Dear Parents,

I would like to congratulate our Year 6 students on receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation last week at Westernport Parish. It was such a beautiful service with the heartfelt message from Father Shymon to reach out and make a difference to the lives of people by being kind and generous. By using the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit we can live spirit filled lives and have a positive impact on others.

Congratulations to Gus, Harlow, Jo Hanna, Bonnie, Drew, Ayden and Indi.

Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) have introduced two exciting approaches to learning over the past year, Vision for Instruction and Vision for Engagement.

Vision for Instruction aims for excellence and equity in education for all children with explicit teaching at the core of all learning. Examples of initiatives using an explicit teaching approach we are currently using are Initialit, Maths fluency bricks, OCHRE Literacy, Maths lessons and history lessons.

Our results are going from strength to strength with our Year 3 NAPLAN exceeding the state mean in every area and our PAT testing across the school has shown excellent growth.

We also celebrate staff who have contributed to the writing of the explict teaching resources. Our amazing deputy Sue was involved in writing the Maths OCHRE resources and we congratulate Ebony Jenkins who has been chosen to assist with the writing of the Science resources.

Recently , MACS introduced the Vision for Engagement component of the learning approach.

The six areas of Vision for Engagement are fostering belonging, teaching respectful behaviour, focussing on attendance, promoting mental health, enabling motivation and targeting individual needs.

Last week I witnessed some incredible examples of Vision for Engagement in our school.

Our Year 4, 5, and 6 students performed at Frankston Cultural Centre last week in the Wakakirri story dance. Wakakirri was just a WOW factor with all of our kids shining and flourishing both on stage and off.

A huge thanks to Jess Scudamore and Tazmyn Hose for their brilliant leadership and all staff involved on a wonderful team supporting our kids. Special shout out to staff who helped with costumes. Our wonderful students won the public speaking award and the team award and I was so proud of each and every student in our years 4, 5 and 6 who performed on the night.

Last Thursday our students from years 3,4,5, and 6 participated in the Parish sports. This was a brilliant day and and I would like to thank Our Phys Ed and Sports leader Emily Reed for her excellent organisation. Like Wakakirri the sports really allow kids to shine in their individual strengths.

Our 3/4 learning community celebrated Science Week engaging with scientists and rangers at Woolleys Beach. Dr Rebecca Morris & Brandon Lanham from Melbourne University visited our students at Woolleys beach to help us with the St Joseph's Shell Reef.

Science week celebrations continued with Café on Friday where students learnt about reversible and irreversible changes.

The Hastings Rotary Club visited our Café on Friday. Following Café we celebrated with a wonderful ceremony as we blessed and opened the new Peace Pole situated near our Buddy seat. To mark the Centenary of Rotary in Australia, the Rotary Club of Canberra Burley Griffin, ACT, set a goal to see 100 Peace Poles donated to 100 Schools to recognize 100 years of Rotary service in Australia in 2021. This goal has been achieved through collaboration with schools, organizations and Rotary clubs around Australia and today there are over 600 Rotary Peace Poles with them in every state and territory. St Joseph’s peace pole was the 490th peace pole.

We thank Rotary for their continued support of our school.

Our 2026 Joeys attended their first session which was a great afternoon engaging our newest little people and I thank our wonderful Prep team for their excellent work.

What a great week we had at St Joseph’s with many examples of our Vision for engagement in action.

We look forward to a great week of celebrating Book week and invite all of our parents to the Book Day parade this Friday at 8.45 am.

Yours in Partnership,

Gab

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