We respectfully acknowledge the past and present traditional owners of this land on which we are meeting – the Algnith people. We also acknowledge the contributions of First Nations peoples to the education of all children and people in our country Australia, in which we all live and share together.

2023 Newsletter Term 2 Week 2 

Dear families and of friends of St Joseph’s,

What an action packed few weeks we have had to begin our term. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed in some way to make our fist weeks back such a successful and happy start to the term.

ANZAC Day

Thank you to those who were able to join us for our ANZAC liturgy on Monday. It was a special occasion, led beautifully by our Year 3 and 4 students. We were joined by our special guests, Major Theo Hadgis and Corporal Aiden of the Bravo Company 51^st Battalion Far North Qld Regiment. Corporal Adian who encouraged our students to take on the ANZAC spirit in his speech.

Sacrifice, Responsibility, and Mateship are all virtues we can aspire to live out each day. We certainly thank Aiden for sharing inspirational words with us and thank our guests for their service. Thank you to all veterans, men, and women in our community who serve our nation.   

Dawn Service 

Congratulations and thank you to those students who attended the Dawn Service and/or represented St Joseph’s in the ANZAC March. Thank you also to the families who made it possible for their children to be involved and to the staff who came along to march and assist with supervision. The students participated respectfully during both of these events, and certainly gave us cause to be extremely proud.

St Joseph’s Feast Day

Today we celebrated the Feast Day of St Joseph the Worker with a special whole school Mass. Every Year on the Feast of St Joseph we present the Spirit of St Joseph Awards. These Awards symbolise the gospel values which we live out here at St Joseph’s.

We are a young school but over the last 8 years, together, we have built a strong school Identify and Spirit inspired by our Patron Saints, St Joseph and St Mary of the Cross. Both the St Joseph’s Way and our school values are the heart of the Spirit of our school.

The St Joseph’s Way tells us what to do-

• Be respectful
• Be responsible
• Be resilient
• Be ready to learn

And our school values tell us how to live out the St Joseph’s way with Humility, Justice and Compassion.

Our Spirit of St Joseph’s Awards recognise children from each class who consistently demonstrate these qualities. These students have worked together with their peers, as constructive members of their class showing respect for others, generosity and helpfulness towards staff and their classmates. They have made a genuine effort to do their best in all aspects of school.  Congratulations to our 2023, Spirit of St Joseph’s Award recipients!

Mother’s Day Celebrations for 2023

 On Thursday morning the11^th May we will be celebrating how special our Mums are by holding our annual St Joseph’s Mother’s Day Celebration of fun, food and laughter.

 This year's theme is 'Mum, You Are My Sunshine' and we invite everyone to wear a touch of yellow for the special occasion.  We will start with prayer, then heartfelt entertainment from Prep and Year 1. This will be followed by morning tea served while you join in our craft activities and games. Our Senior Hub Waiters will be waiters and they will ensure Mum's are well catered for. Take a photo at our photo booth and maybe win one of the three door prizes. We will also be having some fun party games, so it would be wise to brush up on your music knowledge.

Mums can choose from three fun craft activities:

• Sip and Paint with Mrs Pearce
• Decorate a Mandela decorated Flower Jewellery Dish
• Create a bespoke sunflower Tote Bag

Attendance and selection can be made via parent slip that will be sent out early next week.

Hoping you can come along, join in the fun with your kids and make some special memories.

Staffing Update

Internal Relief Teacher It gives me great pleasure to introduce Julie Done and her family to our St Joseph’s school community. Julie’s family is relocating to Weipa from Cairns and will be working with us from week 6. Mrs Dore is a very experienced teacher and will be our internal relief teacher for the rest of this year. She will cover staff on leave and work as part of our Intervention Team.

Tuckshop Assistant

Currently recruiting but unfortunately there will be no tuckshop next week.  We are hoping to be back up and running the following week, starting Monday 08/05/2023.

Attendance

We would like to remind families of the importance of regular attendance and punctuality. Our current attendance rates have fallen from a 92% in Term 1 to 72.2%. The percentage of absences has been 30.6% due to illness and 46% for personal/family reasons.

Attending school every day and arriving on time is essential for academic success and helps to build good habits for the future.

Over time, absenteeism can become chronic and can result in gaps in knowledge and skills that can be difficult to overcome. The table below shows the cumulative effect of regular missed school days:

In addition to academic achievement, regular school attendance is important for social and emotional development. School provides a structured environment where students can interact with their peers and develop important social skills, such as communication, collaboration and empathy. When children miss school, they may miss out on these opportunities to connect with others and develop these important skills. 

The following may help your family establish expectations for school attendance:

• Have a set time to go to bed
• Have a set time to get out of bed
• Have uniform and school bag ready the night before
• Have a set time for starting and finishing breakfast
• Set a time for daily homework activities
• Speak about school positively
• Be firm, send your child to school every school day (unless unwell)

We have many incentives in place to encourage good attendance. This year we have decided to hold a draw at the end of the year for all students who have reached 90% or above attendance for the year. We will draw the winner who will receive a new bike.

This week the MTSS-E focus for the school was using the 4R’s in the playground. Students were given extra Joey’s Tokens for using respectful behaviours when playing with others. It was great to see students using kind language and playing fairly.  

Welcome to week 2!  

Another wonderful fortnight of learning and fun events completed for the term. We absolutely loved participating in our first Cross Country and were so proud of ourselves when we finished, there were huge smiles all round. The students showed great resilience and persistence completing their race on what was a very sunny and hot day for running.  

Another highlight of our week of learning was ANZAC Day and our first special assembly with visiting soldiers to share their stories and memories from their time of service. We loved creating our very own ANZAC Teds after reading the story and the soldiers also commented on how amazing they were.  

During classroom time we have commenced our learning on the following units: 

English – Writing a recount, reading, and speaking and listening skills.  

Maths – Number to 20 and beyond, collecting data and displaying data, and the duration of time. 

Science – Exploring weather and how it affects our everyday lives.  

Geography – Places, what makes them special, and how we can look after them.  

Technologies – Exploring the way things move.  

The Arts – Dance. 

Health - Emotions 

Religion – Jesus’ life and ways people pray. 

We also continue on with our learning in PE, AUSLAN, Music and our Social and Emotional Skills learning and have loved commencing our PMP program in the mornings which you will get a sneak peek at in the photos. Exciting upcoming events we are looking forward to include St Joseph’s Feast Day, Mother’s Day and Under 8’s Day. 

We look forward to another wonderful term with you all and again if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me on kbackhouse@cns.catholic.edu.au 

Many thanks,  

Prep.  

Hi Year 1 families,  

Welcome back to all our year one families for term 2. We have had some big changes this term and I know your resourceful and resilient children will thrive and learn in the coming weeks and throughout the term.  

In Week 1 we have been concentrating our efforts on learning the oa/ ow spelling patterns, consolidating our knowledge of the ee/ ea and ai/ ay spelling patterns, and continuing to develop our reading and writing skills. 

In Week 1 Mathematics we have been further developing our partitioning skills through using physical materials and the part part whole diagram to understand how numbers can be flexibly partitioned and partitioned into lots of 10 and lots of 1. We have played lots of games including bowling for numbers, board games, and dice games. 

In Science we have started to learn about the physical world around us including how the earth turns on its axis making day and night here on earth. We learned how someone standing on one side of the earth can be in the dark while someone standing on the other side can be in the light at the same time.  

In Art we have started to learn about the elements of dance and have experimented with using ribbons to help create firework dance moved. 

Kind regards, Mrs Hamilton. 

Dear Parents and Guardians, 

Welcome to Year 1 Newsletter. What an amazing start we have had to the week. It has been a busy week learning about Anzac Day and Our Patron Saint  - St. Joseph the Worker. We celebrated as a school today Friday with a Whole School Mass with Father Dariusz, cutting of the cake and a shared pizza morning tea. 

The students have transitioned very well and have been working very hard and are now familiar with the classroom routine. This week we have also sent out the Year 1 Curriculum note for Term 2 which details what we will be learning this Term and the days and routines of the Year 1 Classroom. 

Anzac Day 

Year One were very lucky to have Corporal Aidan and Major Theo Hadgis from 51st Battalion, Far North Queensland visit the Year 1 class and speak about the importance and symbolism of Anzac Day. We also celebrated as a School with a Liturgy on Monday afternoon. 

Maths  

This week in Maths, we practiced addition and subtraction to 20. The students used unifix cubes, counters and  to show how numbers increased and decreased. They have also been skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to 120 are getting much more efficient and confident.  

Homework 

You would have noticed that homework was sent home on Wednesday. If you have any questions about the tasks, please reach out. Homework will be collected on Tuesday and returned on Wednesdays.  

A gentle reminder that Monday is a Public Holiday and we look forward to the students return on Tuesday.  

If you have any questions please feel free to make contact with us at  a convenient time that suits 

Our email addresses are: 

Michelle Gear mgear@cns.catholic.edu.au 

Melanie Turner mturner@cns.catholic.edu.au 

Kind Regards, 

Michelle Gear and Melanie Turner. 

Dear Families and Caregivers of Year Two, 

Welcome back to Term 2! It has been great to see the students straight back into their learning and routines.   

In HASS this term we are learning all about Queensland, Australia and The World. Students examined an atlas and viewed different types of maps. They loved finding connections they have to Queensland and other parts of Australia.  

In Maths this week students have been exploring money. We have looked at different menu’s and created our own to work out how much money we need to buy items and how much change we will receive from certain amounts of money. Ask us what we have already learnt so far this term! 

We had a visit from Nadine Grant from Cairns on Wednesday this week to explain more to us about St Joseph and the kind of person he was. Students were involved in acting out the story of when God asked Joseph to travel to Egypt with baby Jesus. We learnt more about the values of St Joseph’s Parish School of justice, humility and compassion.  

It was wonderful to see so many St Joey’s students attend the Dawn Service on ANZAC Day to pay their respects. In class we have looked at the different types of people who represented Australia such as army men and women, navy men and women and the RAAF.  All year two students also respectfully participated in the ANZAC Day Liturgy held at school on Monday.   

Just a reminder for this term:  

Homework folders and Library books will go home on WEDNESDAY 2A and THURSDAY 2B.  

Kind Regards, 

Mrs Barber and Mrs Tapper, 

Year 2 Team. 

Hello family and friends of Year 3, 

Thank you all for a seamless start back to school. The past 2 weeks have been busy for our year 3 students. They did a fantastic job of leading the ANZAC Day liturgy on Monday, it is lovely to step up in the school and do various roles, so well-done team! Cross Country was a great success, thank you to everyone who was able to volunteer some of their time. 

The Curriculum note for this term will be sent out today. This will give you all more information about what the students are learning about in each learning area. With a change to staffing, some of our specialist lessons, for example music/Spanish will be delivered by different teachers within the school. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.  

Our school photos are on the 16th of May. Please make sure that students have the correct formal uniform and black shoes.  

Some gentle reminders: 

• Homework is given Monday and to be returned Friday 
• Library borrowing/returning is Friday – this is student responsibility to return their books 
• PE uniform is Thursday  

Thanks everyone! 

Emily

What a fantastic start to Term 2. Students are settling into learning with many new concepts starting to be covered in our learning. Not only are we learning new things each and every day, we have been celebrating so many events already this term.  

The enthusiasm and good sportsmanship from Year 4 students at Cross Country was outstanding. Every one of them should be congratulated on their efforts on the day. I know that I was impressed with how they displayed themselves off the field and on the field.   

We were also fortunate to commemorate Anzac Day as a school and with our community at the Dawn Service. A special time of the year to be thankful for all the freedoms with have because of our military organisations.  

Our St Joseph Feast Day was also fantastic with Year 4 showing reverence and respect while in the church celebrating all things St Joseph. Congratulations to Rowan who was awarded the Spirit of St Joseph award. Your classmates and I are proud of you.  

A curriculum note will be coming home very soon so keep an eye out for this, as it will fill you in on what is being covered this term in our classroom.  

Important Days to Remember: 

• Homework is due Friday. 
• PE is Thursday. 
• May 1st is a Public Holiday, so no students are at school.  

Welcome back to another exciting term of learning and educational experiences at St. Joseph’s. We are well and truly settled into our routines of the year and have hit the ground running for our learning this term. Just a reminder that in the Senior learning hub we run on short 4-6 week cycles of learning, which means our learning will change 2 to 3 times per term to ensure student engagement and multiple opportunities for their success. 

From Mr Harrington and Miss Mcleish