Dear Parents,

A warm welcome back to Term 3, 2025. It is hard to believe we are in the second semester of the year but I suppose taking a term off for long service leave makes the year seem like it is going along a lot faster than usual.

A huge thanks to my amazing team for all they did in Term 2 whilst I was on long service leave. It just shows the strength of this magnificent team who faced so much adversity throughout the term and just kept on with ensuring every student in our school continues to shine and flourish. A special shout out to Trish Brennan and Kate Huon on their excellent leadership.

I look forward to a great night at our Trivia night this Saturday, tickets still available.

I had a wonderful trip around WA, NT and SA. What a magnificent country we live in! The many different landscapes of contrasting rock, desert, farmland and the many gorges, reefs and water holes just highlight the diverse, rich and rugged country we call home.

I look forward to reconnecting with all of our community and all of the Term 3 events emerging such as Wakakirri, Book week, Athletics, STEM day and many more.

This week we celebrate Naidoc week for 2025. The theme for NAIDOC Week 2025 is "The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy". This theme celebrates the achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and looks towards the future by recognizing the strength of young leaders, the vision of communities, and the legacy of ancestors. We happened to be at Uluru for Naidoc celebrations and saw first hand the vision and opportunities being given to our younger generation.

Our Catholic Social Teachings of being stewards of this great earth is at the heart of the way the longest living community cared for our country over the past 60, 000 years. Let us always have these amazing people at the forefront of our school striving for reconciliation and care for all.

We look forward to a wonderful term of learning at St. Joseph’s where we aim to ensure every child is reaching their full potential both academically and in their areas of strength.

Our focus on ensuring every child achieves excellent growth in literacy and numeracy continues this term.

Student growth across the school in the first Semester was excellent across many areas. Thank you for attending the student conferences where a comprehensive slide show was shared on every student.

At St Joseph’s we have a response to intervention multi tiered approach.

Tier 1- St Joseph’s has a high standard of learning and teaching where every child’s learning is differentiated to their current needs across all domains.

Tier 2- St Joseph’s has significant and targeted intervention and extension programs across all year levels.

Tier 3 - St Joseph’s works closely with health professionals and consultants to ensure every student is being assisted in their area of need or vulnerability.

We are here to work in partnership with you to ensure you child reaches their full potential academically, spiritually, physically, mentally and socially and emotionally.

We ask all parents to ensure you are working with your child at home completing math fluency tasks and vocabulary work each week. We also ask that you find time to sit with your child and read each night. Parents that sit and discuss the reading content making connections between text and life and ensuring comprehension through discussion and questioning will enhance their child’s literacy skills expediently. By sharing the story together you can enhance word knowledge, oral language skills and general knowledge.

If you are unable to read daily with your child we are here to support you.

Please make sure if your child is away you ring the absentee line on 59839374 every morning your child is absent by 9am. Attendance at school on a regular basis is so important and will impact on your child’s growth and we urge you to ensure unless your child is ill they attend school every day.

Our inquiry theme for Term 3 is Curiosity where we incite a love of learning, a desire and passion to learn new things through a lens of discovery, exploration and being inquisitive in all that we do.

Our Year 6 students are preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation over the next few weeks and we wish all of our Confirmation candidates all the best and we hope you are all filled with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit as you shine in your daily lives.

Congratulations to Dom Taylor and all staff involved in the kinder mentor program that we engaged in last term. It is such a privilege to connect with our local day cares and kinders.

Enrolments are open for 2026 and we look forward to commencing Joey’s club in a few weeks.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, concerns or ideas as we strive to ensure St Joseph’s is the place of first choice for excellence for all of our community.

Yours in Partnership,

Gab Espenschied

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