Newsletter Term 3 Week 4

Principal's Report

Dear Community,

Welcome to Week 4! The term is certainly flying by very quickly! We have had a wonderful few weeks here at St Joseph’s. Last week we celebrated Catholic Education Week. This was a wonderful week and was a great celebration of what we do as a community that makes our school special.

Mrs Sanders and I were very fortunate to be able to attend the state launch of Catholic Education Week, along with students, at the Cathedral in Toowoomba.

Prep 2023

We are very much looking forward to our upcoming Prep Open Day on Wednesday the 17^th of August. If you know of anyone who may be looking for a school for next year, feel free to pass along our flyer, or to share our Facebook Posts.

2023 Planning

To assist with our planning for the 2023 school year we ask that you please let the school office know if your enrolment may change next year.

We would also highly encourage our current parents to submit their Prep 2023 enrolments ASAP via our simple online enrolment form https://www.millmerran.catholic.edu.au/enrol

Next year is looking to be a big intake of Prep students, and along with our increasing enrolments across the school, getting your enrolments in early will secure your place and greatly assist us in planning for 2023.

We are currently looking at the possibility of having to employ an additional teacher / add an additional class to St Joseph’s to support our growing enrolments! This is great news and is testament to our wonderful community, families, and teachers.

Principal Forum

Next week I am fortunate enough to be attending the Principal Forum in Cunnamulla, along with the other Principals from the Toowoomba Diocese. This is a chance for Principals to gather, network and share ideas, as well as ensure our school aligns to system policies and initiatives.

Thank you to Mrs Sanders who will be filling in as Acting Principal next week.

Toowoomba Catholic Schools like to host the Principal Forums in towns across the vast Toowoomba Diocese, as a way of ensuring everyone is has a great understanding of the unique strengths, offerings, and challenges that each school and town possess. It is also a way to bring money and business into small communities, with local businesses, groups, organisations,  PPF’s / P&Fs often able to help with hosting duties. This can be a great fundraising opportunity for schools.

Next year I am very pleased to announce that Millmerran will be a host school / town for a Principal Forum. I am very much looking forward to showcasing our wonderful town and wonderful little school to fellow principals, education officers and directors of Catholic Education.

Until next newsletter.

God Bless,

Mr Lawson Short.

From the APRE

What a wonderful week it was last week for Catholic Education Week. We were lucky enough to have four students represent us at the State Launch Mass in Toowoomba. They all performed their roles well and represented our school with pride. On Wednesday, we enjoyed a lovely Mass with Father Thomas.  Thank you to everyone involved for your preparation and participation. On Friday, our teachers engaged in professional learning with Br Damien Price. He talked to us about coming as guest to each moment and being truly present in each moment, even though at times that can be very difficult. He was very engaging and we were all left with much to think about.

This Sunday, we will celebrate Family Mass at 9:30am.  All are welcome.

Next Monday, we will celebrate the feast day of Mary MacKillop.  This is a very important day in our school calendar as we base all of our values around Mary MacKillop and her teachings.  We will begin with Mass at 9:00am. During this Mass, a student from each class will be presented with a Mary MacKillop Award for emulating all the values of Mary MacKillop. This will be followed by our annual Fun Day activities that will be run from 11:30am - 1:00pm.  Each student will need a bag of 20c coins (about $5-$6) to participate in the activities.  All money raised will go to Mission of Mercy, Father Thomas' charity. We will end the day with a novelty relay from 1:40pm.  All parents and younger siblings are welcome to come along and join in the fun.

God Bless,

Michele Sanders

Catholic Education Week

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Prep/ 1 News

What a crazy two weeks we have had in Prep/One! We have been doing so much amazing and challenging work.

In English, we have started stamina reading. We do this every afternoon and there are some very strict guidelines we must follow. We need to keep our eyes locked into our book the whole time and no talking to others. We get to pick 4 books to read and look at the whole time. As soon as someones eyes are not locked in or someone talks, our time stops. Prep/One are absolutely amazing at this and have a record time of 23 minutes and 03 seconds…beating the 2/3 and 4/5/6’s!

In Maths, we learnt all about measurement. We have had the opportunity to measure and compare lots of things, we even got to measure our friends! This week we did a number talk all about part, part, whole. We received a request from “Farmer Pat” to work out how many sheep he has in each paddock. We knew he had 12 sheep in total, but we had to find different ways they could be split over two paddocks. We had some great discussions. One group even said that there are 5 in one paddock, 5 in another and 2 haven’t decided yet! This number talk was great and gave us lots of strategies to help us work out hard problem solving questions.

In Religion, we have been looking at the Creation Story and learning about all things that God has created. We participated in our first Godly Play to help us understand the stories better. It was so much fun and we had lots of ‘wonderings’ when we finished. I can’t wait to see what other stories we get to act out! 

• Lauren Grant and Catherine Folker

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News from 2/3

Hi St Joey’s parents, friends, and community, I hope you have had a productive and safe few weeks. I can speak for the 2/3 class, and productive is certainly a word I could use! They have been working hard investigating informational reports in English, building the skills and strategies to locate and record important information. The 2/3's have started exploring measurement in Mathematics this week. Our focus is firstly on area, and the students have picked up the concepts really well.

We are still exploring the geographical landmarks that make up Australia in HASS, and students have begun reporting on a geographical location of their choice. Our focus in religion this term is looking at the actions and teachings of Jesus, through scripture. A big focus for us to start the term has been on the concept of forgiveness, how important it is to ask for forgiveness and more importantly how important it is to forgive someone else.

The whole school were very lucky to be a part of a session with an illustrator on Monday, organised by our Teacher Librarian, Trudi Burgess. The students were able to hear what the process is like in designing a book and got to create some of their own illustrations under the guidance of a professional. It was a great session.

REMINDER: Mary MacKillop Fun Day is this Monday coming, 8^th August. Make sure you have plenty of 20c pieces handy for all the fun games and activities that will be on offer. Hope you are looking forward to it!  

Have a great couple of weeks,

Mitchell Albury

4/5/6

This week we welcome Miss Lainey McPhee, who is completing her final teaching prac with us for the next seven weeks. The students have already formed great relationships with her and we look forward to getting to know her better over the course of the term.

We have also welcomed Mrs Kass Clark to our classroom.  Mrs Clark replaces Miss Burke who left two weeks ago due to relocation.  Mrs Clark is well known to the students and has slotted into the classroom well.

This week, we also started our learning cycle on fractions and decimals.  This topic is always quite difficult for students as there are alot of new concepts that require a lot of prior knowledge of multiplication and division. The best thing you can do to help your child during this learning cycle is to practice their multiplication and division facts with them at home so they are confident in this area.

Our English unit continues to focus on poetry and analysing different forms. We are also having a go at changing poetry into narratives, which is proving to be quite tricky!

The students are also having fun learning how to use and build in Minecraft and have really started getting engaged and enthusiastic about our class musical, which will be performed next term.

Mrs Gunning is off on long service leave this week.  We wish her all the best for her travels and hope she has a wonderful trip.  We are definitely going to miss her.

Michele Sanders

Minecraft for Education

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Library News

This week we welcomed (virtually) author/illustrator Sue de Gennaro. Sue shared with us some tips and tricks about where her ideas for stories come from and showed us her little black books that are filled with story and character ideas. She then invited us to create five of the characters from her book, We’re Stuck … Giraffe, Pelican, Crocodile, Hippo and Lion. Her step-by-step instructions had us all producing very cute and recognizable characters.

We are entering the last month of reading time for the Premier’s Reading Challenge. For those students who have already completed the challenge … well done! For those still working on reading their 15 or 20 books … keep going.  Reading time finishes on 26^th August.

Book Week activity day is drawing closer.  Remember to come to school dressed as your favourite book character on Tuesday 23^rd August to celebrate Children’s Book Week.

In conjunction with Book Week we will be holding our annual Book Fair.  Book Fair gives students the opportunity to purchase books for their home libraries, while at the same time supporting our school library … as every book purchased at Book Fair earns points for us to spend on new books for our library.

Happy reading!

Mrs Burgess & Mrs Gunning.

Visit by Registered Nurse for Free Prep Vision Screening

Good vision is important for a child’s educational, physical and social development. Vision screening checks for common eye conditions that may impact your child’s ability to see and therefore impact their learning and development.

A Registered Nurse will be visiting the school on Thursday 15th September 2022 to conduct vision screening for children in their prep year.  If you wish to have your prep child participate in this free vision screening program, please complete an online consent form by Thursday 1st September 2022.   The online consent link will be emailed to you from the school administration within the next week. Parents do not need to be present for screening, however if you would like to be, please contact the school to arrange this.

If your child’s vision is screened, you will be advised of the results in writing. If a vision concern is found, you will receive a phone call from the nurse to discuss referral to an eye health professional for further assessment. If a vision concern is identified and your child requires glasses, eligible health care card holders may be assisted with free basic glasses through the Spectacle Supply Scheme.

Participation in vision screening is not compulsory. If you do not wish for your child to participate in screening, please complete the consent form and indicate that you wish to decline screening.

If you have any questions, please contact the Primary School Nurse Health Readiness Program on 1800 687 372.