Term 2 I Week 3

Key Information

• Mothers Day Stall - Wednesday 4th May to Friday 6th May
• Mothers Day Assembly & Breakfast - Friday 6th May
• Administration Day - Friday 6th May
• Prep Vision Screening - Friday 6th May 
• NAPLAN - Tuesday 10th May to Friday 13th May
• Scholastic Book Fair - Monday 16th May
• Indigenous Education Advisory Meeting - Thursday 19th May - 3pm
• Trivia Evening - Friday 20th May - 5pm

Tuckshop Menu:

Tuckshop has been cancelled for this week due to staff illness and no volunteers. 

We are kindly asking for more volunteers! Without volunteers, the tuckshop does not run as smoothly. Miss Jamie-Lea would love to see new faces amongst our current volunteers. Please call the office and let us know if you can volunteer a few hours a couple of times a term.

Uniform Shop

As advertised, all uniform items with the old logo are being sold at 50% off normal price. There are limited sizes as shown. If ordering online your discount will be applied when you collect your order from the Uniform Shop or office.

Uniform Shop Days:

• Monday 2.30-3pm
• Thursday: 8:10am-8:30am

Any requests for uniforms outside these days MUST be done via the link below. 

Principal News

Welcome to Week 3, 

Thank you to the members of The Cloncurry Community that joined us at our famous Cocktail Party last Friday night. This event was to fundraise for our year 7 to 9 students who will be going on camp at the end of the Term 2 holidays. This was my first experience at the Cocktail Party and it was such a nice night, I really enjoyed connecting with you all throughout the night. A big thank you to everyone that worked behind the scenes to make this night possible, particularly Mr Murray, we appreciate you. 

I will be absent on Friday this week as I will be presenting in Mount Isa to teachers and middle leaders that have been nominated by schools in the Townsville Diocese for Senior Leadership Positions. I need to send my apologies to the wonderful mums, nans, aunties and carers for missing the Mothers Day breakfast on Friday. You influence our children each and every day. Enjoy your morning. 

Attendance:
Attendance - Every day counts – Our current whole school attendance to date is 88.6%. This however has declined. In 2021 our attendance rate was 89% and in 2020 it was 91%. There is a direct correlation between academic success and student attendance. It is important that students are in attendance at school to learn and develop. It is also important that students are arriving on time. Teachers often have their literacy and numeracy rotations in the morning session, if students are arriving late to school they are missing this learning time each day. 

Staffing Update:
It is with sadness that I inform our St Joseph’s Catholic School community that Suzannah Coombs our wonderful year 3 teacher will be departing at the end of Term 2. Suzannah will be relocating to Port Douglas. Although we are sad to farewell Suzannah, we are very excited for her on this new journey. 

Mothers Day:
We will be celebrating Mothers Day on Friday with a breakfast at 7.45am in the Home Ec Room. There will be english muffins and croissants to enjoy. Please come along and join us for breakfast, followed by our assembly at 8.30am. 

There will also be a mothers day stall next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday if students would like to bring some money in to purchase something nice for mum. The gifts will be priced from $2 - $20.

Community Engagement - Trivia Night:

St Joseph’s Catholic School strives to host a family event at least once per term. It is important for us to be able to come together. We would love to see all of our families at our upcoming trivia night, being held on Friday the 20th of May at 5pm. 

The trivia night will be held on the school oval. The screen will be set up out the front of the home ec room, so please position your picnic rugs to face this way when arriving. You may wish to compete as a family or join another family. If you are joining another family we ask that no more than 10 people (including children) are on a team. We have quite a few new families that have joined our school this year, if you would like to join another family but aren't sure who, please email the P&F on pandf@sjctsv.catholic.edu.au

If you would like to bring chairs to sit on please be mindful of the people in front of you and it would be best to sit to the side or at the back so you aren’t obstructing the view of others. 

Although staff will be present on the night, the supervision of your child/children is your responsibility and we kindly ask that parents ensure children are sitting with them and supervised throughout the event. 

COVID-19 - new close contact rules:
From 6pm Thursday 28 April 2022 there will no longer be quarantine requirements for close contacts (household or household-like contacts of people with COVID-19). This change has no impact on Isolation requirements for people diagnosed with COVID-19 (i.e. positive cases).

Close contacts who have COVID-19 symptoms must stay at home until the symptoms resolve. They must not attend work or school. Close contacts (staff or students) who are symptomatic, must undertake testing immediately and quarantine until the earlier of Day 7 or until they are no longer experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19.

The following requirements will apply to close contacts who do not have symptoms as from 6pm Thursday 28 April 2022:

• Students that are close contacts must inform the school that they are a close contact before returning to school. 
• Close contacts are recommended to take a RAT test every two days until Day 7, ensuring they have a negative result before leaving home (e.g. to attend school).  RAT tests will need to start from the day the person becomes a close contact (and then additional tests performed on days 2, 4 and 6). These RAT tests will need to be sourced by the individual and will not be provided by the school.
• Close contacts must wear a mask while outside their home if they are 12 years or older (or where they are a secondary student) until Day 7. Masks are recommended where safe for students under 12 years. St Joseph’s Catholic School has masks available for students to wear.

God Bless, 

Samantha Kelley
Principal

APRE News

Welcome to Week 3!

Wishing all our mums a very special Mother’s Day this Sunday! Where would we be without our mothers? I hope this Mother’s Day 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 honor 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 in our community, thank you for all that you do for us! May God bless you this Sunday and each day.  

Notices: 
School Mother’s Day Stall: From today till Friday the school will run a mothers day stall. Thank you to Miss Peta who assisted in ensuring we have so many lovely gifts for our beautiful mothers. Gifts are starting from $2 to $20 and will be on sale in the helpful hub. 

Assembly Prayer: Year 3 will present our prayer this week. This will be a special prayer to all mothers. 

No Sunday Mass this week 

Children Liturgy: Sunday May 15th there will be a children’s liturgy run during our Sunday Mass at 8:30 am. All children are welcome.

Pastoral Care

Unleashing Personal Potential Impact Workshop

Years 7-9 students attended the Unleashing Personal Potential (UPP) Impact Workshop today. In the past two years, we have witnessed significant relationship building and personal growth in each student after attending the UPP workshop.

This workshop has been designed to assist our students to:

• Lead by example, service and action;
• Build healthy relationships with their peers;
• Develop a positive school culture;
• Experience genuine, authentic opportunities to contribute and serve the school community through their leadership role
• Improve collaboration, teamwork skills, respect, listening skills and empathy.

The workshops involved the UPP team working directly with our students. They used a learning, action, reflection process in the three sessions throughout the day.

Years 7-9 students had a great experience at the workshop learnt lifelong skills and built confidence to unleash the potential within themselves.

The Resilience Project
Tomorrow afternoon, our staff will attend a workshop presented by the founder of The Resilence Project, Hugh van Cuylenberg.  Hugh will be unpacking the research on mental health and breaking it down into simple tips that will empower our staff to further improve their  own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others.

Mrs Toni Schneekloth
Pastoral Leader

Teaching & Learning

NAPLAN 
NAPLAN is just around the corner with students in year 3 and 5 sitting the first test (writing) on Tuesday 10th of May. All students participated in the NAPLAN practice test in Term 1 which went well. The students are now familiar with the testing environment and know what to expect on the day. Teachers will continue to prepare students for the examination throughout the coming weeks. 

Prep

Welcome to Week 3,

I hope you have all had an enjoyable long weekend.

Once again thank you to those of you that helped with our literacy rotations last week. It is appreciated. We thankfully managed to cut ingredients to use as pizza toppings last week with no injuries! Miss Tamara and I were very proud of the behaviour of the class when cooking in the Home Ec room. The pizza’s were yummy!

The Preps will continue to learn new letter sounds. They will practice identifying these sounds in words and putting these sounds together to read and write simple words made up of the sounds that they have learnt. This week some "tricky words" will also be introduced. We will send plastic folders home with a list of the sounds learnt and the tricky words to practice later this week. Practicing these will be "homework" for the week. The Preps will have learnt the sounds in set 1 and 2 and some from set 3 by the end of the week. They will also learn the words I, my and the. There are lots of ways to practice these sounds and words at home; write them on sticky notes and put them around the room and time your child finding a word or sound, write them with chalk on the concrete or take it in turns to say a "silly" sentence which uses the "tricky words." I'm sure that you can find a million ways to practice these if you google it! Once we have learnt a few more sounds and words readers will also be sent home. Can we please have the plastic folders with the words and sounds in them, returned by WEDNESDAY OF WEEK 4 so that readers can be sent home in these folders.

I have started testing each student's ability to remember and write each sound taught as well as using these sounds to read and write simple words. This takes about 10 minutes for each child. 

We have begun our artwork for the Cloncurry show and will continue this, as well as doing mothers day craft this week.

Reminders:

• Tuesday: Sport and Mrs Jill Smith teaching Prep in the morning
• Wednesday: Tuckshop orders due
• Thursday: Library
• Friday: Mother's Day Breakfast before school. Wear house coloured shirts.

Yours in fun and learning,

Mrs McLauchlan and Miss Tamara

Year 1

Hello Parents and Caregivers,

Welcome to week 3!

Here is a snapshot of what we are learning this week;

Religion: We are learning to identify words, actions and symbols used in the Sacraments of Baptism.

Math: We are learning to tell the time to half a half hour. Students have began to identify hour and half hour times on both digital and analogue clocks. 

Science: We are learning how different places meet the needs of living and non-living things. Students have begun to complete an information report about their chosen dinosaur. 

HASS: We are learning to identify and describe important dates and changes in our lives. 

Health: We are learning to demonstrate positive ways to interact with others. Students had the opportunity to role play positive and negative ways to interact with their peers. 

Drama: We are learning to use voice, facial expressions, movement and space to imagine and establish role and situation. 

Reminders:

This Term we are still working on an A/B week timetable, however, Library and Sport will be on the same day each week. 

• Sport: Friday with Mr Murray, please have your child wear either their coloured sports shirt or formal uniform.
• Due to sport being on Friday students are able to wear their sports uniform on Thursday if they wish. 
• Library: Is on Thursday if you haven’t already, please send your child’s library bag into school.
• Homework: Homework will be handed out on Thursday and expected back next Wednesday.
• Literacy Groups: If you are able to help out, our literacy groups will be at 10am each morning.
• Have a wonderful week!

Miss Mae-Louise Brock

Year 2

Hi all,

Week 3 already!! 

This week we are learning:

English: Descriptive writing. Our tricky words are something, ask, what

Maths: Counting collections of coins - We will complete our assessment this week!

Religion: The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

HASS: Connections to different places

Science: Life cycles - the week we are candling our eggs to see which ones are developing!

This week we will also begin our art for the show and we will work on these in the weeks to come!

Have a great week,

Miss Leonie Ansell

Year 3

Hi everyone, 

The learning highlights for this week are:

• English: we will continue to use adjectives in our writing and explore the way adjectives are used in the book ‘The Ugly Five’ by Julia Donaldson. Our sound this week is ‘o, u’ as in umbrella. 

• Maths: we will continue to revise quarter past and quarter to in our time unit. 

• Science: we will begin our new unit on day and night.

• HASS: we will learn the difference between human and natural features.

• Religion: we will look at the first Sacrament of Initiation - Baptism.

• Drama: we will experiment with the loudness and softness of our voices to create characters and situations 

The key notices for this week are:

• Sport is on Wednesday 
• Library is on Thursday
• Homework and home readers are due on Friday

Assembly Prayer

• Year 3 will be leading prayer for the assembly on Friday. There will be a special focus on Mother’s Day, so parents (especially mother’s!) are encouraged to join us. 

Have a great week ahead!

Miss Suzannah Coombs

Year 4

Hi Everyone,

English
This week we are enjoying having Miss Brodie helping us in the classroom to develop the students’ skills in writing an historical recount.  They have researched a child convict and will now be taking on the character of this convict to write about their life using the language features typical of this genre. 

The students did a great job last week bumping up sentences using ‘wow’ words.

In spelling we are learning the different ways of representing the long ‘a’ sound. This is one of the trickiest graphemes we have looked at this year but we have been using clues such as base words, rhyming words and saying tricky words such as Wednesday just like they are spelt to help us remember how to spell them.

Maths
This week we are beginning our unit on angles and symmetry. We will be finding angles all over the school that are less than, greater than and exactly a right angle as well as drawing angles that fit certain criteria.

Science
Today is our first egg candling day. Have a chat with your child to see how we went!

Have a great week!

Mrs Lesley Wall

Year 5

Welcome to week 3!

I hope you have all enjoyed your long weekend. Students will be receiving homework this week and it will be due on Friday. 

More weekly subject overviews below:

Hass - Students will examine influencing factors on purchases. They will complete an Economics Process Flow chart and use it to talk through the process of consumers having wants and needs, which creates the demand for services and goods. 

Religion - Students will identify and describe the Psalmists relationship with God as revealed through the three forms of Psalms - Lamentation, Thanksgiving and Praise.

Maths- Students will solve addition and subtraction problems using a range of strategies. They will check the reasonableness of answers using estimation and rounding.

English - While reading the text, ‘Deltora Quest’, students will use language that represents characters to form viewpoints. 

• Sports day: Mondays. 
• Library day: Wednesdays. 

Yours in Faith and Education,

Miss Therese von Drehnen and Mrs Louise Martin

Year 6

Welcome to Week 3!

We have had quite a productive start to the term! Homework will start back next week - I will send out an email outlining how homework will operate moving forwards. This is one of the many things that I hope will prepare the students for high school. 

Our learning focuses for this week are:

Religion: This week, we are learning about the history of the Catholic Church in Australia, including some prominent figures. 

English: Students will practise using persuasive language features by starting a text about pollution. 

Mathematics: Fractions learning began this week. We have been discussing all things equivalent and simplifying! 

HaSS: Students have had a chance to explore the experiences of migrant groups in Australia’s history. We will be using our knowledge to compare and contrast the experiences between a variety of migration stories. 

Science: Year 6 is doing chemistry and how they love it! In our chemistry unit, students are busy learning about changes and whether they are reversible or irreversible. Last Wednesday, the Year 6 students were successful in getting their Bunsen Burner Licences! It was great to see how responsible the students were and their excitement to conduct an experiment using the Bunsen Burner (evaporating a salt water solution to demonstrate changes in states of matter).  The unit involves a lot of experimentation to demonstrate and explain the theory they learn in class.  Looking forward to a great term of Science and if you have any questions or comments, please reach out and contact me via email, in person or phone. Thanks, Mrs Schneekloth

Japanese: This week, we learned the vocabulary for family members, before learning about how to write sentences to communicate this information. 

As of this term, our PE and Library lessons are both on Wednesday, each week.

Have a blessed week ahead!

Mr. Delaney & The Year 6 Legends!

UMY - Subject Spotlight

Year 7 Design with Mr Kelley

This term students will continue work on their Carry All. Students have started work on their dovetail joins with varying success. They are learning to interpret technical drawings and are making links between theory and practical applications. All going well this project should be completed by Week 6 and ready to take home by Week 8.

Year 8 English & Religious Education with Ms Lovett

This term in English, year 8 is studying the structure and features of information texts. We are also building our capacity to be media-literate through analysing features that are used in documentary-films to influence a target audience. We have been using David Attenborough’s 2020 documentary-film ‘A Life On Our Planet’ to support our learning journey. As the term progresses, students will explore language features such as irony and include this in an informative ‘travel’ brochure that will target an intergalactic audience (visit ‘Earth’). 

In Religion, we are exploring God’s plan for creation. Students will examine several Old and New Testament texts, and make connections between these texts that reflect how the life, death & resurrection of Jesus Christ revealed God’s Saving Plan. They will contextualise this learning into their own, contemporary world and describe how the faith and action of believers shows God’s Saving Plan for Creation.

Year 9 Art with Mr Murray
In Arts we are looking at Music for Term 2 and are “Taking Shape” at it. In Taking Shape, Topology will show students how to use the building blocks of music to create new pieces. Every piece of music is made up of short musical ideas, also known as motifs. Topology refers to these short musical ideas as “shapes”; shapes that can be puzzled together in all sorts of interesting ways to create music. 

Library

Hello Everyone,
I can’t believe it is week 3 already!
We are hosting our annual Book Fair in week 5 from the 16th of
May to the 20th of May in the library.

It is a Scholastic Book Fair, so we will have cabinets of books sent from scholastic along with posters and stationary items such as: fancy pencils, erasers, games and diaries etc.

I will be having the children fill out their wish lists in the library lessons and they will bring them home for parents and guardians to look at. The money made at our book fair will be spent back in the library.

Next newsletter, I will put up the times of the Book Fair. We usually host it before school, lunchtime and after school. If any of you would like to help with the Book Fair, please contact me.

Could you please provide your child / children with a Library bag?
Also if children could bring their books back weekly that would be much appreciated.

Regards

Mrs Chaplain
Teacher /Librarian

The Spark Club

What can I say?! The students that have joined have made me smile and laugh! Today we were colouring in and playing charades, and a little question to ask their families while eating dinner together tonight. So if your child asks you "what made you happy today?", please encourage the discussion so they can come back to me tomorrow with answers! We are sparking conversation and making relationships, a great way to build our community.

Breaky Club is NOT on tomorrow morning. Though you are more than welcome to come on Friday morning for our Mother's Day Breakfast and school assembly! We are going to have some croissants, english muffins, juice, tea & coffee and a few surprises as well. 7.45am at the Home Ec room, I would love to see you there!

If you have any card games that are no longer in use at home and you are interested in donating them to The Spark Club, please bring into the office. For eg. UNO, card decks, Canasta, Memory.

I am enjoying seeing the faces that are joining me in The Spark Club, wishing for older students too, *cough *cough! In the Helpful Hub at first lunch is where it is at!

Cheers, Miss Pete x

How to beat exam stress

Mindfulness using the senses

Using the senses can be a helpful way to pull your attention to the present moment no matter where you are, centre yourself and engage with your environment. You can practise throughout the day, especially any time you find yourself getting caught up in your thoughts and feelings. Here is an exercise you can do to play with paying attention to things you might not usually notice.

Try to notice five things:

• Pause for a moment
• Look around and notice 5 things you can see
• Listen carefully and notice 5 things you can hear
• Notice 5 things you can feel in contact with your body
• Finally, do all of the above at the same time.

Mindfulness using the body

Going to a yoga class can be a great way to explore mindfulness of the body in a supported environment.

Studies from the US and India show mindfulness-based yoga programs in secondary schools can improve grades or mitigate decreases in grades across the school year, improve emotional regulation, improve memory, anger control and fatigue, improve mood and decrease anxiety. Many local studios will provide free or heavily discounted offers for introduction classes.

Another option might be to try some gentle mindful stretching on your own or with a friend. You can try any stretches you like, while paying attention to what is happening in your body as a result of the stretch.

Pay attention to how the muscles feel, both during and in the few seconds after the stretch. Be aware of how the stretch might affect your breathing. Try to maintain a steady, calm, breath throughout the practice. If your mind wanders, just bring it back to the sensations in your body.

You can practise these measures at home around exam time, while you’re lining up to enter your exam, or even in the middle of your exam if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed. Taking a moment to slow your heart rate and calm your thoughts will pay off in the long run.

Extract from article published on www.theconversation.com

Student Wellbeing

Employment Opportunties - Teachers & School Officers

We are currently recruiting a teacher to join our team in Teaching The Arts. This position will be 5 days a week. Please apply by clicking the following link: https://applynow.net.au/jobs/ni/TCE1549-teacher

We are also seeking a Primary Teacher to join our team. This position is full time. Please apply by clicking on the following link: 
https://applynow.net.au/jobs/ni/TCE1586-year-5-primary-teacher

We are seeking casual School Officers and qualified Teachers to cover sick and leave days.  For more information please contact our office.
Teaching staff will need to apply here > https://tceo-portal.applynow.net.au/jobs/TCE679-supply-teacher-registration-2021

Mothers Day Stall

Community Notices - Guitar Lessons

Jill Fisher will be holding guitar lessons for any children interested! These will be occuring at St Joseph's Catholic School. Please contact Jill directly if you would like more information.  

Cloncurry Poetry Competition

The Cloncurry Prize – Junior Poetry Competition is back for another year! The competition is open to all Queensland school aged individuals.

The theme of the 2022 Cloncurry Prize Poetry Competition is “Spirit of the Outback”. Attached is a flyer.

 Key Dates:

• Entries open: Now!
• Entries close: Friday 13 May 2022 at 11:59 AEST

Prizes:

• First prize - $250
• Second prize - $150
• Third prize - $100

How to enter
Email your poem to cloncurryprize@cloncurry.qld.gov.au clearly stating the entry is for the junior competition.

The file name should include the Title followed by the Poets Name e.g. The Cameleers Saddle – Bob Down.

Should you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website. www.cloncurry.qld.gov.au/cloncurry-prize

Looking forward to reading some great poetry!

Cloncurry Prize Team

Electoral Commission invites you

The next federal election will be held on 21 May 2022 and the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is seeking your help in letting people know there are 100,000 paid temporary election jobs available across Australia.

The AEC is particularly seeking people for temporary election jobs in your area.

I would like to invite you to share this job opportunity with your networks through your social media. I have attached some tiles you might like to use - feel free to use the one that best suits your community.

The following post text can be used to accompany the tile:

The AEC is recruiting 100,000 Australians to help deliver the 2022 federal election, which is being held on Saturday 21 May.

There are paid temporary jobs available before, on and after election day. Salaries range from $25.54 to $48.29 per hour. COVID-19 safety measures will be in place to protect workers and voters.

Register today at aec.gov.au/electionjobs

Further information including descriptions of all election positions is available on the AEC website.

To find out more, please contact us at employtrainpay@aec.gov.au.

Kind regards
Deb Vaughan

Temporary Election Workforce Communications Lead
Australian Electoral Commission