Dear Parents,

What a jam-packed week we have had this week.  Harmony Week, St Joseph’s Day, NAPLAN, World Happiness Day, Big Vegie Crunch day and Ride to School Day. 

Harmony Week

Harmony Week began with viewing a video to learn what Harmony Day is all about. It also included hearing or reading stories related to the theme of diversity and belonging, including Whoever You Are, by Mem Fox, and Let’s Talk About Race, by Julius Lester.  On Wednesday all stages had the opportunity to learn a dance from a different part of the world. Kinder danced the Reo Ora which has Maori/New Zealand origins; Years 1 and 2 learnt the Danza Kuduro from Latin America; while Years 3 and 4 learnt to do American line dancing.  Years 5 and 6 enthusiastically engaged in dancing the Jai ho, which is a Bollywood style dance from India. 

Thursday saw the children munching their way through orange fruit and vegies whilst our week ended with a magnificent sea of colour.  A number of children wore traditional dress of their family’s country, or of where they have travelled to.  Our liturgy this morning was a kaleidoscope of colour, total engagement and was full of the message how, though we may look and sound different on the outside, on the inside we are all the same.  Ask the children to tell you about the ‘lemons’!  Our Kinder students shared a most beautiful song with us about peace, which nearly brought everyone to tears.

Our Union St fence has been adorned with the most colourful posters that we hope to share messages of inclusiveness and diversity with both our school  community and local community.

Delicious lunches, ranging from French quiche, to Welsh pasties, Indian butter chicken, Mexican burrito bowls and Chinese Yum Cha were on offer and both the children and staff enjoyed experiencing food from around the world. The children gave their meals a 10/10!

Harmony Week is always marvellous here at St Joseph’s; and we value it as a way of bringing about greater tolerance and understanding of one and all.

St Joseph’s Day

Our school’s patron saint, St Joseph, was celebrated on his feast day, Tuesday 19th March.  The whole school engaged in a meaningful liturgy,    led by Year 3, acknowledging what a wonderful person Joseph was. 

St. Joseph did not draw attention to himself. He listened, acted, and exemplified what a disciple is: the one who hears “the word of God and acts on it” (Lk 8:21). Whenever we turn our attention to Joseph, we are led, by him and through him, to discover the God whom he heeded and the divine mission he served.

NAPLAN

Years 3 and 5 students over the last two weeks have worked hard to show their learning in the areas of Reading, Language Conventions and Spelling, Writing and Mathematics through the NAPLAN suite of tests.  We are proud of their efforts and look forward to receiving their results, which is meant to happen much sooner than in previous years.  This will be invaluable as class teachers can then analyse the results and identify what is needed for each student and class, to work on over the course of the year.

World Happiness Day

On Wednesday the whole school engaged in a sing-a-long of  ‘If you’re happy and you know it …”.  The children also created their own ‘happy emoji's’ and shared the biggest and friendliest of smiles all throughout the day. What a beautiful feeling there was about the school on this day. We are also enjoying singing and moving to Ferrel Williams’ song, ‘Happy’ as it is played at lining up times. 

You may be interested in Andrew Fuller’s  “How to be happy” article.” Andrew has recently been described as an “interesting mixture of Billy Connolly, Tim Winton and Frasier Crane” and as someone who “puts the heart back into psychology”. As a clinical psychologist, Andrew Fuller works with many schools and communities in Australia and internationally, specialising in the wellbeing of young people and their families.

Ride 2 School Day

What an amazing array of bikes and scooters were on display today at our first ever ‘bike and scooter show’.  The SRC have created a range of posters that are displayed around the school which promote the benefits of riding to school.  Newcastle Council have supported this intitiave and donated some fruit and hot cross buns to the students along with two bike bells.  The children put their name into a draw for these and the proud recipients of them are Lily G and Katharina M.

Reverse Lunch Survey

Thank you to all those parents who have completed the survey and offered their feedback to us for consideration.  If you are yet to do this, you can access the survey here.

Parent Webinar – e-safety

Free webinar for parents and carers- understanding parental controls to safeguard your child  

It’s important to put in place measures to protect your child’s safety when they go online, but it can be difficult to know where to start.

To assist you, the eSafety Commissioner in conjunction with the Council of Catholic School Parents is hosting a free, 30-minute online webinar.

The webinar will provide an overview of different types of parental controls and, how to set them on smart devices and computers, in apps and on gaming platforms.

Date:              Tuesday 26 March
Time:              7.30pm-8.00pm

Register here