St Joseph’s School, Millmerran eNewsletter

Principal's Report

Dear Community,

This week's gospel says, "Jesus said to them, “Go into the world. Go everywhere and announce the message of God’s good news to one and all.

We have many examples of students in our school community who proclaim this good news in their deeds and actions everyday.

The senior student who sees a younger student upset as they walk in the gate and runs over to them to say "Good morning, do you want to come and play with us?"
The student in the playground who sees another student hurt and comforts them as they bring them to the office and sit with them until they feel better.
The student who sees someone doing something they know is not right and brining this to their attention.
The student who always greets every other student and teacher with a smile and a cheery 'good morning.'
The student who offers some of their lunch, or clothing to another student, so they don't feel disadvantaged.
The student who offers to do jobs around the school, just beacuse they want to help.

These are little things that I see occuring every day, that show me that the values of Jesus that we teach, inclusion, welcoming, justice, service and hospitality are alive and well in our students.

As you may be aware, this year we have begun to implement the Toowoomba Catholic Schools, Diocesan Approach to Reading. This has started with the implementation of our UFLI program in our Prep-Year 2 classes. The work of UFLI focuses on two main areas: teacher development and reader development. The place where those two overlap … that is where the work of UFLI lives. The program is designed to help teachers become more confident and more successful in their capacity to help kids learn to read. So far, we are seeing great success with the implementation of this program. Our teachers have been working hard with our Education Officer in implementing these lessons into their daily programming and delivering these lessons so that every student achieves success in their learning.

For the next few weeks, we will be focussing on the learning behaviour 'Courageous Corella'. This is often a very difficult one for students to show in their everyday learning. There are lots of things that happen at school, and in their everyday lives that might seem scary and that tell them "I can't do this!" Corageous Corella is all about teaching students that it is okay to feel scared, it's okay to make mistakes and that taking risks often leads to great learning. It's about having the courage to try new and different things and knowing that it is okay to fail, because this is how we learn and grow.

Next week I will be absent, as I will be attending the Toowoomba Catholic Schools Leadership Forum. Mrs Fiona Andrews will be deputising in my place. Any day to day matters can be directed to her. Please contact me if there are any urgent matters that arise.

God Bless,

Michelle

From the APRE

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to Liam Folker, Madeline Folker and Heidi Sanders who attended family mass on the weekend and did an outstanding job of reading. There were numerous people who commented on how beautifully they read and what a credit they were to our school. Congratulations to you all and thank you for your continued dedication to supporting our school and parish.

This Friday, our Prep class will lead us in our Mother's Day celebrations. We will begin our liturgy at 8:40am and will finish with a morning tea for our Mother's afterwards. We hope you will all be able to come and join us for the morning.

REFLECTION

Mothers come in all shapes, sizes, colors, temperaments, sanities, and the list goes on and on. Moms and mother figures are good at giving us some moral compass to live by.

From the moment of conception, we’re caring for and nourishing a human person within us. We were designed exactly as God intended: to be able to do this and withstand the pain and changes that not only our bodies go through but also our minds and hearts as well. God has a plan and motherhood is part of so many of our journeys in life.

Moms suffer the greatest heartaches, the greatest of joys, and everything imaginable in between. This Mother’s Day, let’s give each other grace. Moms nowadays are inundated with information and opinions and media and choices and advice, and we’re thrown into doing so much with very little help sometimes. Let’s say a little prayer for each other for strength, courage, and patience. Mary, Jesus’ mother and the greatest of all models to look up to when getting through our day-to-day life, is someone we can turn to and ask for intercession. Our Blessed Mother, even in her perfection, still somehow experienced similar feelings to those that we feel as mothers. I’d like to think that because Mary and so many other women were great mothers, we can be too.

Finally, join me in praying for mothers. As you pray these prayers, take a moment in your humility; put aside anger, resentment, stress, and distractions. Consider praying for…

…the mother who is anxious.
…the mother who has suffered loss of a child(ren).
…the mother who is estranged from her own mother.
…the single mother.
…the mother who feels alone in her motherhood.
…the mother who has had miscarriage(s).
…the mother who is scared.
…the mother who is experiencing homelessness.
…the mother who is in an abusive relationship.
…the mother who has healthy children.
…the mother who is sad.
…the step-mother.
…the mother who is worried.
…the mother who is the breadwinner.
…the mother who has addictions.
…the mother who forgets about her own self-worth.
…the mother who is struggling.
…the mother who is without faith.
…the mother who is doubting herself.
…the newly-pregnant mother.
…the mother who is working.
…the mother who stays at home.
…every mother.

Year 3/4 News

Hello friends and family!

The start of Term 2 has been a bit out of routine as always with the public holidays and events, but the 3/4 students have done a great job to work hard in between the craziness.

In English we have been reading the book Amazing Animal Journeys by Jennifer Cossins, exploring the features and structure of information texts. It has taught us about some interesting animals’ migration patterns alongside the text type being focused on. We will be moving into some writing of information texts soon, after continuing our focus on sentence and text structure. They have been working hard in their spelling lessons and show me their reading skills in our shared reading sessions. I love how much these kids love reading! Their independent reading sessions are successful thanks to their love for the chapter books they pick up in the library. We will be starting reading tests next week for the semester, so it would be great if they could keep up with their reading at home so that they are practicing their fluency.

In Maths we just finished our multiplication and division unit. The students have shown an improvement with their times table which is a great skill to have moving into the next year level, and we will continue to work on this throughout the rest of the year. This week we are starting to work with fractions which is always a fun unit as we can relate it back to something as great as food! Pizza fractions and chocolate bars will be on our minds a lot during this unit.

Our excursion to back creek was a great way to finalise term 1’s Science unit on living things, as we now move into ‘heating up’. We had a look at what happens to ice when we hold it in our hands, and have brainstormed some ways to keep warm in week 2, and will continue to experiment with what happens to different objects when heated up.

In Religion, we are focusing on Millmerran’s local parish and go to interview Mrs Sanders about her role as APRE! The kids had some great questions for Michelle about the church and its history.

While this term will be very busy and a bit crazy at times, I’m looking forward to working hard with this class who manage to put a smile on my face every day!

Thank you,

Georgia Tocknell

Date Claimers

Friday 10th May - Mother's Day Liturgy 8:40am
Friday 10th May - PPF Mother's Day Social Evening 6:00pm
Monday 13th May - Step into Stories
Monday 13th May - Auskick begins (every Monday for 4 weeks)
Tuesday 14th May - Darling Downs Cross Country
Friday 17th May - Singfest
Monday 27th May - Reconciliation Week Liturgy
Tuesday 28th May - Prep -2 high jump qualification
Wednesday 29th May - Long distance events at the State School
Wednesday 29th May - Years 3-6 high jump qualification
Friday 31st May - Athletics Carnival
Wednesday 5th June - State of Origin dress up
Saturday 8th June - St Joseph's Cent Sale
Monday/Tuesday 10th-11th June - Dalby Eisteddfod
Wednesday 12th June - Gore Hwy Athletics
Thursday 13th June - Under 8's Day Celebrations
Friday 21st June - Last Day Term 2

Student News

CROSS COUNTRY

Last Friday, we had 5 students, Darby Commens, Desmond Commens, Harlen Pink, Felicity Clark and Heidi Sanders, compete at the Inner Downs Cross Country trials. This trail was held at Highfields on a nice, hilly track. The students all ran extremely well with a number of great results. Well done to Desmond and Harlen who placed in the top 10 in their event. Congratulations to Felicity and Heidi, who placed in the top 6 in their event, gaining them selection in the Inner Downs team to compete at the Darling Downs Championships next Tuesday.

What great determination was shown by all of these students. We are very proud of all your efforts.

SINGFEST

Also last Friday, we had 25 of our students participate in a rehearsal for the upcoming Singfest concert, at Millmerran State School. These students showed great enthusiasm and were a credit to our school. Mrs Wheeldon was very impressed at the hard work they had been doing at lunchtime to practice for Singfest. We can't wait to see you all perform next Friday at the Cultural Centre. A number of our students have been given solos for this concert; Chloe Sariman, Eloisa Lehuede, Ianelle Bejarin, Felicity Clark and Bella Sese. Congratulations to these girls and we wish you all the best for next week.