ABOUT - Term 3 Week 1 - 24 July 2025

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

Come Holy Spirit.
Fill the hearts of the faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

WELCOME BACK!

Welcome back to a new school term. Hopefully everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable break and we now look forward to another exciting term at St Joey's.

RITE OF COMMITMENT FOR CONFIRMATION

During Mass this Sunday, 27 July at 9:30 a.m., the Year 6 Confirmation candidates will be participating in a Rite of Commitment for Confirmation. During the Mass the students will be stating their commitment to prepare themselves for Confirmation. Their families and the parish are asked to support and pray for the Confirmation candidates.

BOOK FAIR

Our annual Scholastic Book Fair will be held next Tuesday, 29 July in the school hall from 3:30 – 4:15 p.m. Students have had the opportunity to explore the books and stationary on offer and made a ‘Wish List’ to take home for parent approval. Photographs and pricing of books was placed on Compass yesterday and we encourage you to have a look at the range available with your child. A ‘Book Fair Invitation’ will be sent home with all students this week and orders can be sent in to school at any time. Please encourage children to hand their orders to their teacher first thing before school commences. Novelty items, from $2.00 to $10.00, can be purchased with CASH ONLY at lunchtime on Tuesday. We are unable to reorder novelty items. If books are sold out, we can order more in and these will arrive a couple of weeks after the fair. If books are intended as gifts, please let us know on the wish list form or contact the school. Every purchase you make will earn more books for our school library. We thank you in advance for your support of this event. 

Book Fair Payment Information:  Payment may be made by cash or EFTPOS. If you would like to pay online by credit card, please visit the ‘Parent Book Fairs Payment Portal’ at www.scholastic.com.au/payment. After payment has been accepted, you will receive an 8-digit receipt number which needs to be recorded, as well as the amount paid, on the book fair invitation or wish list. Please then return this form to school.

Gingerbread Character Competition: Children have been given the opportunity to 'Disguise a Gingerbread Person' to win a voucher to spend at the book fair. Gingerbread templates were sent home last term. Spare templates are also available from the office. All competition entries for students in Kinder to Year 6 need to be returned to school by this Friday, 25 July and can be handed to the class teacher, the office or the library. All winners will be announced on Monday.

YEAR 2 LITURGY

Next Thursday, 31 July, our Year 2 students will celebrate a class Liturgy in St Joseph's Church at 10:30 a.m.  Morning tea will be served after the Liturgy.  Please bring a plate to share.

YEARS 3-6 FANCY DRESS SOCIAL

Our Year 6 leaders have decided that 'In The World Of Spies, I'm In Disguise' will be our theme for this year's fancy dress social for all students from Years 3-6. You can come as anything, but make sure you are 'disguised' from the 'real you'. You could dress up as Where's Wally, a Detective, a Teacher.....anything really, but make sure you are in disguise!  Let your mind run wild and have some fun with this theme. The social will be held in the school hall next Thursday, 31 July (Week 2) from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. The cost is free and supper is provided - just bring yourself and get ready to dress up in your 'In the World of Spies, I'm in Disguise' outfit! 

WESTERN REGION ATHLETICS CARNIVAL

St Joey’s will send a strong squad to the Western Region Athletics Carnival to be held in Dubbo on Tuesday, 5 August (Week 3).  A permission note and schedule of events was sent home last term. Please ensure the tear-off slip is completed and returned to school by tomorrow, Friday, 25 July. Participating schools include St Joseph’s Gilgandra, St Brigid’s Coonamble, St John’s Baradine, St Lawrence’s Coonabarabran, St Mary’s Dubbo, St Mary’s Wellington and St Pius X Dubbo. 

ICAS ASSESSMENTS

As mentioned last term, our students in Years 3-6 again have the opportunity to participate in the ICAS Assessments this year. ICAS is an online academic competition that gives the students the opportunity to challenge their higher order thinking and problem-solving skills in Digital Technologies, Writing, English, Science, Spelling and Mathematics. These assessments are voluntary. Parents can go online to order the assessments they wish their child to complete.  Full details are in the attached note. A hard copy of this note was also given to the eldest child in each family from Years 3-6 last term. The closing date for entries is next Monday, 28 July.

When entering the 'Parent Payment System code' of UBI626, please ensure you use the letter "I" for "Igloo" and not the number 1.

YEAR 5 EXPERIENCE DAY - POSTPONED

We have been informed that the St Johns College Year 5 Experience Day that was due to be held on Wednesday, 6 August has been postponed. We will inform our families once a new date has been set.

NAPLAN RESULTS

The Years 3 and 5 NAPLAN results were sent home today with each child. Once again the school was very pleased with the overall results of our students. If any parents would like to discuss their child's results with their teacher, please contact the school so we can arrange a meeting.

P & F TEA TOWEL FUNDRAISING

Our P&F Tea Towel Fundraiser is drawing to a close, with final orders due by tomorrow, Friday, 25 July. Our limited edition tea towels are made up of self-portraits drawn by all of our students and are a wonderful keepsake. Why not purchase a few and put them away for Christmas gifts! If you would like to purchase any tea towels, please complete the attached note and return it to school tomorrow.

SCHOOL FETE - "SAVE THE DATE"

The St Joey's School Fete will be held on Friday, 24 October, 2025 (Term 4 Week 2). Make sure you put this date on your calendar, so you don't miss out!

TERM 3 CANTEEN ROSTER

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 

CANTEEN POLICY

Please find below a link to the St Joseph's School Canteen Policy. Due to various changes with Food & Safety Handling, we have been required to update our school's policy. Would all of our canteen volunteers please take the time to read through this document to ensure they are aware of the changes that are now in force.

WHAT'S ON IN WEEKS 2 & 3

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

Welcome back to another busy term in Kinder! On Monday, we were very excited to welcome Lylah Dickens into our class. We hope Lylah and her family enjoy being part of our fabulous Joey’s family. This week we heard about everyone’s holiday adventures and wrote some really amazing recounts. We are reading the iconic “Meg and Mog” books this term and will base many of our reading and writing activities around the entertaining characters and story lines. In Maths we have been exploring how number lines can be a great help when trying to solve number problems. We also explored how to make unique pictures using 10 paddle pop sticks. We celebrated a beautiful whole school Mass with Fr Diep on Tuesday morning and look forward to his involvement with our school this term. For the rest of the year we will be focusing on Geography and our topic is ‘People Live in Places’. Have a great weekend!

Mrs Alison Newstead & Mrs Julia Jeffery                                                                                            

Year 1

Welcome back to a new term. We have enjoyed hearing about everyone's amazing holidays during news and reading about them in our holiday recounts. In English, we have continued our work on narratives by writing our own about a minor character from “The Wall in the Middle of the Book”. We have also listened to an online recording of the poem “The Wizard”. We then read the poem together adjusting the pace, use of pauses and emphasis (loud and soft) on different words and phrases and discussed the effect this had on meaning and engagement. We used the character of the Wizard to model how students can use a planning template to create a character. The students then created their own character including an illustration, a list of their physical traits, personality traits, and things they like and don’t like. They then planned and wrote a narrative about the character they created. We began a new unit in Religion titled, “Stories of God’s People”. We talked about how the Bible is a very special book that holds the sacred scriptures of the Church. We read the parable of “The Treasure and The Pearl” which was a story Jesus told to teach people about the Kingdom of God. Our Geography Unit is ‘People are Connected to Places and Groups’. To begin this unit we defined the term ‘Country’ as the strong connection Australian Aboriginal people have to place. We looked at a map of Australia and found out that where we live is the home of the Wiradjuri Nation. We then listed some things we are connected to in our ‘Country’ and drew an artwork to illustrate this. We hope you all enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Haylee Barry

Year 2

Welcome back to Term 3! Year 2 has eased back into routine this week and everyone has been working very hard. We were also excited to have Reggie join us this week and have enjoyed getting to know him. During Personal Development with Mr Gibbons we discussed our families and what we like to do together and traditions we have. During Writing we have been looking at fairytales through the perspective of the different characters and wrote responses for whose side we support. In Maths we have been learning about trading, everyone is picking this up very quickly. Preparations have begun for our Liturgy next week and we hope our family and friends are able to join us for a special morning. I hope you all have a lovely weekend!      

                                                                             
Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

Welcome back everyone! It has been wonderful hearing all about your amazing holidays. We’ve jumped straight back into our normal classroom routine and are off to a great start. In English, we are continuing our novel study for the first couple of weeks, focusing on two beautiful books, “Piano Fingers” and “Sonam and the Silence”. Right now, we are diving into “Sonam and the Silence”, a powerful story about a child living in Afghanistan during a time when music was banned. We’ve been having some deep and thoughtful conversations and so far are really enjoying the book. In Maths we’ve been exploring fractions. We’ve had lots of fun using counters to help us find fractions of numbers. We even created some fraction inspired artworks of colourful birds and flowers. We’ve said goodbye to History for the year and have now moved onto Geography. Our new unit began with a focus on the Torres Strait Islands. We’ve been defining some challenging vocabulary and discussing what “Country” means to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Excitement is in the air as yesterday we voted for our top three songs for the Primary School Social next week. We can’t wait to get our groove on! Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 4

Welcome back to Term 3! We have enjoyed a great start to the term, with the students working in a calm and efficient manner. We’ve written holiday recounts and it has been great to read how everyone spent their holidays.  We are finishing off our novel, “Bindi” and are beginning to write a free verse poem titled “Fambam” based on our own families and inspired by Bindi. We looked at figurative language, focusing on idioms, similes and metaphors and how authors use these techniques to enhance their writing. During History we have completed a simple source analysis of WIlliam Dawes’ notebook and wrote a response explaining how stories, images, objects and sites are used as sources of evidence for the first penal settlement in New South Wales. In Art we have created  bushfire artworks using the bushfire scene from “Bindi” as our inspiration. Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

Welcome back! I’m so glad that everyone had an enjoyable holiday and is well rested to tackle this very busy term ahead. In Maths, we investigated types of triangles and used protractors to measure angles. We also continued to consolidate our knowledge of area and perimeter. Linking verbs and verb tense is our focus in Grammar this week and we reviewed the purpose and structure of a discussion text in Writing. Our new Religion unit explores the history of the Catholic Church in Australia. We completed a timeline that illustrates the Church's growth from the arrival of the First Fleet to the 2000’s. Pablo Picasso is our artist of inspiration this term. We have created a collaborative artwork for our classroom and have begun drawing a face in the style of Picasso. We enjoyed visiting the Book Fair display and look forward to possibly purchasing a book or a novelty item or two at the Book Fair next Tuesday. Have a lovely weekend.                                        

      
Mrs Meichelle Schier

Year 6

Welcome back everyone! We hope you had a lovely holiday break. We have hit the ground running in all aspects of learning this week with minimal interruptions. In English we have learnt some new spelling words with a focus on the ‘ay’, ‘a’, ‘ee’, ‘ei’, ‘ey’ and ‘et’ sounds and are busy finishing off our novel so we can start our new Literature unit. In Maths we have continued exploring data and how it is extracted and displayed. We also looked at misleading data and how data is everywhere in our everyday lives. In Religion we are preparing for Confirmation and will celebrate our Rite of Commitment Mass this Sunday. We hope to see you all there. We have also begun our Christmas Competition Artworks which is very exciting. This is the 7th year the Diocesan Christmas Story Art Competition has been running and our students will compete against other students from the Archdiocese of Sydney and the Diocese of Wollongong.  Students are encouraged to create art works and written reflections on Advent and the meaning of Christmas from their studies in their Religious Education classes. An estimated 2000 children from 29 schools participate. Pretty cool really!  Have a lovely weekend! 

Mrs Jess Morrissey & Mrs Donna Colwell

ALTAR SERVERS

CANTEEN ROSTER