Dear Parents and Carers,

We are now coming to the end of the third week of term, and everyone has been very busy working on a range of different activities.

The Swim Safe program has seen us swimming each afternoon – we’ve had warm days, dust storms and cool winds – so it has been a week of interesting days.

Congratulations to everyone who had a role in our opening Mass yesterday, you did a terrific job!  Thank you to Mrs King for organising and coordinating the Mass and welcoming ceremonies.

Congratulations to all students who were presented with their captain’s and SRC badges.  We look forward to seeing you lead our school through this year.

Swimming Carnival - Thank you in to everyone who volunteered their time to ensure the smooth running of the events at last Thursday’s swimming carnival – your support and assistance is appreciated.

Good luck to those who are representing us at the Western Region swimming carnival tomorrow in Tumut.

The children are reminded that they wear blue school socks with their sports uniform.

Cricket and Swim Safe - Next week will continue to be busy sporting wise. 

On Wednesday our sporting schools cricket program begins with Matthew Tabbernor from Cricket NSW.

On Thursday we have our catch up day for Swim Safe.

As such, the children should wear their sports uniform on Wednesday 20/02 and Thursday 21/02.

School fees – the school fees for Term 1 were sent home via email/paper form on Tuesday.  If you have any questions or queries, please make contact with Mrs Baker or myself.

School sore/Impetigo – please be aware that there I have been advised that there have been a number of cases of school sores in recent days.  Please take action as required.

School counsellor – our school counsellor made her first visit for 2019 earlier this week.  Each year, the counselling service requires for parent referral forms to be updated.  If your child accesses this service, please return an updated form.  A copy of this form is attached.

Parent Information Evening — our Parent information evening is to be held on Thursday February 21. We are looking forward to meeting you and sharing with you, information about your child’s class in 2019. 

Scholastic Book Club – the book club order forms have been distributed.  All purchased now need to be made online using Scholastic’s LOOP ordering system.  Instructions are on the order forms.  If you need assistance setting up an online account, please ask.  Book Club orders need to be completed by Friday February 15 (tomorrow).

Book Fair – this year, our Book Fair will be held in March.  Further information will be coming home once the books arrive.

Calendar – I am aware that the calendar is not always accessible through the Schoolzine App.  We are hoping to have this glitch fixed in the coming days.

We include a calendar in each newsletter, hopefully this will help you to know the dates for the various events that take place during our school year.

Our school calendar can also be found on the school website at:

https://www.stjosephsgrenfell.nsw.edu.au/

Sincerely,   

Therese Clancy.

REC News

Opening Mass for 2019

Wednesday we celebrated our opening mass. We officially welcomed the new Kinders into the St Joseph’s School community by having them place their stars on the school star banner.

We also presented badges to all of the school leaders for 2019. It was wonderful to see so many family members there to support their children and to pin their badges on. The student leaders also made a commitment to their roles by saying the pledge together. It was an uplifting and affirming start to the year.

Each week one of the class groups will be responsible for leading the mass or prayer celebration. Please join us at 10 o’clock on Wednesdays when and if you can. The children always love to have a family member there when possible, especially if they have a special job to perform.

Peace and blessings,

Mrs Leslie King.

NUMERACY

Year 5/6 students are beginning their unit of fractions, decimals and percentages this week. We use the deci pipes as a concrete way of showing the various sizes of decimals. Deci pipes are a 1 metre length of pvc to show 1 or the whole, 10 x 10cm pieces of pvc to show tenths, 10x 1cm pvc to show hundredths and metal washers to represent thousandths. This resources made choosing between two decimals and choosing the smallest or largest. Students then began to learn how to add decimals through an activity called colour in decimals. From this we used a decimat to begin to see how we add decimals.

Year 2/3/4 students have been looking at reading large numbers using the number generator. We also got out the poly plugs and looked at an activity called Uncover Counting. We slowly uncover each row of plugs and discuss how many ways we can record the number shown. For example we can record 12 as 6+6, or 3+3+3+3+.

We also chose our favourite number and showed a variety of ways to represent our number.

Kindergarten and year 1 have settled into the routine of learning all about numbers. They are all displaying enthusiasm especially when we use the poly plugs. Their formation of their numbers is developing well. Counting on the 100 chart is a daily routine, we count forwards and backwards by ones, and forwards by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. Students are also choosing a favourite number and representing it in different ways. For example, draw that many items, dice pattern, tally. 10 frames. Today the year 1 students remembered how to use tally marks to represent their number.