Dear Parents and Guardians, 

Welcome to Week 6. It is hard to believe that we are in Week 6 already and the children have been introduced and engaged in many programs during the Term.  

Second Step   

 This Term all classes are introduced to the Second Step Program. Second Step SEL is research-based, teacher-informed, and classroom-tested to promote the social-emotional development, safety, and well-being of children from Early Learning through Grade 8. Children learn and practice vital skills for listening and paying attention, having empathy, managing emotions, building friendships, and solving problems with others. The 25-minute interactive lessons and discussion-based activities with distinct grade-level experiences. The lessons focus on Social-Emotional Learning:   

• • Mindsets & Goals   
• • Recognising Bullying & Harassment   
• • Thoughts, Emotions, & Decisions   

• • Managing Relationships & Social Conflict  

These lessons will continue throughout the Year for Prep to Year 6.  

Zones of Regulation    

The Zones is a systematic, cognitive behavioural approach used to teach self-regulation by categorising all the different ways we feel and states of alertness we experience into four concrete-coloured zones. The Zones of Regulation uses four colours to help children self-identify how they’re feeling and categorise it based on colour. The curriculum also helps children better understand their emotions, sensory needs, and thinking patterns. They learn different strategies to help them cope and manage their emotions based on which colour zone they’re in.  

The Green Zone   

The green zone is used to describe when you’re in a calm state of alertness   

Being in the green zone means you are calm, focused, happy, or ready to learn. This is predominantly the state you want your child to be in.   

It’s also the state most needed in the classroom in order to learn.   

 The Yellow Zone   

The yellow zone describes when you have a heightened sense of alertness. This isn’t always a bad thing, and you still have some control of your actions when you’re in the yellow zone.   

Being in the yellow means you may feel frustrated, anxious or nervous. But, it could also mean you’re feeling excited, silly, or hyper – which is okay in the right situations.   

The Red Zone   

The red zone describes an extremely heightened state of intense emotions. When a person reaches the red zone, they’re no longer able to control their emotions or reactions.   

Being in the red zone means you’re feeling anger, rage, terror, or complete devastation and feel out of control.   

The Blue Zone   

The blue zone, on the other hand, is used when a person is feeling low states of alertness or arousal. When you’re in the blue zone you may be feeling down – sad, sick, tired, or bored. You’re still in control, as you are in the yellow zone, but with low energy emotions.   

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.  

Personalised Learning Plans (PLPs)   

Over the next few weeks the teachers are in the process of writing Personalised Learning Plans (PLPs). Personalised learning is a process that supports a wide range of students with additional learning and support needs. This includes students who may require support in one or more of the following areas: learning (including high potential learners), behaviour, social/emotional, cultural/language (including international students, boarders and learners of English as an Additional Language or Dialect) and those who have educational support needs arising from disability.   

Teachers, with the support of the Leader of Diversity, and in consultation with parents, collaboratively decide which adjustments and/or goals are to be targeted and determine appropriate strategies and supports to be implemented. It is the teacher’s responsibility to implement these planned strategies in order to support students to meet their goals.  

Teachers will direct School Officer support and plan for adjustments on a weekly basis. Teachers communicate weekly with School Officers regarding student progress and make adjustments as needed.  

Evidence is collected regularly and uploaded to ENGAGE. PLP meetings are set 6 monthly and will determine if current goals have been achieved before setting further goals. The teachers will meet with Parents of PLP students in Week 8 of this Term.  

This week Ms Tosca Grainger - Dee our School Counsellor is visiting us in Weipa and providing her service to St. Joseph's School. Please see Tosca’s article below. 

I look forward to meeting you all and working alongside you throughout the year on your child’s journey of learning.  

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. 

 

Bringing Up Great Kids Program – Term 2 

Dear Parents 

It is my pleasure to offer a crafted program for parents called Bringing Up Great Kids in Term 2. 

Bringing Up Great Kids is a reflective, mindful, respectful program that provides parents with an opportunity to reflect on their parenting journey. 

Bringing Up Great Kids provides a friendly and safe environment for parents to learn from each other as they continue their parenting journey. 

As a school community we would like to offer this group program. We envisage this program would be multi-modal including face to face and on-line (zoom) sessions. 

The duration of the program is for 6 weeks. Each lesson will take 90 minutes. 

The program content is detailed below. 

Program Content 

The Bringing Up Great Kids’ program supports parents and carers to: 

•        learn more about the origins of their own parenting style and how it can be more effective;
•        identify the important messages they want to convey to their children and how to achieve this.
•        learn more about brain development in children and its influence on their thoughts, feelings and behaviours;
•        understand the meaning behind children’s behaviours and how to respond to children’s underlying feelings and needs.
•        explore new ways of communicating with children;
•        discover ways for parents to take care of themselves and to find support when they need it.

If you are interested to participate in the Bringing Up Great Kids Program in Term 2 or have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact me tgraingerd@cns.catholic.edu.au .  

I look forward to connecting with you. 

Warm regards, 

Tosca Grainger – Dee. 

Wow! A couple of weeks have gone by, and we have been working hard now that we are in Prep. The students have shown just how responsible and independent they are as all have adjusted well to the expectations of learning in our classroom. 

Some things we’ve loved so far in Prep are English and Maths lessons. We have started our InitiaLit lessons and have explored early literacy skills including word awareness, syllables, rhyming words and some initial sounds.  We have also focussed on sounds through our oral phonogram review including and have started to discover blending and segmenting sounds in words. We are great readers and writers in Prep! 

In maths, we have been practising counting to 20 with a stable number order, counting backwards from 10 and subitising small collections.  Today we wrote our number line to 20! 

Year 1A
The students in Year 1A have been focusing on their sentence construction during writing this term. Just ask them and they will be able to tell you that all sentences start with a capital letter, have fingerspaces and punctuation. They have also been learning about proper nouns and the need for capital letters when they are writing someone’s name.

In maths, they have been demonstrating their knowledge of number sequences using a range of hands on materials. We have learnt some fun new games including ‘buzz off’ as a way to practise these number sequences. This week our focus has been addition and the strategy of counting-on to solve simple addition algorithms. We have spent time collecting and analysing data this term. As you can see in the graph, the students in 1A enjoy lots of different kinds of treats!

At the start of the year we learnt about St Joseph. At our school we recognise St Joseph the worker and St Joseph the Patron Saint of Families. The student’s in Year 1 now know that there is only 1 St
Joseph who we celebrate for many reasons. We made our own stained glass windows of St Joseph to decorate our room.

This week we also celebrated Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent and it is also known as Pancake Tuesday. The students in 1A loved their pancakes.

Many thanks
Miss Rowe and Mrs Tapper

Wow – can you believe we are already halfway through this term?  

We have been busy at work this week introducing new digraph sounds and tricky words to use in our reading and writing. We have been working on writing responses to our weekly story books with a focus on grammar and punctuation. During Maths, we have been learning a range of strategies that we can use when completing addition problems. These include counting on using a number line, partitioning tens and ones and rearranging.  

Science this week saw us exploring sound using musical instruments. By the end, we could explain that sound is created through vibrations that travel through the air into our ear drums. This was a very fun and exciting exploration. Over the coming weeks, we will be moving from focussing on Creation to the story of Noah’s Ark. We are very much looking forward to this and will be weaving this learning into our technology unit where we will need to design and build our own Arks to stand up to water and wind.  

Our exciting event this week was Shrove Tuesday. We got to eat pancakes prepared by Miss Cindy and the Year 6s and they were delicious! This marks the day before the beginning of Lent, the lead up to Easter.  

 

It’s been an exciting start to Term One and we look forward to more learning and explorations to come.  

Many thanks, 

Mrs Backhouse. 

Hi families, 

What another great week in Year 2! These past weeks in Year 2 we’ve been learning about Fairytales. We’ve been hard at work identifying the characters, setting, problem and solution in fairytales. Soon we will be creating our own stories!   

 

This week we celebrated Pancake day also known as Shrove Tuesday. We ate some delicious pancakes and thanks to Miss Cindy.  

Happy weekend, 

Miss McLeish.  

 

Year 3 Newsletter Article 

Design Technology in Year 3 

What is a green house and how does it work? Well, the Year 3’s a St Joseph’s can explain everything to you. This term we have been learning about how green houses are designed, how they work, what we can grow in them and how to make a mini greenhouse for our own families. We have also been discussing sustainability and how a greenhouse can help families, school and even the wider community in Weipa. Wouldn’t it be cool to eat something that you have grown with the people you love?! Well, some year 3 families may be in for a surprise. 

 

 

Over the past week in Year 4, students have been busy defining weathering, erosion and landforms. We conducted experiments involving sugar cubes and jars. The students then shook these jars to imitate different weathering to the rocks. We spoke about types of weathering and different forms, such as water, wind, rain, animal and plant growth.  

In maths we have extended our awareness of equivalent fractions. Students were asked to model equivalent fractions using a puzzle and then located these on a number line. We are moving to adding fractions with like denominators and representing tenths and hundredths.  

Gentle Reminders: 

• Homework is due Friday and given Monday 

• Library borrowing is Friday. Please ensure your child has their returns and bag ready to go 
• Check seesaw for any announcements  
• Swimming is week 9 and 10  

These past two weeks in the Senior Learning Hub have been super busy. Students have been showing they have a deep understanding of why we need to have communities. They have seats listed that if we didn’t, we would lose support networks, have many different interests that other don’t have and most important as a believer in a Catholic community that we could lose our faith. We know that having a common belief system allows us to come together to share our understanding about God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. 

In our Math lessons we are consolidating our understanding of multiples, factors, prime and composite numbers as well as square amd triangular numbers. These have tested our brain power and patience when we are cross checking to ensure it fits into the right categories of numbers. We have tapped into the use of our learning walls and other hands on resources.  

 

Our ability to read quickly and accurately over the past week with students practicing their rate of words per minute on a piece of text. Students are familiar with their previous rate and are working on improving this over the week. We have also been working on building our planning ideas for narratives. When we plan well, we can focus on creating engaging sentences for our readers.  

 

The Yr6 students did a wonderful job helping hand out pancakes to the entire school on Shrove Tuesday. Their responsible leadership skills shined through. Next week our Opening Mass will see both our Yr5 and Yr6 students step up and represent our school in a reverant way.