St Joseph

Pope Francis has proclaimed 2021 to be ‘The Year of St Joseph’ and on Friday (March 19^th) we will celebrate the Feast Day of our school patron – St Joseph, with Mass at 12.30pm.

We have much that we can learn from Joseph. He showed great courage in becoming the legal father to Jesus. He was a tender and loving father, who showed great faith in the word of God. He was trusting and patient with his wife Mary and was happy to support his wife and son. He was a hard worker and taught Jesus many life lessons.

Saint Joseph is known as the silent, humble servant of God. This is mainly because there is not one record of Joseph speaking in the Gospels. In John’s Gospel, Joseph is mentioned once when someone calls Jesus “the son of Joseph”.                                                                     

It is through the Gospel readings of Matthew and Luke that we learn about St Joseph. We know he was a carpenter, a working man, for the Nazarenes ask about Jesus, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” (Matthew 13:55).

We know he was a compassionate and caring man by the way Joseph cared for Mary and the infant Jesus, and later searched anxiously for three days for Jesus when he stayed behind at the Temple (Luke 2:41-52).

We know Joseph respected God by the way he dutifully followed God’s commands.

St Joseph is the patron saint of the Universal Church, a happy death, families, fathers, expectant mothers, travellers, immigrants, house sellers and buyers, craftsmen, engineers, and working people in general.

Let us ask St Joseph for his powerful intercession to watch over us and protect our families. May he show us how to love, how to trust and help us care for others as he lovingly cared for Mary and Jesus.

The following is the Pope’s special prayer for the ‘Year of St Joseph’.

Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer,
Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To you God entrusted his only Son;
in you Mary placed her trust;
with you Christ became man.

Blessed Joseph, to us too,
show yourself a father
and guide us in the path of life.
Obtain for us grace, mercy, and courage,
and defend us from every evil.  Amen.

Raffle for Project Compassion

Thank you to Foodworks Adelong for the contribution of lollies, chips and biscuits for our Easter raffle. Your donation is greatly appreciated.

Year 6 are busy organising the raffle which will contain a variety of prizes including Easter craft, Easter Eggs and Easter treats.

Tickets are 50c each and will be on sale each Wednesday and Thursday at recess. All profits will be donated to Project Compassion to help people less fortunate than ourselves.

Prizes will be drawn on Thursday April 1^st 2021. We may have some mini draws before then, as we have a variety of prizes.

Thank you for your continued support.

Liz Murray

REC Co-ordinator

Term 2 Pupil Free Days will be Monday 19th April.

Students will return on Tuesday 20th April.

Staff will be attending a Professional Development day.

Book Club catalogues have gone out today, orders are due back by (tomorrow) Friday 19th March.  Please place orders via the LOOP app.

Lots of learning happening in K/1 this week!

Mrs Murray's initialit group had a terrific time learning about the letter 't'.  They listened to a poem about Tommy Tiger, found pictures commencing with the sound /t/ in alphabet books and posters and made their own Tommy Tiger mask.

Miss Braun’s initialit group has been learning about nouns. Students played ‘I spy a noun’ and ‘noun detectives’ to find nouns in our room. Look at the nouns we found in our room!

This week in maths, we are learning about 3D objects. We worked really hard to make 3D objects using matchsticks and playdough. Year 1 taught Kindergarten some of our favourite warm up activities. 

Thank you Nicki for coming in to do yoga with us, we look forward to it. 

Bee Positive Rewards 

This term at St. Joesph's, we have been focusing on 5 ways of being 

Be kind - show others that you care

Be the best you can be - everything that you do give it 100%

Be Safe - keep safe from harm

Be respectful - treat others kindly and use good manners 

Be responsible - do the things you are supposed to do and be responsible for your actions  

Our Bee Positive rewards are extension on promoting our 5 ways of being and are designed to encourage and promote good behaviour.

The children receive a bee positive stamp on their hand, and a stamp on the class honeycomb. 

Once the class honeycomb is full it gets added to the St. Joesph's beehive which then contributes to filling the reward jar. 

The children have been busy little bees and are on track to reaching their first 150 honeycomb school reward.   

Congratulations to our students who received Principal Awards in Week 7. 

Principal Awards: Preston, Eva & Lily.

This year the students in Yr 3 and 5 will participate in NAPLAN online from 11-21 May 2021.  There will be a practice test that the students will participate in next week to ensure that all devices are able to access the test and that the technology does as it should NAPLAN  tests are Writing, Reading, Conventions of language and Numeracy. 

Covid-19 Restriction Updates as at 8th March 2021:

COVID-19 Testing and Awareness

• Students and staff with flu-like symptoms (including mild symptoms) must not attend school or be sent home and tested for COVID-19. Parents of students displaying any flu like symptoms should provide evidence of a negative result prior to returning to school.
• Where COVID-19 testing has occurred due to flu-like symptoms, and not due to close contact with a positive COVID-19 case, the person being tested must self-isolate until they receive a negative result. If the result is positive, they are required to self-isolate for 14 days.
• The school must sight a negative test result before staff/students return to school.
• Staff/students must be symptom-free before returning to school

Assemblies/School events

• 100 person limit for community events continues (does not include school performances etc.)
• Visitors including parents/carers are now welcome in the school and can drop off and collect students, subject to maintaining social distancing requirements

Visitors

• School-based activities that involve large gathering of adults not permitted (greater than 100 persons). These include parent/community gatherings such as parent functions, working bees, fundraisers, school barbecues, large parent information evenings, and large on-site cultural events.

• All visitors must accept terms and conditions (social distancing, enhanced hygiene protocols etc.) prior to entering the school.

St Joseph's had a great day on Monday at the Adelong Golf Course running the Cross Country.  Congratulations to our students who will progress onto the Western Region Cross Country in Boorowa.  A big thank you to our wonderful parents who came and cheered us on, and who were on different checkpoints around the course - making sure we were on the right track!

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