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Newsletter Week 6 Term 2
Dear Families and friends of St Joseph’s.
It is hard to believe that we only have a few weeks before the end of the Semester.
Last Monday our school community joined in the celebration to commemorate 200 years of Catholic education in Australia. It was part of a national event with schools across the country celebrating at the same time to mark the bicentennial.
Michelle Gear and myself were proud to represent the St Joseph’s School community at the 200 Year Mass held at the Cathedral. This was a significant event and at the end of the Mass we were called on by the Bishop to accept a commemorative prayer card for each student which will be given out at our whole school Mass on Monday 6th June. With gratitude for the endeavours of Catholic education in the past, with confidence in our Catholic Kindergartens, schools and universities today, and with faith in their continuing contribution in the future, we celebrate 200 years of Catholic education in this Great South Land.
Often, I am asked what the Catholic School difference is. Being distinctively a Catholic school boils down to how we treat people and each other. If we are truly distinctive then all students, staff and parents feel a sense that they belong, are valued and are successful. The mission of Catholic Education is that “Being created in the image and likeness of God” which accords everyone an equal and inherent dignity. We believe in an innate original goodness and a universally shared dignity. This belief shapes a hope-filled and life-giving outlook on life for self, others and the created world.
Our School community is committed to providing a culturally safe environment where all children belong and an experience respect, justice, equity, and dignity. At our Reconciliation Liturgy last Friday, we gathered to unite our hearts with First Nations communities as we recognised and reflected on the wrongs that have been done in the past and take actions towards healing for the future.
Reconciliation is a journey for all Australians – as individuals, families, communities, organisations and importantly as a nation. The theme for this year’s Reconciliation week is “More than words, Reconciliation takes action”. Reconciliation must live in the hearts, minds and actions of all of us so we can move forward, creating a nation strengthened by respectful relationships between the wider Australian community and First Nations peoples.
One way we are ‘taking action’ for reconciliation, is that we have potted some Dessert Roses to keep here at the school. The flower of this plant has been chosen by the Stolen Generation elders as a symbol of strength and resilience. The colour symbolises healing. It is our hope that we will make a reconciliation garden here at school ready in time for next years Reconciliation week. We will care for these plants in pots until we can plant them in our reconciliation garden.
Year of St Joseph Mass
On Monday, 6th June, you are invited to join us for our ‘Year of St Joseph Mass’ followed by morning tea. At this Mass we will be inducting our student leaders and giving out the Spirit of St Joseph’s Awards.
2022 Enrolments
It is that time of the year again when I begin the process of planning for 2022 enrolments, class structures, budgets and resources. As you know our enrolments play a significant part in helping us stay focused and achieve our strategic priorities. While we have committed to a range of marketing strategies for our school, in truth, the word of mouth of current families is our best form of advertising and it is almost universally positive.
Continual Academic Success and Wellbeing
As I look over student academic results this Semester, it is pleasing to see that our strong commitment to ensuring quality learning and teaching, continues to lead to our students growth and academic success. Our staff deserve recognition for this. They are committed and talented professionals who are motivated to do their best for the benefit of our learners. This applies not only to the teachers doing the vital work in the classrooms but the countless other staff who provide a range of support and service to our community. I am repeatedly inspired by their efforts.
Prep Enrolments
We are currently in the process of booking interviews for new Prep enrolments for 2022. Please note that if you have a sibling of a current St Joseph’s student you will also need to complete an enrolment for your child for Prep for 2022. As we are anticipating that there will continue to be strong demand for placements within our Prep for 2022, it is important that enrolments are received by the school as soon as possible. If you have children ready for Prep, please enroll online or give the school office a call and arrange an enrolment package. If you have friends looking around for a school for next year, let them know that St Joseph’s is welcoming and ready to hear from them.
National Sorry Day & National Reconciliation Week
At our Reconciliation Liturgy last Friday, we gathered to unite our hearts with First Nations communities as we recognised and reflected on the wrongs that have been done in the past and take actions towards healing for the future. Reconciliation is a journey for all Australians – as individuals, families, communities, organisations and importantly as a nation.
During Reconciliation week remember that 26th May, May 27 and June 3 are important dates in Australia’s history.
The 26th May is National Sorry Day. On this day we remember and commemorate that during the 20th Century, large numbers of Aboriginal people were removed from their families by the government and put into institutions, missions and foster homes. Because of this many people lost contact with their heritage, their country and their identity. They have become know as the Stolen Generation. We recognise how this history continues to affect so many First Nation families. The day is an opportunity for all Australians to remember past mistakes and build stronger bridges for a richer, stronger future together.
Reconciliation Week goes from 27th May to 3rd June. May 27th marks the anniversary of the 1967 referendum when Australians voted to remove clauses in the Australian Constitution that discriminated against First Nations peoples. June 3 marks the historic 1992 Mabo decision in which the High Court of Australia recognised native title—the recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights over their lands.
The theme for this year’s Reconciliation week is “More than words, Reconciliation takes action”.
Reconciliation must live in the hearts, minds and actions of all of us so we can move forward, creating a nation strengthened by respectful relationships between the wider Australian community and First Nations peoples.
As part of taking action for reconciliation we have potted some Dessert Roses to keep here at the school. The flower of this plant has been chosen by the Stolen Generation elders as a symbol of strength and resilience. The colour symbolises healing. It is our hope that we will make a reconciliation garden here at school ready in time for next years Reconciliation week.
We will care for these plants in pots until we can plant them in our reconciliation garden this time next year.
Please help our Tuckshop
We are looking for volunteers for the Tuckshop. Please contact the Office 4214 6600 if you would like to volunteer.
This year, Catholic Education is celebrating 200 years in Australia, marking the bicentenary of the first Catholic school established in Parramatta, NSW in October 1820. Since then, Catholic schools have grown to become the largest provider of schooling in Australia (outside government) with one in five school age students attending a Catholic school. This represents 777,000 students in 1,755 schools across the country and employing over 100,000 teachers and staff.
St Joseph’s was founded in 2016. The name of the school was taken from the Weipa Parish - St Joseph’s which has been established in the community since the first Priest’s mass in the mid-1960s and the construction of St Joseph’s Church in 1977.
While our school is considered young, we are proud to be a part of and continue Catholic Education in Australia for 200 years by ‘bringing faith and learning to life’.
Religious Education Curriculum
Religion is a learning area with a formal curriculum for the classroom learning and teaching of religion. The content of the Religion Curriculum P-12 is organised into four interrelated strands: Sacred Texts, Beliefs, Church and Christian Life. Each strand has its own distinctive content
- Sacred Texts
Old Testament, New Testament, and Christian Spiritual Writings and Wisdom
- Beliefs
Trinity: God, Jesus the Christ, Spirit; Human Existence; and World Religions.
- Church
Liturgy and Sacraments, People of God, and Church History.
- Christian Life
Moral Formation; Mission and Justice; and Prayer and Spirituality.
This year the teachers have been working alongside the Identity and Outreach Team from Cairns Catholic Education to develop unit shapes around these four content areas. The unit shapes are centred around the following
- Focus on the learner
- Moving from surface to deep learning
- Learning intentions and success criteria’s
- Formative assessment to move learning forward.
Do It for Dolly Day
On Wednesday, the school was filled with the colour blue to show our support of Dolly's Dream and show that we choose kindness over bullying. The Year 5 and 6 students have been participating in workshops around ways to respond to bullying and the importance of having a voice. We also had a Parent Information Evening on Tuesday night led by Hannah Chapman on bullying and the support network needed for our young people.
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Welcome to Week 6 and it has been another busy 2 weeks and the children have been working hard during this time. Some of the activities that the students are participating in are training for Athletics Carnival, AFL classes and Safe on Social Lessons.
Positive Behaviour for Learning
Our school community has identified the following school wide expectations to teach and promote our high standards of responsible behaviour:
- Be Respectful
- Be Responsible
- Be Resilient
- Be Ready for Learning
PB4L assemblies take place on Monday’s at 2pm followed by Second Step lessons.
Social Emotional Learning
This week we welcomed back Tosca Grainger - Dee our School Counsellor and she will continue to provide her service to St. Joseph's School. In Second Step the Year 5 and 6 students are learning about Emotional Management in class and worked with Ms Tosca to support us and focus on the following concepts:
- Mindsets & Goals
- Recognising Bullying & Harassment
- Thoughts, Emotions, & Decisions
- Managing Relationships & Social Conflict
This week the Year 5 and 6 students have also had the opportunity to participate in 3 Sessions with Ms Tosca on the topic of Bullying from the Bullying No Way Framework.
The topics discussed were:
1. Understanding Bullying
2. Responding to Bullying
3. Preventing Bullying
- Questions and answer time
If you have any questions please feel free to make contact with myself at a convenient time that suits. My email address is mturner@cns.catholic.edu.au
Kind Regards,
Melanie Turner.
KISS & GO ZONE
Kiss n Go and No Parking zones operate under the same conditions- parents may stop to drop off or pick up children for a maximum of 2 minutes. If you need longer time, please park elsewhere.
The Driver must remain within 3 metres of the vehicle.
Rules apply only within hours displayed.
Under no circumstances are you to overtake another vehicle in this zone.
Kiss n Go zone is for your child’s safety, your convenience, and to minimise congestion and confusion.
Please Remember
- Do not leave your vehicle!
- Be timely!
- Stay in Sequence!
- Child Safety- ensure your child gets in or out of the vehicle on the kerb side. Safety guidelines state that children under 13 years must travel in the back seat.
Thank you for your cooperation!
P E NEWS Week 5 and 6
Last week each class ran their sprint races and relays in preparation for our Athletics day, as well as practising ball games. It was obvious that all the students need to build up fitness skills so we will be running the sprints every Thursday during PE lessons. Ball games skills are coming along well, much better demonstration of accurate chest passing, overarm throwing and tunnel balling. We finish each lesson with a fun game to improve team skills, build cooperation and increase skill levels.
This week we are practising the skills of throwing a shotput and the technique involved with Yr 3-6. Next week will be high jump and then long jump.
I have encouraged all the students in each P E lesson to start doing short runs at home every other day to build up their fitness for our Athletics Day in Week 10. Every bit helps.
Keep active!
Libby Lange
Week 6 Newsletter Happenings - Prep
In English, students are learning retelling, organising and sequencing stories. Our letters of focus for these next two weeks are h and, e. We are reflecting on the letters o, c, and d as well as the others we have learned throughout the term. Students are working on blending their sounds to make words and stringing these words into sentences.
In Mathematics, students are working on the days of the week, ordering and recognising the different events that happen on those days. We are exploring the different events that happen to make up a day. We are still focusing on the number of the day revisiting smaller numbers and exploring bigger numbers above 30 for a real challenge. Students must identify, do more and less, draw and use concrete materials to represent this number.
In Science, we have been learning about the weather. We were exploring wind this week and the students created wind spinners to go out and test how strong the wind was blowing. Was it a light wind or a strong wind? Students will be looking at different things that make noises to start preparing for our design technology assessment, designing and creating windchimes.
In Religion, students are learning about love, compassion and forgiveness. Students will investigate different stories including ‘The Good Samaritan’ and how to be a neighbour to the people around you.
Fine Motor Friday’s activities have changed again. We got to explore using pegs to create different shapes using our imagination and developing muscles. Also Ms Jo ran a fun collage activity to conclude our focus last week on the Very Hungry Caterpillar. What a fantastic activity to finish off our week.
In English we have continued our book study of Amy and Louis, with the students identifying personal connections to the character and analysing similarities with life in Weipa. Next, we will make inferences on how the characters feel and explore creating images to communicate these feelings. We have been practising our plurals: what they mean and how we represent plurals in our writing (we use “es” for words that end in sh, ch, s, x, z eg bushes, foxes. All other words we use “s” eg plants, cars.)
In Religion we have been learning about Jesus' mission and ministry. We have been discussing what it means to be called “on Jesus team” and ways in which we can be kind to one another. Joseph, as a father, had a strong influence on Jesus and shaped the manner in which Jesus viewed the world and those around him. Last week we celebrated the Year of St Joseph and we illustrated our understanding of Joseph as a worker, proctector and carer by making a plate. We loved being creative and making something truly special.
Ms Rowe has been teaching us all about money. We loved playing shops and calculating the price of different objects. In Science we made our clouds in a jar and we would love to show you how to do this at home! We are working very hard to create a representation of our “favorite place” and look forward to sharing these with the class soon.
Hello families of Year 2,
We are steaming towards the end of the term, with a lot of things happening! Year 2 have been practising their dance routine everyday for our upcoming School Dance. It is also coming into the time of assessment, where students can demonstrate their learning and understanding of topics covered across all learning areas.
On Friday, Year 2 were lucky enough to have Miss Edmonds, the school’s Teacher Librarian, teach us how to use the Lego We Do Kits. We are using these kits to construct a frog as part of our life cycle and living things unit in science. Students are almost up to coding their frog and making it move!
For technology, students are being asked to design a toy that can be pushed, pulled or both! They have begun their design brief, and have been asked to bring in items from home to assist them with their build. This may be items such as empty paper towel rolls, tissue boxes, straws, and string. We hope to have these completed by our next newsletter, so stay tuned for updates!
Gentle Reminders:
- Under 8’s Day Thursday 24th June – Week 10
- Library borrowing and returning is Friday
- AFL is Friday on specific weeks
- Homework is due Friday and given out Monday
- Year 2 assembly presentation is Friday Week 8
- School dance is in Week 9
Welcome to Week 6!
What a busy two weeks we have had in Year 3. In the past two weeks, Year 3 students have worked hard in their NAPLAN testing and should be congratulated on their efforts during this time. The resilience, responsibility and persistence shown by students was outstanding and I felt proud as their teacher to see them all giving their NAPLAN tests a red hot go!
Now that NAPLAN has finished, we are thankful to get back into routine and continue on and begin our new units for the term. The students are particularly excited about Science where they are learning about heat and how we keep warm and in Civics, learning about democracy and why rules are important in the classroom, at school and in the community.
We have also began choreographing our dance for Week 9’s presentation and the students are working really hard to put some great moves together to show everyone.
Reminders:
- Homework due on Monday, sent home Tuesday
- AFL this week and next week (28/5/21 and 4/6/21). Please wear running shoes.
- Year 3 assembly this Friday (28/5/21) for National Reconciliation Week and Sorry Day.
As the Term rolls on Year 4 are becoming better and better dancers! We’ve now got a complete list of moves for our alphabet dance and students have experimented with spelling words using dance moves. In the next 2 weeks, students will work together to choreograph a small dance routine where they spell out some words. If possible, these will be made available for parents to view via the Google Classroom. We have also been studying how to become better writers by adding further detail to our writing with phrases. The students now know that phrases have no verb and can work the same way as single adjectives and adverbs. The class is progressing well with their writing skills.
This term is definitely flying by so quickly. Before we know it, we will be having our mid year school holiday break. The Year 5 students have been working hard in our Math lessons showing how much they know about subtraction as well as 2D & 3D objects. Who knew there were so many quadrilaterals? It is now time for us to practice how we can identify each of the shapes by their features.
Our writing lessons have been revolving around Information Reports. We have identified the author’s purpose of reports and non-fiction texts and the structure so we can put together our information reports next week on a chosen Natural Disaster. The Natural Disaster unit for Geography is really engaging the students with finding out why the events take place and will move onto how people and their communities can be prepared so there isn’t as much loss of life or structures.
We have been rocking our unit about the Holy Spirit in Religion. We know that symbols of the Holy Spirit are present in the scripture. We are now looking at how the Holy Spirit is within all of us through the different ‘Fruits of the Holy Spirit’.
Dance lessons are coming along well with students beginning to really know the moves for our class dance that will be presented at the end of term. Students have been practicing and can practice at home by checking their Google Classroom for the practice video.
This coming week students for homework will be asked to work on completing some research for their information report on their chosen Natural Disaster. There will also be their Home Links page from the SEL lessons.
Yr 6 News
As a class we have had some really valuable conversations using the “yarning circle” strategy in the last 2 weeks. This is sitting around in a circle and sharing ideas/concerns/worries/positives about how we are interacting with each other and how the students are relating to each other. As it is Anti-Bullying week this week, it was a perfect time to discuss any issues as a class.
We were fortunate to have Miss Tosca (Guidance counsellor) assist us in this process and be present through a zoom meeting last week and in class this week. Some of the questions asked by the students were very meaningful and it was a very productive session.
Some of the questions asked or raised by the students were:
- What exactly is bullying?
- How does bullying occur and where?
- How to deal with peer pressure in a situation?
- How do I know how to respond to bullying if I am not involved? (being a Bystander/non Bystander) What is the difference?
- The different types of bullying that could affect me. ( eg. Hidden, social, cyber, physical, verbal)
- How to deal with different types of bullying? How to build trust and maintain it in friendships.
Many thanks to Tosca for her invaluable assistance in talking to the students at their level. We look forward to positive actions from these discussions.
Year 6 students are very excited to be receiving their Leadership shirts this week. They have worked hard at some assessment tasks over the last week and they have been working towards a goal of eating lunch at the new covered seats as a Yr 6 privilege.
Overall our goal has been to be respectful to each other at all times, to be friendly to each other and to make positive choices in all areas of learning and play.
Libby Lange and Michelle Gear
