Around The Primary

Dear Families

Wow, we had a wonderful turn out for our Fathers’ Day celebrations.

A sincere thank you to all our Dads, Grandfathers, and special father figures for making the time to come to our early morning Mass. 

There is really nothing better than having you all in our school at the one time! Looking out over a sea of happy faces in the gym, enjoying each other’s company is simply magical!

The Liturgy was such a special experience and a wonderful opportunity for families to be together, to hear the Word, to pray together and to call to mind our own needs and the needs of our friends, families, and community. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank Fr Sean for celebrating Mass with us. 

The students were fully engaged, respectful and they made excellent contributions. Parents, you can feel very proud of your beautiful children!

Parents – keep on giving the very best of yourselves to your delightful children – time, honesty, kindness, humour, goodness, wisdom, and faith. 

A big thank you to our most wonderful staff, who once again went ‘above and beyond’ to be able to provide this special opportunity for our community.

We wish all our families a very happy and relaxing day on Sunday!

Kind regards

Antoinette De Pinto

Head of Primary 

We hope you enjoy the highlights from the recent Year 4 Musical ‘Little Shop of Horace’.  Congratulations to everyone involved. 

2024 Class Placements

Each new school year brings the excitement and change of classes, teachers and classmates.  It is normal for children to have some apprehension about this.  It is also inevitable that changes to friendship groups occur as children move through the grades.  Meeting new and different people is a part of life and it is our role as parents and educators to support children through change rather than protect them from it.

I ask all parents to trust that the class your child is going into next year is one in which they will thrive.  It is important to note that parental requests can only be met in exceptional circumstances and requesting a particular teacher or placement with a best friend does not constitute an exceptional circumstance.

If there is an exceptional circumstance that the College needs to be aware of, this needs to be sent directly to antoinette.depinto@cewa.edu.au by Friday 22 September (last day of Term 3). No late requests will be considered.

While written parent requests to the Head of Primary for a child to be in a particular class are considered, parents need to understand that this request may not always result in the desired outcome.

Early notification of class lists will not be provided.  Parents can feel confident that their children will always be in good hands and receive an excellent education at John XXIII College. 

Dates to Remember

Please check the College Website to note all the important Primary school events for your family calendar http://www.johnxxiii.edu.au/view/for-parents/calendars and subscribe to the Primary Calendar.

Languages Celebration 

This week we have been celebrating ‘Languages Week’.  Upper Primary students have discussed the many benefits of learning another language, such as, enriching our travel experiences; broadening career options; confidence and pride to be able to speak in more than one language. Most importantly, learning another language helps us to be better world citizens by being more understanding and empathetic of other cultures. 

We are so lucky at John XXIII College to have the opportunity to start our language learning journey from Pre-Primary.

Rowson sensei

Shipwrecked!

On Thursday, the Year Five students journeyed south to Fremantle to the Western Australia Shipwrecks Museum. During the day, students relived the experience of the Swan River Colony's first European settlers and learnt about the challenges that new colonial arrivals faced, during and after their journey to the Swan River. 

Working in groups, students explored the WA Shipwrecks Museum and the area around Bathers Beach (called Manjaree by the Whadjuk Nyoongar people), the approximate site of the first mainland arrival of English colonial settlers.  It was an excursion filled with new knowledge and lifelong memories.

Teresa Fontaine & Madison Levy

Year 5 Teachers

Library News

Book Week Guest

Amazing visual storyteller and comic maker, Aśka, visited our library this week to teach the students about visual literacy. She showed how comics have a language and how to use simple pictures to make a narrative. 

The students were inspired by Aśka’s passion for drawing comics and enjoyed having a go at creating their own. Over the three days Aśka spent at our school, the library was buzzing with students and staff who were interested in finding out more about comics and the power of images. 

Book Face Competition

Thank you for all the clever and creative entries to the Book Face Competition, your photos have been a very popular attraction in the library over the past three weeks! The library staff and our special guest, Aśka, judged the entries – congratulations to the following students:

Amelia Moloney 5G, Annabelle McGregor 4G, Vida Wallace 1G and Archie Lemmon KGB.

Sasha Cattapan

Primary Library Teacher 

Music Update

Choir Rehearsals 

Choir rehearsals for next week are as follows:

Primary Choir Performances

Parents and grandparents are invited to a special performance on Thursday 7 September in the Osborne Room where Primary Singers and Wanju Voices will perform their pieces from the Catholic Performing Arts Festival at the following times:

8:20am – Primary Singers

8:30am – Wanju Voices

Student Achievement

Congratulations to the Year Two and Three students in Primary Singers who received a Certificate of Excellence, and the Year Four, Five and Six students in Wanju Voices who received an ‘Outstanding’ award from the Catholic Performing Arts Festival.

If you have any queries regarding Primary Music, please contact me via email: catherine.haydon@cewa.edu.au

Catherine Haydon

Primary Music Teacher

Sport Update

We have just week to go for the Interhouse Athletics Carnival and the excitement is building!  Several ‘pre’ carnival events have been completed and final practices are taking place.  Tuesday is the last session of athletics training and last opportunity for students to fine tune jumps, javelin and sprinting!  

It will be wonderful to see lots of parents, grandparents and friends joining us at the Carnival to support our superstars!

Calling all girls!

Following the enormous success of the Matildas, there has been a lot of enquiries about a girls’ soccer group.  Coach Adi and his team at J&J soccer are delighted to extended an invitation to add a girls soccer group in their Tuesday sessions.  Please get in touch with Adi if your daughter is interested.

Afterschool sport returns for Term 4:

• Tuesdays J&J soccer sessions - Year 1-6, Junior Primary Oval, 3:30pm to 4:20pm commencing in week 2.  Booking and payment required. Email Coach Adi at juricadi@hotmail.com
• Thursdays Basketball with Redhage Basketball - Year 2-6, St Louis Sports Centre, 3:20pm to 4:20pm commencing in week 2.  Bookings and payments required.  Enrol at www.redhagebasketball.com

If you have any queries about anything sport-related, please contact me via email: steve.williams@cewa.edu.au 

Steve Williams

Primary Sport Coordinator