Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th -- Father Dariusz visiting for weekend Mass

Sunday 17th March -- St Patrick's Day

Monday 18th March -- P & F Meeting in the flexible learning space @ 7 pm

Tuesday 19th March -- St Joseph's Day

Thursday 21st March -- Harmony Day

Friday 29th March -- Cross Country Day

Friday 5th April -- last day of Term 1

Prayer for the week:

God of Love, 
through this Lenten journey,
purify my desires to serve you.
Free me from any temptations to judge others,
to place myself above others.
Please let me surrender even my impatience
with others,
that with your love and your grace,
I might be less and less absorbed with myself,
and more and more full of the desire
to follow you, in laying down my life
according to your example.

Amen

We began Lent this week with Ash Wednesday Liturgy. The ashes are to remind everyone of our human mortality “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and as a symbol to others of our beliefs.

Lent is a time of reflection and is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar. During the forty days of Lent, to be like Jesus we are encouraged to take the opportunity to resist temptations and use this time to become closer to God. During Lent, we can “fast” in various ways to connect with and honour Jesus, who fasted for forty days in the desert. Fasting may not always involve food.  

Jesus used his forty days to get away from distractions and communicate with God, we too can benefit from Lent by pushing aside at least some of the distractions of the world. We are reminded during the season of Lent that this time is really about a change of mind and heart, not just about changing some habits, that we may have picked up along the way.

Something to consider in Lent… The power of three little words.

• I’LL BE THERE -Being there for the other person is the greatest gift we can give.
• MAYBE YOU’RE RIGHT -This phrase diffuses an argument and restores frayed emotions; the flip side is the humility of admitting “maybe I’m wrong”.
• PLEASE FORGIVE ME -Many broken relationships could be restored and healed if people would admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness.
• I THANK YOU -Gratitude is an exquisite form of courtesy.
• COUNT ON ME -A friend is one who walks in when others walk out. Loyalty is an essential ingredient for true friendship.

The Importance of Family Time

Let’s face it—life is busy! Between work and life responsibilities, the days pass us by in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, this can have direct impacts on the time we spend with our children. A recent study in the Journal of Marriage and Family questions the impact the amount of time parents spend with their children has on the academic achievement, behaviour, and emotional well-being of their children. This is not to negate the importance of time spent with children, but rather, to reinforce the point that quality of time is much more important than quantity of time.  Children need high-quality time with parents and caregivers—that is what is most beneficial to children and what can have a positive effect on them as they grow. It isn’t about endless hours of time—it’s about how you choose to spend that time that truly matters.

As parents and caregivers, we can make choices to ensure time spent with our children is high-quality. I encourage you all to watch this quick 2-minute video to discover new ways to make time with your children:     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IljMvbKLM0

Meaningful connections are about quality of time, not quantity of time. Keep it simple and connect with your child in ways that make sense for your lifestyle and relationship. Each connection has a lasting impact and provides the support and reassurance that your child needs. Remember, every little bit of time makes a positive impact.

God Bless

Megan

During the week I was asked some very good questions about Lent and what were some significant points they could think about during this time. During our religion lessons in Year 6 this week we looked at the three pillars of Lent: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving, so here are some ideas for you and your families during this season of Lent. This year the theme for Lent is 100% HOPE so we have discussed some of the ways we can provide HOPE for others in need and pose the question for ourselves:  How can we give HOPE?

Prayer:

• Begin each morning with a prayer such as, ‘Lord, I offer you this day, and all that I think, all I do and say.
• Spend some time in silence or meditation at a time that best suits you.
• Say a prayer of gratitude before family dinner. Even if it means expressing one thing each person is thankful for during their day.
• Keep a journal/jar of your Lent intentions, your progress, people you want to pray for, joys and disappointments.

Fasting: To give up something non-essential or take up doing something extra for others.

• Give up a daily/weekly treat and put the money you would spend on that item into a Project Compassion box.
• Give up Facebook, Instagram etc. and spend your time doing something positive for others.
• For our children, talk to them about taking up an extra job around the home or for a neighbour that will put a smile on someone’s face.

Almsgiving: to reach out to others in need with our time, hands and money.

• Give some of your time to help someone…..spend 10 minutes helping Thu in the tuckshop.
• Time for a wardrobe clean out? Take those clothes you really don’t need any more and donate to a charity.

Thank you and blessings for a great weekend,

Amanda

Delicious, special and what a wonderful way to prepare for our Lenten season. The students this week learnt about the importance in our Catholic faith tradition of preparing for the next 40 days leading up to Easter. Thank you Year 6 for preparing our Pancakes and delivering to the whole school community - they were delicious!!!

Our Week 5 winners are so excited!!!

These students all received awards for Week 5 and 6.

Prep - Maddison Johnson, Kadence Simpson, Cody Simpson, Niamh Horwood

Year 1 - Claire Pritchard, Domonic Johnson, Reon Barba and Tye Lee

Year 2 - Oliver Scott, Sophia Clements, Nate Robinson and Natalie Foo

Year 3 - Yuri Lesic, Ianneasha Raleigh, Arki Hagenmaier, Levi Payne

Year 4  - Brendan Ward, Lexi Franklin, Aiden Clegg, Jack Kelleher

Year 5 - Kai Abbott, Jasmine Scikluna, Jessica Hynes, Charlie Hockey

Year 6 - Roxanne Raleigh,Natasha Winaulin, Isaac Morton

Dear Families / Caregivers

In Literacy we will continue to focus on the pure sounds and correct letter formation of the letters; m, s, t, a, p, i, f, r, o, c, d, h, e, n, g, and l. Rhyming, Syllables and onset and rhyme are still a focus in the class as it plays a central role in learning to read and spell. We are also starting to write simple sentences and words. We have been learning about vocabulary and we have been finding words from story books to put on our word wall.

Mathematics will include orally counting forwards and backwards to 20, counting using concrete materials demonstrating 1:1 correspondence, subitizing (recognising a small amount without counting) and number recognition. Students will also sequentially order numbers and match the number’s quantity. They are really enjoying counting to a 100 and beyond with their groups and try really hard to go further each time.

History: This unit begins using literature as a source to explicitly develop children’s personal understanding of who the people in their family are and how they are related. As the children’s knowledge of family develops the unit focus moves to the differences and commonalities of families. Can I please ask that you send in a photo of your child when they were a baby. It can be emailed to me as well.

Kind Regards

Miss Andrieka Knight

aknight1@cns.catholic.edu.au

Dear Parents,

This week we commence Lent. The students have been asked to come up with a Lenten promise that is achievable however, will require some effort. Please ask your child what their Lenten promise is and help them stay focused on their promise from now until Easter. In Maths, the students have been busy learning about doubles facts and growing number patterns. Please practice skip counting this week in twos, fives and tens. Starting at random numbers helps to consolidate this learning. E.g count in tens from 26. We are now very knowledgeable about different animals and confident to speak about their habitat, diet, life cycle and appearance. Please talk to your child as much as possible about an animal of their choice to help them communicate their ideas clearly in their writing. We will be wrapping up all of our units of work and assessing students understanding over the next few weeks. This makes attendance super important so that each child has the opportunity to share what they have learnt. We currently have 56% of the class attending 95-100% of the time. Hopefully sickness eases off so we can finish off the term with a bang!

Kind regards,

Holly Jarden

In Year 3 we certainly have been busy. Our lessons in Religion have been all about the Beatitudes and how we can live our best life. The students have even been learning a song about how to share the love and light that is within us. After we attended the Ash Wednesday liturgy we were definitely on our way to begin our Lenten journey.  The students have been busy reflecting on how we can show love around us. During our English lessons we are continuing to focus on our fluency during reading as well as descriptive language for our narrative writing. We know that we need to make our writing as interesting as it can be and to do that we need to use a variety of adjectives, verbs and nouns. In Maths we have been revising our addition and subtraction strategies and learning how to bundle and chunk our numbers so we can add or subtract quickly. Our Geography lessons have been full of mapping skills. The students have been discovering the importance of mapping conventions and how to design a map. Our neighbouring countries have been discovered while working out their locations through orienteering. This week we have had 16 out of 21 students at school 95% or more of the time. This is great to see!

Another busy fortnight in year four! Our attendance has dropped quite a bit and only 68% of students are attending 95-100% of the last fortnight. Every day counts to make sure your child has the best chances of reaching their potential.

We have been exploring fractions and how a chocolate bar that is broken into more pieces means you get less. We also started looking at location and describing our position using a floor size grid to direct our classmates around. When we learn new math concepts, we learn about the vocabulary, define a few examples and then rotate through different activities during the week to practise the skill. Variations of ‘bingo’ have been a hit in the classroom where students practise vocabulary associated with the skill while trying to fill their board up first.

We have almost finished our character descriptions that we have been working on for the last few weeks and the growth in the students writing and the complexity of their responses has been wonderful to read.

In visual art we have been looking at Jean Dubuffet and how he used scribble to create artworks. We closed our eyes and drew pictures of ourselves and colored them in the same style he used.

Homework was sent out on Tuesday and will be returned next Tuesday. If there are any concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me, otherwise, the children were very excited to begin extra practise at home!

This week we started looking at what a special time we have ahead of us for the next 40 days during a time we recognise as Lent. During Lent we are asked to think about how we can make some changes to not only our own lives but to the lives of others. As a class we discussed the values of being just, respect and kindness. This will be a good challenge for all of us to be just, respectful and kind to all we meet during Lent.   We made a Lenten Resolution this week as part of this journey to dig deep and give up something that would be challenging, or work towards helping others in a way that may be hard.  It was a thought-provoking task and I am proud of how each student pondered about this, after we discussed it and shared ideas, then wrote our resolutions down. Naturally this ties in with the 4 R’s of classroom expectations.

In Maths, we have consolidated multiplication skills and are working each week on a different set of times tables.  This week Division has been the focus and we have approached it in many different ways.  Sharing is the key word, and we spent time doing the turn arounds of times tables to gain an understanding of what division means. Great effort from every student.  Lots of challenge activities also for those who need it!

In English, our focus has been exploring Prefixes in words and how they help us understand the meaning of words we read in different texts.  We have continued to build our writing skills up by looking at paragraphs and punctuation.  We have completed the 3^rd book of Deltora and some of the descriptive writing from this was amazing!  Great to see each student starting to piece ideas together and form opinions about different characters.  I am seeing so many students STEP UP this week.  Keep it up!

What a wonderful week it has been to see so many of our Senior students take on such an important task of helping to conduct our Ash Wednesday Liturgy. The Liturgy was made special by the fact that they were able to help with every aspect from the procession, to readings, songs and setting up the display. We have also spent time during Religion lessons to think of ways in which we at St Joseph's, can help those less fortunate. There have been some suggestions about setting a goal of how much to raise and if we reach the amount what fun things they could do in return to celebrate. These ranged from throwing foam pies at Mrs Saunders to have a fun day with water balloons. This week in Maths the students have been looking at angles within our classroom, environment and how to correctly use a protractor to measure angles. One of our success stories this week also involved the development of a Homework matrix which the students found exciting and brought back a hunger within them to be more independent learners. We are looking forward to making one for Week 7. 

Our Senior leaders also this week co-ordinated and work collaboratively to set up, make and distribute all of the pancakes for the whole school on Tuesday. Well done and they were delicious.

St. Joseph’s  Cross Country Training

Congratulations everyone!  This week at  Cross Country Training we had 30 students attending on Tuesday morning and 32 students attending on Thursday morning.

Training will continue every Tuesday and Thursday 7.30 - 8.00am throughout the Term.

 The St. Joseph's Cross Country has been set for Friday the 29th of March, 2019 at  St. Joseph's School Oval. If you are able to assist with the Cross Country please email

  mturner@cns.catholic.edu.au

Every weekend in our Church services are held at the following times:

Saturday evening 6 pm

Sunday morning 8.30 am

Should you require any further information please contact Mrs Kath Newman on 4069 9346 or via email on weipa.parish@cairns.catholic.org.au