Principal's News 

Week 5 Round-Up...

Dear families,

It has been a far more settled week, without any new rules and restrictions coming into play during the past five days. School has been quiet with an average of 3 children in attendance each day, which means we now have all supervision in the prep area and we have completely closed the main building. We continue to have the midday two hour clean to ensure we are compliant with our Covid Safe plan, which is now located on our website under ‘policies’. School is certainly a very strange place without students and we cannot wait until we are all able to be together in real life.

Cause for Celebration

As we complete the first full week under the current restrictions, I decided to do a bit of maths and analyse all of the ‘meets’ (whole class, small group and individual) in what will be a ‘typical’ week during Stage 4.

The stats are very impressive although I do know that some technical problems have gotten in the way from time to time:

Prep to 6 Classroom Teacher Stats: whole class sessions: 70; small group sessions: 47; individual sessions 66; and ad hoc session when needed (approx 25 this week alone)

Support Staff stats: (Amanda Jackson, Faye Forbes, LSOs- Nancy, Julie, Vink, Briely, Rachael) 67 small group and individual sessions.

That’s a grand total of 183 meetings for classroom teachers and 67 for support staff- an exact number of 250 (not including the ad hoc/ when needed sessions)! In one week! 

To ensure that these meetings give value to our students, it certainly takes a lot of support from our parent community- a true partnership if ever there was one! Thank you to our amazing staff and parents and well done to our students who are really trying their very best.

Let’s Pivot!

Yes, the dreaded ‘Pivot’ word that we are all so used to in 2020.

During the last couple of weeks, we have looked at our ‘non-negotiable’ events through a ‘remote’ lens and tried to think creatively about how we can still provide these all-important occasions for our community. Below are a few examples of our plans and the things we have put in place to keep our community, and importantly our students, connected:

Whole School Disco

Clear your calendar on Friday 21st August @1pm with Dj Sam I Am.

Dig out your best disco outfit and dance like no one is watching (they won't be). This is our first whole-school fun event and should provide a bit of a giggle to end out the week!

Parent/ Staff Quiz Night

Give your brain a workout, form a team with fellow parents or have Polly and James organise your team....and join in the fun. A quiz night with a difference provided to our community by Funky Bunch Trivia.

Save the date: Saturday 29th August @7.30pm.

Thanks to Polly and James for the organisation of the event and more details will come your way next week. If you'd like to find out a bit more as to how an online quiz works, here's a snippet from the Funky Bunch team:

Prep 2021 Teddy Bear’s Picnic

We have over 30 preps excited to join the St Joseph's community in 2021, and despite the fact that we cannot hold our Teddy Bear's Picnic orientation in real life, we have come up with an exciting and fun alternative. Our little ones will receive a special parcel in the post prior to the scheduled date of the picnic, which will hopefully bring a smile to their faces and add to the fun/ connection during our 'remote picnic'. We have the awesome team from 'Kiddly Winks' providing the entertainment for the session.

When: Thursday 10th September @9.30am

We can't wait to meet the newest members of our community!

Year 6 Graduation Garden Party

As is the tradition at St Joseph's, the parents of the current school captains are tasked with leading the organisation for the end of year Graduation celebration. Given the many unknowns this year, I have had discussions with Elissa (Zara) and Talia (Samson) as to how we proceed with plans.

We have decided to keep this special event as simple as possible in these early planning stages, meaning that if restrictions ease by December we can then 'ramp up' the plans.

With that in mind, we have set a date for a Year 6 students, parents and staff Graduation Garden Party. This will take place on school grounds, with a tentative date of Saturday 12th December from 4pm until 7pm.

More information to follow.

Extra, Extra!

From next week the staff at St. Joseph’s will be offering an additional optional activity at 2pm each day. These ‘remote extracurricular activities’, although aimed at our student audience, may give our parents a break at 2pm each day (maybe time for a coffee or some peace and quiet, or even a quick undisturbed bathroom break). These sessions will run ‘live’ and the google link will be put on the school dojo each day.  A little snapshot of next week's offerings, beginning with a Monday activity from Ms Hyde:

I thank the staff for these important options for our students. Whilst there is no expectation that your child will actively participate they may just want to watch and listen. Again, this is an option and you may or may not want your child to join in- it is completely up to you!

Caught on Camera (and recorded with permission)

Question: What do you get when one of our Year 5 students has a drum kit?

Answer: A 'Ba Dum Tishhhhhh' sound when anyone tells a joke, which then turns into a joke-telling session each afternoon.

I was fortunate enough to be invited along to one of the sessions: 

Thanks to Ms Huebner and the Year 5s! I love your sense of fun!

From Across the School...

Well done to our Year 4 students and Ms Balding for their creative covid news reports, a few of which are showcased below:

Ivy's Report:

Henry's Report:

Sophie's Report:

Lily's Report:

More from home learning:

Lockdown times & a very unique friendship from the Bagworth Family

Meet Maggie our magpie friend who has been visiting us for the last three weeks, around 4-5 times a day!

Maggie is very clever, she will sing to us until we go outside to feed her, she is also very friendly she even eats off our hands! Today the Bagworth boys were busy making a burrowing tray for Maggie - lots of sand, bark, leaves & goodies like worms, fruit & nuts for her to search for! Diego, Noah & Andre had fun looking for worms, and learning all about what magpies like to eat. Isn’t it interesting what can happen when life slows down & suddenly you find your family has a new pet!

It also goes to show that there is learning that can happen all around us!

Thanks for sharing Claudia and boys!

Nicholas built this giant Avengers’ heli-carrier LEGO in just two nights. What an achievement! He is also proud to wear a mask when he goes for a walk and help the community To stop the virus! Well done Nicholas!

Spoonville is in the building phase:

Well done to all of the children who have, or preparing to, contribute to Mrs Cummings' Spoonville. The McGrath-Lorenzo family have been busy, with baby Agnes also joining in the fun!

 Online/ Remote Learning

At the end of 2018, after much discussion/ debate amongst staff and after reading relevant educational research, we decided to set homework tasks for our students that were totally 'offline' and not requiring a device/ internet for completion. There were many reasons for this, the main reasons being as follows:

1. We did not want to override/ interfere with the parental right to limit and manage screentime at home.
2. We wanted our children to maintain and build their skillset with actual handwriting!
3. We wanted to ensure our homework expectations and activities did not come with the distractions/ downside of the internet.
4. As a school we cover the Digital Technology curriculum in full, so we know that our students are not missing out on building these important digital skills.

The current pandemic and associated remote learning program certainly caused us to eat our words! With that in mind, I thought I'd share a very comprehensive online safety guide for parents, issued by the eSafety Commissioner to give support to families during these challenging times. Well worth a read, even if you have very young children. As a parent, it is always best to be one step ahead and well-armed with information regarding online content and social media.

A Blast from The Past

On Tuesday, I received a lovely email from an ex-parent of St. Joseph's, Rita Zemdegs:

"Hello and I hope you are managing well in a crazy year!

My name is Rita Zemdegs and both our sons, Feliks and Oskar attended St Josephs when Tony McMahon was principal. We finished up in 2006.

As it is a really tough time, we all need an uplifting feelgood story and I am writing about just that. 

All you need to do is type in Feliks Zemdegs in google and it will be self-explanatory. He is 

twice world champion of Rubik's cube.

So on July 29, there was a beautiful 40-minute documentary released on Netflix called "The Speedcubers" which is about Feliks and another champ Max Park (USA) who is highly autistic. I've attached the link for the trailer.

I just thought this is special and can be a lovely positive thing for parents, teachers and students and a bit of excitement that Feliks went to St Joseph's... especially when times are tough."

Wow! Have a look at Feliks and Max- it really is incredible and I'll be certainly tuning into the full Netflix documentary.

Thanks to Rita for sharing and well done Feliks!

Is your child interested in coding? A message from Katie Allen MP:

Coding Zoom classes for Yrs 2 - 5

Dear Michelle

Do your students know what Scratch, Microbit or Machine Learning is?

Yesterday I zoomed with eight-year-old Grace about her passion to get more kids to learn to code. Like me, she is passionate about STEM and helping grow our future.

Grace and her mum (who is an engineer) believe coding is the ABC of maths and want to teach other kids how to code while we are in lockdown!

So if you have students at home who want to learn how to code their parents can register them below.

Participation is free and for students Grade 2-5.

The first ABC of Coding Club meeting will be on Thursday 13 August at 4 pm and will run weekly for 6 weeks.

Please register through my office using this link: https://www.trybooking.com/BKYGC

The meeting will be password protected to ensure student safety and will be provided upon verification. 

Please feel free to forward this email through to your teachers, students parents associations or anyone who you think could benefit from the coding club. Please feel free to contact my office if you have any questions. 03 9822 4422

                  Stay safe and well, Katie Allen MPFederal Member for Higgins

Birthday Shout Outs!

Happy birthday to the following students, who have celebrated birthdays this term:

Max L, Aisling, Hamish, Elina, Lucas, Freddie, Nicholas, Cruz, Clara, Eve, Viaan, Jackson, Gianluca, Charles, Rupert, Giles, Luca, Thomas C, Grace and Archer.

We hope you all enjoyed wonderful birthday celebrations and we promise that the birthday box will be waiting for you when you return. 

And finally, a few reminders:

• Our next School Board (EAB) meeting will take place next Tuesday 18th August at 7pm. Trish will send out the meeting link prior to the meet.
• Next week is 'Science Week', so look out for lots of great sessions during class time. The junior and senior teams have been working together to plan, and deliver, lessons across the year levels. Lots of great Science learning coming up!
• The application form for school attendance is now located on the school website for ease of access.
• If you require any more printed work packs please contact your child's classroom teacher.

I thought I'd share this beautiful reflection on working during the pandemic, written with the teaching profession in mind, but applicable to all of us I'm sure.

                             by Rebecca L Cull

Wishing you all a relaxing weekend ahead and I hope you all manage some downtime. Take care and stay safe,

Michelle