St Joseph’s Primary School Charlton eNewsletter

Principal's Report

Hello parents and friends of St Joseph's.

Great to see a bit of spring weather starting to emerge after a bitterly cold winter. If you drive down Kaye Street, you can witness out new outdoor learning area. The men are busy now finishing off the cement floor and it looks fantastic. A great addition to the school yard.

This weekend is our circuit breaker weekend. Time out due to the extra work and pressure that covid created for the staff. School will resume on Tuesday 23rd of August.

Jason will be away tomorrow at a Religious Education Leaders Day in Ballarat so Emily and I will be having prep/1/2 plus the children leftover from the badminton tournament as Meredith is off sick.

Next Wednesday we will be walking to the kinder at 9:30 in our Book Week costumes. While we are there we will have an opportunity to have a look around the new building. We are hoping to be able to do a walk past the windows at the nursing home as well but are waiting for confirmation on this one.

The kinder will be open for the community to have a look around on Thursday 25th August if you would like a tour of the new facility.

Information

Badminton Tournament. On Thursday we have 8 of our students in Shepparton playing badminton in the Shepparton Primary Schools Doubles Badminton Championships. We wish these students all the best and hope they have a fun day. We say a big thank you to Nat Bourke and Cate Olive for taking the children to Shepparton.

Circuit Breaker Long Weekend. Tomorrow and Monday are the circuit - breaker long weekend. This weekend is a recommendation of the Ballarat Diocese.

Book Week Dress Up Day. Next Wednesday, 24th August, is Book Week Dress Up Day. The children can come to school dressed as their favourite book ccharacter. The theme for Book Week this year is 'Dreaming With Eyes Open.'

Calder Sports. The Calder Athletic Sports have changed date. Unfortunately there are trots next Thursday so the Calder Sports has moved to the following Thursday, 1st September. I still need helpers to run the hurdles. If you are available, please contact Cate in the office.

Fr Gerry's 70th birthday celebration. Fr Gerry turned 70 last week. The Parish will be celebrating with a lunch at the Cricket Club Hotel on Sunday 28th Augus after 10:30 Mass. Please let Sandra Patton (0407 320 633) know if you will be attending as meals will be pre-ordered.

100 years of the Presbytery. The St Joseph's Presbytery was built 100 years ago this year. There will be a celebration and tour of the presbytery in October.

Prep/1/2 Class News

This week in the junior learning group we have been busy working on our learning goals in class, continuing on with our focus on non-fiction text types in both reading and writing. The students have been exploring the difference between a fact and an opinion and had a go at writing sentences that demonstrated both. In simple terms, the students learnt that a fact is something real or true and often comes from information, whereas an opinion is something that ‘I personally believe’ and may differ to the next person. This week we’ve explored a few different texts in our Shared Reading sessions with a focus on ‘Community’; first reading ‘People who Help Us’ and then ‘Friends’. Both books looked at people and the connections that we make with one another and the wider community around us. We’re making connections here with our Humanities unit – ‘My World’ where the students are beginning to explore their own place in this wonderful world of ours and the connections that each child/family makes with the people and places around them.

I’d also like to congratulate our Foundation students for completing 100 days of school! This week we celebrated this exciting milestone with a number of activities around the number 100. The students decorated funky ‘100 themed’ glasses which they proudly wore for a photo, they practiced counting to 100 and writing 100 words. Each student also imagined what it would be like to be 100 years old and we spent some time writing responses to this. Very entertaining to read! On Friday we joined with the senior students in the hall and participated in a variety of games from 100 years ago including quoits, hoops, marbles, skipping, elastics and hopscotch. We finished up with a STEM challenge involving 100 plastic straws and 100cm of masking tape. The students worked in small groups and had to construct the highest possible freestanding tower they could in the time given. Well done to Murphy, Lila S & Megg for winning the challenge with the tallest tower, well over 100cm tall! Great work!

We also enjoyed hosting some new little faces into our school on Thursday with our ‘Come and Try Morning’. We read the story of the ‘Rainbow Fish’ as a group and students helped to act out the story with colourful masks and actions. We then broke into four groups and the students moved around the room participating in playdough, drawing, collage and counting activities that all related to the storybook. It was a wonderful morning with our new little people enjoying making new friends, having a go at some different learning experiences and we look forward to having them all back in early September.

3/4/5/6 Class News

Our theme of safety continues this week with a focus on water safety on and around the home and farm. Students are learning about where and how water can be dangerous and ways to avoid risk with water on a farm. Students are continuing to consolidate their skills of reading with accuracy, fluency and meaning. Students are working on using context clues in the text to decipher meaning of unfamiliar words. Students are continuing to work on their farm safety writing assignments of a comic strip and planning a story board and transcript of a farm safety video. Students are also revising their understanding and use of apostrophes of possession, commas and quotation marks.

Students are completing their unit on Money and have created a mini budget for a fictional party. They have to use examples of products and prices given to throw a party that will cater for 10 people over a 3 hour period. Students are continuing their work on measuring Mass through weighing objects and using appropriate units such as grams, kilograms and tonnes. Students are using knowledge of conversions between units (such as converting grams to kilograms) to complete word problems based on quantity and cost.

The students are enjoying the lovely weather in the garden at the moment, they are preparing the soil to begin planting next week. Students are continuing to clear away the bark chips and weed the garden.

Contract 24 homework and spelling words are due by Thursday please. They will be accepted on Tuesday if unable to complete by then.

Best of luck those part of the Badminton tournament this week.

Enjoy your long weekend everyone.