ABOUT - Term 2 Week 5 - 29 May 2025

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

"Nothing great is ever achieved without enduring much."
St Catherine of Siena

SPELLING BEE FINALISTS

Congratulations to our two Year 4 competitors, Isobel Barry and Tiffany Fong, who made the finals at yesterday's Diocesan Spelling Bee held in Wellington.   From all reports they acquitted themselves very well.  Well done  girls!

PEER SUPPORT PROGRAM

Our Peer Support Program commenced this week with each Year 6 student leading a small group from Kinder to Year 5. The first session was all about "Keeping Friends" and we explored the concept of friendship, building relationships and developing skills in empathy and critical thinking.  Our Year 6 leaders did a great job mentoring the students in their groups. We encourage our families to talk with their children about peer support as it helps reinforce the concepts learnt each session.

The second session will be held next Monday, 2 June and will continue fortnightly on Monday, 6 June (Week 8) and Monday, 30 June of Week  10.  There will be four further sessions in Term 3.

Attached is a flyer that further details the Peer Support Program.

DIOCESAN NATIONAL RECONCILIATION MASS

Tomorrow, Friday, 30 May, our Year 6 class will be travelling to Dubbo to take part in the Diocesan National Reconciliation Mass.  This Mass will be held at St Brigid's Church and will be a true celebration for National Reconciliation Week reflecting our Aboriginal culture.  The morning is planned to start at 10:30 a.m. with a Smoking Ceremony followed by Mass at 11:00 a.m.  We hope our Year 6 leaders enjoy their time in Dubbo.

Just a reminder that the students will need to pack their recess, lunch and water bottle.

GOOD LUCK TO OUR KINDER NURSERY RHYMERS

We wish our Kinder and Year 1 superstars, Elisha Robin, Noopura Rahul, Angus Foran and Joe Barry the best of luck as they perform a Nursery Rhyme at the City of Dubbo Eisteddfod next Wednesday, 4 June.  To get up and perform on your own already makes you all champions!  Well done Elisha, Noopura, Angus and Joe.

PENTECOST MASS - CHANGE OF DATE

Due to the long weekend, the Pentecost Mass that our Kinder and Year 5 classes were preparing for Sunday, 8 June, has been brought forward to next Thursday, 5 June at 10:30 a.m in St Joseph's Church.  Everyone is invited to attend. Please bring a plate to share for morning tea, which will follow the Mass.

WINTER UNIFORM FROM WEEK 7

At St Joey's we take great pride in our school uniform and the expectation that all students wear the correct uniform to school each day.

All students are required to wear full winter uniform from Monday, 9 June (Week 7). 

A reminder that our winter uniform comprises:

Girls:  maroon box pleat tunic OR maroon gabardine pants, fawn blouse, school jumper, brown socks, black leather shoes, maroon school hat, school jacket (optional).  Please note:  The box pleat tunics can be purchased from school.

Boys:  blue shirt, grey trousers, school jumper, grey socks, black leather shoes, maroon school hat, school jacket (optional).

There are many second hand items for sale in the clothing pool at a very reasonable price.

FIRST HOLY COMMUNION

St Joseph's Church - Sunday, 22 June

The excitement is certainly building for the First Holy Communion class as this special day is quickly approaching.  Our school community and parish are warmly invited to celebrate First Holy Communion at St Joseph’s Church on Sunday, 22 June at 9:30 a.m.  It would be fabulous to have lots there for this great occasion.

200 m HEATS IN PREPARATION FOR ATHLETICS CARNIVAL

In preparation for the Athletics Carnival, we will be holding heats for the 200 m events at McGrane Oval next Friday, 6 June at lunchtime.  As this is a sports day, students will already be wearing their sports clothes and joggers.

PRIMARY ATHLETICS CARNIVAL

The St Joey’s Primary Athletics Carnival will be held at McGrane Oval on Friday, 20 June (Week 8). This carnival involves all primary school students (Years 3-6).

We will need officials to help with the judging of the events and we will also need helpers to run the canteen.  A Helper's Roster has today been sent home with each family outlining all the jobs.  If you are able to assist in any way please write your name down and return the roster to school by next Friday, 6 June.   

FLEXISCHOOLS LUNCH ORDERS FOR THE ATHLETICS CARNIVAL

There will be a special canteen lunch order for the Athletics Carnival on Friday, 20 June.  This has been set up in Flexischools and is available for primary children (Years 3-6) to order. Lunch order bags are also available from the school office upon request.  All canteen orders, for the Athletics Carnival, need to be placed by 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, 17 June, so we have enough time to order food for the carnival.

INFANTS CANTEEN ORDERS ON DAY OF PRIMARY ATHLETICS CARNIVAL

On the day of the Primary Athletics Carnival (Friday, 20 June), infants students who would like to order their recess or lunch using the Flexischools online service, will need to use the following Flexischools services when completing  their order:

Infants Recess Order for Friday, 20 June
Infants Lunch Order for Friday, 20 June

This change in ordering is only for the day of the Athletics Carnival.  If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the school office. 

CITY OF DUBBO EISTEDDFOD

All students from Year 1 to Year 6 will be participating in the verse speaking choirs at the City of Dubbo Eisteddfod on Wednesday, 18 June at the Dubbo Regional Theatre & Convention Centre (DRTCC). The order for the verse speaking choirs is as follows:

Commencing at 10:00 a.m.

Section 5300 – Years 1/2 – Infants (we are competitor no. 5 of 5 competitors), followed by

Section 5301 – Years 3/4 – Junior Primary (we are competitor no. 3 of 3 competitors)

Section 5302 – Years 5/6 – Senior Primary (we are competitor no. 3 of 3 competitors).

We would love to see many family and friends in attendance at the eisteddfod to watch our wonderful choirs perform. 

Tickets went on sale last Thursday, 22 May - see below for instructions on how to purchase tickets.

PRE-PURCHASE TICKETS TO THE EISTEDDFOD

As mentioned above, tickets to the eisteddfod went on sale last Thursday, 22 May. 

Tickets are $6.00 each and can be purchased from the DRTCC Box Office or ordered online by following the below instructions:-

1.  Visit drtcc.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/sales
2.  Type in Search - Eisteddfod
3.  Select which session you wish to attend
4.  Payment of your tickets (Please note: you will have 20 minutes to complete your transaction).

TRAVEL TO THE EISTEDDFOD

Last Thursday, we sent home a permission note with children from Years 1-6 for your child to attend the City of Dubbo Eisteddfod on Wednesday, 18 June in Dubbo and advising us how your child will travel to and from the eisteddfod.  We need this information as soon as possible so that we can organise transport.

The cost for the bus to travel to Dubbo will be $5.00 per student.  Please ensure the tear-off slip and if your child/ren are travelling by bus, the money is returned to the school office by tomorrow, Friday, 30 May.

UNIFORM FOR THE EISTEDDFOD

At this year's City of Dubbo Eisteddfod, girls are again wearing MAROON TROUSERS, NOT the tunic as has been worn in previous years. 

Just a reminder that children are required to wear full winter uniform which is as follows:

Boys:  Grey trousers, blue shirt, school jumper, grey socks, black leather shoes.
Girls:.  Maroon trousers, fawn shirt, school jumper, brown socks, black leather shoes.

NO CANTEEN ON WEDNESDAY, 18 JUNE

Due to the times that students will return to school on the day of the eisteddfod, we have made the decision to close the canteen on Wednesday, 18 June.  Please ensure you pack both morning tea and lunch for your children on the day of the eisteddfod. 

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.

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 

"HELP ME HELP MY TEEN" - LIVE EVENT WITH MAGGIE DENT

A seminar, based on Maggie Dent's latest book, "Help Me Help My Teen" will be held at St Johns College Hall on Monday, 30 June from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.  

It will be a reassuring, practical guide for parents, carers and educators to help teenagers navigate adolescence and grow into confident, capable adults.

Maggie will provide clear and compassionate ‘what to do’ advice for some of the most difficult, sensitive topics  such as technology use, sex, drugs and alcohol, dropped school grades, school refusal, mental health and identity and shows us how we can provide a safe and supportive environment for all our teens.

NOTE: Sensitive topics are discussed. Teens 13+ can attend with their parent/s or carer at their discretion. All attendees require a ticket which can be purchased online by clicking here.

MERIT AWARDS

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

KINDER: Isaac Antaw for super sounding out in Pre-Lit, Angus Foran for beautiful autumn artwork and Noah Weston for great work in History describing old and new things.

YEAR 1: Daniel Herbig and Paddy O’Connor for creative and independent thinking when measuring the area of spaces and shapes, Ellis Starr for using lots of creativity when designing his Matisse ‘Fishbowl’ inspired artwork and Eliza Hancock for adding lots of expression when reading aloud.

YEAR 2: Henry Foran for a great job including compound sentences in writing tasks, Piper Lummis for reading with great fluency and expression and Alex Moeris for showing super typing skills.

YEAR 3: Charlie Budworth for an improved effort in all learning areas, Indiana Jeffery for bringing a positive, can-do attitude into the classroom, Samson Starr for always lending a helping hand and Annabelle Foran for outstanding higher order thinking in our “Wandi” unit.

YEAR 4: Lochie Thomas, Sterling Newton, Liam Cosier, Amelia Altmann and McKenzie Harvey for fantastic improvement in our Maths testing.

YEAR 5: Maci-Jae Lomax for great participation and contributions to the Life Education lesson and Jack Howard for consistently receiving high marks in Vocabulary and Spelling.

YEAR 6: Mack Hutchison for consistently improving his reading fluency score each week and Ryan Faulder for active class participation and willingness to tackle tricky tasks.

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

This week in Kinder we are learning about the sound ‘Uu’. We completed a number of activities where we coloured in the sounds and pictures that start with our sound and continued to look carefully at our consonant, vowel, consonant (CVC) words to match our pictures. In English we continued to read “Wishy-Washy Day” and really enjoyed completing our comprehension questions based on the book. We began our Peer Support groups with Year 6 this week. Our Year 6 buddies spoke to us about friends and the importance of being a good friend. We also enjoyed playing some fun games and we look forward to next week.  We have begun preparing our Pentecost Mass with Year 5 which will be celebrated next Thursday, 5 June. We would love to see our family and friends come along to celebrate with us at 10:30 a.m.  Good luck to our friends who are singing nursery rhymes at the eisteddfod next Wednesday.  We think you are very brave!  Have a lovely weekend everyone!    Mrs Alison Newstead & Mrs Julia Jeffery

Year 1

Our sound focus has been ‘ai, ay and a’ this week. We are striving to make the correct spelling choice when writing words that contain this phoneme. For the past few weeks we have also worked on the ‘bossy e’ rule which states that “when the end of a word has a bossy e, the long vowel sound is what you read”. We’ve made sure to say our long vowel sounds out loud and practised adding the missing ‘e’ or the missing vowel to words that follow this rule. Our literacy lessons this week have been all about ants! We explored a web page that gave us facts about ants, read a description of an ant and completed a labelled diagram. We watched a video about army ants and identified the facts presented and read about ant habitats, then answered some comprehension questions. We then used all of the information we found out about ants to write our own ant facts in the style of the web page we explored. During Maths we learnt how to make a square from an A4, A5 and A3 piece of paper. We discovered that a square has 4 equal sides and 4 vertices. We also learnt the terms polygon, a 2D shape with 3 or more straight sides and quadrilateral, a 2D shape with 4 sides and 4 vertices. We drew quadrilaterals including squares, rectangles, trapeziums, rhombus’ and even parallelograms.  Eisteddfod practice is in full swing.  We are working hard to focus on the conductor, speak in unison and use our faces to make expressions that engage the audience. We wish you an enjoyable weekend.

Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Haylee Barry

Year 2

It was a special morning this morning as we celebrated our friends at our Liturgy, ‘Friends Are A Gift’. Thank you to our family and friends who were able to take time out of their busy day to join us for the Liturgy, we really appreciate it. We have been learning about giraffes this week and compiling the information into an information report. We are working on some pretty cool giraffe artworks to display in the classroom, all with unique patterns like real giraffes. Years 1 & 2 have been working hard on practising our eisteddfod poems and using our faces and expression to tell the story. Everyone has been working hard on their home readers each night and it’s great to see people trying to use expression and punctuation to improve their reading fluency. Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

It’s hard to believe we’re already halfway through the term! This week has been full of activity and learning. We wrapped up our novel, “Wandi”, and while the ending surprised us, the Q&A section at the end of the book gave us some much needed closure about our dingo’s journey. Inspired by “Wandi”, we’ve been researching various dingo sanctuaries and are now working on turning our findings into a short podcast. In History, we explored different navigation tools and revisited the explorers who helped discover and map Australia. Next week, we’re excited to begin learning about Mesoamerica – a new and fascinating topic for us. As it's mid-term, we’ve also been completing various assessments, including a spelling test, grammar quizzes and our Essential Assessment Maths tests. Everyone has been putting in a fantastic effort and giving of their best! In Digi Tech with Mrs Jeffery, we’ve been diving into coding. We played a fun game on the Chromebooks to help us learn – it was a hit! We’ve also begun practising our poems for the eisteddfod. We’re sounding great so far, so please remember to keep practising at home. Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 4

Our Ned Kelly unit is coming to a close. We are finishing it by writing a speech from the perspective of a character at ‘The Last Stand’. We read an insightful letter from a bystander who was present at the Glenrowan Siege. The children are drawing on information from a variety of sources read throughout the unit to produce their text. I’m looking forward to reading them! We are finishing up our Maths unit on place value and additive relations. The children have learnt a variety of strategies to help with addition and subtraction of large numbers. During History we are learning how the arrival of the First Fleet affected the Gadigal people. The First Fleet brought diseases like smallpox and influenza and caused misunderstandings and cultural differences with the Gadigal people. We have begun practising our poems for the eisteddfod. Miss Dobson and I are very impressed with the children’s commitment and enthusiasm. Have a lovely weekend!      

Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

This week we have been completing assessment tasks in Maths, Spelling, Literacy Pro and Comprehension. In Grammar we have been ordering adjectives and endeavouring to place these in the correct order in sentences. During Science we explored the phases of the moon and next week we will try to replicate them with paddlepop sticks and oreos. Rounding numbers to tens, hundreds and thousands has been our focus in Maths and we explored types of characters found in books in our novel study. In Religion we are preparing for our Pentecost Mass with Kindergarten next Thursday and we hope many family and friends can join us for this celebration and enjoy morning tea with us afterwards. Have a great weekend.

Mrs Meichelle Schier

Year 6

Week 5 has flown by! In Year 6 we used this week as a time to revise concepts previously learnt this term and further solidify our knowledge. Students selected their own spelling lists based on incorrect words from their spelling tests this term and used them as their focus for English. We also continued our class novel, “Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief” and further explored how figurative language, including metaphors, hyperbole and similes have been used to further emphasise this historical fiction story. We then created our own character descriptions of the German soldiers which allowed us to practise using metaphorical terminology in our writing and add depth to our character profiles. In Religion we have begun our new unit of work called ‘We celebrate the Sacraments’. During this unit we will learn further about the seven sacraments, their purpose and the symbols and rituals involved. We are looking forward to our day out tomorrow, when we head to Dubbo for the National Reconciliation Mass.

Mrs Jess Morrissey & Mrs Donna Colwell

ALTAR SERVERS

CANTEEN ROSTER

NOTICEBOARD