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Dear parents and carers,
Last Friday morning many people enjoyed the Father’s Day Breakfast. Thank you to the P & F for organising this event. We trust that everyone enjoyed father’s day with their families.
REC/Priests/Principal last Friday both Mrs King and I met with other Religious Education Coordinators and principals from across the Archdiocese to review 2019 and begin the planning processes for 2020. It was excellent to work with colleagues to see and hear how various programs are implemented at different schools across the Archdiocese.
Maths – Mrs Heath is attending a maths day today in Young. This is another opportunity for us to share with our neighbouring schools about how our maths classes are working during 2019.
This week has seen us working more so on class based activities.
K/1 cooked up a storm and shared the results with us all – the zucchini slice was delicious.
2/3/4 have been writing alternative blurbs for their favourite stories – it seems that there a raft of books that we should all consider reading!
5/6 have continued looking at production as they work towards their forth-coming excursion.
This week we have also spoken about choosing not to be the person who teases or “stirs the pot” in order to cause hurt to someone else for fun. It can be tempting to do this; however, a better way to connect might be to invite the person having a difficult time to join your game, seeing this person in another light often creates new friendships.
We have also been hosting staff from CE who have been working with us across a variety of activities relating to the nationally consistent collection of data.
We have continued watching our ovals’ transformation this week. The new turf is coming along well. We are still in a waiting phase as the turf establishes itself. We are very much looking forward to being able to use this renovated play space before the end of term.
Changes to routine - Thank you to those families who are keeping us informed when children are absent from school, or there are changes to the regular routine.
Please be aware you should be using the Skoolbag option or providing us with a note, so that our record keeping is accurate.
Good Luck – to our public speaking team – Emma, Genevieve and Hamish. The Western Region public speaking competition will take place at Sacred Heart School in Cootamundra on Monday.
Sincerely,
Enrolments for 2020 – if you have a child beginning school in 2020, please take the time to collect an enrolment form, complete, and return to school. Completing this process early will help us with planning for 2020 and mean that there is one less job for you to worry about as the busy end of year period comes about.
Please be aware that we have a number of bugs around at present. Given that life is busy both at school and at home, we would like to thank those families who are mindful of people becoming run down during very busy times and taking action as needed.
Thank you, also to those families who are monitoring to ensure that illness is real as opposed to “maths is a bit hard… and I don’t feel like it today
Please join us each Wednesday this term for a mass or prayer celebration. Next week, the Year K/1 students will be preparing and presenting the readings and prayers.
Here are some more special prayers written by students from our school for last week’s whole school prayer celebration.
Dear God,
Thank you God for our pets. Amen
Ethan Browne
Dear God,
Thanks for making Alexander better. Amen
Charlie Knight
Dear God,
I hope that the bushfires don’t hurt anyone. Amen
Georgia Conron
Dear God,
We pray for all the children in the world who aren’t as lucky as us. We pray that they have the opportunity to go to school and go on amazing holidays. God, please give these children hope.
Amen Charlie Best
Dear Jesus,
Help everyone in poor countries to get food soon. Help us to understand that we are much more fortunate than others. Help us to make a donation to help them.
Amen Alyssa Heathcote
Many Blessings
The K/1 students have been learning some of the ‘trickier’ sounds for reading and writing. This includes ‘magic e’ words and words with vowel digraphs such as the ‘ay’ in words such as play and today. They have also been learning how to punctuate sentences correctly. They are now able to write simple dictated sentences using capital letters, finger spaces between words and full stops.
In Physical Education, Shanika has had all of the students involved in Rugby League skills and activities. The K/1 students are building their skills in passing, catching and running with the ball. They have also been learning to problem solve and help one another when activities are challenging.
K/1 Music
K/1 have been working hard in music this term. We have learned about the rhythms of ta and ti-ti and the solfa notes of so, me and la. Keeping a steady beat is important as we sing along to songs and learn how to notate these. We have performed rhythms with un-tuned percussion instruments and composed and played simple tunes on the metallophones. Occasionally we explore movement to some famous compositions including the Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint Saëns.
K/1 PD/H/PE
In PD/H/PE lessons, we have been learning about keeping ourselves safe. This includes the importance of trust and having special people in our lives that we can trust. We looked at how our bodies give us warning signs when we are in unsafe situations and how we can listen to those warning signs. We performed some role-playing of situations where a stranger might approach us and what we should say and do. Coming up in the second half of the term, we will be looking at how we can be safe near the road, in vehicles and when using our bikes.
K/1 Geography
In Geography K/1 have been learning all about the features of places in our lives. We learned about natural and built features of environments and how we can look after some of the environments that we use such as the local park. We have learned a little bit about some different environments like the ocean, mountains, grasslands and cities and will continue to develop this knowledge throughout the rest of the term.
2/3/4 Geography
The beginning of the term saw us learning about the basics of mapping. We looked at the features of a good map, how to read and use grid references and even learned a little bit about longitude and latitude. After an energetic lesson where we competed to be the first 4 teams to locate and write down the continents and oceans of the world, we now turn our attention to learning about some other countries. We will be investigating how those countries compare with Australia, particularly the Grenfell region. Our investigation will have us look at weather patterns, the natural and built features of places and what people are doing around the globe to care for the environment.
5/6 Dance
There is a bit of secrecy around what the 5/6 class have been doing in dance. I can’t give too much away except to say that we are working on a project that will be revealed at the end of the term. It involves exploring different movements, teamwork, and using the elements of dance (such as contrast, relationship, space and time) to compose, rehearse and then finally perform something special. I’ve got this feeling inside my soul that the end product will be something spectacular.
Ellery Johnson
My name is Ellery Johnson. I graduated from St. Joseph’s Primary School in 2005.
I was consistently involved in almost all sporting activities St. Joseph’s had on offer, from lunchtime cricket to swimming or athletics carnivals, cross-country running, inter school touch football or soccer competitions. I was also engaged in extracurricular activities, learning piano, participating in public speaking competitions, as well as being encouraged to engage with the local community at festivals, shows and other community events.
I was always a science fan at school. For me it was really about learning how to recognise and solve different kinds of problems.
My favourite memories of St. Joseph’s Primary School involve tearing around the playgrounds at recess and lunch playing soccer or cricket.
Currently, I am in the last year of my PhD at the University of Technology, Sydney. I am an aquatic ecologist, which is pretty much the same as a marine biologist but for rivers. I look at the environmental and human influences on estuarine health and how to repair ecosystems and animal populations. How I got here? I really just followed what I liked doing. Science, and going outside.
My career highlights include working in Cambodia, Canada and the USA and receiving a scholarship to continue my work.
My tips for current students are to work hard at what you like doing, have a go at the stuff you do not. You might find it is not that bad.
Kindergarten and year 1 students are investigating 2 dimensional shapes. Firstly, we discovered two types of lines we see in shapes, horizontal and vertical. Then students had to cut out a variety of 2 d shapes and sort them into different categories. Students discussed how we could sort the shapes and after some consideration, we decided to sort them into haw many sides each shape had.
Next, we sorted them into regular and irregular shapes.
Year 2/3/4 students were challenged by using a protractor to measure angles. It is amazing how younger students rise to the challenge of using this very tricky measuring tool. Well done year 2 students.
Year 5/6 students investigated transformations, rotations, reflections and translations. Students were challenged to use visualisation to imagine the transformation of each shape and draw how it would look.
