ABOUT - Term 2 Week 3 - 15 May 2025

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

"Guided by Faith, Inspired by Hope, Committed to Learning"
Catholic Schools Week 2025

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WEEK 2025

This week our school is celebrating Catholic Schools Week. This annual event is an opportunity for schools to promote the special ethos of Catholic schools and to highlight the great things that take place in these schools every day. The theme for this year’s celebrations is ‘Guided by Faith, Inspired by Hope, Committed to Learning’. There are 33 Catholic schools in the Diocese of Bathurst that educate around 9000 students and most will celebrate Catholic Schools Week in some way.  We celebrated Catholic Schools Week during this morning's Mass which was prepared by our Year 6 class.

WONDERFUL MOTHER'S DAY STALL

Another fantastic Mother’s Day Stall was held last Friday. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the stall.  Due to the generosity of our families there were many gifts for the children to choose their special presents.   Thank you also to the stall coordinator, Morgan Adams and the mums who wrapped the gifts and also helped out on Friday at the stall.  In conjunction with the Mother’s Day Stall, we had three beautiful hampers as prizes for the raffles.  Congratulations to Neve W, Harper W and Evelyn E who were the lucky winners of the hampers.

There were also free raffles for each class which every student had the chance to win.  This caused much excitement and we thank the families from our school for their generous donations towards these raffles.  Results of the class raffles were as follows:  Kinder – Angus F, Year 1 – Arthur P, Year 2 – Flynn W, Year 3 – Elsie H, Year 4 – George T, Year 5 – Archie O, Year 6 – Ryan F.

YEAR 6 LEADERS ATTEND PEER SUPPORT TRAINING

Our Year 6 leaders had a great time at the GIL Library Hub last Thursday and Friday as they participated in training to become Peer Support Leaders.  The programme is designed to equip our students with the skills, confidence and empathy needed to support their peers in a positive and meaningful way and focused on key areas such as active listening, problem solving, empathy, teamwork and strategies for supporting younger students.  Our Peer Support Leaders will now lead small student groups, from Kinder to Year 5, over eight 30-minute lessons during Terms 2 and 3.  

GOOD LUCK CLANCY

We wish Clancy Larkin the best of luck as she competes in the NSW CPS Polding Girls Rugby 7's Trials being held in Strathfield tomorrow, Friday, 16 May.  We hope you have a great day Clancy and can't wait to hear how you go.

WALK SAFELY TO SCHOOL DAY

Walk Safely to School Day will be tomorrow, Friday, 16 May. The objectives of the day are: 

• To promote the health benefits of walking and help create regular walking habits at an early age. 
• To help children develop the vital road-crossing skills they will need as they become mature pedestrians. 
• To ensure that children up to the age of 10 years of age hold an adult's hand when crossing the road.
• To reduce the car dependency habits that are being created at an early age and which will be difficult to change as children become adults. 
• To reduce vehicle emissions and help tackle climate change and improve air quality. 

We ask you to discuss with your child the health benefits of walking,  as well as safety rules. 

LIFE EDUCATION VAN

The Life Education Van will be at our school next week from Monday, 19 May to Wednesday, 21 May.  We thank the P&F Association for paying for the children’s entry to the van.  It is greatly appreciated.  The timetable for the Life Education Van is as follows, together with a brief outline of the program that will be seen by the children:

Monday, 19 May

11:30–1:00  Year 6 – Relate, Respect, Connect – understanding how to respect ourselves and others, identifying characteristics of positive relationships, strategies to help maintain positive online and offline relationships, how to recognise, react and report unwanted contact, bullying or predatory behaviours.

1:50-3:20  Year 5 – Take A Breath – What are vapes and cigarettes, physical, social, financial  and health effects of cigarettes, e-cigarettes and nicotine, comparisons and connections between e-cigarettes/vaping and the history of smoking, strategies and responses that model assertiveness and resilience in challenging situations.

Tuesday, 20 May

10:00–11:00  Kinder – Harold’s Friend Ship – How to build respectful friendships, recognising and identifying body clues,  strategies to manage different feelings and emotions, protective behaviours and help-seeking strategies.

11:30–1:00  Year 3 – The Inside Story – The benefits of healthy food for health and energy, function of the body systems – digestive, respiratory, circulatory and others, factors that influence physical health, such as nutrition and exercise, practising safe use of medicines.

1:50–3:20  Year 4 – Bcyberwise – Keeping personal information safe online, how to recognise, react and report unwanted contact and potential predatory behaviours, responsible and respectful behaviour when using communication technology, exploring the role of bystanders.

Wednesday, 21 May

10:00 - 11:00  Year 2 – Safety Rules – Recognising safe and unsafe environments, safe and unsafe situations and behaviours online, how to care for others, places and people who we can go to for help.

11:30–12:30 Year 1 – Growing Good Friends – Identifying qualities and attributes of good friends, recognising the importance of respectful relationships for wellbeing, strategies to seek, give, or deny consent, people in our network who can support and help us.

LIFE EDUCATION VAN - HEALTHY HAROLD MERCHANDISE

To coincide with the Life Education Van visiting our school next week, Healthy Harold merchandise is available to pre-order for any families wishing to do so, by visiting https://bit.ly/haroldshop Instructions on how to order are below.  Orders need to be placed by next TUESDAY, 20 MAY and items will be delivered to your child during Healthy Harold's visit to school next week.

OUR LADY HELP OF CHRISTIANS MASS

A Mass in honour of Our Lady Help of Christians will be celebrated next Friday, 23 May at 10:30 a.m. in St Joseph's Church.  Year 4 is preparing the Mass and everyone is most welcome to attend.  Please bring a plate to share for morning tea which will be served after the Mass.

ANNUAL SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT SURVEY

The annual School Improvement Survey was emailed to all staff, parents and Years 5 and 6 students last week.  The purpose of this survey is to provide all stakeholders in our school community with a 'voice' in how our school operates.  The survey is straight forward and your responses are collected, collated and used to inform our school where we are operating well and areas where we may need to improve.  This is an important tool that all schools in our diocese participate in each year.  Data from the survey forms and guides our annual improvement plans for the following year.  We would be grateful if all members of our school community would participate in the survey.

ENROL NOW FOR KINDER 2026

We are now taking enrolments for our Kinder class of 2026.  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.

WHAT'S ON.....for the next 2 weeks at St Joey's

FOOD HANDLER TRAINING LINK FOR CANTEEN VOLUNTEERS

Please click on the below link to undertake the Food Handler Training required to be completed by all of our canteen volunteers. 

www.foodauthority.nsw.gov.au/training/food-handler-basics-training 

MERIT AWARDS

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

KINDER: Elisha Robin for confidently identifying the end sounds in words, Charlotte Melhuish for accurately identifying which objects are heavier, lighter or equal in mass and Annlitta Anoop for a detailed illustration of her favourite memory in History.

YEAR 1: Jackie Gronow for independently writing a great compound sentence, Chase Copelin and Napoora Rahul for composing very persuasive comic strips and Harry Harvey for writing a great compound sentence about his mum.

YEAR 2:  Hamish Burrell for working extremely hard on his reading fluency and Alfie Mudford for being a diligent worker in all subjects.

YEAR 3: Frankie Medd for working hard to add great information to our class argument on dingoes, Parthiv Rajesh Nair for making fantastic contributions in Religion, Billie Toomey for super work in our History unit and Elsie Howard for working hard in Maths and making great contributions.

YEAR 4: Hannah Peart, George Taylor and Mary Lesslie for their fabulous ‘Vase of Flowers’ paintings and Aaron Robin for a great effort in Maths Operations.

YEAR 5: Pearl Mudford for an outstanding effort to reach her Literacy Pro goals and Rose Howard for working conscientiously to apply strategies to solve mathematical problems.

YEAR 6: Chloe Heffer and Jackson Towns for demonstrating exceptional leadership qualities and teamwork during peer support training at the GIL Library Hub.

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

This week in Kinder we have been busily learning the sound ‘Ll’ during English. We completed a range of fun activities to help us hear, say and recognise the sound in words. We also enjoyed reading “Pig the Pug” and had a great time writing sentences to describe different types of dogs. In Maths, we used informal units to explore balance by placing objects on balance beams and predicting which items were heavier or lighter. In Science, we continued our ‘Staying Alive’ unit and discussed what our pets need to survive, such as food, water, shelter and love. During Sport, we have been learning how to move our bodies using basic long jump skills. We practised jumping and landing safely and had lots of fun challenging ourselves. Another fantastic week of learning in Kinder! Have a great weekend!

Mrs Alison Newstead & Mrs Julia Jeffery

Year 1

We celebrated Catholic Schools Week with a lovely Mass this morning. Thanks Year 6! We wrote recounts of our weekend, with many people sharing what they got up to at the Gilgandra Show. We read Andy Lee’s “Do Not Open This Book” in English, another example of metafiction. We compared it to “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” and examined both texts to find the persuasive elements each text used. This includes persuasive language and arguments, punctuation, colour, text size, body language and expression lines. We then planned and composed our own comic strip to convince our parents to buy us a new pet of our choice, including some very persuasive arguments as to why we ‘neeeed’ this new pet. We have been challenging ourselves to write compound sentences. We wrote one independently that told the audience two things we did on Mother’s Day and combined these two independent clauses with the conjunction ‘and’. In Mathematics we used a number line to complete addition number sentences and learnt that our length stays the same if we are standing up or lying down. We also used centimetres to measure the length of different objects in the classroom, ensuring we line the beginning of the objects up with the 0 on the ruler. Our History lesson was all about how Aboriginal people used message sticks for long distance communication across Australia. We got to design our own message sticks that used our own symbols to create a message. We read “The Emmaus Story” in Religion and completed a cloze passage of this Bible story. We hope you enjoy your weekend!

Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Haylee Barry

Year 2

Happy Catholic Schools Week! Year 2 has discussed what it means to belong to a Catholic school and created an artwork of our new Pope, Pope Leo XIV. Year 2 discussed hybrid texts this week - this is where a book combines two types of text. Our book, “Great White Shark” combines both information and descriptive writing. We learnt lots of amazing facts about these creatures and are in the process of making great white sharks in Art. We constructed a model using five blocks during Maths. We then looked at the orientation of the model after a quarter, half and three quarter turn, which led into discussions of writing these as fractions. During Personal Development with Mr Gibbons, Year 2 discussed fire safety. Mr Gibbons has encouraged the children to talk to their parents about the family’s plan if a fire occurred at or near their house. Sport activities have been focussed on improving our running techniques with elbows bent, looking ahead, eyes focused on the finish line and landing on the ball of your foot. Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

We’ve had yet another great week in Year 3! On Tuesday, we watched a fun performance titled ‘Rap, Rhyme, and Rocking Poetry’. We all got up, danced, rhymed, and had lots of fun. In our Novel unit, we are writing an argumentative poster. We explored one about a lion and are in the process of writing our own about a dingo. In Religion, we commenced our preparations for our First Holy Communion Mass in Week 8  by learning our liturgical movement. We have also been looking at how Jesus and the Apostles celebrated different events in the Bible. History saw us looking at Matthew Flinders and his adventures circumnavigating Australia. We also learnt about Bungaree, the Aboriginal man who accompanied him and some of the challenges they faced. Have a lovely weekend!  

Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 4

 What a lovely Mass we celebrated today for Catholic Schools Week. Thank you Year 6 for preparing and leading our celebration. We have started our new English unit based on the book, “Ned Kelly and The Green Sash”. We are using this text to learn about argument and authority. We have read the narrative section of the book, which tells us Ned’s story from his perspective. We have identified some of the text features that the author has used to persuade the reader. We’ve also read some newspaper articles from the time. Reading the different genre from a different perspective has the class questioning their opinion of Ned. We have begun preparations for our Mass next Friday. In Art we have been creating our decorations to display in the church. I look forward to seeing you there. Enjoy the weekend!                                  

Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

We had a great time on Tuesday afternoon at a school performance called ‘Rap, Rhyme and Rocking Poetry’. There were jokes, singing and dancing and even some of the teachers showed off their cool moves! In Religion, we discussed the Easter Triduum - the three significant days of Holy Week and wrote an acrostic poem as part of our Catholic Schools Week celebrations. As part of our Geography unit, we are researching an Aboriginal World Heritage site and, in pairs, will create a PowerPoint to share with the class. Expanded notation and partitioning numbers are our focus in Maths and we wrote a class exposition in Text Types about why people should learn to swim. During Art, we are using Vincent Van Gogh’s, ‘Wheatfield’ painting as inspiration for our artworks and will use a variety of mediums and techniques to complete the picture. Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Meichelle Schier

Year 6

Week 3 has whizzed by! Thank you to our wonderful Year 6 leaders for our beautiful Catholic Schools Mass today, you were all fabulous! In the classroom, our orthography focus is the ‘ge, dj, je, gg, dge’ sound and our phonology focus is on set-rime. We have continued our novel, “Rabbit Soldier Angel Thief” and conducted chapter reviews to further understand the characters at hand. In Maths we have been locating fractions on a number line, comparing common fractions and identifying equivalent fractions. During our Religion studies we have spent some time learning about our new Pope, Pope Leo XIV and also revisiting some important facts about our last Pope, Pope Francis. A historical moment in time , that’s for sure! In Sport today we practised our shot-put skills in preparation for the upcoming athletics carnival. As another week comes to an end, we wish you all a safe and happy weekend!

Mrs Jess Morrissey & Mrs Donna Colwell

ALTAR SERVERS

CANTEEN ROSTER

NOTICEBOARD