Week 3, Term 2

Dear parents and carers,

It has been an incredibly busy week at St Joseph's, with multiple excursions and incursions occurring for all students. Notably, our Year 6s have had such a full week, starting with an excursion to the Immigration Museum on Monday, competing in Cross Country on Wednesday and commencing round one of the Interschool Sports program on Friday - all in addition to a full and enriching academic program. Despite the busy nature of this week, we commend the students and staff for remaining calm and focused, embracing all before them. Perhaps this has been a good insight (rehearsal) for the years to follow at secondary school.

Congratulations to our amazing Parents and Friends for the Studio 54 parent event! Our parent community is an integral part of who we are, and we feel privilaged to be a part of something so special. Thank you to the following people who helped to make the night so fantastic:

Ben Gibbs and Jen Conway - P&F Chair and Vice

Sarah Gonsalves - signs and design

Anita Simons - coordinating the raffle

Rachel Noctor - helping get auction items/raffle prizes

Emma Evans, MJ Daffy, Tanya Etherington, Nina Little - decorations and set up

Office staff - Kerry, Moira, Fiona

Donations - Fiona Lowe, Dani S, Steph H, Anna Skelton, Julia Wilson, Emma Evans, Sara Cavanagh, Kathy Swan, Ben G, Eva

Year 4 Anzac Assembly

Thank you to our wonderful Year 4 students for their reverent ANZAC Day liturgy last Friday. Our students sat so still and were so respectful, as the Year 4 students shared prayers and the history of ANZAC Day. Well done to our Year 4s, and Miss Wilkinson and Miss Lynn, on leading a wonderful tribute.

Staff News

Congratulations go to Cassie Gleeson (Mrs Gleeson) and her husband Will, on the safe arrival of baby girl Lucy May Gleeson! Mum and bub are doing well and are now settled at home.

Year 2N Assembly

Our gorgeous Year 2N class presented at assembly today, recounting their excursion to Ricketts Point and sharing interesting facts they learnt. Congratulations, 2N, you did an excellent job!

For more information about their excursion, please see the Junior School News page.

Year 3 Reconciliation Night

Thank you to Father Elio Capra for facilitating the Year 3 Family Faith Night for the upcoming Sacrament of Reconciliation. The Parish have confirmed that the Sacrament will be celebrated on Friday 14th June at 2.15pm in the Church. We send our sincere thanks to Miss Dillon, Mrs Pepper and Miss Matthews, who have done a wonderful job to prepare the students thus far.

Years 3-6 Cross Country

Congratulations to our successful Interschool Cross Country Team for placing 1st in the HOLT Division! All students in Years 3 - 6 who wanted to participate were able to, and our 176 students had a wonderful day, demonstrating exceptional team spirit and good manners.

Hearing the stories of success made our day - whether it be someone running their best time, friends running together and enjoying themselves, students being proud that they even pulled on their runners and gave it a shot. When our students look back on their time at St Joseph's, these are the primary school experiences that they will cherish.

Once again, we thank our dedicated staff for supporting the students on the day, Miss Dillon, Miss Matthews, Mrs Pepper, Miss Dusting, Miss Shanahan, Miss Coldebella and Mr Gately.

We must also acknowledge the students' commitment to their 8am Wednesday training runs. Meeting every week at Harleston Park, our students faithfully ran laps iBunnings come to St Joseph's to support our gardening program. We sincerly thank Mrs Doran fon preparation for the big day. We thank Mr Hartney, Mr Cody and Miss Dusting for developing this wonderful initiative. All 3 teachers ran laps with the students every week - now that is impressive!

Building Project Update

Everything continues to travel smoothly with our building project. Work has continued on in Year 4C, the foyer and finishing off some cabinetry in the atrium.

I am delighted with the finishing touches in the atrium - our AV will be housed in a sleek new cupboard and the chairs will also have their own storage cupboards at the back!

Last week, the builders displayed incredible strength when getting the steel beams upstairs into Year 4C. (NB: These photos were taken from an appropriately safe distance.)

Work on the multi-purpose room has been pushed back to May 13th, to align better with delivery timelines. This change of date will not impact the overall completion date of the project.

Year 6 Da Vinci Decathalon

On Tuesday, 8 Year 6 students headed off to Korowa Girls School to compete in the Da Vinci Decathalon. The Da Vinci Decathlon is an academic competition designed to challenge and stimulate the minds of school students. Students compete in teams of eight across 10 disciplines: engineering, mathematics, code breaking, art and poetry, science, English, ideation, creative producers, cartography and legacy.

We congratulate Olivia, Seri, Cara, Jasmine, Jade, Xavier, Flossie and Harrison for their commitment to this program, and to Mr Hartney for enabling our students to attend. Our senior students are so incredibly fortunate to be able to participate in experiences such as these.

Mother's Day

It has been a busy few weeks as we prepared for the Mother's Day stall that was held today. Mrs Doran and our Environment Leaders have been busily harvesting our rhubarb to make jam, that was thoughtfully packaged and sold as a gift.

Some of our Year 6 Leaders spent time wrapping the jam jars for sale. These incredible students will also be at school early next Friday to support the successful running of the Mother's Day breakfast.

We thank our Year 5 parent helpers who were able to work on the stall today and also prepare for the breakfast that will be held next week. The Mother's Day Breakfast will be held on Friday May 10th from 7.45am. Breakfast will be held outside under the shade cloth (BYO coat, gas heaters will be on). Our Year 3 students have prepared a special assembly, which will be presented inside at 9am. We hope to see lots of our beautiful Mums and special friends at school, so we can celebrate you and all that you do.

Katalyst Foundation

On Thursday we donated several readers and furniture items to the Katalyst Foundation - Katalyst supports many disadvantaged schools located in the Western region of Vanua Levu, Fiji. The Katalyst Student Essentials Program provides educational supplies to these schools, and St Joseph's is proud to be an active supporter of this program.

We recieved the below email from Liz, the General Manager of Katalyst:

Thank-you! Our deepest appreciation to you and your team for today’s donation of much needed books for our children and teachers in Fiji. We really can’t thank-you enough for your ongoing support of our work, we very much appreciate you and the school community at St. Joseph’s. Looking forward to picking the much needed school furniture donations very soon.

Winter Uniform

School beanies have arrived at St Joseph's! These beanies are now for sale in the office ($15) and can be worn to and from school, as well as during break times outside when it is cold. Don't our little Prep models look lovely!

A gentle reminder - all students need to be in their full winter uniform as of now. A full list of uniform requirements can be found on our school website. FYI - the navy shorts are part of the winter uniform, as we know these are preferred by many of our students.

Little Gems

Allegra (Year 4) proudly wore her Grandfather's medals during the Anzac Day Liturgy.

The Year 1 basketball team 'The Joeys Giants Sundaes' had their first win last Friday! After losing all games in first term they finally scored themselves a win. Congratulations, Sundaes!

Jack (Year 3) was so excited to show Mr Hartney his signed North Melbourne jumper. We have ourselves two very dedicated Roos supporters!

Year 3 spent time gardening with Bunnings earlier this week. As part of their community program, staff from Bunnings come to St Joseph's to support our gardening program. We sincerly thank Mrs Doran for working with Bunnings on this fantastic initiative.

Hermoine the Hedgehog is back! After visiting families in Prep C (2017), she is out and about with the Year 5s. The students have loved having her back and have been comparing her adventures from when she was with them in Prep to now.

Signora Butera was so happy with the work Jack and Alex (Year 1) have been doing in Italian. The smile says it all!

Monte and Mason (Year 2) proudly showed off their writing to Mrs Harrison and I. We were so impressed with their paragraphing skills, something that the students in Year 3 are expected to be able to do. Well done, Monte and Mason!

The Year 6 Parliamentary Committee met with Mrs Harrison and I, to present their report on our Student Acceptable Behaviours Policy. As part of their Term One Topic, Civics and Citizenship, the students worked to unpack the policy with the SRC and presented us with a table of recommendations. We are so impressed with the work our amazing Year 6s are doing - congratulations to these exceptional students!

Ava and Neave (Year 6) prepared a report from Interschool Soccer and, today, they spoke during assembly about what an incredible experience they had and the skills they gained from being a part of the soccer competition. Excellent leadership, Ava and Neave!

Thank you for yet another amazing fortnight at St Joseph's. As always, there is so much to celebrate at our wonderful school.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday May 10th to celebrate Mother's Day.

Claire Tobin

Principal

OSH Club