Filter Content
- PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE
- TUTOR PROGRAM
- DEEPEST SYMPATHY
- ASH WEDNESDAY & LENT
- BISHOP'S VISIT
- SAFETY
- PARENT CODE OF CONDUCT
- CAR LINE
- FOUNDATION STUDENTS
- PARENT BUDDY PROGRAM
- PARENTS & FRIENDS GROUP
- INTEREST BASED LEARNING
- SCHOOL REVIEW
- UNIFORM SHOP
- SPORTING SCHOOLS PROGRAM
- ASSEMBLIES
- DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
- PARENTS & FRIENDS INVITATION
- CODE OF CONDUCT
Dear Families,
Welcome back to the 2021 school year. It’s great to be back at school.
We congratulate our Grade 6 Student Leaders for the next five weeks.
Amelia Tunks, Oscar Murto & Ruby Francis
We look forward to your work with us.
The Tutor Learning Program is a $250 million initiative that will assist Victorian government and non-government schools to support student learning following the period of remote and flexible learning. This funding will enable schools to recruit tutors to deliver additional targeted teaching support to students in a way that best suits our local circumstances.
This program requires the successful identification of students requiring tutoring support with a focus on literacy and numeracy. In order to identify students, teachers will use a variety of data.
The Department of Education has indicated that evidence suggests that 20% of students will have fallen behind during remote schooling.
Students who may require additional support include those:
- with low levels of English
- with home environments not conducive to remote and flexible learning
- already at risk of disengaging from school and
- who need educational and health and wellbeing supports at school but were unable
to access them at home.
The tutoring style will be small group based and use an evidence-based approach to differentiated teaching. We will need to determine the size of the tutoring cohort on the basis of the skills being targeted and the needs of the various students. The idea is for students to be tutored in short (30 or 45 min) regular sessions (between 3-to-5 times a week), over a sustained period (between 10-to-20 weeks). We are presently planning our school’s approach, or combination of approaches, to tutoring that best fits our context and the needs of our students. We will use high quality, well trained tutors. Tutors will work under the direction of and in collaboration with the classroom teacher to implement evidence-based approaches that target the needs of the students within the group. In the coming weeks if your child has been identified as someone requiring tutoring support we will be in contact with you and give you further information on how this program will run. If you think your child needs this program, I encourage you to talk directly to your child’s teacher. It may be that our school data reinforces this idea or it may be that the school data doesn’t confirm this approach, either way it is positive to talk to the class teacher about this.
We pray especially for Ms Liza Marino, as recently her mum passed away.
We understand that this is a difficult time and we pray that God will continue to bless, strengthen and guide her and her family especially at this time.
Liza plans on being back in the classroom next week.
Lent is the church season before Easter and is a time of change to prepare our hearts for the most important church season of Easter. It is a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving (doing good deeds). Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, Catholics and many other Christians will have ashes applied to their foreheads in the shape of a cross. People generally wear the ashes, which symbolize penance throughout the day to publicly express their faith. We were not able to attend Mass this year, but we did send out a link to a meaningful Ash Wednesday liturgy online, so hopefully you were able to access this.
And to embrace uniqueness.
Freedom to cut ties with greed
And feast on love.
Freedom to abstain from over indulgence
Freedom to leave behind selfish thoughts
And to focus on the needs of others.
Freedom to fend off insecurity
And to embrace grace.
Lord, at this time of Lent,
Thank you for the freedom you bring. Amen
Bishop’s Visit
Recently, newly ordained Catholic Bishop of Sale, Most Rev. Greg Bennett, visited our school. Bishop Greg shared morning tea with the staff and then visited the classrooms. He was especially impressed with the Foundation and Gr 1 artwork. The students had created their own little ‘Bishops’ and had them displayed on the window into their classroom. The artwork brought a smile to Bishop Greg’s face.
Safety
Child Safety is of course our number one priority. To keep all our children safe we:
# Lock the back gates all the time.
# We have installed a new security gate at the front between the building and the front entry pillar, this is to close off access to the yard during the school day. In this way, no one will be able to enter our school grounds without coming past our school office.
# The front gate and the carline gate will be unlocked at 8.30am and at 9.00am the carline gate will be locked so that there will be one entry to the school during the school day. At around 3.00pm the carline gate will be unlocked to allow for a staggered pick up at the end of the day.
Our Parent Code of Conduct is part of positive school practice. Please find a copy attached to this newsletter. We ask that you read it and when you’re next in school, that you sign the registry at the front office to say that you have read it and will follow it. It states very clearly in this code of conduct that school issues are dealt with through the school and not between parents. Please remember parents that if/when an incident happens at school, it is the school’s responsibility (that is, the principal or the teacher’s responsibility) to follow this up and to then communicate information, where necessary, to other parents. You are not allowed to approach another parent about something that happened at school. This is the school’s job.
Our car line operates efficiently and safely. After school, the students will be brought out to the car line from the front of the school. The students line up against the wall and they can only enter their car when it is next to the yellow safety rails. Families have been given their family name labels to put on their visor or dashboard to facilitate the efficient running of the car line. Thank you for using these labels as they really help.
Helpful hint: if your child sometimes goes home from school a different way and you want them to remember how they are getting home today, then perhaps you might like to make a special tag that communicates this, say for example, you prepare a ‘car line’ tag with a picture of a car on it and peg it to your child’s bag that day. This will remind your child how they are getting home and so help to build their independence.
Message to families with a foundation student:
Remember foundation students have the first five Wednesdays off as a rest day. The Wednesday of the week following the long weekend in March is the first Wednesday the foundation students will be at school. Parents please make sure these rest days are quieter and slower days for your child, to allow them to rest and feel ready for school again on the Thursday.
St Joseph’s promotes positive relationships and so we encourage our Parent Buddy Program. This is where we partner up an existing parent with a new parent to help the new family to feel welcome at our school. This year we have eight new families so we are looking for eight existing parents who may like to support this program. If you are interested could you please contact Cathleen Ryan as she is coordinating this program this year.
We have a wonderful P&F group who plan fundraising and social events for us. Our next meeting is the AGM. Please find attached an invitation.
Unfortunately, we have had to postpone the start of our Interest Based Learning. We plan to start it next Thursday. Your child/ren have nominated the group that they would like to be in. The program will run for five weeks on a Thursday afternoon from 2.00pm to 3.30pm. We are very much looking forward to it. Stay tuned!
Our schools that work under DOSCEL (Diocese of Sale Catholic Education Ltd) operate within a four year review cycle. This year is our year for review, so this means that we reflect on our processes, activities and policies and seek deliberately and strategically to improve. The leadership team, the staff and the School Advisory Committee will engage in this process. By completing the SRC parent surveys (that we send home each year) you will be participating in this review process, and in addition if you would like to be more actively involved in the review then please contact me and I will thankfully include you. It is crucial that we always seek to be our best.
Orders from CDF online payment system are received on a weekly basis and are filled Wednesdays, cut off for weekly orders is Tuesday night every week. Items can be picked up from the office when they are ready.
The government supports Physical Education in schools through the Sporting Schools Program. Through this program we are able to supply an expert athletics coach to teach the students over four different visits. In addition to this, Taryn Maxwell-Garratt will follow these sessions up in our regular PE classes. Our athletics program will culminate with our school’s athletics carnival at the Joe Carmody Track in Newborough on Friday March 12th. We really need lots of parent helpers to run this day successfully so if you are able to help please contact Taryn.
May God continue to bless and guide us in our work.
Trish Mulqueen
Principal
This year assemblies will be Fridays 3.10pm in Mary MacKillop room. Unfortunately, at this stage assemblies are only open to students and teachers as we still need to abide by the two square metre density rules and our Mary MacKillop room is simply not big enough to hold students, staff and parents. We will however endeavour to livestream the event if you would like to join us.
Icy poles on sale on Fridays in Term 1 $1
Remember school hats must be worn in Term 1 & Term 4.