Newsletter 2, 13th February 2025.

Principal's Report

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

I felt very proud to part of such an uplifting celebration at our Opening School Mass last Friday. The students fulfilled their roles with meaning and enthusiasm. The celebration’s theme of BELONGING was palpable as students and many parents, family members and parishioners joined us for the occasion. A pleasant morning tea was shared afterwards, with special thanks to Mrs Fitzpatrick for her amazing St Joe’s cookies! We are also  thrilled to welcome to our school community, Mr Mason Heenan (LSO), joining us in the Junior Room three mornings a week and Mrs Rachael Smyth, who will work in the Junior Room each Friday. Congratulations and welcome go also to the Watts Family, on the arrival of the newest member of our extended school community!

 A huge congratulations to all staff and students for their effort and positive attitude throughout our Swimming Program – WOW! It has been amazing to see the growth in confidence and skill development over the two-week program. Staff and students alike, have reaped the rewards of the hard work, achieving things for the first time, improving, being allowed to work at their own pace and become their best selves. Special thanks to Mrs Lanyon, who trained as a swim instructor last year, for organising and running the program this year – super job! Of course, the Swimming Program culminates in the St Joseph’s Swimming Carnival tomorrow at the Charlton Pool from 12-2:30pm. See details below.

Parents and Carers will be asked to sign a couple of important documents as the year commences. One of these, is a Code of Conduct (which has been updated) and the other is an ICT User Agreement. At St Joseph’s we are committed to providing a safe environment, in both our physical and digital environments. The Code of Conduct is now signed once for your child’s enrolment period and the ICT User Agreement is signed annually. Thank you in anticipation of you reading, signing and returning these documents.

I shared with you last year that DOBCEL (Diocese of Ballarat Catholic Education Limited) is enthusiastically developing a strategy for improvement and excellence in all Catholic Schools in the Diocese. Over the next few newsletters, I will share some further details with you all. Today’s simple snippet is below!

On behalf of the school community I extend our heartfelt condolences to Wyatt and his family on the sudden loss of Brittany's father. Please continue to hold Wyatt and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
Warm regards in faith & learning,
Enjoy the weekend,
Mary

Jubilee Year 2025 - Pilgrims of Hope

A Friendship Blessing

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where
there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.
May you be brought into the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them;
may they bring you all the blessing, challenges, truth,
and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam ċara.   Amen

Adapted from Anam Cara: A Book Of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue
In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is an anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Gaelic world was the ‘soul friend.” In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam cara - John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

May we all be and find an Anam Cara as we experience everything 2025 brings.

Important Dates

PLEASE NOTE THE DATE CHANGE FOR OUR PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHS.
THEY ARE NOW TUESDAY 18TH MARCH.

Friday 14th February - Swimming Carnival 12pm-2:30pm
Tuesday 4th March - Dental Van visiting this week
Friday 28th February - SCHOOL CLOSED - staff professional learning AUSLAN
Wednesday March 5th - Ash Wednesday -Lent begins - Mass at 2:15pm
Friday 7th March - SCHOOL CLOSED - staff professional learning RELIGION
Monday 10th March - Labour Day Public Holiday
Wednesday 12th March - NAPLAN begins
Friday 14th March - School Nurse visit
Tuesday 18th March - Professional School Photos
Wednesday 19th March - School Feast Day
Friday 21st March - Harmony Day
Thursday 27th March - HOT SHOTS Tennis in Boort (Gr 4-6)
Friday 4th April - END TERM ONE

 DOBCEL Student-Free Guidelines and Procedures
Student-free days are days where students do not attend school within the gazetted attendance period but are designated for staff professional development, school professional development activities, planning and/or report-writing. Each year, the first day of term one and the last day of term four will be a student-free day in all schools. PLEASE NOTE THE STUDENT-FREE DATES FOR 2025. 

TERM ONE
Friday 28 February  -Staff professional learning - Auslan Language
Friday 7 March  - Staff professional learning - Catholic Identity

Uniform

 Our school uniform is important in making sure all our students feel equal and included. Wearing the same uniform helps create a sense of belonging and ensures certain aspects of safety. We really appreciate your support in making sure all children follow the uniform policy. A reminder that black shoes are to worn (except for on PE days), hair accessories to be uniform coloured ribbons or scrunchies, earrings to be sleepers or studs and no nail varnish, please. A religious necklace may be worn tucked in clothing for safety reasons. If you have any questions or need any help, just let us know. 

Homework

While students have been settling in and navigating the Swimming Program, reading has been the main focus of home tasks. Junior students will also have some high frequency words to revise at home. Homework is on the agenda for our first SAC (School Advisory Council) Meeting next week. If you have opinions on homework you would like to share with one of the SAC representative please contact Kelly Wright, Naomi Fitzpatrick, Jake Lanyon or myself. Further information will be communicated after the meeting.

DOBCEL Strategy 2035 - WHY?

From good to great

‘We are blessed to have a good system of Catholic schools led by highly skilled and dedicated Principals, teachers and staff, working in partnership with families, parishes and communities.

 ‘But as the world changes, we are challenged to think differently about how to best meet the needs of our students and families. 

 ‘Building on strong foundations and a rich heritage, this DOBCEL Strategy 2035 sets the sails towards a new tomorrow for our system - to move from good to great.’

 Terry Harney (Chair, DOBCEL Board)

NAPLAN 2025

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an annual assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. It is one snapshot of assessment which can be helpful for teachers and parents to see how students are progressing in literacy and numeracy over time – individually, as part of their school community, and against national standards.  We aim to treat the assessments as a normal teaching and learning task . This year the NAPLAN assessment period opens on Wednesday 12th March.

NAPLAN is made up of tests in the 4 areas (or ‘domains’) of:

• reading

• writing

• conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation)

• numeracy.

School Nurse Program

Kerrie McCosh, primary school nurse, will be visiting our school on March 14th,  2025.
Foundation parents, please be on the look out for an envelope that will come home which will include information about how to register.

Foundation Grade Health Assessments:  All parents/guardians of Foundation grade
children will be asked to complete a Health Questionnaire online, before February 28th.
If you do not wish your child to be seen by the school nurse, please go online, register, and
indicate the non-consent.

Referrals (Grades 1-6): Parents and/or teachers may refer children from any grade for
assessments of vision, hearing, basic speech, physical abilities, medical conditions,
behavioural and parenting issues. Please collect a referral form from the school office.

Completed forms are to be handed into the school office prior to February 28th . Should
parents wish to have an interview with the School Nurse, please indicate your request on the
form.

Please note: You can talk to the primary school nurse at any time throughout the year.

Breakfast at School

A reminder that Mrs Wright runs a Breakfast Program at St Joe's each Tuesday and Thursday in the Multi-purpose Room. It is always wonderful to see the students not only enjoying breakfast, but the company of each other as they chat over breaky! Mrs Wright usually has a game or two out to generate some extra chatter!

Foundation/1 Class Report

We have had a great two week swimming program. The children have enjoyed learning new skills and taking on new challenges. Well done everyone! 

We have our Swimming Sports this Friday - notes have been sent home regarding what team each child is in. 

We welcome Mason Heenan into our P/1 classroom as an LSO this year. 

Mason has settled in well and the students and staff are very excited excited to have him join us at St Joseph’s this year. 

Structured literacy groups have begun and the Foundation students are enjoying themselves and adapting well to the program and learning the sounds and letters. 

Numeracy has been focused on pattern and counting. There has been a lot of hands on play and learning new skills. 

Have a great week 

Katie Brown 

Grade 2/3 Class Report

Hello families!

Can you believe we're already three weeks into the school year? It has been an exciting and productive start, and I am thrilled with the progress our class has made so far. In the past few weeks, we’ve been settling into our routines, building strong foundations in our subject areas, and getting to know each other better. 

In Literacy, we have been focusing on our No Nonsense Phonics (NNP) everyday, looking at some new sounds, and concentrating hard to achieve our handwriting goals. 

Our Numeracy lessons have been focused on addition of 10 and 100 and we are moving on to three-digit place value. Students have been enjoying exploring new maths games that help reinforce their learning.

We will start our Inquiry unit this week after we have finished our swimming program!

As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns. You can contact me through our SeeSaw class or the school office. Thank you for your continued support as we build a wonderful school year together!

Lara Thompson

Grade 4/5/6 Class Report

Newsletter 13th February, 2025

We’ve certainly had a busy start to the term! Students have enjoyed going to the pool over the last two weeks and enjoying the water on these hot days. They have been learning lots of new skills and revising some already known to them. Reminder, that swimming sports are on Friday and all are welcome to come and spectate as the students show off their skills. 

In the last two weeks of Literacy, students have been revising routines and working on classroom expectations. Students have been revising letters and sounds through our daily phoneme work, strategies for spelling, handwriting and what makes a good sentence in the context of a larger story. Students have been practising their reading daily and I encourage students to do this at home as often as they can. 

In Maths, students have been revising mental and written strategies for addition and subtraction. Students have been revising what factors and multiples are, along with prime and composite numbers. Students have been working on their mental maths revision everyday, along with counting, patterns and their multiplication facts. 

Last week we had our Opening School Mass and it was lovely to see so many people in attendance. We welcome our new Foundation students and new families to St Joseph’s. We also congratulate the Year 6 students on receiving their school badges and taking on leadership roles for this year. 

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.