Term 3 Week 6

Key Information

A reminder that there will be no assembly this week! 

QLD Opera Performance - Shire Hall - Tuesday 23rd August
Book Week Parade / Learning Breakfast - Thursday 25th August
School Fete - Friday 26th August
Child Protection Week - Monday 5th September - Friday 9th September
Cross Country - Friday 9th September 

Pupil Free Days Term 3
Week 8 Friday - 2nd September 2022
Week 10 Friday - 16th September 2022

Upcoming Board Meetings
Week 10 Tuesday - 13th September 2022 

Upcoming P&F Meetings
Week 9 Monday - 5th September 2022 (fete wrap up)

Tuckshop Menu:

Orders to be in by 8.30am Wednesday morning! Click the link to order!

https://myschoolconnect.com.au/

Uniform Shop

Open Days:

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

Any requests for uniforms outside of these days MUST be done via the link below. Please click the link to access the Uniform shop! https://myschoolconnect.com.au/

Principal News

Welcome to Week 6, 

I will be absent from school for the remainder of the week for Professional Development with all other principals in the Townsville Diocese. I strongly believe that leadership development must be a priority in education, as it is through effective leadership that schools lead successful learners and achieve excellent outcomes. It is important however to acknowledge that ‘success’ looks different for each and everyone of us. I encourage you to spend some time talking with your child/children this week on what success looks like for them. Children can often get stuck in a rut when thinking about what success looks like and can resort to picking a certain academic grade, but it is important to remember that success can often be different to academic achievements and that is okay. Challenge your child to not only identify success but also what steps they need to take to get there, ensuring that it is realistic. Take some time to share these answers with their classroom teacher, we would love to work together to achieve these goals. 

P&F Meeting:
We had a great P&F meeting yesterday afternoon in the library. It is great to come together as a community and we had some new faces joining us as well. We had a presentation by Mr Dean Kelley from the Teaching and Learning Team on our current writing data. We have spoken to both parents and students a lot about our goals to improve student writing, however, we found timely that we show you the data that is driving this decision. Mr Kelley then showcased a new initiative that we have implemented at St Joseph’s, being Writers Toolbox. 

Writers Toolbox is an electronic tool that assists teachers in teaching the skill of writing and assists students in not only getting their ideas onto paper but on how to improve their writing with instant tips and tricks, and feedback. This presentation will be presented again to the School Board in Week 10. 

Upper Middle Years Girls Uniform: 
A big thank you to the parents that came along to the P&F meeting yesterday to cast their vote on the new Upper Middle Years Girls Shirt for 2023. This shirt will be purchased by all 2023 year 7 girls and by 2025 we expect to see all of the senior girls in the new uniform. 

The voting will close this Friday at 3pm and orders will be placed. I will update you on the selected design in the newsletter next week. 

Learning Breakfast, Book Week Parade & Assembly:
Next Thursday the 25th of August St Joseph’s Catholic School will be celebrating with our annual Learning Breakfast in the morning, followed by our Book Week Parade at assembly. We have intentially combined these celebrations into the one day to save parents and carers needing to take several days off work to join us to celebrate. 

The Learning Breakfast will start at 7.45am outside the Home Ec room in the Upper Middle Years area. You are invited to join your child’s classroom teacher for breakfast. The classrooms will then be opened from 8.00am for you to join your child and see what they have been learning. Our students look forward to bringing their parents / grandparents / aunties / uncles / family and friends into their classroom each year and we look forward to seeing you all there. 

Following learning breakfast we will have an assembly in the Mary MacKillop Shed at 8.30am. This assembly will replace our  usual friday assembly and will include the prize for the student that sold the most raffle tickets for the fete and will also include our book week parade. 

I am very much looking forward to this celebration and am excited to be joining you for this.

St Joseph’s Catholic School & St Colman’s Parish Fete:
The celebration of the year is almost here!

I would like to thank Mrs Shelley Curry for the enormous amount of work that she has put into organising the fete. This is Shelley’s 2nd year coordinating the fete at St Joseph’s and we can’t wait! The proceeds will go towards upgrading the sound system in the Mary MacKillop Shed and purchasing a new screen.

We are however needing assistance with both volunteers on the night and the following day to assist with the clean up. If you are available please place your details on the linked document.

God Bless you and your families,

Mrs Samantha Kelley
Principal

APRE News

Welcome to Week 6!

Today I am writing to you from Townsville. This week I am gathering with all APREs across our diocese to focus on “The world behind the Gospels”. I enjoy participating in these networking opportunities and building my capacity to better serve our school.  

Yesterday, Monday, 15 August the Church celebrated the Feast Day of the Assumption of Our Lady when according to our faith, the Holy Mother, “having completed her course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory”.

Assumption of Mary
The Assumption signals the end of Mary’s earthly life and marks her return to heaven to be reunited with Jesus. While the bodies of both Jesus and Mary are now in heaven, there is a difference between the Assumption and the Resurrection. Where Jesus arose from the tomb and ascended into heaven by his own power, Mary’s body was taken up to heaven by the power of her Son.

Mrs Therese Curley
APRE

Pastoral Care

Uniform - Hair
St Joseph’s Catholic School family takes pride in its school uniform.  It is a highly visible symbol of who we are and students are required to wear the full school uniform neatly and with pride.

• Hair must be tidy and remain natural in colour and appearance while attending school. Students are permitted to have colours that are subtle and natural looking; our stance is one of moderation. 
• Long fringes, scraggly hair around the face, hair extensions, undercuts, mullets or other extremes of style are not permitted. 
• Hair is to be no shorter than a No. 3 cut for both males and females. 
• Hair is to be worn neatly and fastened with a band and/or ribbon in navy blue or checkered scrunchie, if hair reaches the top of the collar. 
• All hair must be firmly tied and pinned off the face and above the collar. 
• Single ponytails or plaits must be held firmly in place beneath the crown.

Science Week
Yay! We love Science Week!  Due to the overwhelming interest from previous years, each year level will have a Science Brain Break at lunch time over the next two weeks.  A Science Brain Break could be anything from a quiz, group activity or a few quick science demonstrations allowing our students a chance to stop and reflect on the science in your world.

Mrs Toni Schneekloth 
Pastoral Leader

Prep

Welcome to week 6,

I hope you had a great weekend.

In math this week the class will be exploring mass. We put eggs into the incubator on Friday as part of our "living things" science unit. Thank you Lisa Dickenson and Nicole Laffey for our eggs. The preps also watched videos and looked at books about chicken development. This week the class will do chicken art as well as working on our class canvas which will be auctioned at the fete. 

I can't believe that the fete is only two weeks away. Please think about how you can contribute to our playdoh stall. This could be by buying or making playdoh or buying small toys that we can put with the playdoh. 

Book week is next week as well. Have you got your child's book week costume sorted? I need to make myself a sheep mask. 

We have almost learnt all the letters of the alphabet as well as some digraphs and double letter sounds. The last sound learnt is "ch" and the last  "tricky words" are "this" and "then." 

Reminders:

• Tuesday - sport
• Wednesday - order tuckshop online
• Thursday - tuckshop and library
• Friday - no assembly

Yours in fun and learning,

Mrs Sharon McLauchlan and Miss Tamara Williams 

Year 1

Hello Everyone,

I have spent the last three days completing Early Years Testing and I am so impressed with the growth that every student has made this year.

Religion: In religion this week we will be finishing our assessment on Jesus’ mission and ministries. 

Math: We are revising numbers and algebra. We will spend this week revisiting teen numbers as skip counting.  

English: We are again consolidating our work with the Bossy ‘e’ digraphs. We have learnt that bossy ‘e’ makes the vowel sound long. We will also be completing our unit of work on fictional characters and creating character descriptions.

Reminders

Wednesday

• Students may wear their sports uniform on Wednesdays.
• Homework: Please ensure your childs’ is handed in so readers can be swapped. 

Thursday

• Library with Mrs Chaplain. Please make sure your childs’ library bag is at school.

Friday

• Sport is on Friday with Mr Murray. Students may wear their coloured house shirts.

Literacy Groups: Literacy groups will be on Monday - Friday at 9am. If you are available to help out please let me know. 

Design Technologies: This Term Mrs Laffey and the Year 1’s will be making sustainable solutions in Design Technologies. If you would like to contribute please see the flyer below for recommended items. 

A reminder that there is no assembly this week. 

Miss Mae-Louise Brock

Year 2

Hi all,

Our school fete is coming up fast! This year we will be doing the bottle stall. We need donations of glass jars and packets of little chocolates, lollies, stationary, kick-knacks that are small enough to fit in a little jar.

This week we are learning:

• English: Procedural Texts. Our tricky words are: through, every, only
• Maths: Addition and Subtraction Strategies
• Religion: God’s Covenant with Noah
• Science: Water is a resource
• HASS: Significant people in our community
• Health: Food Advertisements
• Media: Stop Motion Animation

Reminders:

• Wear sport uniform on Wednesdays 
• Tuckshop orders due Wednesday
• We have Library on Thursdays
• We have Sport on Fridays (house shirts)
• Homework due on Friday
• No assembly this week

Have a great week!

Miss Leonie Ansell

Year 3

Welcome to week 6.

It is wonderful to see how well our students are progressing. They are working hard to take responsibility for their learning and demonstrating a great deal of improvement in the presentation of their work. We have been talking about how close they are to becoming Year 4 students.

Our focus this week;

• English - completing an information text on an Australian animals.
• Maths - we have completed our symmetry unit and our upcoming units are fractions and chance. We continue with place value throughout the year.
• Science - we continue with living and non-living. This week we focus on living things from an Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective.
• HASS - we continue to learn about Australia’s neighbours - Indonesia is our week 6 neighbour.
• In PE our students are fortunate to be participating in AFL training.

We hope you have a great week.

Mrs Deb McCann and the Year 3 students

Year 4

Hi Everyone,

Thanks very much for the lolly donations that have been coming in for our Fete stall. Some students have been working on designs for new obstacles to use for our Mini Putt Putt course to make it more eye-catching.

Maths- We have just completed our unit about money and are moving on to 2D shapes. Many students are still having difficulty calculating change, so if you are out shopping with cash (a rare occurrence these days) you could discuss how much change you should receive.

English- Last Friday our students presented their promotional speech about the cereal they had created. There were some very entertaining and convincing presentations using many of the persuasive devices we have been learning about this term.

Today we began our narrative unit concentrating on stories of the Dreaming. Students will be revising the narrative structure and looking at the language features specific to these types of stories as well as creating their own story to explain a natural phenomena. 

PE is on Wednesday this week, not Thursday.

Don’t forget, next week is Bookweek and our parade of characters will be on next Thursday, along with our learning breakfast. 

No assembly this week. 

Have a great week!

Mrs Lesley Wall

Year 5

Welcome to Week 6!

Maths: Students completed their Maths assessment this week, which assessed their knowledge and skills of Fractions and Decimals. 

English: We are identifying poetic devices used in a variety of poems, and explaining the purpose and audience. Later in the week, students will be given samples of explanations and will work in small groups to identify one, two and three star responses!

HaSS: We have learnt how to use ‘Google My Maps’ to locate specific places in our local area. Students have used BOLTSS to make sure they have included all of the important features of maps. 

Behaviour: Students have been working on creating a peaceful classroom environment, respecting their teacher, respecting the right of their peers to learn, and respecting their right to learn. 

Homework: Homework is handed out on Monday and is to be returned on Friday. Homework is a chance to revise concepts taught in class. 

PE: Monday

Library: Wednesday

Enjoy your week,

Miss Therese von Drehnen

Year 6

Welcome to Week 6!

This week’s learning focuses are:

Religion: We have learnt about the themes, messages and rituals of some of the Jewish high holy days and this week we will be participating in some of the practices.  

English: This week, we will be using our knowledge of federation thus far and learning about an introduction for an  informative text. 

Mathematics: The students will be learning about the powers of 10 and how that looks when we are multiplying and dividing decimals. 

HaSS: We are learning about another key event that led to federation before learning about some of the marginalised groups in society. 

PE and Library are on Wednesday. 

Homework: For the remainder of the year I will be encouraging students to utilise their student diaries. They will be bringing these home to be signed. Students are encouraged to read each night. At key intervals throughout the week and/or based on the progression of content covered in class, students will have maths homework to consolidate their learning from class. On some occasions, their may be some class work or assessment work that can be completed at home. This will be communicated with parents and students. 

Have a blessed week!

Mr. James Delaney and the Year 6 Legends!

UMY Spotlight

Year 7 History with Mrs Schneekloth
Students have completed their first semester of History and discovering the details of the ancient world. Students focused on the ancient historical period between 60 000 BCE and 650 BCE. The in-depth studies included units on The Ancient Past where students investigated the Narrabeen Man, Ancient Rome and Ancient China. Each unit focused on developing students' understanding of each ancient civilization and developing inquiry skills such as questioning, researching, analysing and applying.

Yr 9 Maths with Mrs Laffey
Linear Algebra! The joy of my life! Alas it is not so for everyone, so to help win the students over we have a guest coming in to tell us about how he has used this basic maths concept in his life, particularly as a storm chaser over in America. There are so many uses for this mathematical concept, you would use it all the time without realising. Trying to figure out how many apples you can buy for $10? How much is one can of coke if the carton is $25? What time will we arrive in Isa if we leave at 3pm and don’t get stuck behind a truck? These are all linear relationships. See what linear relationships you and your children can discover this week!

AFL Program

Over the next six (6) weeks, AFL will be coming in for a Half Day program with our school, working in conjunction with the State School.

This will see the Game Development Officer (GDO) for AFL coming in on Wednesday afternoons and doing three (3) one-hour sessions with classes.

These classes will work with the AFL GDO for two Wednesdays, before another three groups at school start their two week rotation.

This week, years 3, 4, 5 are beginning their first week of their two-week rotation with the AFL GDO.

If it is not your child's PE lesson day, please ensure that they are in Sports Uniform for this.

Mr Scott Murray
Sports & Extra Curricular Coordinator 

Library & Book Week

Greetings from the Library!

Yes, it is that time again… Book Week.

Book Week is a celebration by the Australian Children’s Book Council of Australia.  It celebrates Books and Australian authors and illustrators for a week.  

Book week goes from August 20-26 and the theme this year is Dreaming with Eyes open. 

This gives us a wide scope of characters we can use to dress up as.  I know that some of you parents and carers stress about the dress up bit. Honestly just ask your child as they have lots of ideas and love to have input into designing what they are wanting to dress up as.  Pinterest is a great source for some very simple ideas. 

We will have our dress up parade on Thursday the 25th August at 8:30 am in the Mary McKillop Shed, following the Learning Breakfast. All are welcome to our breakfast at 7.45am. 

We will be doing some activities prior to Book week in the library. 

I have sent a lot of our culled books and second copies of books to Townsville for the Hospital Second-hand Book Fair which is held in September. If you are travelling to Townsville before September and you have excess books at home, they would be only too pleased to receive them.  I would be happy to put you on the contact for the Fair. 

I know it is hard to remember library books, but it is very important that the children bring their books back regularly as other children may what to borrow the book your child has.  

Library is either Wednesday or Thursday.  

Thank you for your co-operation. Happy Reading

Chris Chaplain
Teacher/Librarian.

Walk on Country

Learning Breakfast & Book Week Parade

Indigenous Education Advisory Meeting

Raising Resilient Children - Free Parenting Seminar

Student Wellbeing

We all know that diet and nutrition is vital to your child’s development and growth, but are you aware of the effects it has on your child’s brain development and how it can impact their academic achievement?

In this era of convenience, it is easy to reach for pre-packaged and processed foods to cope with busy schedules. However, these foods are usually packed full of sugar and salt which can have adverse health effects. Making a habit of reading food labels can help reduce the risks. It can also help to stabilise your child’s energy, improve their mood, maintain a healthy weight and improve their general wellbeing.

In this edition of SchoolTV, parents will discover practical advice for teaching your kids about the benefits of incorporating a healthy diet and good nutrition.

Here is the link to the Diet & Nutrition edition of SchoolTV

https://sjctsv.catholic.schooltv.me/newsletter/diet-nutrition

Spark Club & Chaplaincy Breakfast

Hello Everyone!

I guess to all that read the Newsletter that all our teachers contribute to, to help keep you "in the know" with what is happening within our amazing little big hearted school.

What can I say? The younger grades come to visit Spark Club and we have fun! "Just Dance" and "Go Noodle" are a hit and colouring in. Of course the games for some Yr 2 students too.

Our Chaplaincy Breakfast is always a hit, Tuesday and Thursday from 7.30am we generally have a good bunch of kids coming in hot for whatever is on offer. This though, this circle of friendship, feasting, laughter, banter and jokes. I love this. Even though this mob of kids may not even realise it, they make me happy when I see togetherness. Together with no nonsense and all being one. 

There won't be any Chaplaincy Breakfast on Thursday as I will be away for the day! Make sure you let your kids know!

Have a great day,

Miss Pete McIntyre 

Fete 2022

Save the Date: 26th August 2022

We are so close to the Fete! The countdown is on, next Friday here we come! Thank you to all the generous families that have donated foods to the Wheelbarrow Raffle (tickets available at the Fete). There is still space for your donation if you haven't yet. Such generosity within our St Joseph's community is overwhelmingly wonderful! We thank you all.

Change to COVID-19 Rules

The Queensland Government has announced an update to COVID-19 isolation protocols. The change relates to people who have had COVID-19 and are considered ”cleared cases”.

Previously, cleared cases did not need to isolate or get tested if they re-presented with symptoms in the 12-week period after having contracted COVID-19. In response to updated AHPPC advice that reinfections may occur as early as 28 days after recovery from a previous COVID-19 infection, the Queensland Government has announced that the “cleared case” period will be reduced from 12 weeks to 28 days (4 weeks). 

This means that people who were previously infected with COVID-19 will need to get tested and isolate if they re-present with symptoms or return a positive test from four weeks after their initial infection.

A reminder to families - please do not send your student to school if they have any flu-like symptoms. Unfortunately the high risk of infection prevents us from being able to accommodate unwell students in our sick bay. If your child is meant to be wearing a mask as a previous case or as a Close Contact, we appreciate your support in providing these and ensuring they are worn.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the school’s front office on 4742 1633.

Commonwealth School Data Collection Notice - Census

Good Shepherd Catholic College Musical

Community Notice - Pop Up Shop

Community Notices - Music Lessons

PCYC Holiday Fun

We are so lucky to have these guys coming for the September Holidays! 3 days of fun.

Follow Cloncurry PCYC page for more information and bookings. More info to come.