6 September 2017

Newsletter Articles

FROM THE ACTING PRINCIPAL

Well done to our librarian assistant Mrs. Michelle Roberts who hosted a very colourful and successful Book Fair last week. This was Michelle’s first ever Book Fair and I am sure you will all agree that she did a fantastic job. The organization of an event such as this requires much work behind the scenes as well as a great time commitment both before and after school in order for our community to attend. The event was a raging success not only in the fact that it has resulted in over 170 new books for our students to enjoy in the library, but also in the fact that it has generated a great enthusiasm within our students towards the written word. I always tell students that I love television and movies, but you can never really replace the imagination needed, the education gained and the emotional journey that a good book can take you on. Thank-you for all your hard work Mrs. Roberts.

This Thursday night our Year 6 students and teachers will be running a school disco to fund raise for camp. The theme for this disco will be ‘Movie Characters’ so please get your thinking caps on come and support our Year 6 students and have some fun whilst doing so. With that in mind, due to previous ongoing construction and the school’s physical limitations, our last disco was held in Term 3 2015, over 2 years ago. This means both the Student Leaders and myself are working hard to remember a workable disco timetable in order to fit in games, pizza and activities for both the upper and lower school students.

There will be prizes for the best dressed within each of the year levels, however I have spoken with all of the students at Monday’s Assembly and have requested that we do not have costumes that involve any type of weaponry such as guns, swords or knives. This decision is made as both a safety issue and on principal as a Catholic school. I am sure you would all agree that in the current world climate, schools and these items should not be associated with each other. On a more positive note, I cannot wait to see the creative costumes our families come up with.

Throughout the week our P&F Community Spirit Trophy finally arrived at school and it was with much pleasure that I was able to present Jenny Puckering with this well-deserved award. Jenny is a Grandmother at school who puts in a tremendous amount of time volunteering in the tuck shop, library and in classrooms. This award is an opportunity to say thank-you to the people like Jenny who are able to come and help the students of our school. I thank everyone who ‘chips in’ and helps at school in any way. Your generosity, just like Jenny’s, is a major contributor to our school being as great as it is today and ensures that it will be even greater in the future.

Don’t Forget …

Have a great week.

Regards

Bernard Fitzgerald
St. Joseph’s PA Acting Principal

After School Care Program.

Our St Joseph’s Outside of School Hours Care runs from Monday-Friday 3-6pm. To seek further information, please contact the OSHC Coordinator from 2-6pm weekdays on 0408 703 482 or via email at sjpa_oshc@rok.catholic.edu.au

Our OSHC will also run Vacation Care for the upcoming holidays which will be available Monday-Friday 18-29 September 7.30am-6pm. Bookings welcome from children attending all schools.

For further information, please contact Chelsea Holden on 0408 703 482.

Bernard Fitzgerald
St. Joseph’s PA Acting Principal

APRE REFLECTION

This week is Queensland Child Protection Week. With this in mind I found the following prayer. Our priority is the safety and wellbeing of the children in our care. To guide us in our actions we pray to the Lord:

Mrs. Bernadette Brennan
Acting APRE

RELIGIOUS MATTERS

3T Prayer Assembly

This Friday 8th September, 3T will be leading the prayer assembly in OLHC church at 11:30am. The Year 3 students will be presenting an assembly about the birth of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Parents, families and friends of the school are all welcome to come along and share this prayer celebration.

Children’s Mass with visiting NET team

This Saturday, at 6:pm we are celebrating an extra Children’s Mass for the term. OLHC is lucky to be hosting the visiting NET team who will prepare and perform the music. They will also be acting out the Gospel and joining the students after mass for the cuppa. This is a great opportunity for us all to join in and celebrate the Eucharist with these visitors to parish.

To raise funds for the collecting and shipping of the Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes we will be having a Free Dress Day on the last day of term. Children are asked to make a donation of a gold coin towards this program. Each box we pack needs ten dollars to cover its journey to the child in need. If you wish to donate more money this can be done through classroom teachers or the office. Together, Joeys can “be the someone to some in need.”

Operation Christmas child is a giving program designed to reach children in poverty around the world. Each class in our school will be given two shoeboxes to fill (one boy & one girl) with something from each of the following six categories:

• something to wear
• something to play with
• something for school
• something to love
• something special
• something for personal hygiene

For the rest of this term we are going to make a greater effort to ‘prefer to help the poor’ and reach more people in remote regions of the world through Operation Christmas Child.

Andrew Chinn Concert

Next Thursday 14th September, Australian religious songwriter and singer, Andrew Chinn, will be visiting our school to share his songs with our children. Andrew’s songs, such as “These Hands”, “Rainbow” and “An African Blessing” are used in classrooms and liturgies around Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada. Parents/parishioners are warmly invited to be a part of the celebration of faith and fun. There is no charge for adults. The concert will take place in the multi-purpose area, at 1:35pm. We look forward to seeing you there.

No Prayer Assembly Week 10

Peer Support

In this week’s Peer Support session the children will be exploring how to join groups and how to accept others into their friendship groups. The activities will give the children a chance to practice these skills, as well as a chance to say no in a respectful way, cope with being told no and inviting others to join them.

Encourage your child to discuss with you the importance of saying no to people in a respectful way so they don’t lose friends. Also discuss with your child various options they have at school if they should find themselves without anyone to play with during break time.

Bernadette Brennan
Acting APRE

Mass times

Weekday

Tuesday 9.00am Holy Family
Wednesday 12.00 Noon St Mary’s
Thursday 8.00am Emmaus College (Yaamba Rd)
Friday 9.00am Our Lady Help of Christians

Weekend

Saturday – Vigil
6.00pm Holy Family
6.00pm Our Lady Help of Christians
Sunday
7.00am St Mary’s
9.00am Holy Family

Bernadette Brennan
Acting APRE

SPORTING MATTERS

Swimming Term 4

The major PE focus for Term 4 will be our swimming program. Swimming will commence in week 2 and continue each week until week 6. The swimming program then culminates with our annual carnival in week 7 on the 15th November starting at 5:30pm. More details will come home week 1 next term.

Catholic Schools Touch Football Challenge

Next Wednesday we are participating in the annual Catholic Schools Touch Football Challenge to compete for the Tony Novak Memorial Shield. The competition is held at the Rockhampton Touch Fields commencing at 9:00am.

T20 Blast School Cup

Also next Wednesday, we are taking a team to compete in the T20 Blast School Cup. The T20 Blast is run by Cricket Australia and is part in their MILO in2 Cricket Skills Program. This competition is held at Kalka Shades Cricket Grounds from 11:00am to 3:00pm.

Bernadette Brennan
Acting APRE

CURRICULUM NEWS

Woolworth’s Earn and Learn

Once again St Joseph’s has registered to be part of the Woolworth’s Earn and Learn program. Through this program we will be able to get new educational resources for our school.

From Wednesday 26th July to Tuesday 19th September we are collecting Woolworths Earn & Learn Stickers. You will get one Woolworths Earn & Learn Sticker for every $10 spent (excluding liquor, tobacco and gift cards). Place the Woolworths Earn & Learn Sticker onto a Woolworths Earn & Learn Sticker Sheet and when it’s complete, the Sticker Sheet can be dropped into the Collection Box here at the school office.

At the end of the promotion we’ll be able to get some great new equipment. The range is extensive and offers lots of items ideal for our students – including resources for Maths, English, Science and some fantastic fun supplies for Arts & Craft, Sport and for our library. Last year through this program we purchased a variety of maths equipment including a teaching clock for every classroom, some stopwatches and sporting equipment.

You can get a sticker card from any Woolworths Supermarket and we will keep spare ones here in the office if you need an extra one, or they can be downloaded – just go to the link below. Please make sure you completely fill the sheet before you return it to school as partly filled sheets are not counted.

LITERACY CORNER

Reading:

Learning to read involves children learning skills in comprehension, fluency, accuracy and expanding on their known vocabulary. This week’s skill comes under the heading of accuracy.

Strategy – Skip the Word, Then Come Back

When students come to words they don’t know they can skip over the word until they come to the end of the sentence or passage. Then readers back up and read the sentence again, using the first letter or letters of the skipped word and their context clues to decode the unknown word.

Spelling:

Activity: Words without vowels

Write your spelling words in a list but replace all the vowels with a line. Then go back to the beginning of your list and see if you can fill in the correct missing vowels.

Regards,

Deanne Senini
Assistant Principal Curriculum

CLASSROOM NEWS

YR 1M

What an incredible term we’ve had….

Lots of learning about sound and light in Science. We got to play with lots of different instruments so we can hear the different pitches. This week we get to make our own instruments from materials around the classroom and home.

We can’t wait for that to happen.

We also enjoyed Under 8’s day in week 5. So many wonderful activities to do it was hard to choose what was best. Here are a few of our favourites:

Trinity: I loved face painting.
Kaidyn: My favourite thing was seeing the ambulance.
Lani: My favourite was the sausage sizzle.
Harlem: My favourite was the police car.
Emma: My favourite was the marble painting.

Then in week 7 we enjoyed Book Week. Some incredible costumes including Mickey Mouse, Little Mermaid and Smurfette. There were so many to choose from but Ebony as Arial from Little Mermaid took out the award for best Year 1 girls costume. Congratulations Ebony.

Year 1M has managed to squeeze so much learning into our term as well as our extras we will be needing our holidays to relax.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Congratulations to the following students who will celebrate their birthday this week. They are: Tom Compagnoni (PM), Karen Messmer (5C), Cooper Anderson (1M), Hudson Hood (4W), Liahna Cook (3T), Phoenix Thorn (PW) and Max Vickery (6B).

Have a great day.

FINANCE NEWS

TERM 3 FEES Overdue

Fee Accounts for Term 3 were due for payment on Monday 7th August.

If your account remains unpaid, these are now 3 Weeks Overdue.

Your immediate attention to this matter would be appreciated.

If paying by Direct Deposit, please use your Account Number (6-digit number on your Fee Statement) as the reference.

If you are unable to settle your account, your immediate contact with either Bernard or Megan is requested to advise when the account will be settled.

VACATION CARE

Please find attached the Program and Booking Form for Vacation Care these coming Holidays.

If you would like to know more about Vacation Care, please call Chelsea on 0408 703 482.

DISCO

Tomorrow night (Thursday 7th) we will be holding a school disco. It has been a long time since our last so it would be great to see you all there.

Time: 5:30 – 7:30
Entry Fee: $2
Theme: Movie characters
Food: *Pizza will be available for dinner.

Pizza orders need to be in by Wednesday 6 September.

* Drinks and chips will also be available on the night

See you there!!!

INTERSCHOOL GYMKHANA 2017

Please see the attached flyer for all information regarding the up and coming Interschool Gymkhana. If your child/ren ride and would like to compete in this competition (which St Joey’s have won the past six years), please see Kath Howell.

SCHOOL BANKING

If you are wanting to start school banking but are unsure of what to do, pop in to the office and we can help you out.

School banking is done thru the school every Thursday.

LOST PROPERTY

The lost property is starting to mount up. If your child/ren are missing their jumper or school jacket, lunch box, water bottle or hat, this is where it could be.

At the end of the term, all unnamed items will be discarded or donated to the Uniform Shop.

VOLUNTEERS INDUCTION SESSIONS

WPH&S Volunteers Inductions are necessary for the safety of your children. Therefore, we ask that all parents who generously volunteer their time to the school, either in a classroom or in the tuckshop, attend a very brief induction regarding maintaining a safe environment for the children of St. Joseph’s.

These sessions only take about five minutes and are available after assembly on a Monday morning with Deanne Senini, and on Tuesday afternoons from 2:30pm - 3:00pm. Sue Clarke will also be conducting induction sessions in the tuckshop, if you are helping out in there.

Thanks

UNIFORM SHOP

Our uniform shop is run by VOLUNTEERS of the school and is open

Monday morning from 8:15 - 8:45
Tuesday afternoon from 2:45 - 3:15
Friday morning 8:15 – 8:45

Please feel free to drop any uniforms you no longer need so they can put out to sell. Proceeds can go back to you or you can donate it back to the P & F.

The Uniform Shop has quite a lot of good second hand uniforms. Please feel free to pop in (at the opening times above), and have a look.

There are second had Emmaus uniforms also.

FRIDAY PIZZA

Meatlovers and Hawaiian Pizza are available every Friday for $1.50/slice. Please have your order in a Brown Paper Bag with your name, class and order on it, with the money in side.

Please use a brown paper bag with child’s name and class written on the front.

TUCKSHOP IS UNAVAILABLE ON FRIDAYS

DRAKES SUPA IGA

Simply scan your Drakes Supa IGA key tag and the checkout with your groceries, and automatically 1 cent of every dollar you spend goes to the Cathedral Conservation Fund.

Key tags are available from the office; local church or Drakes stores. Put it on your car keys so you remember to use it.

Key tags can be used at any Drakes Supa IGA supermarket in Queensland. Currently in our Diocese Drakes stores are located at

• Glenmore (North Rockhampton)
• Emu Park

TENNIS

Beak’s Tennis Holiday Programs and Term 4 coaching spaces available, call 0419 026 963 or message us on Facebook for more information