Newsletter 5 2024
Principal's Report
Hello to Families and all in the St Joseph's School Community,
Today brings Term One to a close! Whilst it feels like it has gone by so quickly, on reflection much has been experienced and achieved! The Foundation students have settled into school life beautifully and Ms Brown and Miss Claudia seem to have been here for ever! Well done to all staff and students for a super start to the 2024 school year. Thank you, also, to parents, carers and community members for your continued support of St Joseph’s School and our students.
This week marks Holy Week on the Catholic Liturgical calendar. Holy Week began with Palm Sunday last week, with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Today, Holy Thursday honours the Last Supper, when Jesus shared a meal with his friends and established the Eucharist as a way to remember him. Tomorrow, Good Friday, is marked by a more sombre reflection on the crucifixion. Holy Week leads up to the celebration on Easter Sunday. We have used Easter egg wrappers in our prayer and liturgies this week - recognising that while Easter provides time to rest, forget work for a few days and enjoy the company of family and friends, it also marks the most important celebration in the Christian calendar.
Today we commenced the day with a Holy Week Liturgy be before visiting the Nursing Home to parade our Easter bonnets and spread some Easter cheer. After recess the Grade 5&6 students organised some Easter related events and students were able to try out the new billy karts.
We welcome Jake Lanyon to the School Advisory Council(SAC) from the start of Term Two. I thank Jake for his willingness to take on this role and look forward to having him join Naomi Fitzpatrick and Kelly Wright as the parent represenatatives on the SAC. The feedback, input and support offered by the SAC members is very appreciated and helps to support decision making in my role of leadership.
Best wishes for a peace- filled and joyful Easter. I hope the holidays bring time for rejuvenation, family time and enjoyment in ‘the little things’.
Term Two commences on Monday 15th April, 2024.
Mary Hogan
Principal
SCHOOL FEAST DAY CELEBRATIONS
What a wonderful day of celebration we shared together on our School Feast last Tuesday. After a Mass of celebration students enjoyed a variety of activities and treats throughout the day. Students enjoyed working in mixed age groupings to make origami lilies, learn about Joseph and play dress-up and to draw a portrait of St Joseph. Paying homage to Joseph’s trade as a carpenter, the Junior students enjoyed creating with wood and nails, while the Grade 3-6 students worked in groups to create four billy-karts. The highlight of my day was watching students try new things, work collaboratively and share comradery with each other! A big thank you to Mrs Wright for the green jelly and to Mrs Fitzpatrick for the special cupcakes. A day well celebrated!
NAPLAN
The NAPLAN Assessment window has now closed for 2024. Well done to the Grade 3 & 5 students for their efforts sitting each of the assessments: Writing, Reading, Language Conventions and Numeracy. Results will be made available to families when they are released to schools.
CROSS COUNTRY
Students will participate in Cross Country in Week 2 of next term. If they can be encouraged to do a little bit or running practice over the break they might find it beneficial. The focus will be on participation and personal best efforts. There is the opportunity, for those who qualify, to run at the next level in early May.
PARENT TEACHER MEETINGS
An opportunity will be provided early in Term Two for any families who have not already touched base with teaching staff.
SCHOOL CLOSURE
Last Friday staff worked with two DOBCEL staff members, Anne Ruddell (Leader of School Wide Positive Behaviour) and Liz McIntyre (Student Wellbeing Team), to further our journey in developing and implementing a set of expected behaviours at St Joseph’s. Staff audited current practices before reviewing and exploring our work to date. We look forward to sharing with you our behaviour matrix and school expectations in the near future! A second aspect of the day centred around using the SIMON platform to track social behaviour – both negative and positive.
PROJECT COMPASSION
Any families with Project Compassion contributions are asked to return boxes today, please. Donations will be added to the gold coin contributions collected at today’s Easter activities and sent to Caritas Australia. The students have enjoyed learning about this year’s focus groups each week at assembly – in Samoa, Malawi and the Philippines. Thank you to all families for your support of this Lenten activity.
RHYTHM UNITES EXCURSION
On Tuesday the F-4 students travelled to St Mary’s School in Donald to see a cultural, musical performance "Rhythm Unites". From all reports, both staff and students found the experience very enjoyable. Students have shared their learning about different cultures, their flags, their dress and their music - and a couple even told me about the teachers dancing! A big thank you to Mrs Wright for driving the bus and to Mrs Drum at St Mary's for providing a delicious lunch for both staff and students.
HOT SHOTS TENNIS
In exciting news, the Grade 5 & 6 students had a successful day at the Hot Shots Tennis Tournament in Boort yesterday, winning the tournament! A super effort, and a team effort, which is fantastic. A big thank you to Mrs Wright and Mrs Fitzpatrick for supervising and coaching the students on the day and to Miss Brown for practising tennis skills during PE lessons.
MATHS
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 Year 1 level information below.
Students of the Week
Foundation/1/2 Class Report
What an amazing Term it has been!
The Prep/1/2 students have all done such a great job settling in, making new friendships and focusing hard on their goals.
In Literacy we have been working on our phonics programs and each group has been having fun learning their new sounds each day and working hard on their handwriting.
We are very heavily focused on this at present and are having the students work on 'one great sentence.'
Our Preps have been working on ordering numbers to 10 and challenging themselves up to 20!
They have been working on their number formation using Play-doh to assist them.
Grade 1 and 2 have been working on grouping and continuing with their place value. They will move forward into multiplication in Term 2!
I hope you all have a great rest over the holidays and have a safe and Happy Easter.
Ms Brown
Prep/1/2
Grade 3/4 Class Report
The students have had a busy and fun filled first term.
Literacy: This last fortnight has been busy revising our learning for the term. Students have focused particularly on their understanding of contractions and apostrophes of possession. Students have been learning about mapping, climates, compass points and vocabulary such as temperate, tropical, equator and polar in their shared reading texts. Students have been revising narrative writing through paragraphing and using adjectives to describe objects and subjects in independent and dependent clauses/sentences.
Maths: Students have worked on addition and subtraction, understanding the link between these and strategies to solve 2-4 digit problems. Students have particularly revised the split strategy this week and are working on reading and understanding word problems. Students have revised their multiplication tables of x3, x6, x9 and x12 and are working on their accuracy and speed when recalling these sums. Students are practising mental math strategies and revision daily in their Mental Maths booklets.
Grade 5/6 Class Report
Students have completed first term, well and truly settled into the rhythm of our class routine, while also showing they are managing having more than one teacher throughout each week. The work staff have been doing with School Wide Positive Behaviour totally supports this, as it builds universal behaviours to be expected in all learning spaces. It is great to see the students understanding that as a class we are a team, and I have been pleased to witness examples of this recently. The Grade 5 students have completed their NAPLAN assessments over the past couple of weeks and were very patient with the technological side of things! Well done.
In Literacy this week we reviewed the term's spelling words, published a persuasive text on the benefits of technology, continued to explore year level vocabulary and had some fun with figurative language. In Mathematics, students completed their post assessments for addition and subtraction and revised place value of big numbers (into the millions).
We also took the opportunity this week to get creative! Students made Easter cards for the Nursing Home residents, made Easter baskets and bonnets and prepared some Easter activities for all students to enjoy. To round off a great term in the Senior Room, the Gr 5&6 students had a very successful day at Hot Shots Tennis in Boort. Well done.
Happy Easter and enjoy the holidays!
Mrs Hogan
Maths
Hot Shots Tennis
St Joseph's School TV
With the holidays advancing and Cross Country early in Term 2, you may want to check out this week's topics relating to 'Diet and Nutrition' and 'Physical Activity & Exercise'.
Physical Activity & Exercise: Physical activity and exercise is not only vital to a child’s overall development but it has so many other benefits. With children spending more time on computers being sedentary, it is even more important to get kids moving more. As well as maintaining a healthy weight, it also improves concentration by helping to establish connections between different parts of the brain. It helps kids develop fundamental movement skills impacting positively on their confidence, self-esteem and ability to develop social skills. On an emotional level, it reduces stress and anxiety while improving posture and sleep. Physical activity and exercise is good for your child’s health, now and in the future. Parents should encourage their kids to move or play sport at every opportunity – in and out of school.
Diet & Nutrition: Families today, with school-age children, have very busy schedules. This can sometimes make it hard to sit down to homemade meals every day when there is such an abundance of pre-packaged and processed food at the available. However, it is still important to teach your kids healthy eating habits. Diet and nutrition is crucial to your child’s development. Not only can it prevent many chronic diseases, but it also impacts on your child’s brain development and learning abilities.
There are many benefits to incorporating a healthy diet and good nutrition. It can stabilise your child’s energy, improve their mood and maintain a healthy weight. Not only will it improve their general wellbeing, but it can also have a positive impact on their mental health helping prevent anxiety, depression and ADHD.
https://sjcharlton.catholic.schooltv.me/
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.