Jesus, the living Bread, will be at the centre of our lives this week in all we say and do.

Sunday Gospel

John 6: 1 - 15 Jesus feeds five thousand.

Jesus was always concerned for the human needs of people as well as the spiritual. He knows his concern that people have nothing to eat and he is anxious to remedy that. In other episodes we see him healing the sick, comforting the grieving, reaching out to the lost and outcast, to sinners. In prayer he taught us, he urged us to ask the Father to ‘give us our daily bread’. This bread can refer to himself, the Bread of Life, that we receive in Communion, but it also refers to the food we need for sustenance each day.

In this Gospel we also note the concern of Jesus that none of the food gets wasted as he urges the disciples to collect all of the scraps left over. Today we live in an age of incredible wastefulness, a throwaway society. Huge amounts of food are dumped every day. Today is a good day to consider our use of the resources of the earth. One paradox of life is how a little can go a long way, as the boy with the five barley loaves and two fishes demonstrates, while excess often leads to waste and leaves many hungry.

(Gods Word 2018- Daily Reflections , St Pauls Publications)

Discussion starters

In this Gospel a large crowd followed Jesus. Why was Jesus concerned for them?

What small amount of food did the disciple Andrew find?

What did the disciples ask the crowd to do before Jesus blessed the bread and fish?

What did Jesus do with the blessed food?

What was left over?

Jesus feeds us in the Eucharist. What does he give to us?

Jesus gives us his body so that we can become one with him and live like him.

We pray that we will live for Jesus and share what we have with others.

Learn, Create, Share @ St Francis

Last year we were fortunate to be offered the opportunity to become a part of the Manaiakalani Outreach programme.

Being a part of this programme affords the learners in our community many opportunities. Mark Maddren, a Manaiakalani Outreach Facilitator will be working with staff and students to help embed the Manaiakalani pedagogy over the next three years.

The Manaiakalani pedagogy ‘Learn, Create, Share’ puts our young people at the very centre of their learning.

Since the beginning of 2018 our Year 5-8 students have been involved in the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme and the learning pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share.

Mark visits the Tumu and Kaupeka Hubs and work alongside teachers and students. This is great professional development for teachers and also a great learning opportunity for our students. They are learning how to look after and use their device, with tools and tips, to get the most out of them. Mark is sharing with them ways to be creative on their Chromebooks eg making animations and blog profiles.

Each child in Years 5-8 has their own individual blog. Please make sure you have subscribed to your child's blog so you can be part of the learning that is shared.

Mark is also providing professional development to all St Francis of Assisi Staff. We are unpacking the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy. It is exciting to see how well it aligns with our philosophy of delivering the curriculum with a project based learning approach.

Values Assembly

Last week at our Values Assembly all students were given a card to take home showing the St Francis of Assisi School Values. We talked about living out these values in our everyday lives whether we are at school, at home or out in our community.

Here is the presentation from our assembly.