Dear Parents,

Please see below for the latest updates for After School Sport in 2020.
This information is accurate as of 16/6/2020.

Soccer
The North West Junior Soccer Association (NWJSA) has this morning announced that the 2020 season has been cancelled.

There will be no school soccer competition recommencing until 2021.

Basketball & Netball
St Clair have this week notified us that Netball and Basketball will recommence in Week 2 of Term 3 (Week beginning 27th July). Game days/times will be as follows:

Tuesday:
Yr 2/3, Yr 4/5 and Yr 6 Basketball (3:50pm, 4:35pm and 5:20pm)

Wednesday:
Yr 2/3 Netball (3:50pm, 4:40pm, 5;20pm)

Thursday:
Yr 4/5 and Yr 6 Netball (3:50pm, 4:40pm, 5;20pm)

Semester 1 teams will automatically roll over to Semester 2. If you are wanting to join a team or withdraw from your Semester 1 team, please email rkel@sjsh.catholic.edu.au.

More information will be sent to registered players/coaches in the coming weeks in preparation for the recommencement of the season. All details are subject to change so please see the school newsletter for regular updates. 

Thanks for your continued understanding and support of sport at St Joseph’s.

Rebecca Keller
PE Teacher and Sport Coordinator

Refugee Week started in Australia, in 1986, and is now a global celebration. It provides an opportunity to celebrate the wonderful ways in which people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds enrich their new communities.

World Refugee Day, on June 20 is designed to raise awareness and promote discussion in our communities about refugee experiences.

The key aims of Refugee Week are:

• To celebrate the ways in which people from refugee backgrounds enrich our communities and culture.
• To educate the public about who refugees are, why they have come to Australia, and to understand the many challenges they face in doing so.
• To foster empathy and understanding and in doing so, encourage a safe and welcoming environment for people seeking safety in Australia.
• To enable communities and individuals to take positive action, and stand in solidarity with people seeking asylum and displaced people in Australia and around the world.

Visit the Refugee Week site to learn more 

Please find links for our Liturgies and Assemblies on our SkoolBag app that are being live streamed on the days listed below. This is an important way for our St Joseph’s School to maintain community.

I had the pleasure of meeting again with the Mini Vinnies group who are busily preparing to cook meals to be given to different charities supporting homelessness. Our prayer focus was around inclusivity and ensuring that we value all people regardless of race. This tied into the story of the Good Samaritan that the Year 5/6s had as a focus at their recent liturgy and have also reflected on during their unit on World Religions.

As a group we discussed reasons why maybe the priest and the Levite did not stop to help the injured man. The students came up with lots of reasons why they may not have helped, including:

• maybe they were scared the robber was still there
• perhaps they were running late for a meeting
• they didn’t have any first aid equipment with them
• they were worried what others might say if they helped a Samaritan

We reflected on how we sometimes see a need, but get caught up in the reasons of why we can’t help, rather than helping, even if it is doing something small. This led to discussions of what Mini Vinnies as a group can do to raise social justice awareness and to help those who are in need.

Helen Clark
APRIM

We also ask for you to donate canned foods such as vegetables and long lasting foods like pasta and long life milk that will be used in our cooking that will be given to shelters that support homeless and migrant families.

Over the coming weeks we will be cooking meals to be given to Vinnies to provide to homeless shelters for distribution. We will be working in groups of around 5-8 in the hall kitchen, supported by Ms D’Aloia and Miss Clark. They are seeking any donations of:

• pumpkins
• potatoes
• zucchini
• garlic
• onion
• dried pasta
• sweet potatoes
• canned or fresh tomatoes
• monetary donations to purchase further ingredients

We greatly appreciate the generosity of our St Joseph’s Community.

Lachlan A and Jiyaa B (on behalf of Mini Vinnies)

Until further notice students celebrating birthdays or special events are not able to distribute novelties or gift bags.

Your cooperation and understanding is greatly appreciated. Every child matters!

We want to continue maintaining a safe environment for all.

We are ALL in this together.

We continue to remain vigilant about stopping the spread of illness at Preschool and School. Please note that for the safety and well being of your child, their classmates and staff, it is essential that children stay home if they are unwell with coughs, colds, runny noses or similar ailments. 

Last week, the Preschoolers continued their Air Investigations by creating bubbles. Bubbles are air wrapped in soap film that float because the air trapped inside a bubble is less dense than the air outside the bubble, so it's up, up and away!

The Preschoolers watched the bubbles form and float in the wind and eventually pop! A group of children created designs that were formed when coloured bubble mix landed on their paper. 

Soap bubbles are thin enough to be able to affect the light that hits them. This means you see e.g. blue, yellow and green colours in the bubbles, even though you make soap bubbles in the white light from the sun. Normally you see several colours at the same time in the same bubble.

How the Birds got their Colours is an Aboriginal story told to children living in Broome, Western Australia and is illustrated by school aged children.

The Preschool children have been reading this story and invited the children to draw, paint and create birds with pine cones, wool and other materials as a response to the narrative.

In the early years, children are encouraged to celebrate diversity with respect and learn from our Indigenous Australians.

ELLA App: The Polyglots at the Zoo

The Polyglots at the Zoo includes animals and food items from a range of cultures within the diverse environment of an open-range zoo. Children will encounter many animals in the zoo, some are endangered species while others are culturally significant, such as a Chinese panda, Arabian camel, a French water vole, a Japanese macaque and an Indonesian orangutan.

The learning experiences encourage values aligned with the Early Years Learning Framework such as developing an understanding of the interdependence between people and animals. The app also introduces new words in Italian, relating to fruit and drinks while building on the language learnt in apps 1, 2 and 3.

Learn more on the ELLA App website

During year 1/2Cs Science lessons last week they investigated the moon. The children shared their moon diaries at the beginning of the week and this helped us look at the pattern of the moon.

They drew the phases of the moon and also started painting pictures of the moon by using foil to print the craters of the moon. Did anyone else see the full moon last weekend? Amanuel told us it was a pink or strawberry moon. ?

The Year 4 class started reading 'The Word Spy' written by Ursula Dubosarsky. It is an entertaining journey through the English language where we are starting to learn more about where the alphabet we know today has come from. There are cartoons, riddles and a special code to solve along the way. The Year 4s were able to solve their first code together, which had them stumped for a little while.

Once they had worked out the code they wrote a coded message to their parents. Good luck in solving it.

Hint: Think about the alphabet backwards and forwards.

Continuing on with their learning of World Religion, Year 4/5C, 5/6ED and 5/6TDP have moved on to the next stage of their unit. They completed their sketches of their chosen place of worship and were so pleased with how they turned out – they decided to BUILD them!

This project has incorporated learning from a number of other subjects they have been focusing on this term. They have applied the concept of ‘measurement’ (Mathematics), the skills they have been learning in design (STEM) and of course their new knowledge of World Religions (RE).

Their task has been to design and build a model of their chosen ‘place of worship’, using their skills in measuring, predicting, estimating, calculating, designing, communicating, problem solving and generating ideas.

They have been working SUPER hard using their creative minds throughout this process. A range of materials such as modelling clay, Lego, pasta, foam, pop-sticks, wood, cardboard and more have been used to construct their models and they have learnt so many ‘joining’, assembling and structural techniques throughout the building process.

They have been enjoying the challenge so far and cannot wait to reveal the finished models to you in next weeks Newsletter. Until then, here are some progress pictures… 

Last Week's Year 5 Maths Provocation Question:

What would a cubic metre look like? I wonder how many children would be able to fit inside the cubic metre?

The children were completely engaged in this inquiry and had lots of fun learning at the same time.