Newsletter 14 2023
Principal's Report
Hello to Families and all in the St Joseph's School Community,
A huge thank-you to all the mothers, grandmothers and other special visitors who joined us for the Mother’s Day Liturgy on Friday morning, last week. It was wonderful to be able to welcome guests to St Joseph’s, to join the children in celebrating, and connect with our school community. I reiterate my thanks for the ongoing guidance and support given by all ‘mothering’ figures and for your commitment to the students of St Joseph’s School. We have been blessed with beautiful Autumnal weather, chilly mornings, but days filled with delightful sunshine. I hope you have all been able to spend some time collecting Vitamin D stores before the Winter arrives!
Catholic Education Week
Catholic Education Week 2023 is going to be celebrated from 21-26 May. the theme for this year is:
‘Let the words you speak always be full of grace’ – Colossians 4:6
How we speak and how we are open to be changed through dialogue, has been subject to deep consideration in many different circles – political, social, ecological, theological. Dialogue opens us to the other, to learn and to change – it is an openness to be moved or influenced and allow for the spirit to be present – this is the invitation our theme offers.
On the Wednesday of Catholic Education Week we will all journey to St Mary's in Donald to join our cluster group, which includes St Patrick's, St Arnaud. We will celebrate Mass, enjoy some entertainment and share a meal. Children will not need lunch on this day, unless they do not like suasages! On Friday the 26th we have a live puppet show visiting St Joseph's with a performance based around making and maiontaining friendships!
Winter Sports
The Winter Sports Carnival held in Boort, under glorious skies, was a very enjoyable day for all who attended. It was great to see the way students from the different towns joined together to compete in the varied sports. It was also pleasing to see the leadership roles undertaken by senior secondary students to assist in organising and running the day. These days provide an excellent opportunity for students to not only practise their physical skills, but to build their social and emotional skills out of the school environment.
National walk to School Day
National Walk to School Day is on this Friday, 19th May 2023. As we have so many bus travellers, students will go for a walk during the day as part of our participation in this day. The day promotes healthy lifestyle choices and physical activity.
School Visitors
This week we have benefitted from the support of Education Consultants from the Catholic Education Office. These visits offer vital assistance and information, which we are not otherwise able to access easily, due to our location.
Over the past week we have been supported by:
Dean Pidgeon – Business Manager (Finance and Budgeting)
Jo-Anne, Justin and Bernadette – Religious Education (video conference)
Ashleigh Freckleton – Speech Therapist
Maria Richards – Learning Diversity Education Consultant
In addition to this, Mrs Olive attended a SIMON Conference in Melbourne on Monday and Tuesday last week. You will start to see digital versions of permission forms being communicated as a result of this professional learning.
I am off to Horsham on Thursday and Friday to attend the Diocesan Principal’s gathering. Please contact Mrs Olive in my absence.
Lunch Orders
An increasing number of students are forgetting their lunch orders and/or money for lunch orders. Please ensure lunch orders are placed on Monday or Tuesday. We do not help to develop life-skills for the students if we ‘remember’ for them, especially for those in the upper end of the school. If lunch orders are forgotten students will remember for the next week I’m sure, so the school won’t intervene if orders are not placed. Thank you in anticipation of your understanding – at times, it is difficult to know if students have forgotten or parents have not wanted lunch orders.
Child Safety
The care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people is a central and fundamental responsibility of Catholic Education. St Joseph’s School is committed to strengthened practice for the protection of children in line with the Victorian Government child safety reforms.
Standard 5: Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.
In complying with Child Safe Standard 5 an organisation must, at a minimum, ensure:
5.1 The organisation, including staff and volunteers, understands children and young people’s diverse circumstances, and provides support and responds to those who are vulnerable.
5.2 Children and young people have access to information, support and complaints processes in ways that are culturally safe, accessible and easy to understand.
5.3 The organisation pays particular attention to the needs of children and young people with disability, children and young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, those who are unable to live at home, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children and young people.
5.4 The organisation pays particular attention to the needs of Aboriginal children and young people and provides/promotes a culturally safe environment for them.
Important Dates
May 19th – National Walk to School Day
Sunday 21st May – Catholic Education week commences
Wednesday 24th May – Catholic Education Cluster Day at St Mary’s Donald
Friday 26th May – Arts Performance “Making Friends” in the multi-purpose room
Wednesday 31st May – Friday 2nd June Gr 5&6 Camp
Monday 12th June – Public Holiday – King’s Birthday
Thursday 22nd June – Children’s Yoga sessions with Averyll Loft
Friday 23rd June – Reports uploaded – FINAL DAY OF TERM TWO at 2:30pm
Please keep on the dates as they continue to populate in each weekly newsletter and aim to avoid appointments on these days so all students can participate.
Mary Hogan
Principal
Students of the Week
Congratulations to the students who received awards at assembly on Monday morning!
Senior Class - Clancy Bourke
Middle Class - Sophie Roberts
Junior Class - Mia Wright & Samantha Revell
Foundation/1/2 Class Report
It was very enjoyable hearing about Mother's Day and weather added to the celebrations.
Religion
This week we are continuing to look at the first creation story in Genesis. The students are relating this to the wonder of creation we see around us.
Language
The writing focus is procedural writing. We have used our experience of sowing our seedlings plus how to do simple tasks. The Grade 1 and 2 are looking at the role of verbs when writing these texts. The class is continuing to focus on the recognition and spelling of the initial high frequency words. Assessments are including the sounds and using them in words.
Mathematics
This week we are focusing on subtraction and its relationship with addition. The students are also practising numeral formation and the spelling of the numbers.
Having an enjoyable and busy week.
Anne Anderson
Grade 3/4 Class Report
This week in Literacy we are continuing to learn about the great Australian poet, Banjo Patterson. We are reading about his life in an information report fact file and in ‘This is Banjo Paterson’ by Christina Booth. We are discussing his life events and his characteristic attributes to then create an acrostic poem about his life and person. Students are learning about poetic devices such as alliteration, onomatopoeia and personification and how these support rhythm in poetry reading. Students are also focusing on writing information reports on various Australian poets, focusing on aspects of their life, early jobs and work, famous poems and how they’ve impacted Australian literature.
In Maths this week we have commenced a unit on money. We are learning to identify Australian notes and coins and how to write these using decimal notation. We are revising our understanding of fractions and the links to decimals. We are learning about what a budget is and briefly the importance of it.
In Religion we are learning about dignity and how it ties in with respect. Students are working in small groups to create a response to some questions from a video on dignity that we watched in our classtime.
Students have been working on physical fitness everyday and working on stretching their bodies and exercising using own body resistance. Students have been doing some exercises using a chair this week and have worked on sit ups, push ups, step ups and leg stretches and trying to beat their personal best each time.
Homework contract 12 and spelling words are due this Friday please. Thank you.
Grade 5/6 Class Report
Grade 5 & 6
Over the past week the students have competed in the Winter Sports in Boort and participated in the Mother’s Day liturgy. The format of the Winter Sports was a new experience for me and I was super impressed with the organisation and structure of the day. It was wonderful seeing senior students from surrounding schools taking on roles of leadership and students mixing to form teams which created a more even competition. Students were happy to welcome visitors to the Mother’s Day liturgy and participated by reading and singing.
School Camp
Grade 5 & 6 students will join with students from St Mary’s Donald & St Patrick’s Sea Lake, from 31/05/2023 to 02/06/2023 for a two-night camp at PGL Adventure Camps in Kyneton. Keep your eye on the newsletter for more information as it becomes available.
ENGLISH
I hope you have all had a chance to view the students’ assessment poetry which concluded our unit on figurative language. I was super impressed by the outcomes and have shared a few examples with you below! Our writing focus moves to the informative genre and we have commenced by discovering purpose and structure of this text type. A large part of this unit focuses on research skills and using technology to locate, understand and interpret information. Informative texts lead us to the exploration of technical vocabulary and students are sure to learn some new words and scientific expressions! Our class reading tasks will also focus on informative writing to reinforce all aspects of this genre.
MATHEMATICS
In Mathematics, we have taking a little detour this week, after assessing our multiplication learning. We have spent some time this week exploring money. This has involved making naming currencies, making amounts, working out change and solving real-world problems. As we now live in a world where physical money is rarely used, many students don’t get opportunities to work with money in real life, so this practise is important. Mrs Wright is focusing on the topic of time each Wednesday for Term 2.
A reminder that students should have their satchel, reader, diary and Homework Pocket at school each day. Reader diaries are to be filled in each day with the page number read to and a parent/carer signature, please.
Community News
Acknowledgement to Country
We acknowledge the Dja Dja Wurrung people as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this land. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging. We thank them for sharing their cultures, spiritualities and ways of living with the land, in this place we all now call home.