Newsletter Term 3 Week 6

Principal's Report

Dear Community.

Welcome to our Week 6 Newsletter! We have had a very busy and successful few weeks here at St Joseph’s, with a big highlight being the Mary MacKillop celebrations.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the Principal’s Forum in Cunnamulla. This was a great chance for leaders to gather, celebrate the successes within our schools and focus on Toowoomba Catholic Schools mission and vision moving into the future.

Classes and Staffing 2023

I am very pleased to announce that due to our increasing enrolment numbers St Joseph’s will be moving from 3 to 4 classrooms next year. This is very exciting for our wonderful school, with our predicted enrolments next year to be at an 8 year high.

This doesn’t just happen and is a testament to our wonderful community, who have been so active in promoting our school.  It is also a testament to the hard-working staff and the quality education and results we achieve.

Although not completely locked in our most likely class structure for 2023 will be Prep/Year 1, Year 2, Year 3/4, and Year 5/6.

With good news, also comes sad news. At the end of 2022 we will be farewelling Mr Albury who is relocating back to Brisbane. We have been blessed to have Mr Albury at our school for the previous 3 years, and I know he will be very much missed within the St Joseph’s family, but also within the wider Millmerran community. I look forward to being able to more formally thank Mr Albury for his service later in the year.

As a part of the Toowoomba Catholic Schools staff relocations, I am very pleased to announce that Miss Grace Twidale will be relocating to Millmerran to begin teaching here in 2023. Miss Twidale has been undertaking a 6-month teaching position in our St George school. Miss Twidale is a very familiar face to St Joseph’s, having been a student here as well as having taught music here and is the daughter of our learning support teacher Mrs Twidale.

I know you will make Miss Twidale feel very welcome here. She is very excited to be joining us, and is eager to share her skills, especially in the musical arena.

Advertising and recruiting processes are currently underway for our additional classroom teacher.

Pick up and Drop off

Just a reminder that students are to be dropped to school from 8:15am when supervision can be provided. Students are not to arrive before 8:15am as there is no teacher designated to provide supervision. Thank you for your assistance with this.

Thermomix Raffle

A massive thank you to everyone who took part in our Thermomix raffle. Congratulations goes to Genevieve Clark on your win! This was a great project undertaken by our PPF and raised some great money for our school.

We Need Your Cans, Bottles & Containers!!

Thanks everyone for your efforts in collecting your 10 cents eligible containers. We have been very lucky to have this project happening at school and to have such great support.

Since we have begun this project, we have raised over $2000 for our PPF and our students.

Please bring along any containers, and place these in the specially marked bins in the schools' undercover area.

Until next newsletter.

God Bless,

Mr Lawson Short.

Date Claimers

From the APRE

Well, we are half way through the term and I feel like I can breathe a little sigh of relief that all our big events and masses are done for the term.  It has been a very busy couple of weeks!

Last week, we celebrated our annual Mary MacKillop Feast Day celebrations.  This day is always a big one on our school calendar and this year was no different.  A big thank you to the Mini Vinnies club who came up with all the activities, made the signs and facilitated all the stalls and activities on the day.  They did a wonderful job and without them, this day  would not happen.  Thank you to everyone for their participation in the day. We raised a total of $354 to go to Mission of Mercy. Father Thomas will greatly appreciate this donation.

Congratulations to our Mary MacKillop Award recipients, Madeline Folker, Desmond Commens and Bella Klein.  These students were chosen for consistently displaying the values of Mary MacKillop; bravery, persistence, kindness, tolerance, understanding, patience and justice.

This weekend Harry Farrington will complete the Sacraments of Confirmation and Communion at Pittsworth.  We wish him all the best as he takes this next step in his faith life.

On Thursday 1st September, our Prep/1 students will present a liturgy for all our Dads and Grandads.  We will begin with a free breakfast of bacon and egg burgers from 7:45am.  This will be followed by the liturgy at 8:30am.  All are welcome to join us. A note detailing this will be sent home this week.

God Bless,

Michele Sanders

Mary MacKillop Fun Day

Prev

Showing images 1 - 8 of 24

Next

FATHER'S DAY BREAKFAST AND LITURGY

A breakfast of bacon and egg burgers will be provided for Dad's and their families from 7:45am on Thursday 1st September. Please RSVP with the number of people eating breakfast to michele.sanders@twb.catholic.edu.au no later than Monday 29th August.

Prep/ 1 News

I can’t believe we are already halfway through Term three! Prep/One have continued to do some amazing learning in these last two weeks!

In English, we have started looking at narrative structure. We have started our unit by looking at fairy tales. We love fairy tales, so it has been lots of fun being able to listen to stories and learn all about them!

In Maths, we have been very busy! We have started looking at writing and reading time on a clock as well as days of the week and months of the year. We have been participating in lots of hands-on learning to help grasp these concepts and Prep/1 have done an amazing job!

In HASS, we have been learning all about natural, managed and built features. We especially have been looking at parks and using google earth to find different parks around us. Parks are a great example of these different features as they always have lots of different things. We are currently doing some research as to what we think would be good in a park. We get to interview others as well as do some online research of really cool parks around Australia. We are then going on a walking excursion around Millmerran to look at all our different local parks. After all this research, we get to build our very own parks. We are so excited for this!

In Health, we have been learning about how to keep our bodies healthy. Last week, we learnt all about healthy teeth. We created a dental area and had a little bit of time pretending to be the different roles at a dentist. We had a receptionist, dental assistant, dentist, x-ray technician and an oral hygiene educator. This was so much fun!

What a great two weeks we have had! I can’t wait to see what amazing things happen in our next fortnight! 

• Lauren Grant

My New Gallery

Prev

Showing images 1 - 8 of 9

Next

Prep Transition Days

News from 2/3

Hi St Joey’s parents, friends, and community, I hope you have had a great couple of weeks! I think we have finally beaten all the cold and flu that has been going around, fingers crossed. We have had a complete class the past few days which has been great to see, it has felt like a long time since we have had everyone back on deck!

Thankyou to everyone who made Mary MacKillop Fun Day a great success last week, the money raised is going to Fr Thomas’ charity and I know he appreciates every last 20c coin.

We have had plenty going on both academically and outside the classroom this term, and it looks set to continue. We have been discovering all things measurement in maths, exploring area, length, mass, and capacity. We have continued our research into our classmates and interesting animals for our report writing. We have reorganised the English rotations throughout the week as the students become more independent and capable of completing more detailed tasks. They have enjoyed the change this week and I look forward to seeing where it will lead.

Outside the classroom we have plenty coming up. None bigger than book week next week. The book week dress up and parade will take place next Tuesday, so I hope characters and costumes are under construction! We also have St Joey’s Got Talent taking place in a couple of weeks. I know the students participating are very excited.

Hope everyone has a great fortnight,

Mitchell Albury

From 2/3

4/5/6

This week we welcomed back Mrs Gunning from her long service leave.  She has regaled us all with her travel tales and what a wonderful time she had.  In her absence, we have been working extremely hard and were excited for her to see what we had achieved in just 8 days!

In Maths the focus has been on fractions.  We are learning all about equivalent fractions, types of fractions and now how to add and subtract fractions.  Miss McPhee has been engaging the students in lots of hands on learning and the students have been enjoying all the different types of activities. In the next few weeks, our school will be participating in the Matific Maths Olympiad. During the week long period, students will complete activities to earn stars, which will earn points for our school.  Some great prizes are up for grabs, so we are hoping to do well and win some prizes for our school.

In English, we are starting on assessment for our reading and writing unit.  This work will take place over the next 5 weeks and is all about analysing different types of poetry and turning poetry into a mulitmodal narrative.  The students will be supported to complete this work over the remainder of the term.

The students have also been enjoying their learning experiences on Minecraft for Education.  So far, we have built a new national monument for Australia, a garden and a campsite.  We are looking forward to having some more fun on this program.

Michele Sanders

Learning about Fractions

PPF News

Trivia Night Raffle

Dear families,

Once again as part of the Campoven Festival activities, the PPF will be holding a Trivia Night on the 28th September.

Last year we had a very successful multidraw raffle on the night, including a variety of prizes from local businesses and families plus our school community grocery hamper.  Once again, we invite all families to contribute to our multidraw raffle by donating goods and services as prizes for the draw or items to our grocery hamper. We understand that not all families can volunteer their time, so this is a great, time-free way of contributing to the awesome fundraising efforts of our PPF.  Money that ultimately is reinvested in our school and children.

If you could please contribute an item or two per child, the following guide will help to avoid too many double ups. 

Prep/1 families:

Baking items and soft drinks/juice

Year 2/3 families:

Party foods and canned goods

Year 4/5/6 families:

Sweet treats and pantry staples

Please return your items to the school office by 9th September

Also keep an eye out for a book of tickets to sell in advance for the multidraw raffle coming home next week – please let us know if you would like more than one book to sell 😊

Kind regards,

St Joseph’s PPF.

Parish News

Library News

PSHS Transition Days

Every Day Matters

Guidance Counsellor News

Club Information