A short week this week to end what has been a very busy term.  There has been much sickness at St Joseph’s recently (both staff and students) so it will be great for our school community to have a restful holiday break and come back for Term three rejuvenated, healthy and ready to go!

Last week the slab was poured for our new build which was very exciting.  As always everything that is being done on site is done under many watchful eyes who love recess and lunch to observe the daily changes!

Semester One reports were posted to compass last Friday.  This week teachers are holding parent teacher interviews and again I would encourage all parents to take up this opportunity to discuss your child’s progress with their child’s class teacher.

Some great tips from Catholic School Parents Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn;

• Celebrate the strengths and successes in the report
• Ask your child what they are most proud of in their learning this year
• Meet with teachers – ask them about effort and attitude as well as academic progress
• Together with your child develop challenging but achievable goals for the remainder of the year

Our Community Council had a very successful street stall last Friday – again a HUGE thank you to our wonderful parents and grandparents who baked, manned the stall, donated wood and goodies to make our stall such a good one.

Last week we had a fabulous full page advertisement and editorial in the Tumut and Adelong Times promoting our school.  Today we will hold our first Open Day and we will have another one next Term on Wednesday 24 July from 11.30 am – 12 pm.

Staff will join with St Mary’s Batlow and St Patrick’s Gundagai on Monday 22^nd July for our staff Spirituality Day led by the RE team from Catholic Education.  All students return to school for Term 3 on Tuesday 23^rd July.

I look forward to seeing you all next Term,

Kirsty Beavan

Principal

NAIDOC Week 

During the holidays we will celebrate NAIDOC Week. The 2024 theme is “Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud”. This theme was selected to celebrate the relentless spirit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Year 6 Students will attend the NAIDOC Mass next term in Tumut.

Aboriginal_Our_Father.pdf

Aboriginal_Our_Father _pdf 486.94 KB

Winter Woollies 

On Wednesday 3rd July, St Joseph’s will be holding a ‘Winter Woollies Day’ to support the St Vincent De Paul Society’s fundraiser ‘Vinnies Winter Appeal’. 

The Vinnies Winter Appeal is all about providing emergency relief to those at risk of/or experiencing homelessness. Vinnies would appreciate donations of ‘Winter Woollies’ such as gloves, socks, jackets, beanies, blankets or sleeping bags. All donations are then distributed through the homelessness and community services to directly support those who are most impacted. If you would like to donate, please send any ‘Winter Woollies’ to the front office by Wednesday 3rd July. Any donations are greatly appreciated. 

Students are invited to wear their ‘Winter Woollies’ (dressing gown, pyjamas, jacket, tracksuit pants, jumper, long socks, beanie, scarf etc) to school on Wednesday 3rd July to support the Winter Appeal. 

Wishing all our St Joseph’s families a lovely holiday break.

Many thanks,
Stacey Braun

Religious Education Coordinator

Keep up to date with events happening at St Joseph's via our electronic school calendar (please note dates can be subject to change).

Reminder: Nominations for the executive roles on our Community Council close tomorrow, Wednesday 3rd July. Nominations can be sent to sjasecretary1@gmail.com

Please ensure that any outstanding Term 2 fees are paid by the end of the week. 

Term 3 school fees will be issued by week 2, we do ask that if you are paying by instalments that you make sure they are covering the fee amount and make adjustments if necessary.  Thank you for your assistance in keeping up to date with fee payments.

The Premier's Reading Challenge aims to encourage a love of reading for leisure and pleasure in students, and to enable them to experience quality literature. It is not a competition and it is not compulsory but we would like you to encourage your children to participate and challenge themselves to read more from a wider range of books.

This year participation in the PRC will be optional for all children. Attached is a Personal Reading Log on which to record the books they have completed reading. These books also need to be recorded onto the PRC website by logging in with their username and password. If your child has participated in the PRC previously their username and password will be the same. If you would like to know your child’s username and password please email me jess.campbell@cg.catholic.edu.au and I will send it to you.

Our 2024 Selwyn Ski Trip is coming up in Term 3. This will be held on Friday 2nd August for students in Years 3-6 who filled out the expression of interest. The Compass event with all relevant information will be posted in the coming week. 

Students have presented their speeches. The effort that has gone into these speeches is great and we have loved listening to each other's views and ideas. Students who progress to the next level will travel to Batlow to compete against St Mary's in week 1 of Term 3. 

Goodluck to all students! 

What a busy term we have had in 3/4! In English, we completed the novel study “Yirra and Her Deadly Dog, Demon” by Anita Heiss with a focus on factual recount writing. During the unit, students looked at how to improve topic sentences by using the different sentence types (statement, command, exclamation and question), wrote topic and supporting sentences and expanded fragments using ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘where’. 

In creative writing, students have been working very hard on improving their writing skills by using language features. Here are the start of some of our stories. 

Last week, K/1/2 continued their ‘toilet paper science’ by testing for the property of absorbency. They soaked and then squeezed their toilet paper samples as hard as they could. They found that the ‘lined’ toilet paper held more water than the ‘leaf’ toilet paper.

The scientists in 3/4 tested samples of toilet paper for strength. Some perseverance and good thinking allowed them to set up the tricky experiment! All groups set up a ‘fair test’ which allowed us to claim that the ‘lined’ toilet paper is stronger than the ‘leaf’ toilet paper.

5/6 have been investigating materials and did an experiment to try and make ‘plastic’ string from a chemical found in kelp (alginate). We saw varying levels of success from blobs (one looking remarkably like a T Rex!) to near perfect string. Messy and fun - science is all that and more!