ABOUT - Term 2 Week 9 - 27 June 2024

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

In the ashes new seeds are sown.
From the ashes new life will grow.
Leave the past in ashes, start a fresh new life right here today.

NAIDOC WEEK ACTIVITIES

"Keep the Fire Burning!  Blak, Loud & Proud"

NAIDOC Week will be celebrated next week at St Joey’s. The theme for 2024 is ‘Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud & Proud’.  On Monday, 1 July at 9:00 a.m. we will have a flag raising ceremony and share a special NAIDOC cake. On Tuesday, 2 July at 9:00 am, a NAIDOC Mass will be celebrated and from 12:00 noon class groups will participate in Aboriginal art activities.  We thank our Aboriginal Education Officer, Miss Tahlah Thompson for all her hard work in organising all these activities to celebrate NAIDOC Week.

These National NAIDOC Week Activities are funded by the National Indigenous Australians Agency and CEDB.

CHRISTMAS ART WORKSHOP

Each year our Year 6 students participate in the Diocesan Christmas Story Art Competition.  Students create artworks and written reflections on Advent and the meaning of Christmas from their studies in Religion. Mr Glenn Corben from Catholic Education Diocese of Bathurst visited our Year 6 class yesterday and conducted an art workshop with the students in preparation for this year’s Christmas Art Competition.  During the workshop, Mr Corben assisted the students with their techniques, abilities and designs.  

SOCCER GALA DAY & LUNCH ORDERS

St Laurence’s Dubbo is hosting a Soccer Gala Day next term on Friday, 9 August at Lady Cutler Ovals, Bligh Street, Dubbo.  Permission notes were sent home last week with children who would like to participate in the gala day and were due back at school last Friday.  If your child would like to participate in this gala day and order lunch, please ensure the tear-off slip is completed and returned to school, with the money, by tomorrow, Friday, 28 June as we need to inform St Laurence’s of the number of lunch orders we require.

YEAR 4 HUT DAY

Everyone is starting to get excited about the Year 4 Early Settlers Hut Day to be held next Thursday, 4 July, with morning tea at 11:00 a.m. followed by the presentation of huts at 11:20 a.m.  Everyone is welcome to attend.  Please bring a plate to share for morning tea.

WELCOME BACK TAYLOR

We welcomed ex-student, Taylor Hayes, back to Joey's on Monday as she completes a week's work experience.  We hope Taylor has enjoyed her time back at St Joseph's.  Once A Joey Always A Joey!

P&F PICTURE PLATE FUNDRAISER

On Tuesday, notes were sent home with each family with regards to a Picture Plate Fundraiser, initiated by our P&F Association.  If you would like your child to create a picture plate, please complete the tear-off slip at the bottom of the note and return it to school by next Wednesday, 3 July.  Please ensure you indicate at the bottom of the note whether your child will be completing their design at home or in the library next term.

If you have indicated that you would like your child to complete their design at home, we suggest dropping into the school office to collect a template, to avoid any marks or creases showing on the final design.

SEMESTER 1 REPORTS

All Semester One School Reports will be published on Compass tomorrow, Friday, 28 June.  A hard copy of the report will NOT be sent home.  If you have any problems accessing your child's report on Compass, please let us know.

PARENT/TEACHER INTERVIEWS

Parent/Teacher Interviews will be held next Monday, 1 July, Tuesday, 2 July and Wednesday, 3 July.  Interviews will be held from 3:30 to 6:00 p.m. and are set at 15-minute intervals.  Interviews need to be booked through the Compass Parent Portal.  Please view the below instruction sheet on how to access and book your interviews.  If anyone has any difficulty, please contact the office.  All staff members are looking forward to meeting parents and discussing your child's progress.

Please note that Year 6 parents will need to select either Mrs Schier or Mrs Barry, depending on who is their child's main teacher.

ATTENDANCE SMS

Starting in Term 3, Catholic Education Diocese of Bathurst will be implementing an automated system to notify you via SMS if your child has an unaccounted absence.  Please view the below flyer for further information.

POSITION VACANT: ASSISTED TRAVEL SUPPORT OFFICER

The Department of Education currently has a position to fill to assist with the transport of a student with additional needs to travel safely to and from school.  This position is for three days a week.

The Assisted School Travel Program (ASTP) plays a significant role in meeting the needs of eligible students with disability by providing free specialised transport to and from school where parents and carers are unable to provide or arrange transport for the student either fully or in part.

Benefits & Perks:

• Work reduced hours, twice a day and time to pursue other interests in your free time
• ‘Feel-good’ work opportunity while giving back to your local community
• Providing support to the disability community and their families
• Only work school terms and enjoy school holidays

As an ATSO you will:

• Play a significant role in meeting the needs of eligible students with disability by ensuring they get to school safely and ready to engage in learning
• Work with the school, parents, contractors and drivers to provide a high level of supervision
• Be provided training in Child Protection, Code of Conduct, Anaphylaxis, emergency care and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
• Be provided with individual training on the specific travel support needs of students on transport.

Further information on the role can be found at:

https://education.nsw.gov.au/public-schools/astp/atsos  

All successful applicants need to obtain a Working with Children Check, obtain the necessary proof of identity and complete the Expression of Interest form online.

HOW TO APPLY: The EOI and documents should be sent to ASTP at atso.astp@det.nsw.edu.au

PUPIL FREE DAY - Friday, 5 July

The last day of this term, next Friday, 5 July, will be a pupil free day.  All Joey's staff will be engaging in a Religious Retreat in Dubbo.  Please note that the school office will be CLOSED on this day and the phones will be unattended.

TERM 3 CANTEEN ROSTER

Please find attached the DRAFT Term 3 Canteen Roster.  As can be seen, we still have a number of spots to fill.  If you can help out in the canteen next term, please click on the below link and indicate your preferred day.  The final Term 3 Roster will be sent home early next term.

ENROL NOW FOR KINDER 2025

We are now taking enrolments for our Kinder class of 2025.  If you have a child ready to start school next year, please call in and pick up an enrolment pack or phone the office and we can email a pack to you.

PAPER NEWSLETTER AVAILABLE IN SCHOOL OFFICE

Due to a request from our P&F Association, a paper copy of the St Joey's School Newsletter will be available for collection each Thursday afternoon from the school office for those families who would prefer a hard copy.  We will continue to send a link to the digital copy to all families by email and via the Compass Parent Portal.

Please note that the new online format of the newsletter that we now use through Schoolzine is a web based document and as such the formatting isn't perfect when printed.  Obviously links and documents attached to the newsletter will need to be accessed via the digital version.

MERIT AWARDS

Congratulations to the following Kinder students who received Merit Awards at Assembly on Tuesday:

KINDER:  Eliza Hancock for trying hard to sound out 'Consonant-Vowel-Consonant' words, Angel Dinto for settling well into the Joey’s family, Teddy Kelly for always trying hard in sentence writing activities and Saddler Newton for listening carefully and trying his best in Phonics activities.

The following students also received Merit Awards at Assembly on Tuesday for their wonderful individual performances at the City of Dubbo Eisteddfod:

YEAR 2:  Indiana Jeffery and Thomas Colwell.
YEAR 3:  Tiffany Fong, Billy Jeffery and Allie Claire Williams.
YEAR 4:  Regan Godber and Katie Colwell.
YEAR 6:  Heidi Colwell and Isabelle Peart.

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

Kinder has been very busy working on the 'Kk' sound in our Phonics lessons and we made wonderful kings in Art. We read the children’s classic, “Rosie’s Walk” written by the talented author Pat Hutchins and enjoyed looking at the illustrations which told us a lot about the story. We have been comparing the similarities and differences between stories read in our literature units and will investigate how a venn diagram tells us information. In Science we focused on animals that produce food and learned about how bees make honey. We wrote some sentences about what we now know about these busy little bees! Maths continues to challenge us to combine quantities using dominoes and unifix cubes when counting groups of objects and numbers. We are looking forward to meeting you all at parent teacher interviews next week.

Mrs Alison Newstead & Miss Lisa  Harvey

Year 1

This week in Religion Year 1 read the story of ‘The Feeding of the Five Thousand' and talked about the miracles of Jesus. In English we have been looking at the differences between stories and informational texts. We really enjoyed learning about ants and wrote an information report on these incredible insects. We used our art skills to draw a diagram of an ant and labelled each part. In Maths we investigated 2D and 3D shapes through a number of fun hands-on activities. We had a lot of fun exploring the features of 2D shapes using string,  playing an interactive game on the smart board where we needed to identify all the 3D shapes and we used a torch to find the shape of the shadow a 3D shape creates and lots more! In the library this week we defined what digital technology is and brainstormed what objects are digital devices. During Sport we have been practising our throwing and catching skills and playing some fun games with Kinder and Year 2. Have a great weekend!
Mrs Julia Jeffery & Mrs Prue Best

Year 2

We enjoyed our excursion to the Rural Museum last Friday. It was so interesting to see all of the olden day machinery and equipment, they certainly worked hard in the olden days! Thank you to the Rural Museum for having us and showing us around, as well as the Youth Club for the loan of their bus, it certainly saved our little legs. In Digital Tech we have continued to work on correct formatting including having one space between words, paragraphs, capitals and full stop, bold print etc. We have put the finishing touches on our portfolio tasks and can’t wait to share these with you next week. I look forward to meeting with you during Parent/Teacher interviews. Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

Year 3 will be practising soccer for Sport for the remainder of the term to prepare us for the Soccer Gala Day in Dubbo next term.  Thanks to everyone who has returned their permission slips. It should be a fun day for all. We began our final Maths unit for the term this week. We are learning about 3D spatial structure and volume. We learnt about the properties of 3D shapes by drawing and labeling them. We also made models of them using plasticine and matchsticks. We have really enjoyed listening to the Year 3 speeches about the importance of sanctuaries. Overall, they have been convincing and we can see that students have read through and/or practised them beforehand. We have continued exploring figurative language this week by identifying and writing examples of personification. Students then attempted to write their own descriptive paragraph of an image from ‘Piano Fingers’ using personification. This is our last week of homework for the term. We hope you have a great weekend and for anyone who has booked an interview we will see you next week.
Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Swade Wilson

Year 4

Wow! What a busy week we have had! The children should have all finished writing their Hut Day speeches. A copy has gone home for them to be practising each night so they are confident when delivering their speech. Huts are starting to come in and they look fantastic! I can’t wait to see all the huts at school. The children are also excitedly planning their outfits. An invitation to Hut Day has gone home today. Please let me know if you have any questions. In English we’ve been reading “Bindi” and have created a character profile of Bindi. We then wrote our own free verse stanza based on ‘Being Bindi’. We also explored the use of indigenous language within the book. We wrote a stanza titled ‘Playground’ incorporating indigenous language. In Religion we have researched a Saint and learnt how to create a slide in Google Slides to publish our information. Looking forward to seeing you at Hut Day on Thursday!
Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

We are so close to the end of term, how exciting! This week has been busy working on our portfolio tasks. In Religion we retold the Pentecost story using pictures to help us. We also recapped the Gifts of the Holy Spirit by going into more depth about what they are and how they help us. During Maths this week we have done a lot of measuring using the trundle wheels. We measured out a kilometre and discussed how a kilometre is the same distance if you walk 100 metres ten times. We also looked at perimeter and how to measure and calculate the perimeter of shapes. In preparation for our Canberra excursion we have been working hard researching and writing our scripts about each place we go. We will continue to practise and memorise our scripts so we are ready for the excursion. In Art we are working on our Van Gogh inspired sunflower artworks. Last week we drew them and today we started adding the colour. Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 6

On Wednesday we had a great day working with Mr Corben from CEBD on our Christmas artwork. Mr Corben was able to provide inspiration for unique compositions and helped us refine our masterpieces. We also spent time experimenting with different mediums to create vibrant pictures. We are enjoying our class novel, “Stormbreaker”, as Alex (the protagonist) has just finished his training and is now ready to go undercover as an M16 spy. In Maths we are learning about side-by-side graphs and in Grammar we continue to identify the different types of adverbial phrases. Congratulations to Year 6 on their enthusiastic participation in our fundraiser last week. We are sure Little Wings will appreciate the $401.00 we raised on their behalf.  Have a lovely weekend.  
Mrs Meichelle Schier, Mrs Haylee Barry & Mrs Donna Colwell

ALTAR SERVERS

CANTEEN ROSTER

NOTICEBOARD

Gilgandra Shire Council School Holiday Activities

Please click on the below link to view various events that Gilgandra Shire Council are running during the school holidays at the library and youth centre.

Little Athletics NSW - Middle Distance & Endurance Clinic

Little Athletics NSW will be conducting a Middle Distance and Endurance Clinic in Bathurst on Friday, 12 July. This will be followed by a Mini Meet consisting of 100m, 400m, 1500m, shot put and long jump. This is a great opportunity to meet a past Olympian as well as learn new skills and have fun. The mini meet will also provide an athletics competition in a relaxed atmosphere.  Participants do not have to be registered with LANSW to enter.

Please see the below attachment for further information and a link to register for the clinic.