St Joseph's Parish School Weipa eNewsletter

Dear Parents

I can’t believe we are at the beginning of Week 4 already! Students have settled back into school routines well. Each morning as I greet students, I am continually impressed by the beautiful manners that our students display. It is a real credit to our parents as they respectfully engage with our staff and greet us each day.

Last week, all Catholic schools and Dioceses across Queensland celebrated Catholic Education Week. This year marks the 175^th anniversary of Catholic Schooling in Queensland. So, what does it mean for us to be a Catholic School?

We will be an inclusive school – we will welcome all who share our values and wish to be part of the community – there won’t be selection on “merit”
We welcome those at risk
No one will be turned away because of financial need
Justice and accountability will be a feature of all we do
Positive and valued relationships between all will be vital
We will be practical and committed to doing all we can to assist the development of young people
We will be committed to those who are less fortunate than us

We however set high standards in academic pursuit, respect each other and are strong ambassadors of our school
We will want to make a difference

Our mission demands that our school be committed to the education and wellbeing of each child and this is what makes our schools great places to be at. What Catholic schools remind all of us is that one person, even in the face of overwhelming odds, can make a difference.

Catholic Education is a big organisation. With 1 in 5 school age children attending a catholic school across Australia and with over 70,000 people employed nationwide, we really do have a lot to be proud of.

Catholic schools are not private schools. Private schools are exclusive by nature. In other words, they choose who they want to be part of their school community. As I mentioned above, each Catholic school in Australia by their individual charism are inclusive, where all who share our values and wish to be part of the community, are welcomed.

It has been wonderful to come together as a school lately for a couple of events after a long hiatus of not being able to gather. This week we will continue to celebrate the mission and identity of our school at a whole school liturgy. With COVID-19 precautions in place parents will not be able to attend but we will upload a video to our next newsletter.

Thank you, parents, for your patience with the ‘stop, drop and go’ system. As you are all aware COVID is in its 2^nd wave so until we have further directive from the government, all of our current ‘keeping safe’ practices will remain in place.

We are now entering the traditional cold and flu season and I remind everyone that it is very important that students exhibiting flu like symptoms remain at home. Hopefully, we will see Queensland continue to effectively manage the virus over the term and we will be able to progressively move to normalise our school’s operations.

COVID-19 UPDATES FOR SCHOOL

School restrictions continue to stay in place during Term 3 until further notice, especially in line with recent COVID hot spots emerging:

Assembly outside with only parents of weekly award recipients attending

Public Health Rules:

Physical distancing
5m per person indoors (adults)
Hand hygiene
Respiratory hygiene
Frequent cleaning and disinfecting

Staff will continue to ask children to:

wash their hands regularly with soap and water, particularly before and after eating, and after going to the toilet
use alcohol-based hand sanitiser every 30 mins
cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue or the inside of their elbow
dispose of used tissues in the bin immediately
apply social distancing as far as possible at school

Parents are asked to monitor children and if your child develops flu like symptoms, please:

keep the child at home and seek advice about undergoing COVID testing
contact your doctor or contact 13 HEALTH (13 43 25 84) immediately
call ahead to the medical centre or doctor’s surgery, advising of your child’s symptoms

PREP ENROLMENTS 2021

Thank you to those families who have submitted their application for Prep 2021. Only a couple of places left. Prep interviews are currently being conducted and will be finalised by week 7. If you have a child or know a friend or family member that have a child eligible for Prep next year, please contact the School Office ASAP.

ASSEMBLY ‘Counting Every Blessing’

Last week’s Assembly was presented by Year 4. They reminded us that we all have so many things to be grateful for and enthusiastically shared with us their blessings.

Many blessings and thanks for reading,

Megan Pearce

“Education cannot be neutral. It is either positive or negative; either it enriches or it impoverishes; either it enables a person to grow or it lessens, even corrupts him. The mission of schools is to develop a sense of truth, of what is good and beautiful. And this occurs through a rich path made up of many ingredients. This is why there are so many subjects — because development is the results of different elements that act together and stimulate intelligence, knowledge, the emotions, the body, and so on.” Pope Francis message May 10, 2014

This Week Let us include in our prayers…..

Those who work in and support Catholic Education. May we give thanks and blessings to all staff, volunteers, parents and friends who are workers in the field of God’s garden.
Those living in uncertainty as a result of Coid-19: those in lock down; the vulnerable in aged-care; those on the streets; those who are unemployed. May we, where we are able, be a pillar of support for those who are wavering.

Sunday’s Gospel- 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Please find shared in this week’s newsletter: the Sunday prayer at home which has some wonderful resources to unpack this week’s readings in a family friendly way.

This week’s Gospel is another Parable and shows how God, who is totally heedful of us, knows that we can live a half-life, worried about ourselves, our families, the futures, a pandemic, this constant worry can so consume us that there is no more time to actually just sit back, live, and enjoy all the blessings that we actually have.

We know that when we have a bowl of soup and a piece of fresh bread shared with friends it is better, richer fare than a four course meal, eating when our hearts are disturbed or if we have no one to share it with. Food is a metaphor for life. How we live depends on our nourishment. Should we also be looking at how we nourish our spirit? Where do we find food for our soul?

As God so generously feeds us, so to must we in turn share this food with others, as the disciples did in this week’s reading. What has been given to us freely so we must in turn give freely to others. Let us set the challenge to ourselves this week to turn towards others in our lives and see how we can show mercy, compassion, kindness, and peace. Reading Reflections

Week 4 Whole School Liturgy

We are very excited that Fr Dariusz will be available to join us for a liturgy of the word this Friday at 9am. We will be focusing this week on both our patron Saint St Mary of the Cross Mackillop and Catholic Education Week. The students will be reflecting on how they can be the hands of Mary, and make pledges about what need they are going to do something about, to reflect Mary’s pledge to ‘Never see a need without doing something about it’. It will be wonderful to see these pledges on display at our liturgy on Friday. As Mary is our first Australian born canonised saint, who took bold new directions in education and care of children, we pray this week that many young people in our communities may embrace her spirit.

With the Feast of Mary of the Cross MacKillop, it is timely to listen deeply to her wisdom as it reverberates through our current context. Mary was a woman of tremendous strength as those who knew her attest.

“Mother Mary was a noble woman, blessed with rare vision and holiness. Where the glory to God and duty to others were concerned she was full of moral courage, fearing no human opinion, always acting according to the dictates of conscience.” (Sister M Helena McCarthy, Tokaanu, NZ. 1 December 1925 p. 71. Excerpts taken from Memories of Mary by those who knew her, Sisters of St Joseph 1925-1926.)

Never_see_a_need.pdf

Never_see_a_need _pdf 174.64 KB

Globally, nationally, locally and personally, COVID 19 has afforded challenge and opportunity beyond anyone’s imaginings and one may do well to listen deeply to Mary’s gentle invitation to Believe the whisperings of God in your own heart. (MM 1868) A chance to connect/reconnect and to serve those in need – Mary ‘s constant drive and call to each of us.

May St Joseph smile on you,

Meg Newell

APRE/CST

family_prayer_wbw_18_ordinary_time_1 pdf 1.09 MB

We are learning how to write a basic information report using a template. The students are learning topic related vocabulary which include; herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, habitat, animal classification, camouflage and animal specific information. This week we have been learning about a Jaguar.

We are continuing to practice; Oral and Written Phonogram Review, Alphabetical order including lowercase and capital letters, reading fluently and writing simple sentences from left to right.

Science topic: On the Move

Students develop an understanding of how things move. They explore the push and pull forces they can use to move objects in ways such as sliding, bouncing and spinning. Through investigations, students observe and gather evidence about rolling objects and explore the idea of fair testing.

Ms Turner, Matt and Jake have been running Auskick

Matt and Jake spoke to the Preps about a Program called On The Move With Deadly Foods Project (OTMWDF) which aims to educate and improve physical activity levels and healthy food choices.

Year 1 Class News

Click link below for the recording

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mk3Rj8PQj_jJao6ZlUUlhM-Me-kBxisi/view

Thank you to everyone who attended our Parent Teacher Interviews in week three. It was great to discuss your children and their successes!

This week in year 2 we have been busy learning about persuasive writing and all the features we can use to persuade someone for something! We even wrote some letters to Mrs Pearce asking for things at school, such as a pool, ninja warrior obstacle course and fishing ponds!

In Religion we have been looking at how Jesus lived and how his stories are told through the Bible. We have researched information about Jesus’ clothes, food, transport, and work…the Bible has been a great resource for us!

On Monday of week three, year 2 had the opportunity to demonstrate their fabulous singing skills as we sang our ‘Be a Learner’ song for the whole school at the PB4L assembly. This song is from the Second Step program, which focuses on 4 key areas of a learner: focus attention, be assertive, listen, and use self-talk. We did a fantastic job!

As always if there are any questions or concerns please get in contact with me directly and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Kind Regards,

Emily Ridgley

The past few weeks we have been revisiting the 4R’s and have introduced our classroom reward system. Many students are striving to be a “Super Student” at the end of the day which comes with many perks. Everyone in Year 3 is encouraged to strive for their personal best and be ready for
learning every day.

In Mathematics, we have been following a clear structure for each lesson which begins with mental computation and counting, modelled teaching, group tasks and independent tasks. We will continue this structure for our maths lessons throughout the term.

In English, we commenced Reading Groups which includes a range of activities including grammar, independent reading, pobble365, and handwriting. Every student will need to have a book every day to read during these sessions.

In Religion, we have been learning about Baptism as a Sacrament of Initiation and welcoming into God’s family. If there are any photos of your child being Baptised please send them as we would love to see them. We will also be visiting the Church to learn more about the rituals and symbols of Baptism.

In Writing, we have been focusing on emotive language as a tool to persuade. You may like to ask your child to persuade you to buy a pet? Go on a holiday? Or even eat a certain food for dinner.

Just a few reminders, Homework has commenced and will need to be submitted every Friday. Students need to bring in a piece of fruit to eat during crunch and sip during class and their drink bottle. Laptops should be coming to school charged and ready for learning every day.

It was great to meet most of the Year 3 families throughout Week 2 at the parent interviews and gain insight into your child’s social, emotional and academic development. I look forward to meeting others in the coming weeks.

In faith,
Mrs Michelle Gear

This week the Year 4 class presented Prayer on Assembly and our theme was Counting our Blessings. The students wrote why they feel blessed and read them out on Assembly with a Power point to accompany the Creation story from the Bible with pictures of Weipa.

This week in Physical Education the students of St. Joseph’s participated in AFL and got to practise their kicking skills in the big Inflatable Gaol Posts. A great time was had by all.

Reminders

Library Day is Wednesday – please ensure Library bag is packed on that day

Health and Physical Education

Teacher: Melanie Turner (Thursday)

Health Lesson

Teacher: Megan Newall (Friday)

Auslan

Teacher: Yasi Kemmerling (Monday)

Homework is given out every Friday and returned the following Thursday

Laptops – Please remember to charge Laptops at home each night

Communication

If you have any questions or queries, please email us on mturner@cns.catholic.edu.au and sulanas@cns.catholic.edu.au and we will endeavour to return your email within 24 hours.

These past couple of weeks we have been busy learning about the Gold Rush. We have learnt about who discovered gold as well what life was like on the goldfields. We played an interactive game called Gold Rush 2. We had to go to a number of different stores and purchase items so we could dig for gold. Some of us earnt a lot of money. Some of us had to go back and try again to get more money. We discovered that purchasing certain foods were not a good choice because we didn’t have a fridge to put it in. We also learnt to make gifs using a website called Brush.Ninja. It was a little difficult because we aren’t very neat with our drawing skills online just yet. But we did create some gifs about the goldfields. I think our multimedia presentations are going to look really great once they are done because we will have so many interesting things to write about.

Pictures of our Gold Rush game

In English lessons we looked at language features in a poem called Storm at Sea. We had to find the similes, metaphors, personification and onomatopoeia. Using our colours, we coloured or underlined the words or phrases. We checked our page and most of us got everything correct. We then went onto Google Classroom and did our good copies using our highlighter or coloured font to show each of the language features.

Jack’s example of similes, metaphors, personification and onomatopoeia from the poem Storm at Sea

Our Math lessons have been a bit tricky these two weeks. We have been looking at factors, multiples and divisibility. If we know our times tables, we are able to do our work a lot quicker. If we don’t we need to make sure we have our multiplication chart to have a quick look at. It has been challenging but rewarding when we get the questions right. Miss Edmonds showed us some rules on how to work out divisibility and it shows that some really clever people could work out big numbers if they know those rules. We are getting better at harder problems all the time.

Casey and Sydney’s Math worksheets on Divisibility

We searched around the school for items/symbols that show what we value in our school for our Religion lessons. We all were able to draw a variety of things. We learnt a bit more about our mission and vision for our school by looking at our school website. Knowing about this before walking around our school made us search for certain symbols. Humility, Justice and Compassion can be seen and heard every day. We have a lot of important people in our school that make our school the great place it is. Some are no longer at our school and some come to our school every day. We learnt our school is different from other schools because it is named after St Joseph the Worker, it is a Catholic school and that we value many different things that help us be the best students we can be.

Ryan, Sarah & Noah’s items/symbols from around the school

Student Awards- Noah Lynch, Cees Hagenmaier, Sarah Bond and Brendan Ward

Things to Remember

Thursday’s are library & homework day

Week 7 is Book Fair & Book Week. Don’t forget to organise your costumes! The theme is ‘Curious Creatures, Wild Minds’ or choose your favourite book character.

Yr 6 Newsletter written by Yr 6 students.

This week our Second Steps topic is Being a Bystander. You can be a positive or negative bystander. “You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.” If you were being a negative bystander you would be encouraging the bully, laughing at the person being bullied, watching the bully without doing something about it or ignoring what’s happening and just leaving. To be a positive bystander you would get help, ask the bully to stop, help the person being bullied and standing up to the bully. It sounds easy but it isn’t. Be a positive bystander! (Jasmine, Angus, Jai)

During Maths lessons we have been learning about decimals and volume and capacity. We know how to read and calculate the capacity in a container and how to measure cubic metres and centimetres. We are learning how to round decimals, to add and subtract them and to estimate different types of decimals e.g. money and length (Sophie, Jake and Kyan)

We are learning about circuits and switches in Science and last week we did an experiment called “Light it Up!” We used a battery and a lightbulb, we also used wires and buzzers. We are looking at the electrical symbols and what they mean so we can draw a circuit diagram. E.g. _____ for wire. This week we experimented by testing how effective different materials were to conduct electricity. We used materials like feathers, metal tins, scissors, a mandarin, tos ee what was the best conductor. (Charlie, Sienna, Ramona)

This term we have had the people from Auskick come up and do some activities with us like brandy and kick to kick. Last week we started our new reward system. On Friday we did the trampoline and had popcorn which we enjoyed. We found some playtime games to do this week, games such as handball, 21 home base, obstacle course, touch footy, oztag, ultimate footy and tug-a-war.

(Kai, Luke and Liam)