Learning 

Message from Learning & Teaching

Community Project Term 2 – ‘Brick by Brick’

The thread of our term 2 Community Project stems from our learning in our first project ‘With Frog Bog’.  We will use our conceptual knowledge of identity and connection with Footscray to explore how our community has transformed through history.  

• Our Prep Hub will explore the building and transformation of the farm since its design and initial construction.
• Our One Hub will explore the transformation of St John’s Primary School since its establishment nearly one hundred years ago.
• Our Two Hub will explore how our local Footscray community has transformed, heading off to visit Whitten Oval.
• Our Three/Four Hub will explore the story of Australia and the many perspectives within our Australian community, heading into the city to visit the Immigration Museum and Melbourne Museum.
• Our Five/Six Hub will seek to explain how Australia has transformed from a colony to a democratic nation.  They will also be immersed in the Gold Rush and Eureka Stockade and its effects on the community.  This understanding will be coupled with their performance in Wakakirri that will take place in early Term 3.

Wakakirri – Grades 5-6

This week, children in the 5-6 Hub were immersed into their second Community Project through their rehearsals for Wakakirri.  The performance will showcase focus on the Gold Rush and Eureka Stockade and its impact and transformation on our country.  Children will have performance rehearsals every Tuesday with Andy our choreographer.

NAPLAN

Over the coming weeks, the children in Grades 3 and 5 will prepare for the upcoming NAPLAN tests (Reading, Writing, Language conventions and Mathematics). As a whole group, children will be looking at sample questions and exploring strategies that they can draw upon to help them in a testing situation. Educators will also explore the genre of testing with children i.e. how to answer a short answer or multiple choice question.

Message from our Wellbeing Leader Cristina Van

Hello,

My name is Cristina Van and I am the Wellbeing Leader at St. John’s Primary School. I am 11 years old and live with my parents. Outside of school I like to play T-ball, play piano, go for walks and chat with my friends online. 

I really wanted to be a Wellbeing Leader to help children at St. John’s and to get leadership skills and experience. To me Wellbeing is being happy and feeling welcome and safe. 

My dream for this role is to help all students at St. John’s feel that they can be themselves and love coming to school. I hope to do this by providing opportunities, like activities on the yard, to bring kids together and make them happy. I also want to be a great role model and to support new leaders.

As a Wellbeing Leader I have been setting up a water play so that the kids in our St. John's community can come together, make new friends & play. This involves filling up the water in the morning and then cleaning it after lunch for the next day. As the weather cools down we are looking into ways to change this area. We've also been looking into getting new games and equipment for the yard. Isabella Ortiz, in Grade 5, has been helping me do all of these things.

I look forward to telling you more about what we are doing.

From,

Cristina Van

Message from Faith

We gathered as a school community today to celebrate Easter, our theme was 'We joyfully celebrate because Jesus is risen!'. Thank you to the families who were able to join us. Our Mass was led by Father Rene, along with some of our fantastic student leaders and our awesome Year 2 Hub. We're also looking forward to our visit to the temple later this term. A letter will be sent home closer to the time with further details. 

We will continue to celebrate our Prayer Gatherings outside (weather permitting!) so if the ground is dry you are very welcome to come and join us. (If it's wet/very cold we will celebrate indoors, unfortunately we cannot yet have families join us indoors due to COVID restrictions on space, fingers crossed this soon changes!). 

The Sacrament of Confirmation will be celebrated by some of our Year Six children this term. We will have an online Family Faith Evening in the lead up to Confirmation, as well as a reflection morning for the 5/6 children. A letter was sent home to families last term, further details will be sent in the coming weeks. 

As a whole school we are currently focused on Sacred Story, we are exploring stories from the Bible and special stories in our families that have particular meaning for us. If your family has a special story from your faith that you would like to share with us we'd love to hear from you! 

Aoife Mc Carthy

Faith Leader 

Social Justice Project

Hello families,

As the weather gets cooler we will begin to collect warm clothes such as beanies, socks, gloves and scarves to donate to people in need in our local community. Our team will send out more information about this project after we have researched what items are needed most. 

Thank you,

Kelly, Adler, Paulino and Jordan

Social Justice Leaders

Sustainability

How does Our Garden Grow 

An insight of what we’ve been doing at the farm.

Dear families, 

Here is our next farm update about what’s happening at the farm. We’ve continued caring for the plants and vegetables by watering, tending and planting new fruit. We’ve recently planted some kale, beetroot and chives. Our worm farm is brimming with worms and other bugs that will most definitely help our garden stay healthy, we have been able to water the worm wee into the garden beds by diluting it in the watering cans!

The sustainability leaders, Chloe and Leni are planning to make some improvements to the chicken coop to guarantee they are happy and cleaning their area and caring for them will be easier and more efficient. One idea is that instead of hay in the nesting area we will place sand so that it is easier to clean. Another is that we help craft a chicken swing for the chickens to play on.

From Leni, Kelly and Anh Van

Side Note:

Over the holidays Andrew and I came in to give the Chicken Coop a really good clean out in preparation for introducing our new chickens. Many thanks to Kat, Joel and Lucas for all their help on the day. Andrew took Boomerang and Roast to his place for a bit of a vacation and we’re in the process of sourcing our new pullets. Hopefully our coop will be full again by the start of Week 3. 

Many thanks to those families who came and fed our worms, added to the compost, watered the plants and harvested the produce over the holidays. 

Just a friendly reminder that during term time eggs are left in the nesting box for classes to collect (we use these for cooking) and produce is also left for classes to harvest. 

Many thanks 

Haley 

Update on Boomerang and Roast

Boomerang and Roast have started their autumn mault which means they will stop laying as they drop a lot of their old feathers and start growing beautiful new feathers. To help them during this stage it's important to add as much protein as possible to their diet, including sunflower seeds, oats, bugs and worms which they have been getting plenty of at my farm. 

I have just cleared one of my vege beds and they dived straight in for a bath and a feed on some juicy worms.

Andrew