Dear Families,   

This weekend, we acknowledge the wonderful mums (and grandmothers) within our community. Their generosity, commitment, unwavering care and unconditional love is never lost at St. Joseph’s.   Like my household over the weekend, we sincerely hope our families celebrate and justifiably spoil their mums on this special day. My children simply love this day, and occasionally need reminding that everyday should be a mum’s day.  We also ask that you please remember those families whose loved ones are no longer with them on this day.

1G:

Matilda Morgan - I love my mum because she does nice things with me like going for walks.

Alice Webster - I love my mum because she gives really good hugs.

1D:

Sasha Volz- I love mum because she takes me for bikes rides and because she plays games with me. She is a very thoughtful mum!

Mila Morris- I love my mum because she helps me with my reading, and is kind and loving. She is the best mum.

4D:

Mercedes Hard - My mum is the most important woman in the world to me because she is intelligent, supportive, loving and strong, no matter what.

Eva Hatzidimitriou - I love my mother because she is an amazing person and she’s always very generous to me, even if I’m a bit naughty sometimes.

Anthony Sidiropoulos - I love my mother because I can always look up to her, because she is very hard-working and reliable.

4O:

Kristian Taalikka - I love my my mum because she gives me a hug and kiss each night before bed, this makes me feel special and loved.

Ava Frigo - I love my mum because she is delightful, intelligent and helps me when I am faced with challenges.

Annalyse Laveglia - I love my mum because she is a beautiful person, understands me like no one else and makes me feel warm inside.

2M:

Olivia Meszaros - I love my mum because she is caring and loves me very much. She always helps me with my problems and runs me around to all my fun activities.

William Wright - I love my mum because she does all my jobs! She is confident, really nice and funny. I like playing tennis with my mum especially when she lets me win! She is really good at tennis.

2R:

Jane McLennan - I adore my mum because she cheers me up when I am sad and if I have done the wrong thing.

Charlie Hicks - My mum is caring and I love how she helps me when I have a problem. I love how she makes yummy dinners.

6B:

Stefani Rentaris - I love my Mum because she is affectionate and she’s always there when I need her.

Jack Kulesza - My mum always looks after me and is very understanding. She is extremely kind and generous to other people, hardworking and an exceptional cook!

5T:

Sidney Wardlaw - I love my mum because she always takes care of me and does a lot for me. I love my mum because she takes me places and gets me things and when I'm sick my mum always takes care of me.

Graziella Dixon - I love my mum because she is beautiful inside and out and I will love her forever. I also love my mum because she works hard for her family so that she can put food on our plates every day and every night.

5H:

Jack Kennedy- My mum is excellent because she makes the best brownies in the world. She also works really hard to be able to spend time with my siblings and I despite working so hard at her job. She is the best!

Maddi Bird - I love my mum because she takes great care of my brother and I and makes sure that we’re always happy. She provides food all the time and drives my brother and I to all of our extracurricular activities. She is the best mum that anyone could ever have!

Prep S:

Isabella Duart-David: My mum is the best because she buys me things that I like and helps me.

Lucia Zeljko: My mum is the best because she helps me learn things I don’t know.

Prep C:

Marlo Brown: My mum is the best because she makes me laugh by telling me jokes. I tell her jokes too!

James Hicks: My mum is the best because she give me the best hugs.

3D:

Abbie Joyce  - My mum is the best because she makes sure we have everything we need. I love her very much.

Liam Mitchell-Zancanaro - I love my mum because she is unique, she would do anything for us and she is always there to take care of us.

6G

Laeticia Ouizeman - I love my mum because she works very hard but she still has the time to do stuff for us.

Lucy Williams - I love my mum because she is really kind and caring. She loves helping everyone when it is needed.

Great to see so many dads reply  promptly and assist with the very special  Mother's Day breakfast on Friday.   We hope families can stay on for the much anticipated assembly presented by our Year 1s.  Get your tissues ready mums, the rehearsals continue to draw me from my office. 

Thank you Betty and the team of the mums for giving up your time on Wednesday to run the stall. In particular, we acknowledge Betty who prepared and organised many of the ‘special' gifts. Our students love this opportunity to purchase something for their mum.  Anne Hart did a great job modelling (selling) some of the options for the children. 

Students in Years 3 and 5 sat NAPLAN this week. NAPLAN is The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and is an annual national assessment for all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. All students in these year levels participated in tests in reading, writing, language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy.

NAPLAN is a diagnostic tool, not a high stakes exam. Coupled with many forms of assessment gathered throughout the year, we use this to track growth over a period of time. These specific results generally don’t arrive until October, therefore the school based assessment is key to targeting and identifying a student's point of need i.e. where are they now, where to next. They tells us more.

Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the classroom teacher.   We hope all  families put these tests into perspective, rested wisely throughout the week and remained calm to ensure the children were not heightened by this experience. It is important to remember that a single test is never a true reflection of how your child is traveling.

What a great attitude from one of our students during NAPLAN.  "No, I'm going to get it done, I'm determined to have a go no matter what."  What a great attitude to have in life. 

Term two school fees were due last week.  By this time of year the expectation is that half of the school fees have been paid (unless you have organised a regular payment method).   We ask that all families please attend to any outstanding school fees.  Overdue statements will be sent out in coming days. Please contact Moira in the office or by email ([email protected]) if you have not received your statement or have any school fee queries.

We respectfully remind families that the Elsternwick Club car park is for patrons only.  If required, additional parking can be located at the Elsternwick Library, 200 metres down Sandilands Street. 

A gentle reminder that black runners or basketball boots (not to be mistaken with the black Clarke styles) are not part of the school uniform policy unless a note has been provided stating a specific medical condition.    Students must change back into the correct school shoes after training sessions or risk missing playground time.  

We also have reminded students to remove various rubber wrist bands and temporary tattoos prior to school. From time to time these expectations need reinforcing in line with our policy.  

Thank you families for supporting our very special Prayer and Pyjamas night with the Prep students. These evenings have been a great addition to their faith formation.  Miss Cauchi, Mrs Sargent, Miss Glumac, Miss Dullard and Miss Overbury did a great job supporting the students and families on the evening.

More great feedback, this time from the parent/child Confirmation workshop and the student retreat day on Friday prepared by Miss Guy, Mr Barnhoorn and Miss Overbury. In addition, the students have been preparing a ‘Saints Expo’ to showcase their chosen saint for Confirmation. The students have to identify the traits and attributes of their chosen saint, rather than just connect with the name they might ‘like’.  In doing so this gives greater meaning and importance to their chosen saint.

Yeah! We finally have the new shade cloth installed.  The feedback from all families has been sensational (they love it and think it looks great), and no doubt this will serve our community well over the years.  Our priority was to provide extensive coverage for our students and we have not been disappointed.  Thanks Miss R for coordinating this impressive sun smart project. Once again this significant investment was generously supported by the P & F. In time we will look further redevelop this area as funds replenish.

This week we warmly welcome Mrs Amanda Bowman on staff. Amanda will work across the classes supporting specific students on Wednesday and Friday.  She joins our invaluable team of support staff who continue make a difference to the learning and wellbeing pathways of our students.

Looking forward to another positive and fun week at St.Joseph’s,

Simon Collis

Awesome job ‘Team Juniors’ with regards to the recent success of the Lorax film night.  With high 5s a plenty at the close of the evening, I couldn’t have been more satisfied with the effort from the juniors. Thanks Mrs Martin, Miss Ryle, Miss Glumac, Miss Dullard, Miss Cauchi and Mrs Sargent. We also appreciate the time spent cleaning the atrium in readiness for the following day.

Please keep a close eye of your children upon arrival and dismissal.  Whilst we enjoy and celebrate the social interactions of our families after school each day, we expect all parents to closely supervise their children during these times.  More recently we have noticed this has become a bit loose from some, requiring staff to intervene after observing from either the staff room or school foyer beyond 3:45pm. In addition, we ask parents or guardians to discourage certain physical interactions between toddlers and school aged students e.g. chasing or tackling or poking or tormenting to encourage the toddlers to react and chase them. 'Don't poke the bear or the bear will...' This does not prepare the children for primary school and does not align with our school values of respect for others. 

Thank you to the parents and grandparents who have offered their time to help with our school musical. I am currently waiting on some costume lists from other schools to check if we are able to hire/ borrow items, before we start producing our own. I will make contact with you all in week 7 of this term to get started on the costume/ prop/ set making. 

In the meantime please get in touch if you have any of the following items that we can borrow for the show:

- waistcoats, any colour/ size

- any 'Victoriana' type clothing (think Mary Poppins!)

- circus costumes

- top hats

- unwanted rolls of fabric

- feathers!

Any donations much appreciated!

Rehearsals are coming along nicely and I must thank Miss Angie and Mrs Quinn (music teachers) for doing an amazing job in teaching the songs to the students. They sound great! Also, a huge well done to our senior cast members who are rehearsing during lunch and after-school sessions. Well done!

Thank you to those parents who attended this valuable workshop last week. We had approximately 60 parents attend and we have had lots of very positive feedback about the session. We hope you enjoy your free 5 week course, and we thank the staff from Smiling Mind for giving us the opportunity to participate in a parent workshop.

The big unit of work this term at St. Joseph's is a sustainability topic entitled, 'Head, Heart and Hands for a Sustainable World'. The foundation subjects for this unit are Biological Science and Geography, amongst links with other areas of the curriculum. This work also offers rich opportunities to look at sustainability with a faith focus, concentrating on stewardship of our earth. We thank Pascale Miller (Georgia, Grade 2) who has worked with our students for the past two weeks, imparting her in-depth knowledge of our environment and sustainability. I have had the good fortune to spend this time with Pascale and our students from Prep to 6, and it has been a pleasure working them all. Aside from learning so much from Pascale, my favourite moment came during a session with Year 1s, when we were gathered around the stump of the old tree on the back playground. The children explained that they knew the tree had to be removed for safety reasons (it was dropping large branches) and during the first playtime following its removal many students from across the school held a prayer service around what was left of the tree. They laid special prayer stones around the stump and said thank you to the tree for always providing shade, and thank you to God for the gift of trees. 

To think that they did this without teachers knowing! What a joy that our children can stop and appreciate the gifts of nature in such a way.

Thank you Pascale for your work, we have really appreciated you sharing your gifts and passions with us.

Wishing all of our mums, grandmothers, aunties and special people a restful and relaxing Mother's Day; put your feet up and enjoy being pampered...you deserve it!

Have a great week!

Michelle Moore

[email protected]

Thank you to all those who attended the Family Fun Movie Night. It was a highly successful night. The children shared their knowledge of what they learnt about The Lorax, from rhyming words to nonsense words. The students put themselves in The Lorax shoes and wrote letters about how they would look after our land which is so precious. Our Juniors know that in narratives there is a beginning, middle and end where the author creates an exciting problem and resolution. "We loved eating pizza, movie food and watching the movie with our, friends, parents and teachers."

Please find attached our Middle School News, we hope you enjoy reading it!

This week in Year 6, we did some work with Miss Guy on the topic of Computer Science. We learned that many of the jobs that will be available when we grow up will most likely have computers involved with it. Therefore, we think that it is important for the children of St Joseph’s to learn about this topic because computers and technology will be a large part of our lives in the future.

As a part of this lesson, we learned about the basics of Scratch and learned how to use different coding blocks to make a victory celebration for our sprite character. It was amazing how much we all achieved in such a short amount of time and it was fun to see and play with the projects of other students in our class. Our favourite coding blocks made our sprites change colour, dance and play music. In upcoming lessons, we would like to learn how to make my sprite fly and we would also love to learn how to make our own games, with more sprites.

“I want to do more now! It was fun!” - Louie Davidson

“It was so much fun! It makes you wonder about the future and what else we can do!” - Claire Vise

“It is endless what you can make on it!” - Orlando Graham

“We finished at 3:30pm, but we wished it ended at 9am the next morning!” - Luis Zeljko

In the coming weeks, Miss Guy is excited to be going into other classes across the school to teach about Computer Science and Scratch.

- Laeticia Ouizeman & Jemima Bell

Attached is the latest Environment News from St Joseph's!

In year 6, the students have been focusing on using descriptive language with rich vocabulary to bring their writing to life. Take a moment to appreciate the talents of one exceptionally talented author, Summer Williams, who has written in response to a stimulus on a 'black hole'. 

A Mother’s Day breakfast will be held tomorrow in the atrium (8 am – 9:15 am).

Assembly to follow.  Please join your children for breakfast to celebrate.

The cost is $5 per family (the P&F will also contribute funds).

Please RSVP and pay for your breakfast via

Trybooking: St Joseph’s Mother’s Day Breakfast

https://www.trybooking.com/PUNQ

Thanks to the Grade 2 class reps (Stephanie, Sarah, Josie and Sheridan) for organizing.

Please see the attached flyer for details.

Wishing all Mums a very happy Mother’s Day this Sunday.

  For those of you looking for an easy mid-week meal - next week I am cooking….

Moroccan Chicken Tagine

 chicken thigh pieces marinated overnight in sweet fragrant spices & then slow cooked in a saffron tomato broth

with roasted pumpkin, chickpeas,  preserved lemon, fresh dates & green olives

a light, fresh family dinner - mild for the kids with a separate tub of harissa for those who like extra spice

at home we like to serve it with couscous, rice, crusty bread or wrapped in warm flatbread

small $16   medium $28   large $36

Moroccan Vegetable Tagine

a delicious vegetarian version packed with seasonal veggies, chickpeas, fresh dates, preserved lemon,

green olives & sweet fragrant spices - cinnamon, cumin, saffron, ginger

small $15   medium $25   large $32

small serves 2 adults medium serves 3-4 adults large serves 4-5 adults 

Both dishes are suitable to freeze  &  gluten/egg/nut/dairy free

How to order - email your order to [email protected] - cut off for orders is 3pm Friday 12 May    

Meals will be available for collection from the tuckshop kitchen on Tuesday 16 May between 3.15 - 4.00pm

Please let me know if you cannot collect during this time & we can make other arrangements

Payment via bank deposit or cash on pick up

Would you like your meal delivered? 

 Leave out a cooler bag with ice bricks & I will deliver your meal to your front door

Any queries please do not hesitate to contact me

I look forward to cooking for you & your family 

Amber

Amber Sanderson

Cooked For You

T 0410 454 719

 E [email protected].au

Glen Eira Council will be holding the following free event:

National Reconciliation Week

Sunday 28 May, 12pm

Mallanbool Reserve

Crn Leila and Murrumbeena Roads, Murrumbeena

The event will include a Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony, Indigenous performance and guided tour of natural flora and fauna with cultural and historical insights.

Reconciliation: Let’s take the next steps. 
www.gleneira.vic.gov.au/nrw  
www.reconciliation.org.au/nrw/

Please see attached flyer

Glen Eira City Council will host a workshop for community groups and organisations that rely on volunteers. This is an opportunity to learn more about recruiting, retaining and recognising volunteers.

Volunteering Victoria’s Sarah Lean-Jones will facilitate this workshop focusing on strategies for building successful volunteer programs.

Come along and network with other local groups.

Date: Tuesday 16 May

Time: 6pm–8pm

Venue: Duncan Mackinnon Pavilion, corner North and Murrumbeena Roads, Murrumbeena

Cost: $5 (light supper provided)

For further information please view the attached flyer.

Bookings are essential.

For further information or to book, contact Council’s Service Centre on 9524 3333.

Lead Animator for Art of Play Games and licensed developer for Disney andNickelodeon studios Derek Pritchard will delve into how stories are told through video games and the challenges in creating them.

Be it a test of athletic ability, an intellectual challenge or simply to pass the time, people of all ages gain joy and meaning from interactive play. Video games offer us an opportunity to explore new worlds, interact in unique ways and tell stories that only this digital medium can connect us to.

WHEN
Tuesday 27 June, 7pm–8.30pm

WHERE
Carnegie Library and Community Centre — Boyd Community Room
7 Shepparson Avenue, Carnegie

FREE event
Limited places available. 
Bookings essential.

Book online

This event is part of Council's 2017 Storytelling Festival — Off the pag

If you are looking for some holiday for your children for the July holidays, please see the attached brochure from Camp Blue.

NumberWorks’nWords can help your child reach greater heights with our expert after-school Maths and English tuition.  Please see the attached flyer for more information.

Friday 12 May

Mothers' Day Breakfast 8:00am - 9:30am

Friday 26 May

Cake Stall (Grade 1)

Dads' Footy Night 

Saturday 3 June

Working Bee (Postponed until early Term 3)

Friday 9 June

School Closure - Staff Level 2 First Aid Training

Monday 12 June

Queens Birthday Public Holiday

Monday 26 June

Creative Music Concert (Teacher -  Rodolfo Wunderlich  students)

4.15 pm in the Atrium

Wednesday 28 June

Creative Music Concert (Teacher - Lachlan Cullis  students)

4.15 pm in the Atrium

Friday 30 June

1.00 pm - End of Term 1 (Whole School Mass at 12.00 noon)

Kids movie afternoon

Monday 17 July

Term 3 begins

Friday 28 July

Grandparents' Day

Tuesday 15 August

Parent/Teacher Interviews

Wednesday 16 August

Parent/Teacher Interviews

Saturday 19 August

Trivia Night - Art Auction

Friday 25 August

School Closure - Berry Street Professional Development

Friday 1 September

Fathers' Day Breakfast

Monday 18 September

School Musical Production at Glen Eira Town Hall

Tuesday 19 September

School Musical Production at Glen Eira Town Hall

Friday 22 September

1.00 pm - End of Term 1 (Whole School Mass at 12.00 noon)

Monday 9 October

Term 4 begins

Friday 13 October

World Teachers Day

Monday 30 October

Year 6 depart for Forest Edge Camp

Wednesday 1 November

Year 6 return from Forest Edge Camp

Monday 6 November

School Closure Day

Tuesday 7 November

Melbourne Cup Day (School Closure)

Tuesday 5 December

Year 3D Roar & Snore at the Zoo sleepover

Wednesday 6 December

Year 3C Roar & Snore at the Zoo sleepover

Monday 11 December

School Closure - Data Analysis, Student Handover of Information & Planning for 2018

Tuesday 19 December

Year 6 Graduation Mass & Celebration

Wednesday 20 December

School Term concludes at 1.00 pm