Newsletter Term 1 Week 4

Principal's Report

Dear Community,

Welcome back officially to 2022 and the new school year, and the first edition of our online school newsletter! It has been a wonderful having all our students back at school with students settling into school routine and learning seamlessly. Our students, and staff, certainly have hit the ground running, and it has been wonderful to see the enthusiasm, engagement, and participation of our students in their learning.

I would like to especially welcome all our new families to St Joseph’s. We have been blessed with a number of new families joining us in 2022. We look forward to welcoming you to our community and showing you all what a special place St Joseph’s is for students and families.

Uniform Reminder- Black Shoes

Just a reminder, as per previous communications, that our school uniform shoe policy was updated at the end of last year, following feedback through our school SRIP and Uniform Surveys.

Students are required to wear ALL BLACK leather joggers / all purpose shoes, including on sports days. This was in response to the added expense parents were having to incur having 2 different shoes as a part of the uniform, and the difficulty in finding all white sports shoes.

Shoes should be completely black including soles and laces, with no other colour / highlights visible.

Thank you for adhering to this requirement.

Administration Position

As you would be aware, Mrs Thurston will be leaving St Joseph’s. I would like to formally thank her for her work at St Joseph’s in the administration position and wish her well in her future endeavours.

Applications are now open for the position if you, or someone you know may be interested, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

https://www.seek.com.au/job/55921358?type=standard#sol=6b9b36349348d0df6e6b80b11fa52c78d2ae4de5

COVID Reminders

Thank you everyone for being diligent and adhering to our current COVID restrictions. We hope that these can ease soon as the year progresses, and things return to normal.

Just a reminder that we please ask parents to minimise their need to be on-site over the coming weeks, and to please call/email whenever possible.

Meet the Teacher Evening

Due to the current COVID restrictions we were unable to hold our formal Meet the Teachers Information Evening. In lieu of this, teachers have emailed out their start of school year information. I hope this has helped families settle into the 2022 school year. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to get in touch with your child’s teacher.

When COVID restrictions ease, we plan to go ahead with our Meet the Teacher BBQ and social night, without the formality of individual classroom presentation as this information should have already been sent home.

Have a wonderful next couple of weeks.

God Bless,

Mr Lawson Short

From the APRE

Hello Everyone,

Welcome back to a new year and a new term. This year is going to be a big year for our school in terms of Religious Education as we are participating in the Illuminate RE strategy with the diocese. This will enable us as teachers to learn how to be more confident in the teaching of Religion, to understand scripture better and to make Religion lessons more engaging for our students.  We, as a staff have already participated in professional development and have our coach, Mrs Lee ann Weekes coming out to work with our teachers in the next few weeks.  She will be planning and modelling lessons to help us and our students grow.

You may have seen the noticeboard outside the office. This displays our Mary MacKillop value for the month of February – Be Welcoming. The teachers will be choosing a recipient for our Mary MacKillop Award based off this value.

Our Opening school mass and induction of school leaders is our first big event for the year and unfortunately, due to Covid has had to be postponed. This mass will now be held on Friday 11^th March at 9:00am and will be followed by a shared morning tea.

Our Mini Vinnies club will be up and running again this year.  They will run our annual Pancake Toss and a form to register will be sent home shortly.  Our Mini Vinnies Club will also be running some weekly events this term to raise money for Project Compassion.  Stay tuned to find out what is in store!

God Bless,

Michele

Parish News

Upcoming Events

Prep/1

Welcome to Prep/One!

I can’t believe we are already in our second week of school! Prep/One have already started doing some amazing work! In Math’s we have started learning all about numbers. Preps are focusing on numbers to 10 and the Year One’s are looking at numbers to 20 and beyond. We have been doing lots of fun, hands on activities to learn and revise! In English, we have started to look at rhyming. We have been singing lots of nursery rhymes and identifying rhyming words. We have also been working on our fine motor to get our hands ready to write after those long holidays. This year we have set up our calming corner. Each day, two children get to use the corner to complete any of their work if they wish. This is our first go at flexible furniture in Prep/One and we are loving it!

 These first two weeks have flown bye and we can’t wait to watch Prep/One flourish!

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Year 2/3

Hi parents, partners, friends, and community members of St Joey’s. Welcome to the first newsletter item of 2022!

It is great to finally have the students back in the classrooms and life feeling somewhat normal again. I’m not just speaking for myself when I say that school the last few weeks without kids has felt quite strange to say the least.

We have hit the ground running this term beginning our units and activities throughout the first week. The students have begun recognising, sequencing, and ordering numbers to 10,000 by making towers out of blocks that are worth different amounts of points, they enjoyed the challenge!

They have begun looking at narratives throughout our reading unit and have also started writing some of their own narrative stories. The students have become history detectives this term in HASS, learning about the past and our history by investigating artefacts and what they mean.

The new year 2 students to the room have settled in really well and the class routines and structures are second nature to them already. I am looking forward to seeing how far this group can go and be pushed, they're excited, and I’m excited for a big year.

Have a great few weeks,

Mitchell Albury

Year 4/5/6

Welcome to a new year!  We are already back into the swing of things in 4/5/6 and everyone has been working really hard. We have welcomed the three new students into our class and St Joseph's and they are settling in well. A big welcome also to the year 4 students who have joined us this year.

In English this term, we are learning all about the fantasy genre.  We have begun reading the book ‘Malamander’.  Please encourage your child to talk about what is happening in the book, discuss the characters and talk about what makes it a fantasy novel.

Maths this term will be all about number and place value. We will continue on with number talks and we are also working on cooperative group work skills in Maths this year. This will encourage all students to talk about their learning and discuss how they come up with solutions.

This term we are also learning design technology, health and visual art and will be creating some exciting projects in the next few weeks.

Looking forward to a great term.

Michele Sanders

News from the PPF