St Joseph’s School, Millmerran eNewsletter

Principal's Report

Dear Community,

Last week, I was away in Chinchilla attending the Leadership Forum. It was wonderful to hear while I was away what a fantastic job our 5/6 students did of running the Mary MacKillop Fun Day activities. This can often be a difficult task for the students as they have to sacrifice their chance to join in an have fun. What they did last Thursday displays the willingness they had to serve others and the joy that they got from seeing the other students enjoy themselves. It was wonderful to hear about them living out our Mary MacKillop values on this very important day.

Over the next few weeks, the students and staff will be focusing on the learning behaviour of 'Curious Cockatoo'. Some parts of this learning behaviour can be quite easy for students - they are naturally inquisitive and want to find out information. Other parts can be quite challenging - growing our ideas and perspectives from other people's thinking is not something that even we, as adults, are always great at. There are often times where we want everyone to agree with us or think the same way that we do. When we can celebrate the ideas of others and challenge each other in a safe and supportive environment, this is when the best learning occurs.

You may have seen that we have started our Master Planning process, with our community consultation surveys. This is a really important process for our school as it will guide us in the growth and development of our school and the facilities that we provide. We value your opinion and would love everyone to have a say in the process. The survey will only take you a short while and we would appreciate your honest feedback in this process. Please note that it is anonymous and we will not see your name. You can fill out the survey using the following link: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=_f1LV0RCBUK3EBaPWwxYDepnqVxJQ-pBnrpSRjfTEH9UOFQ5UkczUTRKNExXTk9XMzhNSks3VEk1Ti4u

God Bless,

Michelle

From the APRE

Last week, we celebrated the Feast Day of Mary MacKillop. This is such an important day in our school calender as Mary MacKillop underpins our values and our school learning behaviours. We started off with a mass led by Father Thomas. We then participated in our annual fun day activities where the 5/6 students ran some wonderful activities. Our students raised $330 from the day, which will be sent to Father Thomas' charity, Mission of Mercy - a charity for underprivilaged children in India. Thank you all for your support.

A big congratulations to ourMary MacKillop Award winners:

Prep - Hazel Walker, Winter-Rose Keyworth

1/2 - Elsie Willett

3/4 - Desmond Commens

5/6 - Liam Folker, Heidi Sanders

Mary Mac Fun Day

Mary Mac fun day

Year 3/4 News

Hello families and friends,

I cannot believe we are already in week 6 of term 3! Time has flown by as usual this term, and the students have been doing a great job of working hard throughout the weeks.

In English we are about to finish up our narrative unit, in which we have been reading Matilda by Roald Dahl and using this to practice story writing. The students love this story (as do I) and have been enjoying learning new vocabulary, literary devices, and story structures present throughout the novel. Next week they will be completing their writing assessment, in which they will write a narrative, and I am excited to see what they come up with! After narratives are finished, we will start an integrated unit about environments which I am very excited for.

Fluency pairs being included almost daily has created a great routine for students to become more fluent readers, which I can already see happening. We have been working hard on this, as well as writing more complex sentence structures and using more vocabulary.

In Maths this term we have been focusing on shape and measurement, which is a great opportunity for students to learn a relevant life skill! They have been mainly exploring length so far, and are now moving into exploring weight, capacity and volume.

Leading into our integrated project of creating dioramas representing an environmental issue, we have been exploring sustainability, rock types, and environments in HASS and Science. These will all tie in together when students create their multimodal presentation and diorama.

During Catholic Education Week, students baked and decorated cupcakes to send to the local kindergartens. This was an excellent opportunity for students to have some fun and also to do something for someone else in an act of service.

With the term moving so quickly, I am excited for the students to begin working through assessment shortly to show what they have learned so far.

Thank you,

Georgia Tocknell