A Great Start!

Welcome to our first newsletter of 2022 and to what will be a wonderful year of learning, friendship and fun for our students. Although we are only five days into the school year, the children have settled exceptionally well as have our staff and new families.

I must acknowledge our students and staff for the fantastic start to the school year; Mr Earl and I were astounded at the settled and calm classrooms after just one hour at school. This bodes well for a year of fun and learning for all of our students and we can’t underestimate the positive impact on learning that a calm and orderly environment brings. We cannot wait until we are able to invite parents into the classrooms and for you to finally see the wonderful job the teachers have done in setting up their rooms.

There is a sense of positivity around our school and we could not be happier at how the year has started. We welcome the following students to the St Joseph’s family:

Abigail, Archie, Ari, Bennett, Christopher, Clements, Eliana, Elise, Georgio, Harry, Harvey, James, Liam, Lucas, Lucy, Mary, Oliver, Sebastian, Shreyan, Will, Coco, Alice, Ava, Archer, Zoe, Tom, James, Aldrich and Alex.

We wish our new students and their families many happy years in our community and I sincerely thank all of our ‘old’ families for the warm welcome shown to the newest members of our school.

Assemblies to start and end the week

Thankfully, the sun shone on both days as we began our new school year as a community, joining together to pray for the year ahead. Congratulations to Gaby, Noah and all of our Year 6s for competently stepping into the leadership roles this year. We are so impressed with their maturity and sense of responsibility towards the younger students. We’re in good hands!

Thank you to those parents who were able to join us, let’s hope it won’t be long before we can join together in the hall.

Thank You To…

Our Parishioners from St Joseph’s Church for cleaning up the secret garden and pruning the overgrown plants, ready for the students to return. Thanks to Mrs O’Dwyer for strengthening this bond with our parishioners by working together on sustainability causes and positive action. We are very grateful to the parishioners for being so generous with their time and gardening expertise.

Shahan Priamo for dropping off the beautiful little prep parent pack and the welcome to St Joseph’s pack for all new students, it’s these ‘little’ things that help to make our new families feel at home. Shahan is an ex parent of St Joseph’s who runs the Children’s Liturgy at our church and we are thankful she is still part of our school community.

To all the families who contributed to the Malvern Emergency Food program and to Mrs O for the genius idea and organisation of the ‘canned film festival’. I received the following words of thanks from the MEFP:

To all the families who contributed to the Christmas Giving Tree. I received a lovely letter for Julie King, conference president of St Vincent de Paul, thanking the St Joseph’s families for making a difference to many families at Christmas time.

To the Kopp, Beedell and Breeze families for donating the accessories for our eco-village. What started out as a pristine and quite sterile space on Monday has become a hive of activity, with all sorts of things being made out of mud, water, leaves and seeds- that’s exactly what we had hoped for! (Sorry about the uniforms!)

Term Dates 2022

Term 1	Monday 31 January– Friday 8 April
Term 2	Tuesday 26 April – Friday 24 June
Term 3	Monday 11 July – Friday 16 September
Term 4	Monday 3 October – Friday 16 December

School closures:

9th and 10th of June: staff conference
31st October: report writing day for staff
28th November: data analysis, student handovers and 2023 planning

Extra-Curricular Programs

Our chess lessons will begin on Monday 21st February. Please see the following flyer for enrolment details.

Tennis lessons will begin soon and information on how to register is here:

All-Stars martial arts are up and running each Thursday morning before school. See flyer for details:

In the news, the spotlight on on St Joseph’s, by Smiling Mind

https://blog.smilingmind.com.au/spotlight-on-st-josephs-primary-school

Weekly Classroom Bulletins

Look out for the Friday Dojo bulletin from the classroom teachers, with information and updates for the following week's events. This will be published each Friday so please make sure you have connected with your child’s Dojo page. Thank you to the teachers for taking the time to keep our families up to date with school events.

Student Absences- A Reminder:

Just a reminder that if your child is absent from school we ask you to call the office on 9597 6300 as soon as is possible to advise us of the absence; email/ Dojo message should not be used to communicate an absence. Our office admin team will call parents by 9.45 am if there is an unexplained absence. Apologies for a glitch in the system this week.

Parent/ Teacher Information Sharing Session- Online: Tuesday 15th and Thursday 17th February.

(both sessions 3.45pm-6pm)

You are warmly invited to meet your child’s classroom teacher in an online information sharing session. Our teachers will give you some insight into how your child is settling into the school year, and most importantly, you can share information about your child.

Our teachers would like to find out more about your child, so it’s a good idea to think about the information you want to share with the teacher. For example, you might want to talk about your child’s strengths or interests, or areas of learning where your child might need more support.

The link to book your meeting is https://www.schoolinterviews.com.au/code/49j7a

Your classroom teacher will share the google meet link with you prior to the meeting.

Classroom Term News

Our teachers will send home an outline of the term on Monday and they will also post this to the dojo on Tuesday. This outline will tell you about the routines and expectations at St Joseph’s and also some details about the curriculum content for the term.

That Friday Feeling…

It was an absolute joy to end out the week with the sun shining and our children having fun…

Wishing you all a restful and relaxing weekend ahead. Thanks to all of you for your contributions this week and a HUGE well done to our staff and students. I could not be happier with our St Joseph's team.

Take care,

Michelle

A Great Start to Year 5

Ms O'Dwyer