18 October 2017

Newsletter Articles

FROM THE ACTING PRINCIPAL

This week we will be holding our Prep Orientation Day as we welcome a number of new students and families to our Joeys community. It is always wonderful to see new students that are keen to begin their educational journey, but it is also a time to reflect on the many great gifts that we as a community can offer to those seeking our Gospel values. This year we were again in great demand as the educational institution of choice of many families with over 80 applicants for the 52 positions on offer. Unfortunately, that means that due to our size we are unable to accommodate everyone who seeks our values here at St Joseph’s. It is this smaller school, family like community feeling that is one of the key factors in attracting new and existing families to our wonderful school. This year I interviewed a fourth generation student who had a parent, grandparent and a great grandparent attend the school. Both of the parents of this student honestly said that they wanted for their child, what St Joseph’s had given them as an educational institution growing up. This is very humbling to hear as an educator as we can often forget the positive influence we can have on our students collectively as they complete their primary schooling.

We will be hosting our new 2018 Prep students on Thursday with our first group through for Prep Orientation will be 9:00-10:30am and our second group will be 11:00am-12:30pm. To accommodate our new guests our current Prep students will be visiting Year 1 for the day and our current Year 1 students will be joining our Year 5 students for the day.

Last week I apologised for making a mistake with the Emmaus Year 6 Orientation Day. This was in fact an error in a letter sent to me by Emmaus. The Year 6 Orientation Day is in fact Thursday the 16th of November as first printed. All parents of students attending Year 7 at Emmaus in 2018 should have received correspondence from Emmaus regarding the details of the student’s visit and the Parent information evening prior to the date. Please remember that students will need to have private transport to and from Emmaus on this day.

Don’t Forget …

• Prep Orientation Day, Thurs 19th Oct
• TCC Year 6 Orientation Day, Mon 23rd Oct
• Emmaus Year 6 Orientation Day, Thurs 16th Nov (re-amended from last week)

I hope you have a great week.

Regards
Bernard Fitzgerald
St. Joseph’s PA Acting Principal

APRE REFLECTION

On Monday, the staff gathered for a religious education professional development day. The focus of the day was to look at the prayer life of St. Joseph’s Park Avenue and determine how we can lead, model and make prayer more meaningful for the students. Prayer is a sacred time with the creator, so we started the day sharing a prayer service thanking God for creation.

God made our world in ways that are mysterious.
His providence keeps everything in existence
Of all creation, human beings have a special place.
We are called to a special relationship with God.
Do we take our world for granted…
Do we respect it…

RELIGIOUS MATTERS

1M Prayer Assembly

This Friday 20th October, 1M will be leading the prayer assembly in OLHC church at 11:30am. The Year 1 students will be presenting an assembly about forgiveness and friendship through the story of Zacchaeus. Parents, families and friends of the school are all welcome to come along and share this prayer celebration.

Children’s Mass

Bandana Day

National Bandanna Day is CanTeen’s largest fundraiser and aims to raise $1.3 million this year to support young people living with cancer. Every year, another 23,000 young people (63 a day) have to deal with the challenge of cancer. And we get it. Just when life should be full of possibilities, cancer crashes into a young person’s world and shatters everything. CanTeen is the game changer.

Bandanas will be available for sale next week before and after school. Next Friday we will celebrate Bandana Day as our way of supporting Can Teen.

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

Friday Sport 20/10/2017

Basketball

Game 1 12:30pm
Fireballers v Pink Warriors

Game 2 2:00pm
Sabertooth Tigers v Mavericks

All basketball games are played at school

Softball

Games are played at 12:30

Softball draw unavailable at time of print

All softball games are played at Kele Park

T20

All games start at 12:30

St Joseph’s PA 1 v Frenchville 1
St Joseph’s PA 2 v Lakes Creek 2
St Joseph’s PA 3 v Lakes Creek 1
St Joseph’s PA 4 v St Joseph’s PA 5

All T20 games are played at McLeod Park

Bernadette Brennan
Acting APRE

CURRICULUM NEWS

DAY FOR DANIEL

Once again this year we will be inviting students to participate in the annual ‘Day for Daniel’. ‘Day for Daniel’ is a National Day of Action to raise awareness about child safety and protection. Parents, carers and guardians are asked to start a conversation about personal safety in the real world and in an online environment.

Students are asked to wear a red shirt to school on Friday, 27th October with their normal sports uniform shorts. Students are also asked to bring a gold coin donation. This money goes towards educating children about safety and supporting young victims of crime. Those senior students travelling for sport are asked to bring their normal sports shirt to change in to.

Teachers will be talking to the students and completing activities as a way of remembering how to stay safe. Please reinforce the important messages of Recognise, React, Report with your children.

What does RECOGNISE, REACT and REPORT mean?

• RECOGNISE encourages students to be aware of their surroundings and to recognise body clues in situations where they don’t feel safe.
• REACT helps students to consider choices that may keep them safe or help make them safe again as quickly as possible.
• REPORT encourages students to report unsafe incidents to an adult.

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 comprehension.

Strategy – Use Main Idea and Supporting Details to Determine Importance

Readers understand the most important idea about what is being read. This idea is often stated in a sentence in the passage, whereas other sentences comprise pieces of information that tell more about the most important idea. Identifying and understanding main ideas along with determining importance are prerequisite skills to summarising text. Readers summarise the most important aspects of the text by determining the details that are significant and discard those that are not while stating the main idea in their own words, thus improving comprehension and understanding what is read.

Spelling:

Activity: Upper and Lower Case

Write your spelling words two times each. The first time write them in uppercase letters and the second time write them in lowercase letters.

Regards,
Deanne Senini
Assistant Principal Curriculum

CLASSROOM NEWS

Year 1 M Adventures

Week 3 and we’ve already had a couple of swimming lessons which is an adventure in itself. This term it’s all about getting ready for the independence expected of Yr 2’s. We are learning how to put together a wonderful sizzling start to our stories, what it means to belong to something as a prelude to what belonging to the Church means and heaps of adding and subtracting.

We are putting into action some amazing good choices just like Jesus wants us to. Our Prayer Assembly this Friday reminds us that Jesus asks us to be forgiving through our words and actions. Please join us as we have been working hard to learn our different parts.

We have a busy next few weeks ahead of us. In health the children have been looking at what keeps us healthy so if they tell you they need lots of sleep, good food and lots of water, that’s great. We will soon be learning our Presentation Night song, learning what happens in the Christmas Story and learning to ‘wait’ through our Advent learning.

We are all looking forward to exciting times ahead!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Congratulations to the following students who will celebrate their birthday this week. They are: Miranda Brunton (4W), Isabelle Fuary (3T), Ethan Roati (PW), Tyler Senini (6F), Ethan Cark (3T), Kiasharn Henaway (3A), Nicholas Murphy (5T), & Harrison Styles (PM)

Have a great day.

FINANCE NEWS

Fee Accounts for Term 4 were emailed and posted out on Monday 9th October.

*** Please Note: Term 4 Fees are due on Tuesday 24h October.***

NOTE: When your Concession Card expires, please present your new card to Megan otherwise Concession’s cannot be applied.

If you have not received your Fee Statement, please contact Megan for a copy.

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

If you have an outstanding amount and are unable to make any payment, can you please make immediate contact with Bernard or Megan to advise your current situation?

2018 SCHOOL FETE

2018 ‘Festival of Colour’ School Fete

Stall holders and sponsors

The ‘Festival of Colour’ School Fete for 2018 is fast approaching. We are now looking for any businesses, individuals or groups that are interested in purchasing a 3X3 undercover, unpowered site for only $25! The fete is on Sunday 29th April 2018 between 2-6pm. Please contact the school or email sjpafete@gmail.com for further enquires or bookings.

Poster competition

We are running a competition for the students to create the poster that will be used to advertise the fete. All details of what needs to go in the poster has been sent home in a note. These are due back to be judged by Friday 10th November. Your child will be in the running to win a rides wristband so encourage them to give it a go!

Thanks Kate Nembach
P & F Fete Committee President

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.

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