Dear Families,

Last week was an especially busy week at school.  We celebrated Father's Day Breakfast with our Dads at school at 8am and then we had a liturgy in the Mary MacKillop Room at 9am.  Thank you so much to Ellie Dilger and Kate Westbury for serving the food and special thanks to Narelle and Andrew Jamieson for organising everything and then cooking the eggs and bacon.  Special shout out to you Andrew for cooking the breakfast for all the other Dads, we hope you were spoilt on Father's Day.   We appreciate your help.

We hope all our Dads had a wonderful day.  You occupy a very special place in our families.  THANK YOU !

This week we welcomed Aylah Stokes in Gr 4 and her parents Kylie and Rowen from Greensborough to our school community.  Aylah is pictured above with Scarlett, who has helped Aylah feel especially welcome.  We know you will love our school, Aylah.

R U OK? day

Last week we acknowledged R U OK? day on Thursday.  This is a really important day to check in with your friends, colleagues, neighbours, family members, to really check how they are.  We hightlighted the day with a small bag of goodies for each staff member, together with an R U OK? card.  Remember, everyday can be R U OK? day.  Life changes when we all spread a little compassion and care for others. 

Assemblies

We have assembly every Monday morning where we raise our national flags. We think this is especially important as we are a respectful and inclusive community. You may have noticed that we have our flags flying half mast as a sign of respect to mark the passing of Queen Elizabeth 11.

In addition to Monday assemblies, we have two Friday afternoon assemblies to showcase our learning.  Next term, our Friday assemblies are:  Nov 4 at 3pm (Gr 4/5 presenting their learning) and Dec 9th at 3pm (Foundation students send off the Gr 6s).  Families are very welcome to join us in the Mary MacKillop room.

Enrolments for 2023

A reminder if you know any families who have a 4 or 5 year old kinder child, you might consider promoting our school to them. This week I have been conducting Foundation Interviews for 2023.  It is a great part of my job to sit with young students and their families and to talk about school, it is really exciting for them. 

Child Safety is paramount at our school.  We have taken our Child Safe Policy and put it into child friendly language for our students.  Please see attached the Gr 4/5 version and the Gr 5/6 version of our Child Safe Policy.

Children's rights were referred to in the recent Biggest Child Safety Lessons that we viewed last week.  Please see below the children's version of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.

In term 4 the Mini Vinnies have organised fundraisers to
support others in need. We do this because we are a faith
community which is led by Jesus and his teachings, 

3 where students will have an opportunity to guess how
many lollies are in a jar. Each guess will cost $1.
Also, in Week 3 on Friday 21 st October we will have a Crazy
Hair Day to raise money for Catholic Mission.
On Friday 18 th November we will have a Casual Clothes Day to
raise funds for the Pakistan Floods.

The Sexual Health Education program called Talk About It will be presented by
specialist educators from Life Education Victoria on Tuesday October 11 th and
Wednesday 12 th of October. This program is an age-appropriate personal
development program for students in Years 5-6. These are two really important
dates for our Grade 5/6 students and we hope all students are present.
Parents are invited to an online information session on Tuesday evening the 4 th of
October at 6:30pm. A link will be sent to us closer to this date and we will put it on
our Dojo page.
The program is divided into the following modules:

Years 5 & 6
- Who Am I?
- Welcome to Puberty
- Evolving Friendships
Grade 6 only
- The Journey of Human Reproduction

Talk About It is facilitated by specialist sexual health educators who work in
partnership with the classroom teachers. The teaching framework is student-centred,
interactive and ensures all content is delivered in a sensitive, factual and age-
appropriate manner. This program covers the requirements of the Victorian
Curriculum for students in Grades 5 and 6.
The Talk About It program is delivered separately from the rest of Life Education
Victoria’s programs. Specialist teachers will visit our school for the two days to work
solely with the Grade 5 and 6 students and their teachers. We understand that
engaging in this program fits really well with building and maintaining respectful
relationships as well as understanding and respecting themselves and others as they
enter or approach puberty. It also fits really well with our School Wide Expectations
(SWE) and the Rights, Responsibilities and Respectful Relationships (RRRR)
program.

Our School Advisory Committee (formerly School Board) work to support the school programs and decision making in the school. Our work includes participation in policy making and we also consider school uniform issues.  The 2022 Committee includes:  Imelda Cathomen, Ashlee Treyvaud, Dan Towb, Marja Jamieson, Kara Pedemont, Taryn Maxwell-Garratt, Fr Bernard Buckley and myself.  Please see below photos of our School Committee members.  If you would like something discussed at these meetings you are welcome to approach anyone of us and we will follow the issue up. 

Our next meeting is Wednesday October 19th at 5.30pm at school.

Our last meeting (23/08/2022) was started with a summary of Parish /School activities, we work hard together to have a positive working relationship supporting each other. In staffing news Trish explained that Mrs Raelee Hill is having a few operations and will not be back at school this year,  so instead of music in Term 4, we will have Digital Technology (animation and iMovie) run by Kathy Grass. Japanese Day was well run and met its aims, everyone enjoyed the day. Trish provided a P&F summary of activities, we are very grateful for their work.  Child Safety is a regular agenda item and we talked about the 11 new Child Safe Standards that we need to show compliance with.

The Committee spent time looking at the SRC data from the surveys that we completed early in Term 2.

SRC data Summary

Our recent School Improvement Survey data was very positive.  The Staff Organisational Climate and Teaching Climate had both improved. The parents indicated a big increase in the Community Engagement Aggregate score and the students showed a small decline in the Student Wellbeing Aggregate Indicator.

In the School Climate data the Adaptive Behaviours, Innovation and Teamwork continue to be in the top 25% of Victorian Primary Schools. Generally, the staff recorded a positive trend in all areas of organisational and teaching climate, with significant improvement in Professional Growth and Curriculum Processes.

Students in Years 3 & 4 indicated a decline in Emotional Wellbeing and Student Behaviour while students in Years 5 & 6 showed an increase in these areas.  Although the senior students indicated an increase in Eagerness to Learn they also showed a decrease in Teaching & Learning.  There are some anomalies in the student data, so the leadership group have decided to look more closely at what the students are saying.  We are actively seeking student voice in our improvement.  We will engage in a Student Wellbeing Protocol and Student Behaviour Surveys to further explore this area. Student Safety and Wellbeing continue to be of paramount importance in our school.

St Joseph’s Trafalgar flew the Japanese flag last Wednesday on Japanese Day and the school was abuzz with Japanese cultural activities. Starting the day well with “rajio taiso” (Radio Exercise) which many Japanese schools and work places do daily; a practice that started in 1928. Calligraphy, origami, Japanese koi (fish) art, Japanese (sakura) cherry blossom art, manga (cartoon) drawing, and a kahoot quiz were enjoyed by all. The day concluded with a Tokyo Ondo dance outside.

As well as learning Japanese language, understanding, respecting and including people from all around the world is vital to developing our young global citizens. 

From the students:

Japanese Day is “Good fun. I liked doing the paint blowing because the paint spreads a lot.” Nyah 

“If we want to go to Japan, we already know how to speak Japanese and write calligraphy.”

Charlotte says “ You have to say “hai” in Japanese and I love it.” Tia and Lilly

After winning the kahoot quiz demonstrating his Japanese knowledge, Reuben said “It was great” and showed me “the worm” - his winning move.

On Thursday November 7th we will be hosting a 'Learning Expo' at school (please note the change of date). Each student will have a number of pieces of quality work on display. The Learning Expo will start at 2pm for the school classes to walk around and view each other's work.  Families are invited to visit the school from 3.30 to 6pm and walk through our classrooms viewing the student's quality work.  Our art work, music work and Japanese learning will be highlighted.  The tiles that the students  have painted in art classes, will also be unveiled each hour for viewing.  We think this is a wonderful way to invite our families into the school and to showcase our work.  We hope your family can join us sometime.

Movie Night – Thursday 15^th September

Unfortunately, due to lack of numbers to support this fundraising activity, we had to cancel.

Trivia Night & Auction Night

This night is going to be one you will not want to miss, get the babysitters booked! An adult friendly evening at Trafalgar Bowls Club on Friday 4^th November at 7.30pm. Andrew Deak from 3GG will be hosting the trivia event and we will also be having an auction. Tickets will be $25 per head which includes entertainment and nibbles. Invitations are extended to family and friends. You can buy tickets individually or a table of 8. Tickets will be available to purchase through CDFpay, the winning table on the evening will win a grand prize! We are sourcing donations from families or community businesses to auction on the night. We are still sourcing donations to auction on the night, please contact one of our P&F members if you can – thank you!

Colour Fun Run

Mia Scanlon from You & Mia Fitness and our committee are organising a fantastic colour fun run at school on Friday 11^th November after lunch on the oval. Mia’s talent in fitness and health is valuable and very much appreciated to get our children out in the sun, exercising and having fun! Children will be sponsored to raise money, the class who raises the most money will get to slime their teacher and our Principal!! Please come along to join the colourful fun.

A few years ago we ran a particularly successful parenting program called 'The Circle of Security' and the mums who attended it said it was especially helpful.  We are looking at running this program for our Dads.  It requires a substantial commitment but the benefits are tremendous.  You need to be able to commit to the 8 consecutive sessions as each week grows on the previous week's learning.  We are looking at running it on  Tuesday nights at school from 5pm to 6.30pm in term 4, starting October 12th. The program aims to help parents in their vital role of parenting.  If you are interested please let us know as soon as possible as we will only run it if we have enough interest.  Post Father's Day can be a nice time to reflect on your important role in our families. 

2023

March

Thurs 16th                         Reconciliation Parent & Child Workshop

                                         Warragul 4pm or 7pm

Fri 17th                             AFL clinic (all classes)

                                         3.  Interest Based Learning

Mon 20th                           St Joseph's Feast Day Prayer Service church 3pm

Tues 21st                          School Athletics Carnival

Wed 22nd                          Storytime 9.15am

                                         School Advisory Committee 5.30pm

Fri 24th                              AFL clinic (all classes)

                                         4.  Interest Based Learning Program

                                         3pm Lenten Prayer Service in church

Mon 27th                            Gr 6 Young Leaders Day Melbourne

Tues 28th & Wed 29th          Life Ed Program Healthy Harold 

Wed 29th                            Sacrament of Reconciliation 6pm church

Fri 31st                               5. Interest Based Learning Program

April

Mon 3rd                             Easter Carnival 3.30 to 5pm at school

Wed 5th                            Last day of Term 1.

                                        Easter Dramatization in church 2.30pm

                                        School finishes 3.30pm

Thurs 6th                          Pupil Free day. Staff Professional Learning

Fri 7th                               GOOD FRIDAY

Mon 24th                            HOLIDAY

Tues 25th                           ANZAC DAY holiday

Wed 26th                           First Day of Term 2

May

Mon 22 to 26                     Catholic Education Week

June

Tues 6th                            Andrew Chinn (music composer) visit & concert

Mon 12th                           King's Birthday Holiday

Wed 21st                           Last day of term 2 for students

Thurs 22& Fri 23                 Staff PD days in Melbourne (student free days)