14 February 2024

FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Welcome to Week 4.

A reminder that this Friday is a PUPIL FREE DAY due to all Catholic Primary Schools and Colleges from the Rockhampton and Capricorn Coast regions coming together for the annual Bishop’s In-service Day.  Due to staff shortages, OSHC will not be operating on this day.

Today the school celebrated Ash Wednesday marking the beginning of the Lenten season.  Lent is a time in which we as Christians recommit to our baptismal call and spend the next forty days turning back to God through prayer, almsgiving to those less fortunate than ourselves and personal fasting in preparation for Easter Sunday.

Tonight, we host our first P&F Meeting for the year.  The meeting will be held 30 minutes later than previously advertised due to the parish celebrating an Ash Wednesday Mass in Our Lady Help of Christians at 5:30pm. All are welcome to attend.

Our School Board Annual General Meeting for the year will be held in Week 5.  The meeting will be held in the library at 5:30pm. This meeting will consist of the election of office bearers for the 2024 year while also reviewing the school’s uniform policy and discussing implementations to the school’s guidelines regarding students’ use of mobile phones and communication devices during school hours.  You may remember that in late November 2023, Education Queensland schools began applying a government led mandate for students to ‘switch off’ mobile phones and ‘put them away for the day.’  Even though this is far more relevant to our colleges, we do have a number of students with devices and need to address guidelines around their use for the safety of the entire community.

After meeting with the school Student Counsellors last week, they have asked if they could facilitate the establishment of a ‘Quiet Space’ in the morning that promotes literacy.  The space is designed to help students who may struggle with the amount of stimulus of a morning during play time and who may benefit from a quieter lead up to the school day.

The Student Counsel prepared the following information that was announced at Monday Morning’s Whole School Assembly:

Before School Quiet Space

We are opening a morning reading session and quiet space. This will be a silent spot for kids to come in before school starts and escape the noise and business of the MPA play space. It will open at 8:15 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings each week. This will be starting on Tuesday of Week 4.

Students and guardians will be allowed to bring their own books to this space if they wish. But there will be books sourced from our school library and these will be changed each week. There will be a student council member in attendance who will be able to read a book to the students if they wish.  Year 6 Student Council Leaders

This weekend we will be holding our first Joey’s Children’s Mass for 2024.  The mass will be followed by a BBQ hosted by the school.  Mass begins at 6:30pm in OLHC Church each Saturday evening.

Don’t Forget …

• First P&F Meeting for 2021, Wed 14^th Feb @ 6:30pm (updated time)
• Ash Wednesday Mass, Wed 14^th Feb @ 5:30pm in OLHC
• Bishop’s In-service Day, Fri 16^th Feb (Pupil Free Day)
• First Children’s Mass for the year, Sat 17^th Feb @ 6:30pm in OLHC
• School Board AGM, Wed 21^st Feb @ 5:30pm
• St Patrick’s Race Day. Saturday 16^th March

Have a great week.

Regards
Bernard Fitzgerald
Principal
St Joseph’s Catholic School, Park Avenue

St Joseph’s 2024 School Improvement Priorities:

• Christian Virtue – Dignity
• Increased Learning Gain & Achievement
• Learning Dispositions

CURRICULUM NEWS

Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum

Each year students in all Catholic schools in the Rockhampton Diocese complete the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum.  At St Joseph’s, this is completed in Term 1 of every year.  Your child will learn how to keep themselves safe and will undertake lessons around the three messages of ‘recognise, react and report’.  Please let me know if you’d like more information about this program. 

Later this year, in June, we have organised for Bruce and Denise Morcombe to visit St Joseph’s to speak to the students regarding child safety.  We look forward to this visit. More information about this will come out closer to the date.

Learning Dispositions

Each year, our students work on developing skills related to our school learning dispositions of Resilience, Persistence, Creativity, Independence, and Collaboration. You will also see these Learning Dispositions appear on our student report cards. So, what do they mean and look like in practice?  Over the next several weeks, I will break these down to help develop a shared understanding across all of our Joey’s community.

At St Joseph’s:

Persistence is the capacity to continue on a course of action in spite of difficulties. 

In Prep I am displaying persistence when I:

• Have a go
• Keep trying even if it’s hard or boring
• Finish my work

In Year One I am displaying persistence when I:

• Stay calm and focused when learning gets tough
• Know it’s okay to be ‘in the learning pit’
• Am determined to meet my learning goals

In Year Two I am displaying persistence when I:

• Don’t give up on difficult tasks
• Try my best
• Keep trying even if something is difficult or boring

In Year Three I am displaying persistence when I:

• Develop a selection of strategies and use them to problem solve
• Don’t give up when things are difficult or boring
• Try, try and try again

In Year Four I am displaying persistence when I:

• Develop a bank of strategies and use them when I’m in the learning pit
• Keep going until the task is completed
• Try, try and try again

In Year Five and Six I am displaying persistence when I:

• Try hard 
• Don’t give up
• Make an additional effort when work is frustrating, difficult or boring
• Complete tasks instead of allowing myself to be distracted

Regards
Deanne Senini
Assistant Principal Curriculum

RELIGIOUS MATTERS

6^th Sunday Ordinary Time
Jesus heals a leper.
Mark 1:40-45

Living the Gospel – Who is your leper?

There is a story of Francis of Assisi in which he encountered a horribly disfigured leper. Initially, Francis was repulsed by the man but remembered that this man too was a child of God and made in the image and likeness of God. Overcoming his fears, Francis ran forward and embraced the man. Rather than seeing the disease, Francis saw the person. We can ask the question, Who is your leper? Who is the person in your life that you need to embrace rather than reject? Who would benefit from you viewing them with different eyes? Soft eyes! Eyes of compassion!

@Liturgy Help – Greg Sunter

CHILDREN’S MASS THIS SATURDAY

Please join us for our first Children’s Mass at Our Lady Help of Christians this weekend.  A Google form has been sent out via our Audiri app as well as a note on Monday.  Please return these by Thursday to allow for preparation of the children.

LENT

Lent is a 40 day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday. It's a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord's Resurrection at Easter.  At St Joseph’s we will begin our Lenten season with an Ash Wednesday Prayer in the MPA at 8:35am.  All community members are welcome to join us for this special celebration.

PROJECT COMPASSION

The Season of Lent begins Ash Wednesday, and it will be the launch of our Project Compassion fundraising at St Joseph’s.

Project Compassion 2024 reminds us that the good that we do today will extend and impact the lives of generations to come.  Together, we can help vulnerable communities face their challenges today and build a better tomorrow for all future generations.

You can donate through Project Compassion donation boxes sent home today or those in each classroom, and other places around school.

Liturgical Celebrations Coming Up

*SJPA – St Joseph’s Park Avenue
*OLHC – Our Lady Help of Christians church (next to St Joseph’s, Park Avenue)
*HF – Holy Family Parish Centre (next to Anthony’s School)
*STM – St Mary’s Church (next to St Mary’s School)
*MPA – Multipurpose Area (Basketball court)

PARISH NEWSLETTER

Elizabeth Carter
Assistant Principal Religious Education

CLASSROOM NEWS

Greetings from Prep

The students have had a wonderful time settling into new routines and demonstrating independence in their new classroom.  They have engaged in scripture from the Bible on the birth of Jesus and are learning about his family and his life.  In English we have started daily workshops learning letters and their sounds, writing our name, painting and participating in reading with teachers.  In Maths they are working to achieve their goals of identifying numbers to 10, including by quantity and in isolation through play and hands-on learning in many ways.  Here you can see they have been counting objects in the playground and recording the numeral.

Students are also working on developing new friendships and learning each other's names.  Four special classmates' names that have not been hard to remember are Wombat, Possum, Cuddles and Snowball. 

The guinea pigs have officially moved into their bigger enclosure and are settling in beautifully with the youngest students of the school.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Congratulations to the following students who will celebrate their birthday this week.  They are: Lilly O (Yr 4), Creed B (Yr 2), Memphis B (Yr 3), Clayton V (Prep), Archer H (Prep), Spencer O (Prep), Ella P (Yr 3), Raven MW (Yr 4) and Noah W (Yr 4).

Have a great day.

DRAKES SUPA IGA

Drakes Fundraiser for St. Joseph's Cathedral

I thank you for your support of this project which has raised over $40,000, of which the school community has played an important role.  Please continue to support the Cathedral by shopping at DRAKES using your key tag and receiving the benefits.

If you have not been part of this fundraiser you are invited to get a key tag from your local School or Church and shop at your local Drakes, one cent in every dollar you spend will go to the Cathedral.  No Fuss, only benefits.

Hoping to see you at Drakes 
Stay Safe

Shirley Hopkins,
Co-ordinator, Drakes Fundraiser for St Joseph's Cathedral