Newsletter 4 2024

Principal's Report

Hello to Families and all in the St Joseph's School Community,

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend and managed to stay cool in the hot weather! The short week sees us quickly heading towards Easter and the end of Term One. There is still a bit happening between now and then so make sure you check out all of the upcoming calendar dates.

This Sunday marks the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Catholic Liturgical Calendar and being March 17^th it is also St Patrick’s Day (and from the green streamers decorating the streets, Charlton is certainly looking the part). During Lent Catholic Christians are called to open their minds and hearts to others. This week the St Joseph’s School Community extends wide, open hearts to the Fitzpatrick family on the passing of daughter, Maddi, and continue to keep the family and all those who knew and loved Maddi in our prayers. This week’s School TV resource relates to managing grief and there is a flyer below which may also be helpful in supporting each other at this time.  https://sjcharlton.catholic.schooltv.me/

FOUNDATION STUDENTS
We are happy to report the Foundation students are ready to join us full-time from this this time forward! The boys have settled in beautifully to school life and working well in the classroom and playing enthusiastically in the playground. Congratulations on such a super start to the year and to school life. Well done!

SCHOOL FEAST DAY CELEBRATIONS
Our school celebrates our existence – a bit like our birthday – on the Feast Day of St Joseph, the earthly Father of Jesus and a carpenter by trade. The Feast of St Joseph is on March 19^th, which is next Tuesday. Fr Gerry will celebrate a Feast Day Mass at 9:00am and families and community members are most welcome to attend. During Mass, our Term Leaders, Rosie and Marlly will tell us what they think is great about St Joe’s!

Paying homage to St Joseph’s trade, students will have the opportunity to work together on some special carpentry projects during the day. We will keep you posted next week.

I had a visit from the Buloke Healthy Kids advisors this week, who Mrs Wright and I have been liaising with. In exciting news, they are going to bring their SMOOTHIE BIKE along as a special treat on our Feast Day. Students will choose their ingredients and then have to get pedalling to blend their smoothies!

Lunch will be provided for students – a sav in a roll and a juice box. If students do not like savs please send their usual lunch along next Tuesday.

NAPLAN
NAPLAN testing for Grades 3 & 5 students commenced this week with Grade 3 students completing their writing test today. Well done to all students for giving it their best shot! A technical issue with the chrome books has delayed the start for Grade 5 students, who will now complete the writing task tomorrow. On Monday we will do Reading and Language Conventions, followed by Numeracy on Wednesday. Any students who are absent will undertake catch-up tests on their return to school. Tests will usually commence at 9:30 am so please ensure your child is punctual to begin their testing each day.

PARENT TEACHER MEETINGS
Parent teacher meetings foster communication, allowing parents to stay informed about their child’s academic progress, their behaviour and social development. Thank you to parents for collaborating- with staff to optimise healthy learning environments for your child and the setting of goals for the future.

 Miss Brown has met with parents to learn all about her students and used this information to set goals for individuals.

All teachers have met with parents to share personalised learning plans for those students who work on more individualised goals.

Staff will be in contact with any families who have not yet had a parent meeting to arrange a suitable time for a brief collaboration. Thank you in advance for your willingness and openness in participating in these valuable meetings.

 SCHOOL CLOSURE
Next Friday St Joseph’s School will be closed for staff to participate in professional learning. The focus of our day is SCHOOL WIDE POSITIVE BEHAVIOUR. We continue to explore the values and expectations we want to uphold as a school. This will further drive our behaviour management, celebrate successes and underpin all aspects of life at St Joseph’s School – so it’s a big deal! I look forward to sharing our learning with you next week.

STRUCTURED LITERACY UPDATE
Staff are continuing to implement the principles of Structured Literacy as the year progresses. I think we are all starting to develop routines which play to the students’ strengths and feeling more confident each week. You may have all seen the media reports over the past couple of weeks relating to the Grattan Institute's newly published report on Reading Instruction.  It is nice to know we are on the right track!

The evidence is clear: there should be a strong focus on
phonics-based decoding skills in the early years. Students
also need a knowledge-rich curriculum to build the
vocabulary and background knowledge that are critical for
successful reading comprehension all through school. And
schools need to track student progress, so they can
intervene early to help struggling students to catch-up.
Grattan - Feb 2024

MATHEMATICS
We are surrounded by mathematical concepts in our world, each and every day! Some of us notice these and some of us don’t! Mathematical thinking – the ability to break down problems into smaller parts and to ‘think outside the box’ – is a valued skill in everyday learning and in many careers. It is important to remember that we don’t need to instantly be good at maths – it’s a normal part of skill progression to make mistakes and learn from them. My dream is for all students to love mathematics! Over the next few newsletters I will share information about numeracy at each level of the curriculum. This week, check out the Foundation level information.

VULNERABLE PEOPLE
This week, I had a visit for Mark Remnant, Project Officer at Buloke Shire. Mark spoke of a Shire initiative to identify those at risk of not receiving, or having difficulty processing, bushfire/disaster notifications in a way that meets their needs. This is particularly true of some of the most vulnerable in our communities such as the frail and elderly. Please see the flyer below.

 Mary Hogan

Grief in Primary School Students

School Advisory Council

The School Advisory Council currently has two parent representatives. Brendan Bourke finished his time on the SAC at the end of the 2023 school year. I thank Brendan for the time he gave as a member of the SAC and was always appreciative of his input and feedback. Brendan's departure has left a vacant position on the School Advisory Council. If any parent is interested in filling this role, please contact Mary via the School Office. The role involves
a once-a-term meeting, and as the name suggests, to support the principal in
steering the school forward.

Project Compassion

If families have contributed to their Project Compassion boxes, could these be returned by the end of term. please. 

A school activity to add to our Project Compassion fundraising will be held in the final week of term. The Grade 6 students are currecntly deciding on the activity - stay tuned!

NCCD Information

Students of the Week

Foundation/1/2 Class Report

Hi Families at St Joseph’s.
We have had a jam packed couple of weeks. The Prep 1/2s have been working hard with their literacy groups and are all making great progress. This week our focus has been -ck, -ay and -ee. 

Our focus in numeracy has been place value, addition and subtraction. We are all working on our number formation and the children have been doing an amazing job with this!  

We had our Hockey Roadshow this week where the students got to try out their hockey skills. All the students had a great time and learnt some new skills from the coaches.

Grade 3/4 Class Report

Literacy: Students have been learning about the long -y phoneme at the end of words and how this can be changed to plurals. Students have used this week to revise phonemes and spelling rules covered this term (ch, tch, ture, -dge, -ge, g(e,i,y) and -y) through class based activities and their spelling words. Students have been learning about paragraphs and narrative structure the last few weeks and have been consolidating their learning through narrative writing practice. Students completed an interesting story based around the idea of a gate this week. Students have also been learning about coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, independent and dependent clauses. 

Maths: Over the last two weeks, students have been learning about addition with carrying over. Year 3 have been learning about this strategy and been working with 2-3 digit vertical sums. Year 4 have been consolidating their understanding of this skill and have working with 3-5 digit vertical sums. Students have also revised strategies such as building to 10, doubling and friends of 10 to help complement this learning. Students have continued to consolidate mental maths skills and knowledge through daily mental maths practice in their workbooks. Students have been learning x12 and x9 multiplication facts over the last two weeks, completing their knowledge of x3 and x6. We will be working towards connecting addition and subtraction later this week and into next week. 

Religion: We have been learning about Holy Week through Mark’s Gospel. We are currently unpacking Mark Chapter 15 on the events leading up to and happening on Good Friday.

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Grade 5/6 Class Report

Maths

Foundation Mathematics - What to expect at school and what you can do at home.

Container Deposit Scheme

St Joseph's Primary School has registered for the 'CDS' (container deposit scheme). We are raising funds for our Vegetable Garden and Breakfast Program. A yellow bin has been placed near the office door for containers to be dropped off or you can download the App. choose Donations - search St Joseph's Primary School Charlton, scan the barcode and deposit your containers.  Let your family and friends know.  Cans can be deposited anywhere in Victoria for our school.

Tammy

NAPLAN 2024

The 2024 NAPLAN Timetable for Grade 3 and 5 students is as follows:

Thursday 14th March - Grade 3 Writing @ 9:30am

Friday 15th March - Grade 5 Writing @ 9:30am

Monday 18th March - Reading & Language Conventions @ 9:30am

Wednesday 20th March - Numeracy @ 11:30am

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.

Child Safety - digital images

Taking Photos/Video Footage
As we begin a new year a reminder to parents and family members to please ensure, when at school events, to take photos or video footage of your child/ren only. Please do NOT post photos of children, other than your own, at school events or wearing school uniform, on personal social media pages other than your own. Thank you for your cooperation in using social media respectfully helping to keep everyone in our school community safe online.  

Community News

Acknowledgement of 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.