Dear Parents,

Welcome to our new newsletter format for 2022! Our move to an online platform for our newsletter will enable greater input to our newsletter for our students and staff, and hopefully an easy to navigate platform for our families.

Our start to the year has been a smooth one with our students settling into their new classes beautifully and with a great sense of comfort and familiarity. In saying that our thoughts and well-wishes are with our families who have had to isolate over the last week and into this week. We have had a few covid cases across the school community, which have been managed in a calm and sensible manner.

CHINESE CULTURAL DAY

I would like to send out a huge thank you to Tess Parton for organising our Chinese Cultural Day yesterday. The day was a very successful and the children enjoyed all of the cultural activities - especially the Chinese Dragon Dance workshop. Well done Tess!!

More photos of the day have been uploaded onto our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/sjnorthcote

STUDENT LEADERSHIP

Last week each class went through the process of election for their Student Representative Council (SRC) member. Each class from grade prep to grade 4 elects one representative per class, and our senior classes elect a grade 5 and a grade 6 representative. Together with myself and Fiona, the senior SRCs will chair SRC meetings and coordinate the activities and initiatives throughout the year.

We have also started the process of electing our House Captains. These roles are open for all of our grade six students to apply for.

We wish all of our students who have nominated for a Student Leadership role the very best of luck. Positions will be announced ...

STAFF 2022

I would like to welcome back our wonderful Staff to another school year. The full staff list is available on the link below.

CURRICULUM EVENING - SAVE THE DATE!

Please note in your diaries our Parent Information Session to be held on Tuesday February 22 at 7.00pm. This will be an opportunity for teachers to share information with parents/carers and the Learning and Teaching team will provide valuable information about the St Joseph’s Learner Qualities.

COVID SAFE PRACTICES UPDATE

Can I please remind all parents to email me directly if they have a positive case in their immediate family as soon as possible. This enables me to follow the prescribed actions by the health department which in turn keeps our community as safe as possible during these uncertain times. I will email all families daily with updates of covid numbers across the school, which fortunately have been very low to date. For confidentiality reasons, I will only name year levels that have new active cases and not specific classes. Please monitor your children for symptoms and use the provided Rapid Antigen Tests when needed, to ensure the safety of our community.

Information around masks, QR codes, ventilation and other covid related issues were addressed in the communication sent home last week. If you require any further clarification or have any questions please don't hesitate to contact the office or Fiona (fehmer@sjnorthcote.catholic.edu.au) or myself (principal@sjnorthcote.catholic.edu.au).

CLASSROOM CUISINE

Lunches can be ordered online from ‘Classroom Cuisine’ and are available on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Orders can be placed via https://classroomcuisine.com.au.

Lunch orders are delivered to the school in cooler boxes and orders can be placed until 8am each day.

EXTRA-CURRICULA PROGRAMS

Music Programs

Music lessons with Mad on Music will commence next Friday. Enrolment forms are available from the office. If you are interested in after school music lessons with Creative Music please contact the office.

Chess Club

Chess Club in once again available to all students. Because of covid restirictions, sessions are held online on a Wednesdays at 5:30pm. See below for more details or contact the school office.

St Vinnies Reading Club

St Vincent de Paul Education Program offer a reading club at St Joseph's every Wednesday afternoon from 3:15 - 4:30pm

The Reading Club is open to students in Grades 2 to 6. This is not homework, tutoring or remedial English class but simply an opportunity for children to enjoy books and experience the benefits of reading. The aim of the Program is to help young children: *enjoy reading

*read with greater clarity and understanding

*share books

*gain confidence in approaching and understanding a variety of texts

The students will be supported by St Vincent de Paul volunteers together with students from Santa Maria College, Northcote.

Please click on the link below for an enrolment form or contact the office if you would like information

Tennis Lessons

Happy New Year from Todd's Tennis Coaching at St Josephs parish tennis courts to all families at St Josephs School. Tennis lessons are recommencing and spots are available for our existing and new students. Please contact Matthew Todd on 0414 628 633 or mc.todd@hotmail.com if you have any enquiries. There are also full length tennis notes with Carmel at the school office.

Kelly Sports

Kelly Sports offer Dance Club at lunchtimes on a Monday and after-school sports activities on a Thursday (3:15pm - 4:30pm).

Please let Carmel know if you are interested in registering for either program.

COFFEE MORNINGS

Next week, after school drop-off (8:50am), we will be holding a ‘Coffee Morning’ for the parents in each level. This is a chance for parents to meet and get to know each other. We will have a member of the School Advisory Council (SAC) at each of these mornings to chat about the SAC and parent involvement in the school in general.

Dates are as follows:

Thursday Feb 10 - Seniors

Friday Feb 11 - Juniors

Monday Feb 14 - Middles

Tuesday Feb 15 - Preps

HOURS OF SUPERVISION

The school yard is supervised before school from 8:30am and after school until 3:30pm. If your child is dropped-off outside these times they will be unsupervised until the teacher commences yard duty. EXTEND out of school hours programme is offered to all families outside of these hours. Before school care is available from 7am-8:30am and after school care is available from 3:15pm-6:00pm

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