Term 3 Week 7 2022
Principal's Report
Hello parents and friends of St Joseph's,
I am away next week at a Ballarat Diocese Northern Zone Principal's Retreat in Daylesford. I will be away Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday.
Next Thursday we have the Calder Athletic Sports. We will need some parent helpers to help with the running of the hurdles. Please let Cate know if you are available.
Congratulations to the successful badminton teams who competed last week at the Shepparton and Districts Primary Schools Doubles Badminton Tournament. Our Division 1 team were champions on the day and our Division 2 team were runners up. Thanks to Cate Olive and Nat Bourke for supervising the children. By all accounts, a great time was had by all and they are keen to go back again next year.
On Friday 2nd September, we will be having a Father's Day breakfast. The children should have brought home an invitation by now with all the details. Please notify the school ASAP if you will be attending for catering purposes.
Yesterday we had our Book Week Dress Up Day. Once again the children looked fantastic in their costumes. We had a walk to the kinder where we did a fun activity and had a look around the new kinder/day care facility. We then walked to the hospital and did a window walk by for the nursing home residents. It was nice to be able to visit in our costumes again. It has been a few years since we have been able.
This week we had a visit from Indiah, Demi and Jonty Guy, some ex-students who had travelled back to Charlton for a funeral. Absolutely fantastic to see the Guy children and they are all doing extremely well in life. They have very fond memories of St Joseph's and it has been a pleasure to be involved in a small part of their lives.
Information
Calder Sports. The Calder Athletic Sports are on 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 August 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 and Hall were built 100 years ago this year. There will be a celebration and tour of the presbytery in October.
NO BUSES. There will be no buses on Friday 26th August due to the College school closure.
Prep/1/2 Class News
With only a few days at school this week, we’ve had a busy but quick week! The students have kept busy, working on their learning goals and achieving plenty in our time together. Over the last week we have been exploring a few different texts from the nominated booklist decided by the ‘Children’s Book Council of Australia’. This week’s theme ‘Dreaming with Eyes Open’ inspired imagination and some amazing costumes in the junior room. We had Flynn as Harry Potter & Maddie as Dumbledore (Harry Potter), Megg as Ana & Mia as Elsa (Frozen), Madelyn as Rapunzel (Tangled), Lila as Dorothy (Wizard of Oz), Vinny as Mr Shark (Bad Guys) and Mr Whatnall as Clark Kent/Superman (DC Comics). The class looked fantastic and the excitement and enthusiasm shown by all was great to see! Well done everyone! As a part of our Book Week activities, we went for a walk down to the local Kindergarten where Mr Whatnall read one of the nominated books ‘Stellarphant’ to the children – a story about an elephant who never gave up on her dreams to venture into space. After the story, the students from St Joseph’s buddied up with the Kinder kids and everyone made an ‘animal astronaut’ with space suits, wobbly legs and beautiful decorations. Everyone did an awesome job, the Kinder kids loved having us there for a visit and working on the craft activity with our students. We then left the Kinder and paraded up and down the main street of Charlton to show off the creative costumes that the students had come dressed in before stopping off at the hospital again to show the residents the beautiful Book week costumes the children were wearing. Everyone loved seeing the St Joseph’s students all dressed up with smiles across the board. Amazing effort!!
In other news this week, the students will have their last chance to hone in on their athletic skills in preparation for the Calder Sports competition next Thursday. I’m very proud of the improvements we’ve seen with our students as they have listened well, taken on board all the tips and advice they’ve been given and applied this to their actions and movements each week as we’ve practiced throwing, running and jumping events. In Religion, we’ve been reading one of the parables from the gospel of Luke, ‘The Good Samaritan’ which explores the kindness shown by the Samaritan to the man who was attacked by robbers. This story teaches us that despite their differences, the Good Samaritan saw the person needing help and put his feelings aside to help and show kindness where it was needed. The students drew upon comparisons in their real lives and we have explored many ways that we can show kindness to others (particularly when it’s not easy to be kind, but we know it’s the right thing to do). Next week we’ll continue to look at the Bible and some rich examples of how Jesus calls us to be kind to those around us despite the challenges we all face. Lovely work everyone!
3/4/5/6 Class News
Happy Book Week everyone!
Students have had a great time this week reading books from the shortlist in class. Students have visited the Kindergarten and the hospital to participate in reading activities and to show off their wonderful costumes. Well done to the parents and students for organising such a variety of costumes, they all looked wonderful.
In Literacy this week we are reading about animal and firearm safety on farms, including best practices to reduce risks to young children. Students have identified the main points in the text and written a summary of this. Students have consolidated their understanding of apostrophes of possession and revised using quotation marks accurately to show direct speech. Students are continuing to work on their video submission transcripts and story boards. Students are making a list of equipment and props that they need to film and to make for their filming part of the project. Students have completed their comic strips on farm safety this week
In Maths students have started a new unit on patterns and algebra. Year 3 and 4 students are working on understanding, determining the rule and completing number patterns with addition and subtraction. Year 5 students are working on determining the rule for complex number patterns, completing missing terms and completing number patterns with multiplication and division operations with multiple steps. Year 6 students are working on these foci as well as determining the 10th or more place value in a number sequence.
3/4/5/6 students are taking a break from our learning focus in Science to help the F/1/2 class with their guinea pig maze construction and testing. It is wonderful to see how supportive and cooperative the students are between the two classes.
Contract 25 homework and accompanying spelling words are due Friday.
Badminton Tournament
On the 17th of August, Murphy, Charlie, Clancy, Liam, Darcy, Rosie, Isaac, Toby, Mrs Olive and Nat Bourke all went to Shepparton for the Shepparton District Primary School Doubles Championships for Badminton. When we arrived in Shepparton we went to KFC. After KFC we travelled to our cabins and slept the night. It was Clancy's birthday so we all had cupcakes and CLancy had a lolly bag for all of us.
The next day we had our breakfast and drove to the stadium where we would play. We played many schools and won a lot of games. The results were in. Our second division team came second which were Clancy, Isaac, Darcy and Toby, but our first division team came first which was Murphy, Charlie, Liam and Rosie. Rosie was lucky enough to win the encouragement award. She got a brand new racquet. We took our trophy with us and drove across the road to McDonalds to celebrate. We continued to drive on, listening and singing/shouting to 80s songs. We all had a fantastic time!
By Murphy Fitzpatrick
Community News
Humour
A man was driving without his seatbelt when he spotted a patrol car right behind him. He grabbed for the belt and put it on.
But it was too late and the red lights began to flash. “you weren’t wearing your seat belt.” said the officer.
“Yes, I was,” said the man, “and if you don’t believe me ask my wife.”
“So how about it ma’am?” asked the cop.
“Officer,” she said, “I’ve been married to this man for forty years and there are some things I’ve learned: Never argue with him when he’s drunk! Just give him a ticket for not wearing his seat belt!”