Term 2 Week 4
Key Information
Term 1 Important Dates
- Week 5
- Monday 13th May - Spirit in Action, 3-4:30pm
- Tuesday 14th May - FACE Meeting (Fete planning), 2-4pm
- Friday 17th May - Term 2 Ride to School Day; Assembly, 8:30am
- Saturday 18th May - Open Day, 9-11am
- Week 6 - National Volunteer Week
- Monday 20th May - Mary Help of Christians Mass, 1:40pm
- Tuesday 21st May - Parish Meeting, 3:15pm
- Friday 24th May - Shake and Stir Performance & Workshop (The Twits), 9am
- Week 7 - National Reconciliation Week
- Tuesday 28th May - Board Meeting, 5:30pm
- Friday 31st May - 2024 Athletics Carnival
- Week 8
- Wednesday 5th June - World Environmental Day (Activities with Pastoral Care); State of Origin Free Dress Day
- Friday 7th June - Assembly
- Week 9
- Wednesday 12th June - School Officer Day
- Friday 16th June - Cloncurry Show Public Holiday
- Week 10
- Tuesday 18th June - Board Meeting, 5:30pm
- Thursday 20th June - Walk to School Day
- Friday 21st June - Assembly, 8:30am; Dress Like Your Teacher Day; International Day of Yoga (Lunchtime Activities)
Tuckshop News
Our special for Week 4 is: Meatball Sub & Funfetti Cinnamon Rolls
Please have your orders in by WEDNESDAY 8:30 am.
To order: https://myschoolconnect.com.au/
Thank you to everyone who supported my cadbury fundraiser!
Because of your support and generosity I was able to purchase both the stand mixer and the food processor. These have both already been hard at work and are a great asset to now have in our tuckshop. Thank you!
OUR TUCKSHOP CREW NEEDS YOU
Miss Jamie-Lea is looking for some wonderful volunteers to help her in Tuckshop on Thursdays. You do not have to be a parent to volunteer. We have had grandparents, aunties, uncles, friends and cousins as well as mums and dads. If you are interested in volunteering, please join Miss Jamie-Lea's tuckshop volunteer group 
https://m.facebook.com/groups/
Please email Jamie-Lea at jmcconachy@sjctsv.catholic.edu.au or call the office to let us know if you're available to volunteer!
Uniform Shop
Our Uniform Shop is now located in the office. We are open to orders being placed via the app, https://myschoolconnect.com.au/
Please give us 24 hours to organise collection for your order; we generally contact you when your order is ready to collect.
If you are needing students to try on sizes, we are available:
Monday from 2:30-3pm and Wednesday from 8:10-8:30am.
As this is a new system for us, please be kind and considerate while we find our feet in the new office space.
Miss Heather
General News
Principal's News
This Sunday we will celebrate Mother’s Day; a day where we are thankful to all the special women in our lives who have nurtured and cared for us. This vocation of motherhood, to nurture human life and raise future generations, requires incredible selflessness. This selflessness was shown by our Blessed Mother, Mary, the mother of Jesus. We recognise in Mary her enduring and tender love for Jesus and her commitment to us. So, we honour our Mothers, Aunts, Grandmothers or other ‘motherly’ figures who have helped raise us and continue to love us. I hope you all have a wonderful day surrounded by love.
Our students were running a Mother’s Day stall at lunchtime all this week and by Thursday, they had sold out! Thank you to all who supported this initiative and special mention to Mrs Toni Schneekloth and her student helpers for their efforts. In addition, our Mothers Day Breakfast was well attended and I was delighted to see such a happy and vibrant gathering. Croissants were speedily consumed while we were entertained by our very talented school choir. Mrs Rose Saunders and Mrs Judy Saunders were the lucky recipients of the lucky door prizes - a gift voucher from Jade’s Massage & Beauty Salon and a box of goodies from The Fudge Station.
AEDC
I would like to bring to your attention the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), which will be conducted during the upcoming week. The AEDC is a nationwide census of early childhood development that measures the progress of children as they start their first year of full time school. We use the data collected to plan for improvement to build on our children’s capacities.
Participation in the AEDC is crucial for capturing a comprehensive snapshot of our school community, and I encourage all parents to support this initiative by ensuring their child's participation. Rest assured that all information collected is confidential and used solely for the purposes of research and improving educational outcomes.
Opera Queensland Visit
On Thursday, we were excited to host a visit from representatives of Opera Queensland. Their workshop was attended by our choir who experienced the voices of Opera. Students were also given some vocal training as they learnt to sing ‘Click go the Shears’. The children, as always, were enthusiastic participants and asked many questions. I have included some photos below:
Scholastic Book Fair
All week, the Scholastic Book Fair was conducted in our Library. Our talented School Officers, Miss Jaime-Lea and Miss Charlotte, turned the space into a beautiful book garden. Students were able to read some of the books on display, place book orders and purchase many unique stationery items. Special thanks to both ladies on their efforts to make the Library an excellent place for our students to spend time in.
Fete FACE Committee
Our fete organisation is making good progress, thanks to our mothers. Their contribution to the organisation, grant applications and sponsership sourcing is invaluable. If you would like to help out, please join us on Tuesday 14 May at our next FACE meeting from 2pm-4pm.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact the school office. We value your partnership and look forward to working together to create a positive and enriching learning environment for our students.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
God bless
Mrs Karen Good
Acting Principal
Deputy's News
This week, I will focus my newsletter article on reading in the Early Years (Prep - Year 2) and the Science Discovery workshop held at school on Tuesday.
As we all know, reading is important, and the Early Years set the foundations for future success. In these formative years, children begin to develop the fundamental literacy skills that will serve as building blocks for their academic journey and beyond. By encouraging a love for reading and providing enriching literacy experiences during the Early Years, we lay the groundwork for children to become confident and proficient readers in the years to come.
At St Joseph's, our entire Early Years team has been hard at work creating resources to assist with home reading. We have two videos on the way that will be released to parents and caregivers in Years 1 & 2 at the start of next week (Prep will follow later this term). These videos are designed to assist with home reading and give some information on how you can best assist your child/children.
Why is home reading important?
Home reading plays a crucial role in the development of young readers in the Early Years (Prep - Year 2) for several reasons:
- Reinforcement of Skills: Home reading provides an opportunity for students to practice and reinforce the literacy skills they are learning in school, such as phonics, decoding words, and comprehension strategies.
- Building Fluency: Regular reading at home helps students improve their reading fluency, which is the ability to read with accuracy, speed, and expression.
- Comprehension Skills: Home reading encourages children to engage with texts, ask questions, make predictions, and draw conclusions, all of which are important comprehension skills.
- Parental Involvement: By reading together, parents can bond with their children, model good reading habits, and demonstrate the value and importance of literacy.
In conclusion, nurturing a love for reading in the Early Years is essential for laying the groundwork for academic success and lifelong learning. Our teachers are dedicated to giving students the tools for success and opportunities to practice. Through home reading initiatives and parental involvement, we can further support our young readers in developing essential literacy skills.
Science Discovery Workshop
On Tuesday, our UMY students were lucky enough to participate in a Science Discovery workshop. The purpose of this workshop was to provide students with a hands-on learning experience that promoted curiosity and collaborative learning.
The students had a blast with some shocking results from their experiments – apologies for the poor puns.
Mr Dean Kelley
Deputy Principal - Teaching and Learning
APRE
This weekend we are wishing all our mothers and mothering figures a very special Mother’s Day on Sunday! I hope all mothers will have the opportunity to feel every bit appreciated as you deserve.
The month of May is also the time of the year when Catholics celebrate Our Lady as the perfection of motherhood. During May we honour Blessed Mary as the Mother of Jesus and our Heavenly Mother. Like all of our mothers, Mary cared for and tended to her child despite all of the struggles in her world. To the mothers and mothering figures in our community, thank you for all that you do for us! May God bless you this Sunday and each day.
Ascension of The Lord:
This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension, that is Jesus’ departure from this earth after his Resurrection. It may sound odd that we celebrate his departure and see this as in fact a blessing. To help understand this I would like to share a reflection written by Sr Kym Harris from Casting the Net Blog:
“One way we can understand Jesus’ Ascension is to consider people who have influenced us profoundly for the good and who have since died. I had a wonderful grandfather and I frequently find myself consciously living by the values he imparted. In fact, I feel closer to him as I strive to be like him. When Jesus left this earth, he promised us his Holy Spirit and told us to be his witnesses. That is, the world is to continue to see and experience him in and through us. If he was still around, we simply would not step up to the mark. But as we live by his Spirit and by his words, he comes and lives within us and we become the revelation of the life and grace of God to those around us. That is, people are to experience God and Jesus because they have experienced us. This is a great dignity. This is a blessing. And we rejoice that we have this great calling.”
Notices:
Week 5 Assembly Prayer: Year 3 will present our prayer in Week 5.
A Prayer in Gratitude for Our Mothers
- Author Unknown
Good and Gentle God,, we pray in gratitude for our mothers and for all the women of theory who have joined with you in the wonder of bringing forth new life. You who became human through a woman, grant to all mothers the courage they need to face the uncertain future that life with children always brings.
Give them the strength to live and to be loved in return, not perfectly, but humanly.
Give them the faithful support of husband, family and friends as they care for the physical and spiritual growth of their children.
Give them joy and delight in their children to sustain them through the trials of motherhood. Most of all, give them the wisdom to turn to you for help when they need it most.
Amen
Have a blessed week,
Therese Curley
APRE
Pastoral Care
URSTRONG - Bullying
Our Founder, Dana Kerford, was interviewed in 2018 on the topic of bullying for the Sydney Morning Herald. Here is the interview with journalist and author, Kasey Edwards:
Australian schools have the dubious honour of having one of the highest reported rates of bullying in the world. By some estimates, one in four students experience regular bullying. Governments have implemented anti-bullying programs, schools write policies, and parents are vigilant, yet we appear unable to solve the bullying problem.
“Bullying” has taken on a life of its own. Perhaps it’s time for a re-think.
According to Canadian friendship skills expert and founder of URSTRONG Dana Kerford, Australia’s approach to bullying is wrong. For starters, we need to lose the term “bullying”.
“The word ‘bullying’ is so misused and misunderstood, even among parents and teachers. The word has taken on a life of its own, and it’s confusing for children,” says Kerford who is currently on an extended stay in Australia, working with teachers, parents and students.
For behaviour to be “bullying” it must be intentional, repetitive and potentially harmful. Accidentally hurting someone is not bullying. Not liking your friend’s new haircut is not bullying. Having a disagreement, or not wanting to play with someone aren’t bullying. But this level of nuance can be difficult for children to understand.
To help kids identify bullying, Kerford suggests calling it “mean-on-purpose behaviour”. Anyone can understand what that means and can easily spot it.
The other problem with the term “bullying” is that it’s stigmatising.
“I absolutely do not believe that a little kid who’s learning these skills should be labelled a ‘bully’. They just haven’t learned to manage those really big feelings and emotions that they have inside in a healthy way yet.”
Kerford says that she’s seeing a reactionary and punitive response to bullying in Australia, such as tougher consequences for bullies and “say no to bullying” days.
“Having somebody come into a school and tell the story about how they’ve been bullied in their lives, and how they rose above it is inspirational, but that doesn’t give children anything they can use,” says Kerford.
“Instead we should focus on teaching kids practical skills-based strategies for how to manage and stand up to mean-on-purpose behaviour.”
Kerford says when kids start standing up to such behaviour they are not only learning to treat themselves with respect but they also deter the kids who are being mean-on-purpose from doing it again.
“Self-governance starts to happen in schools when children can effectively resolve their own conflicts, make good choices around who they’re playing with, and stand up to mean-on-purpose behaviour. We get this culture of harmony and kindness and respect and teachers can have their lunches and recesses back”.
The early signs of this new approach are promising. In 2012, Perth College implemented URSTRONG’s skills-based approach to empower students to deal with their own friendship issues. The school has subsequently seen improvement in the resilience in the students. Staff are also reporting that they now spend less time dealing with conflicts between students as the girls deal with conflict themselves.
“The girls consistently report low bullying scores across the year groups we assess (Year 3 to Year 12),” says Deb Perich, director of the program at Perth College.
“This approach works because the girls have a toolkit to use when they are faced with a challenge, whether it be normal conflict or a “mean on purpose” incident. They have simple skills to perform in these situations and they have practised their technique,” Perich says.
Although, not all teachers are comfortable with the approach, specifically the lesson that children should always stand up to mean-on-purpose behaviour. Because bullying is often a sign of low self-esteem and other trauma, some people believe that these kids should be treated with more understanding and compassion.
“Teachers have said to me that they try to teach the kids that things are a little harder for him [the kid who was mean-on-purpose], and that they should show some understanding. And I get very nervous when I hear that,” Kerford say.
“I think empathy obviously, is a great thing. We want to empathise. But there’s a tipping point when empathy becomes enabling.”
Excusing bullying behaviour because the kid is suffering, isn’t good for the child, since they can feel justified. And what happens when they grow into an adult, when such behaviours may land them in trouble with the law?
It’s also a terrible lesson for the victims. Do we want little girls thinking it’s okay for little boys to push them down the stairs because he has a rough home life and he’s feeling sad and angry? Add ten years and we’re potentially grooming young women to accept and excuse male violence or abuse as normal and justified.
Instead, we need to teach kids — all kids — that it’s never okay to be mean-on-purpose and that they should never have to tolerate it.
Of course, bullying is complicated, but given our poor performance in addressing the issues, Kerford’s approach, based on sound relationship principles, is worth trying.
The Resilience Project
This next presentation from The Resilience Project is all about Empathy and Kindness.
Empathy is our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others to feel and see what they do. We practice this through being kind and compassionate towards other people.
Brain imaging data shows that being kind to others registers in the brain as more like eating chocolate than like fulfilling an obligation to do what’s right (e.g., eating brussel sprouts)!
Research shows that practicing empathy, such as performing acts of kindness, taps into our brain’s ‘mirror neurons’, builds compassion and our behaviour becomes more social and community-based.
View Part 3 of the series here:
Part 3 - Empathy: https://theresilienceproject.com.au/2023-parent-carer-hub-inspire-hugh/
Here’s an activity to practise empathy and kindness:
- Reflect on someone in your life who could benefit from an act of kindness today. It could be a friend who would love some affirmation about their work, your pet who deserves an extra treat, or a family member who would love a phone call or text message.
- Make a plan for who you are going to give an act of kindness to, and what you are going to do.
- If you want to add accountability to your plan, share it with someone else and encourage them to do the same thing.
- Follow up with each other in a few days time, to ask how it went!
Sources: Psychology Today, UC Berkeley, Greater Good Science
For mental health resources and support information, visit The Resilience Project’s Support Page.
Feed and Succeed
I encourage all senior students to attend weekly tutoring available on Thursdays from 3-4pm!
Active Body | Calm Mind | Connected Spirit
Look what is on offer for all of our students during lunchtimes at St. Joseph’s in Week 5!
Best regards,
Mrs Schneekloth
Pastoral Care Leader
Prep
Welcome to Week 4. I cannot believe how quickly this term is flying!
This week in English we revised our learnt Tricky Words (I, a, you, my, the, is and was). Our Little Leaders also learnt about the new vowel letter e for Eric Elephant.
We also were introduced to a Simple Sentence using the Writer's Toolbox Sentence Train. Students developed the understanding that a sentence starts with a capital letter, ends with a full stop and that it must make sense. We will use this train to show that a sentence starts with a subject (in the engine spot). All trains have an engine to drive the train. No train, no engine. The train also has carriages. This will be where the rest of the sentence goes. Students will also become familiar with punctuation; Capital letters and full stops.
In Math, we revised our familiar shapes and completed our assessment on shape attributes. We also used this time to practice our counting to and from 20.
In Science, we are excitedly awaiting the arrival of our class chickens. Every day we have spent time watching a chicken development video and discussing what stage we are up to. We are on day 18 of 21! This week we will start to move into discussing what plants need to survive.
Keep up to date with what is happening in Prep by checking out our Little Leaders Website. I have also added an additional page called Home Learning with different activities and resources that may be useful to consolidate learning at home. Please access this via the Little Leaders Website.
Yours in fun and learning,
Miss Brock, Mrs McLauchlan, Miss Rachel, Miss Kylie and Miss Nina
Year 1
Hello Parents and Carers,
We had a busy week!
This week:
In Maths, the students have started looking at length, mass and capacity. They are learning how to use informal units to measure objects. They have used unifix cubes to measure things around the classroom and discussed what things weigh more and less.
In English, the students have started using adverb starts in their writing. The students are becoming more confident in how to use these. An adverb start makes their writing more interesting and detailed. An example of this is ‘Quickly, the boy ran through the mud’. It is telling the reader how the boy ran.
In Science, the students are starting to look at how the sky looks during the day and night. What activities you may do and things you may see at these different times. The students have created lovely drawings of things they see during the day.
Here are some photos of the students creating things out of the 3D objects:
Reminders:
Tuesday: Art
Thursday: Sport, no Library (due to book fair) and homework due
Friday: Technology
Have a wonderful week.
Miss Haley and the always fun Year 1s!
Year 2
Hi Year 2 Parents and Carers,
During InitiaLit this week, we have focused on adding prefixes and suffixes to words in spelling. We have now started to move into ir, ur and er. We are also looking at the comprehension strategy of visualising. This term in writing, students will be creating an imaginative text based off of Wombat Stew. We continued planning our texts using box plots this week. During Maths, we are finalising skip counting and will be looking at addition and subtraction. In our other subjects this term we are looking at:
Religion: Jesus and Community
Science: Life Cycles
HASS: Connections to different places
Health: Keeping ourselves healthy and safe
Reminders:
- Homework is due on Monday.
- Library is on Mondays of Week B - Our next library lesson is in Week 6
Have a fantastic remainder of your week!
Miss Ansell
Year 3
Hi all,
Another short and jam-packed week!
Mathematics
Students have been continuing to practice telling the time and have applied this knowledge and their understanding of time duration (eg. 1hr = 60min) to create an itinerary for the fete! The students were also lucky enough to be taught a lesson by Mr Huff, who is on Prac in Year 6.
English
Every morning, students work on the digital platform Writer’s Toolbox. Last term, they would complete a ‘daily challenge’ responding to a photo prompt, but this term we have taken it one step further and complete ‘weekly challenges’. This gives students more time to create an even better piece of writing that they can also plan for and edit.
This week, the students have been reading and learning about digital texts and investigated their purpose and structure. We explored the Kids Corner on the Great Barrier Reef website to choose a reef animal to learn about. Students also compared print and digital texts.
Religion
This week, students compared life for Christians and Catholics now to what life was like for the First Christians (as we learnt about in the scripture Acts 2:43-47). We discussed technology and everyday items have changed, as well as how some sacraments and rituals have stayed the same!
HASS
The students practiced creating a map of Australia, drawing the state lines and adding the state/territory names as well as the capital cities!
Science
Students continued to investigate how day and night is created by the Earth's movement around the sun.
Week 5 Reminders:
- Homework - Homework will be given to students every Monday and is due Friday.
- PE uniform Tuesday
- Chaplain’s Breakfast - Tuesday & Thursday at 7:45am in MMS
- Library Thursday (odd weeks - W1,3,5,7,9)
- Reading Challenge - encourage your Year 3s to participate in the Reading Challenge!
Thank you
Laura Cook
P.S.
Check out some of the fun we had with Mrs Smith and Mrs Chaplain last week in our art workshop!
Year 4
Hi everyone,
It’s been a big week with heaps of activities on. We took the opportunity at the end of an awesome day to celebrate with a game - Who doesn’t love Head’s Down, Thumbs Up?!
This coming week we are going to be learning about the Red, White, and Blue Sentence. With the Red, White, and Blue Sentence, writers can quickly list three or more things—people, places, objects, actions, adjectives—all in ONE sentence. Check this out:
- Alpacas are easy to look after, incredibly soft, and surprisingly affectionate.
- Tim visited Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and Buckingham Palace when he was in London.
- Careful application of heat, light, and nutrients helped the beans grow extremely large.
Our spelling sound this week is the ‘ll’ sound in lizard. This sound can be represented by the graphemes l and ll.
- The ‘ll’ sound in lizard is most frequently represented by the grapheme l (e.g. leg, release, pencil).
- We usually use ll after short vowel sounds at the end of single-syllable words (e.g. spill, smell).
Reminders:
- There is a FACE meeting this Tuesday from 2pm-4pm to discuss the Fete. If anyone is interested in being involved, please come along!
- Ride to School day is THIS FRIDAY!!
- Chaplaincy breakfast is on Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning at 7:45am.
- Tuckshop is on Thursday
Have a great week everyone!
Mairin Borlase
Year 5
Welcome to Week 4.
It's hard to believe that week 5 is just around the corner and we will be half way through the term. I would like to say what an amazing job Year 5 did at assembly last Friday. I was so proud of each one of them. It is not easy to get up and read in front of the whole school and parents.
English
We have continued our work on persuasive texts. This week the children were working on the structure of their texts and using evidence to reinforce their opinion. We were also looking at Persuasive Devices to improve their writing. We learnt a helpful mnemonic to remember what should be included in persuasive texts. This was: A FOREST
A - alliteration
F - Facts
O - opinion
R - repetition or rhetorical questions
E - emotive language
S - statistics
T - rule of Three
The children have also continued their weekly Soundwaves lessons. This week the sound was J as in j g ge dge.
Maths
This week the children worked on Measurement Conversion. They worked on centimetres to millimetres and centimetres to metres.
Religion
This week the children concluded their work on a slides presentation on the Sabbath as part of their assessment.
Pastoral Care
This week we introduced the children to our new Friendology program. This is a whole school friendship strategy. We will be looking at what’s normal in a friendship and the difference between healthy and unhealthy friendships. The Year 5 children worked with the Year 6 children. I will keep you updated with our progress through this program.
Specialist Subjects:
Monday: Japanese and Science
Tuesday: Drama
Wednesday: Health and Technology , students may also wear their House Shirts to school
Thursday: Science and HASS
Friday: Sport and HASS, Students may wear their Sports Uniform
Reminders:
- Tuesday 14th FACE Fete meeting 2pm-4pm
- Chaplaincy breakfast is on Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning at 7:45am.
- Tuckshop is on Thursday
- Friday 17th Ride to School
- Saturday 18th Open Day 9-11am
- Sunday 19th Youth Mass Pentecost Sunday
I hope you have a great week. If you have any concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.
Nicola Cullen
Year 6
Dear Families,
We trust you all had a lovely long weekend. On Tuesday morning, we had a Science incursion with SCIENCE DISCOVERY to promote discussion about electrical energy, which aligned nicely with our work on electricity and circuits. Special thank you to Rob Grehan for organising this terrific experience for our Y5/Y6 learners - it was super fun and greatly appreciated!
In our English learning, we are continuing to investigate the topic of e-scooters and PMD (Personal Mobility Devices). We have discovered some interesting things like the fines for speeding, using a mobile phone and doubling (2 people on the same scooter) - check out the Street Smarts website for further information. The aim of our debate and discussion is to formulate precise arguments with supporting evidence, which make us sound like experts in the field. We have begun to work together to structure the LAWYER PARAGRAPH so that learners can reference the shared work when writing their own arguments.
In our spelling, we are investigating words with the phoneme [ay] using the common graphemes [a, a-e, ay, ai] and some less frequent [eigh, ey , ea and et]. We will be developing our understanding of the suffix -ation, which means action, state or result of. We will also revisit homophones with the phoneme [ay].
In Mathematics, we will continue to develop our understanding of area including the strategies we can use to solve simple problems involving length and area. We will reignite prior learning and begin to consider how we can apply this learning to the real world. In Think Mentals, we continue to investigate multiplication strategies when multiplying 2-digit and 3-digit numbers.
Have a great week,
Mike and Aiden
Subject Spotlight
Year 7 Science with Mrs Toni Schneekloth
At the start of the year, the Year 7 students started with an introduction to science - revisiting the scientific method, laboratory safety and obtaining their Bunsen Burner licence. From there, they have investigated how water is a renewable resource and how water is treated using various separation techniques to ensure its safety for humans to consume. This term, students are delving into astronomy and how predictable phenomena on Earth, including seasons, tides and eclipses, are caused by the relative positions of the sun, Earth and the moon.
Year 9 Design with Miss Shara Humes
Picture this for me: a pad of sticky notes, a basic ballpoint pen, any apple product you can think of. I imagine you might even have some of these lying around your house or workplace. They seem to be a somewhat random collection of items, yet they are fairly common staples in our lives. What is it that makes these products, among others, so popular and widely used in society? The answer: good design. For the first few weeks this term, our students have been looking at what makes good design good through exploring what already exists. We have discussed Dieter Rams 10 Principles of Good Design in relation to the aforementioned products, delving into how they meet these principles and forming our own opinions on whether designs need to meet all the criteria to be deemed “good”. Hint: they don’t.
From this point onwards in the term, students are furthering their understanding of what a design brief is and its role within the industry to help designers in many fields take a client's vision and bring it into reality through ongoing collaboration and communication. This will result in the cumulative project for this term: exploring graphic design through the creation of a music poster advertising an upcoming gig.
Year 8 RE with Mr James Delaney
To begin the term, we are learning about the different covenants throughout the Old Testament and the unique relationship present between God and His chosen people. The students will consider and organise the covenant narratives to identify key themes that inform these relationships. From this learning (and our Term 1 learning of the Trinity), we will be exploring God’s saving plan. Specifically, evidence from scriptural texts that highlight Jesus as the Messiah and how He fulfils God’s saving plan through His life, death and resurrection.
Guidance Counsellor
SPECIAL REPORT: Toxic Achievement Culture
Toxic achievement culture is a critical societal issue where an individual's self-worth is entangled to their academic or extracurricular achievements. This culture is not merely about striving for success; it represents a deep-seated belief that a student’s value is solely dependent on their performance, often propelled by intense external pressures from parents, schools, and society. The concept of toxic achievement has recently been outlined in a book that sheds light on this phenomenon, highlighting the dark consequences of a culture obsessed with success.
Toxic achievement is becoming increasingly prevalent, characterised by excessive competition, unrealistic expectations, and a singular focus on results. This culture is also being aggravated by parental expectations, peer competition, a relentless comparison ethos, as well as being compounded by social media. It stems from a shift towards individualism where personal achievements are being equated with self-worth.
This relentless drive to excel is leading many students to prioritise accolades over genuine learning and personal growth, often at the expense of their own wellbeing and interpersonal relationships. Some students are overfilling their schedules with activities aimed to "get ahead". However, the consequences are proving to be detrimental on students' mental and physical health resulting in burnout and heightened stress levels.
As adult carers, we need to advocate for a more balanced and holistic approach to achievement, emphasising the importance of resilience, wellbeing, and the pursuit of diverse interests. There is nothing wrong with having ambition, but it's crucial to ensure that this desire doesn't push our young people into a toxic cycle of achievement and make them feel they must achieve in order to matter.
Here is the link to your Special Report
Mrs Bec Greaves
Guidance Counsellor