St Joseph's Parish School Weipa eNewsletter

Dear St Joseph’s Families,

I hope you are all managing to keep safe and well and are maintaining the good practices that have kept us so healthy. Although we have seen a bit more sickness/ absentees over the last couple of weeks, within both students and staff , it has been interesting to see the reduction in illnesses such as colds, flu and gastro that often go through schools since the increase in hand washing and staying home if you are unwell.

It is also important that we maintain the limits on adults attending schools. I would like to sincerely thank you all for your support in this. It has been disappointing to have to turn parents away when we have worked so hard to encourage you in in the past. I know that many of you are missing seeing your kids to the classroom and having a look at their work. The positive side to this has been seeing the resilience of your kids improve. They are generally very confident in making their way to class and getting themselves set up. Please keep in contact with your child’s teacher if you have any questions. We are happy to make phone call or zoom appointments. With our continued hard work on maintaining these practices, hopefully we will stay COVID-19 safe.

As we move into the second half of the term, the business of school life is being somewhat taken for granted and we need to be mindful of the stresses which young children can experience at this time of year. Kids need to be active, but they also need time to rest. Sleep and nutrition are vital, especially during periods of vigorous routine and or illness. This is the time where children will start to feel the wear and tear of school, homework and extra-curricular activities. Naturally, they will become more emotional over issues that a few weeks ago would be handled with ease. One such issue would be maintaining positive relationships with their school mates.

Conflict with peers is unavoidable and is all part of growing up. From my experience, most disagreements occur at the back end of each school term. Petty, niggling things that others may say or do suddenly become major reasons for arguments and strained friendships. At times like these, teachers and parents play an important role in guiding children through these rough patches. It is also important not to catastrophize issues into something they are not.

An example of this is to avoid labelling minor school or playground incidents as bullying. Bullying should not be confused with not getting along with someone, rejection, random or one-off verbal or physical conflict. While teachers put a lot of effort into supporting students to maintain positive relationships with each other, children will tease and fight at some stage; however, this bickering or ‘friendship fires’ should not be confused with bullying.

Bullying is an insidious behaviour and can take on many forms and guises such as physical and emotional abuse, intimidation, harassment and exclusion. It is not the domain of just one gender. Girls bully just as much as boys, but they do it in less physical ways. Whilst boys use physical intimidation or verbal abuse to wield power, girls are more likely to use exclusion or sarcasm to assert themselves.

Bullying is about lack of power, as one person is powerless to stop the teasing or physical abuse. Bullying is the selective, uninvited, repetitive oppression of one person by another person or group. Sometimes, we don’t find out that someone has been bullied until after a long period of time and this proves very difficult to resolve, as recollections of incidents can become unclear if they occurred some months beforehand. This is why it is important to identify and act on any possible signs of potential bullying at the earliest opportunity. For this to occur, teachers, parents and children need to communicate and co-operate as soon as any signs may appear.

If you suspect your child is being bullied, here are some helpful hints on what to do:

Listen to their story. Children experiencing stress in their lives need someone to believe their story. Take them seriously yet take some time to help them differentiate between bullying and teasing. Kids can be nasty to one another at times, yet this does not constitute bullying.
Get the facts. Ensure you get a clear picture of what happened, including who was involved, the frequency and what occurs prior to any bullying. Get your child to be as specific as possible. A quiet chat with your child’s teacher the following day will help enormously. The teacher may be unaware of such behaviour occurring and now can start planning a course of action, or he or she can provide further information of what occurred.
Deal with their feelings. A child who is being bullied probably feels scared, angry and sad. Reassure them that it is ok to feel this way and by working together things will get better.
Help build your child’s support networks. Kids need friends to support them when they experience bullying, so look for practical ways to broaden friendship groups. Avoid withdrawing or utilizing social media to solve the issue at all costs.
Build their self-confidence. Provide plenty of encouragement. Let them know through your words and treatment of them that they will get through this tough period.

If you ever have concerns that your child is being bullied it is important to speak with the classroom teacher as soon as possible so that the situation can be investigated and action taken immediately. When parents and the school can work together to support our children with effective skills/ strategies to deal with friendship difficulties, they will develop resilience and a skill set that will help them overcome tough situations. These strategies will be invaluable as they continue their journey into secondary schooling.

Road Safety

Queensland’s Road Safety Week will be held from 24 to 28 August 2020, delivered in partnership by the Department of Transport and Main Roads and Queensland Police Service.

Road safety is everyone's responsibility and putting road safety first should be the priority every time we're on or near the road. Queensland Road Safety Week is an opportunity to put the spotlight on road safety. This year, the Department of Transport and Main Roads is asking all Queenslanders to sign up for road safety – and put up a sign sharing a road safety message, then take a photo and share it with them. We are encouraging all students to create a road safety message with their family, display it on a sign, and share it online. Each of our classes will also be creating interesting ways to share Road Safety messages with our community.

To get involved:

Get creative! Think of a road safety message you'd like to promote. It might be something relevant for your students/business/suburb/community, an issue you're passionate about, or just your way of showing support for road safety (please keep it polite!). If you can't think of anything, the attached list might provide some inspiration.
Put your message on a sign. If you have an existing sign or message board, use it! Or you can put your message on whatever is available – paper, cardboard, whiteboard, footpath etc.
Take a photo of your sign and share it with us at https://streetsmarts.initiatives.qld.gov.au/qrsw-2020to display on our image gallery on the StreetSmarts website.
Like and share our QRSW Facebook posts on your organisation’s own social media platforms and encourage others to get involved: https://www.facebook.com/streetsmartsQLD
Visit https://streetsmarts.initiatives.qld.gov.au/tools-and-resources/tagged/road-safety-week#items for some great resources such as email signature blocks, screensavers and supporter posters for QRSW.

Thank you for supporting road safety!

COVID -19 Safety

Thank you parents for being so pro-active in keeping your children at home even if they have just a cold. Please be aware that students who present in the office with sore throats, obvious coughs and symptoms of a head cold, such as a runny nose and congestion, are not permitted to be at school. Under the current COVID protocols, students with these symptoms will have to spend time in the infirmary and wait for an adult to collect them. I completely understand this situation puts pressure on working parents, however, we need to follow the rules. If your child presents with any of these symptoms in the morning, please do not send them to school and contact the office to report this absence. Please call us daily to inform us of absences. Thank you for your assistance, you are truly looking out for all of us.

Strategic Planning / Parent Survey

Last Friday I attended the Term 3 Principal’s Conference in Cairns. This event allows every principal from the Cairns Diocese to work together towards our strategic goals, support initiatives and share success during the learning from home experience. In preparation for the 2020 Annual Report and to inform future strategic planning, we will be surveying the school community this week. We understand people are busy but would appreciate parents and carers taking 5-10 minutes to complete the Parent Survey.

Staffing Update It is with sadness that I announce that Yasmine Kemmerling, our Indigenous Liaison Teacher, has resigned. Other work and personal commitments mean that Yasi will no longer be on staff. Yasi has contributed much to our school including implementing our AUSLAN program this year. We all wish her well, but will miss her experience and knowledge.

God Bless,

Megan

Our Pope’s prayer intention for the month of August is dedicated to the Martime Work. The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network offers resources where we can learn more about the difficulties and challenges of those who work and live at sea - whom, without them, many of us would be struggling. Pope Francis captures profoundly the importance of supporting our brothers and sisters in the Maritime World. We should pause and pray:

Lord Jesus,
You called fishermen to be your disciples,
and you look with love upon all
those who live and work at sea.
Touch our hearts so that we can be watchful
of their needs– these our brothers and sisters and their families.
Help us to be more aware of the challenges and dangers they face,
and send your Spirit on those who can give them
better conditions for safe work and fair pay.
Support them and protect them in their difficulties,
And watch over their families,
and that in us they can find support and help.

Amen

This week let us also include in our prayers…..

Those who have died, have lost loved ones and are feeling betrayed in Beirut….
Those who are alone, unemployed, suffering and dying as a result of COVID-19….
Those who are working tirelessly to heal our broken world….

May these prayers and all those we hold in our hearts, be felt by those who need them most.

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.

One of the striking features of the gospels is the unflattering picture they present of the Twelve. Jesus’ hand-picked disciples. They are shown to be dull of mind, slow to believe, prone to rivalry and ambition, and when it really mattered, cowardly. Jesus, by contrast is patient, passionate, steadfast, and powerful.

What is exceptional is a story in which Jesus is shown as coming off second-best. What is even more extraordinary is that his victor is not only a woman but a foreigner. That is the story from Sunday’s gospel. The Canaanite woman challenged the narrow horizons of Jesus’ mission: now her story takes the quest to us. How broad is our outlook? How inclusive is our vision? How courageous are we in going beyond what is familiar and comfortable? I have a fondness for this story as it shows the length that a mother will go to for her child. This unknown woman’s feistiness and persistence gets her the results she was after. Reading Reflections

May St Joseph smile on you,

Meg Newell

APRE/CST

family_prayer_wbw_20_ordinary_time.pdf

family_prayer_wbw_20_ordinary_time _pdf 1.06 MB

Dear Parents,

We are continuing to practice reading and writing. When we read, we read like a river and not like a robot. We are practicing reading with fluency and re-reading for meaning. The HFW we are focusing on are: he, she, me, we, to, the, is, them, there, here, one, ball, all, call, tall, go, no, so, with and this. We also introduced new phonograms sh, ck, ee, ar, th, ch.

This week in writing we have been focusing on the Saltwater Crocodile and the students have been enjoying learning about the croc.

In maths we have been exploring positional language using words such as above, below, left, right , under and over to explain an objects position. We have also learnt how to collect data using tally marks and present the data in a graph.

The Western Cape Region Rural Fire Brigade visited Prep and Year 1’s. The students learned about fire safety and how to respond in emergencies. It was great fun to have them visit us.

Click on link below

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_olrlQBxU3ziKHSOxjJNewpLjGnz_sQY/view

Hello everyone!

I cannot believe we are halfway through term 3! I thank you all for your cooperation, collaboration, and support.

Over the past few weeks, we have celebrated Catholic Education Week. Year 2 students looked at the word Spirit, and what the spirit of our school might look like and feel like. We created an acrostic poem using the word spirit. It was tricky to come up with some words for the letter ‘i’, but the students did a great job!

Everyday we have reading group rotations. These always consist of a writing activity that is linked to our English, iPad literacy activity, guided reading with the teacher, spelling and activities that build our fine motor skills. Year 2 students rotate through these activities to learn new concepts and build new skills! Below are some photos of our students during Monday’s reading groups.

As always, please contact me if you have any questions. Have a great week!

Kind Regards,

Miss Ridgley

We have started a new class novel “The Little Wave” which is a shortlisted book for the Children's Book Council of Australia. Year 3 shows great focus and interest when being read to and are enjoying seeing the characters from a city and country school form friendships.

In Writing, we have been looking at creating an advertisement to convince people to attend the Weipa Fishing Challenge. Keep a look out for the final product.

In Religion, we have moved onto learning about Confirmation as a Sacrament of Initiation. Many children are interested in what it means to be a young Catholic and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We have been looking at the signs and symbols of the Sacrament and the importance of the Catholic community.

In Mathematics, we have been exploring our number system and learning about the place value of up to five digit numbers. The MAB blocks have been a great resource to represent numbers as an assist with understanding expanded notation and partitioning. If your child is challenged by some of the concepts in class remember Maths Online is a great resource which is updated with topics which can be used as revision.

In Science, we have been looking at how shadows are formed. We carried out an experiment using chalk and rulers to track how our shadow changes depending on the location of the sun. You may want to ask your child what they predicted.

In Faith,

Mrs Michelle Gear

Dear Parent and Guardians,

In the last 2 weeks we have celebrated Catholic Education Week and Mary MacKillop Feast Day (8th August).

For Catholic Education Week the Year 4 class created an art piece about how we can keep the Spirit alive at St. Joseph’s.

On Friday we celebrated the life of Mary MacKillop with a whole School Liturgy and activites in class focusing on the quote by Mary MacKillop “Never see a need without doing something about it”.

This week in P.E the Year 4 students participated in a game of modified AFL and had a fantastic time. At the end of the session we thanked and farewelled Matt and Jake from AFL Cape York as they returned to Cairns over the weekend.

We look forward to their return in 2021.

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)

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.

Since the beginning of this term we have been looking at who are the influential figures of the Australian Catholic Church. Mary Mackillop is one of those people. She founded the St Joseph Sisters and her influence on our school has been discovered by all of us. We have started to learn about her and her family. She was an amazing women who did so much for so many people. Her motto of ‘Never seeing a need without doing something about it’ is something we know we need to do a little more of some days. We hope we can make a difference like Mary Mackillop.

This week we have started to look at division and all the ways we can work out how to answer questions using a written strategy. We know it is a little difficult, but we are getting better at it. We have a couple of different ways we can use to work them out. Our multiplication, addition and even our subtractions skills are used when working out division.

We have been given the go ahead in our History lessons to create in Minecraft. We are recreating the gold fields from the Gold Rush period. The way our knowledge of what happened in the Gold Rush is shown is by us using Non Player Characters (NPC). When you play the game, the players will go up to the NPC’s and a pop up speech bubble will appear with all the information we want to say. Everyone is having so much fun doing it.

Yr 6 Newsletter Week 4 and 5 Written by Yr 6 students.

At the moment in Yr 6 we have been talking about school camp. We will be flying there the first week of Term 4. We will be doing fun activities like building rafts, night spotting, giant Jenga and lots more. We saw the final design of our t-shirt, with all the colours and our names on it. It looks amazing!

Last week we started working with the WeDo Lego kids in Digital Technology. The kit connects to the APP on the ipad, you connect the battery to the motor and then programme the motor to spin and move in different ways. With these kits we will build trains, robots and all sorts of motor powered things. You can also program a lever, it tells you the degrees of the surface and you have to put in the code to make it work. It is all about coding and following instructions.

In Religion we have been researching Mary McKillop and learnt about all the helpful things she did for her community and family. We have some beautiful artwork that we designed as part of Catholic Education Week depicting “A Spirited Tomorrow”…. Our Second steps lessons have been looking at how our brain reacts in conflict situations and how this effects our bodies and recognising some of these signs. The importance of pausing and thinking first before acting was really interesting.

We have been changing different variables in our circuit work to see what effects the brightness of the light bulb. We have made different circuits and changed the amount of bulbs used, how many batteries and wires etc to see what happens. It was really fun and we enjoyed experimenting and learning why the brightness changed. We can’t wait for more fun things to experiment with.

For reward time we did the Jellybean challenge. This is where you pull a jellybean out of the bucket and if you get the right flavour you get a go at the jellybean target. You have to throw a marble into the bucket from a distance, you get different points for where it lands. It is all about aiming and judging distances as well as getting to eat jellybeans!

TRADING HOURS - Monday 24th to Friday 28th August 2020

We will be open 8:00-8:30am each day next week and then again at 3:00-3:30pm. Social distancing rules apply, with minimal adults allowed. Cash or card payments are welcome.

Book Week Dress Up Day - Friday 28th August 2020

Unfortunately, due to covid-19 restrictions on social gathering, parents will not be able to be present. However, we are hoping that there will be plenty of pictures on our St Joseph’s media pages.

The theme this year is Curious Creatures, Wild Minds. So, if your child would like to dress up in this theme, it could be quite fun. Otherwise, a favourite book character is another possibility.

Some possible dress up suggestions are:

Wild Minds -wild hair, big brain hat, a hat with all your crazy ideas dangling off

Curious creatures dress as a bunyip, unicorn, Lockness Monster

Website with lots of ideas

https://www.bountyparents.com.au/expert-advise/20-easy-book-week-costumes/