ABOUT - Term 3 Week 2 - 31 July 2025

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

"A book is a gift you can open again and again"
- Garrison Keillor

BOOK FAIR

Our annual Scholastic Book Fair was held this week and was a big success.  Thank you to the families who attended the book fair.  Your support enables our school to purchase new books for our library which the children and staff greatly appreciate. 

BOOK FAIR COMPETITION

In conjunction with the Scholastic Book Fair, the library ran a competition with students having the chance to win a book fair voucher.  Congratulations to the following students who each won a voucher to spend at the book fair:

Kinder - Olivia Wass
Year 1 - Freyer Williams
Year 2 - Lachlan Foran
Year 3 - Samson Starr
Year 4 - Tiffany Fong
Year 5 - Oliver Buckley
Year 6 - Neve Walker

YEARS 3-6 FANCY DRESS SOCIAL

THIS EVENING - Thursday, 31 August
5:30 - 7:30 p.m.

We hope you have your 'In The World Of Spies, I'm In Disguise' outfits ready because tonight is our fancy dress social for all students from Years 3-6. 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! The social will be held in the school hall from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. There is no cost 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 next Tuesday, 5 August.  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.  Best of luck to all our athletes:  Elsie Howard, Tess Howard, Piper Lummis, Lachlan Foran, Clark Baker, Henry Foran, Molly Adams, Piper van den Ende, Annabelle Foran, Thomas Colwell, Hamish Burrell, Sam Luckie, Madeleine Foran, Hannah Peart, Mary Lesslie, Jack Howard, Sterling Newton, Ryle Walker, Katie Colwell, Rose Howard, Alice Peart, Dusty Jordan, Charlie Cruickshank, Archie O'Connor, Chloe Heffer, Clancy Larkin, Estelle Hazelton, Charlie Howard, Mitch Beaton, Tex Mudford, Darcy Adams, Harper Wykes, George Taylor, Samson Starr, Bella Hammond, Oliver Buckley, Layla Walker, Laycee Hazelton, Jackson Towns, Caitlin Younghusband, Lochie Thomas, Charlie Jones-Copelin, Pearl Mudford, Ryan Faulder.

ICAS WRITING & DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES COMPETITIONS

The ICAS Writing Competition will be held next Monday, 4 August and the ICAS Digital Technologies Competition on Wednesday, 6 August for those children who have entered these competitions.

PRESCHOOL VISIT

We are looking forward to welcoming the children from Gilgandra Preschool next Tuesday, 5 August.  We hope they enjoy their first visit to ‘big school’.    

ST MARY MACKILLOP MASS

Year 4 is preparing a Mass in honour of St Mary MacKillop which will be celebrated in St Joseph’s Church next Thursday, 7 August at 10.30 a.m.  St Mary is a very special saint at our school as she co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph, the order that started our school back in 1909 and we look forward to celebrating this special day together.  Everyone is most welcome and morning tea will follow Mass so please bring a plate to share.

JEANS FOR GENES DAY - Next Thursday, 7 August

Next Thursday, 7 August is Jeans for Genes Day. This is a great opportunity to help raise money to prevent childhood disease.  We are asking all students to wear jeans to school next Thursday and bring along a gold coin donation.  If you don’t own a pair of jeans, just wear a pair of casual pants.  With their jeans, infants students will wear their sports shirt, jumper and joggers, while primary students will wear their normal school shirt, jumper and school shoes.  We look forward to an enjoyable day and raising lots of money for this worthwhile cause.

MATHS CONSULTANT VISIT - YEARS 2 & 5

During Week 4 this term, we have an international consultant, Mr Vince Wright, who specialises in Primary Mathematics, visiting our Years 2 and 5 classes.  Mr Wright is visiting 8 schools in our diocese to identify strengths and areas for potential improvement.

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 3 & 4

MERIT AWARDS

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

KINDER:  Lylah Dickens for settling happily into our St Joey’s Kindergarten class, Laine Anderson for writing a fantastic story about a vulture and Charlotte Melhuish for designing and creating a fantastic model of a star using 10 paddle pop sticks.

YEAR 1: Jordee Burgers for concentrating and working hard on her sounds, Eleanor Foran and Kyro McKenzie for planning and writing a creative narrative of a minor character from “The Wall in the Middle of the Book” and Ellis Starr for using detail and creativity when plotting data onto a graph.

YEAR 2: Clark Baker for reading each morning with lovely fluency, Reggie Dickens for settling into the Joey’s family so well and Lachlan Foran for taking great care with his handwriting.

YEAR 3: Samson Starr for fantastic contributions in our Religion unit, Isabelle Sandry for working hard to identify the pronoun in sentences and Caroline Taylor and Evie Adams for working hard to write similes on the symbolism found in our class novel.

YEAR 4: Hannah Peart and Meenakshi Binu for great use of language in their 'Garrall' free verse poems and Isobel Barry for a clever play on words in her holiday recount.

YEAR 5: Jack Howard  for a fantastic effort to answer inferential questions in full sentences and Alice Peart for wonderful use of numerous strategies to complete mathematical tasks.

YEAR 6: Oscar Medd for his excellent engagement in our ‘Fake News’ Literature unit and Tex Mudford for his excellent achievement and hard work in Mathematics.

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

This week Kinder really enjoyed visiting the Book Fair. A big thank you to Mrs Jeffery who spent many hours organising this wonderful event. In Religion we are learning about Abraham and Sarah from the Old Testament. They are an example to us about how important it is to listen and obey our parents. During Maths we focused on forming equal groups by sharing and counting collections of objects. We used playdough to help us model, count and share. Our spelling focus was the sound ‘Ee’ and we wrote some great stories about eskimos and completed a fun art activity to accompany our writing. In Geography we brainstormed lots of different places we have visited and then chose  some of our favourite places to draw. Remember to keep reading every night and practising your sight words. Have a great weekend! 

Mrs Alison Newstead & Mrs Julia Jeffery                                                                                            

Year 1

Year 1 has had a busy week learning about the ‘ow’ as in cow and ‘ou’ as in cloud phoneme. We used the pink phoneme tree to segment (sound out) and encode (spell) various words that contain these phonemes and others we have learnt this year. This week’s decodable book was “The Tree House”. We read it each day in order to practise blending grapheme–phoneme correspondences to improve our automaticity and prosody. During Literacy we read “Amy & Louis” by Libby Gleeson and “Mr Huff” by Anna Walker. We explored these books to learn about how the reader can draw meaning from a text’s words and illustrations, as well as their own experiences (connotation). We also examined how symbols and images are sometimes used to bring deeper meaning. We used “Mr Huff” as inspiration to write our own story titled “My Bad Morning” where we included three things that would make for a ‘bad’ morning. Some things the students included were falling out of bed, stubbing a toe, spilling breakfast, a dragon burning down your house and even a preying mantis biting your nose! In Maths we continued our work on data. We created a column graph of the house colours we belong to and graphed and interpreted data on our favourite pets. We also rolled two 6 sided dice to find out what number combination total we were most and least likely to roll. We found out that 7 was most likely and 2 and 12 were the least likely. In Geography we learnt about Dreamtime stories and how they illustrate how Aboriginal peoples use their knowledge of the land, water and sky in everyday life. We also learnt that when black wattle is flowering it is time to harvest bush fruit and that when black ants build mounds on their nests it is a sign it is going to rain heavily or storm. Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Haylee Barry

Year 2

What a lovely morning it was at our Liturgy with the theme, ‘Love Like Jesus Did’. You read and sang so beautifully, Year 2. Thank you to our family and friends who were able to join us for the liturgy, we appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to celebrate with us. We always need to remember the Golden Rule; Treat Others How We Want To Be Treated. Thank you to Mrs Jeffery for organising the Book Fair on Tuesday afternoon, we certainly enjoyed our time looking and shopping. How creative were the Gingerbread Disguises?! During Maths we have been learning about rounding to the nearest 100 and telling the time at quarter past and quarter to. We have been looking at the different rivers in Australia and looking at the different ecosystems of the Darling, Murray and Murrumbigee Rivers. Enjoy the weekend!

Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

What a fantastic week we’ve had! In Maths, we continued working through our fractions unit, focusing on placing fractions on a number line. We’re making great progress and will spend a little more time next week to consolidate our learning. In our novel unit, we began our final writing task, a journal entry inspired by “Sonam and the Silence”. Students are writing as if something that means the world to them has been banned in their country, just like music was in Afghanistan. Their entries are full of description and figurative language and we’re so proud of how well they’re writing. In Geography, we explored the concept of sustainability, looking closely at how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples practise sustainability through traditional methods. It was a fascinating lesson and we learnt a lot. Finally, we’re all buzzing with excitement for our first Primary Social tonight! We can’t wait to see everyone in their ‘Spies in Disguise’ costumes and dance the night away. Have a great weekend everyone!

Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 4

During Maths this week we have been revising equivalent fractions and ordering fractions on a number line. We’ve also been using the online fraction matcher to test our skills. We’ve created some eye-catching artworks of a bushfire scene inspired by our novel in Art and we’ve been revising verb tense in Grammar. Our Fam bam poems are complete and the children have done an amazing job trying to include similes in their poems. We have begun preparing for our Mary MacKillop Mass next Thursday and we are all excitedly looking forward to the Primary Social tonight. I look forward to seeing everyone in disguise! Have a great weekend!

Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

This week in Religion we researched and completed a fast facts report on different people who had an impact on the establishment of the early Catholic Church in Australia. We investigated symmetry and rotational symmetry in Maths and focused on adverbs in Grammar. During Science we discussed the different types of forces used to move objects and the forces used even when we stand still. ‘Social Media: Does it Cause more Harm than Good’ is our topic in Writing. As a class, we have shared some fantastic ideas to reflect both the pros and cons of social media use and have begun to write a discussion text. We are all very excited to dress up in disguises for our Primary Social tonight and show off our groovy moves on the dance floor. Have a great weekend.

Mrs Meichelle Schier

Year 6

It has been a busy week in the classroom this week. We have finished our class novel, “Rabbit. Soldier. Angel. Thief” and can report that we all thoroughly enjoyed this historical fiction. In Spelling we have practised some familiar and unfamiliar words with a focus on the ‘e, ea, ei’ sound. We also strengthened our correct use of homophones through sentence writing. During English we have begun writing a persuasive text about homeschooling and its pros and cons, whilst during Maths we have focussed on multiplicative strategies, square, prime and triangular numbers. In Religion we have continued on with our Saint Projects in preparation for Confirmation and have written a letter to the Bishop asking to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation or a Confirmation blessing. We had a very productive day working on our Christmas Art Competition entries - they are looking fabulous!! We enjoyed the Book Fair this week and are very excited for the Primary Social tonight! Good luck to those students who will compete in the Western Region Athletics Carnival in Dubbo next Tuesday. Have a great rest of the week!

Mrs Jess Morrissey & Mrs Donna Colwell

Science News

This week has been very busy for Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 in Science, as we continue to explore different topics in our physical and living worlds. Year 3 is looking at living and non-living things and learning to classify them, just like scientists do at Natural Science Museums. They looked at the different plants, pictures of animals and different types of rocks and began taking notes in their Science journals. Year 4 is looking at contact and non-contact forces and how they can change how different objects interact with each other, like a tyre swing being slowed down because of friction. Year 5 discovered how they can bend water using electrons on a plastic comb. Next week they will be looking forward to investigating how other forces can affect different items like paperclips and our own hair! Year 6 investigated how thermal energy works using a convection and conduction demonstration, making some gladwrap rise out of a very hot cup of water! Keep experimenting!

Miss Alexandra Dan

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