Dear Parents and Carers,

It has been another sensational week for our Joey’s this week.  On Sunday our Sacramental students completed their journey to full initiation in our Catholic faith by making their First Eucharist.  Then Thursday night saw our Young Speechmakers do an outstanding job representing not only our school but also themselves. All of their speeches were incredibly articulate, humorous and delivered so professionally.  The calibre of speeches from across the schools was impressive and there was definitely some future leaders and perhaps even Prime Ministers amongst the speakers. A massive congratulations to Meg, Thomas, Mikayla, Aria, Greta and Julia for their achievements.  Then to top the week off, on Tuesday our Putney Athletics team had a clean sweep of the trophies at the interschool carnival. A huge thank you to Mr Meekin who did a fabulous job once again in preparing our team. Also thank you to Miss Lisa, Miss Nicci and Miss Juanita who helped out at the carnival.  

It has now been just over a week since the site offices for the St Patrick’s building project arrived. I would like to thank each and every one of you for your patience and care during pick up times. It has certainly helped the transition to the changes in the pick up area run smoothly.  Just a friendly reminder that this zone is not a parking area and we ask for your consideration with this. I would also like to thank all of the extra staff who have helped of an afternoon to ensure that pick up time runs efficiently.     

On Tuesday 18th June our P&F will be holding their Annual General Meeting at 6pm in the staff room.  I encourage you to come along to this meeting to hear about the wonderful work that our P&F does within the school and to see how you might be able to contribute to our shared mission of making St Joseph’s the best it can possibly be.  The evening is always relaxed and we love to see new faces. There will be child minding provided in the Library.

We have now hit that time of the year where due to the change in the weather we begin to see more cases of the flu and flu like symptoms.  Over the past week, we have had a number of students presenting with some of these symptoms. Some medical conditions require that children be excluded from school in order to prevent the spread of germs among other students and staff.  Please see the Time Out Brochure for information regarding exclusion periods in schools.  I ask for your help in keeping our school community as healthy as we possibly can during this time.

The cold weather has well and truly arrived over the past few days.  As a result, I would like to put out a friendly reminder about the importance of students wearing the correct school uniform. A St Joseph’s Royal Blue Jacket is available for purchase from The School Locker or we have some school jumpers at our second hand uniform shop which is open of a Tuesday morning. During the cold weather, children are permitted to wear royal or navy blue tracksuit pants.  Girls may also wear navy blue tights. We encourage the students to wear their school uniform with pride and being dressed in the correct school uniform is part of our Joey’s 5Rs where we show pride in being a Joey’s kid!

Have a wonderful week.

Amanda

Sacramental Progam

On Sunday our Sacramental Program students made their First Eucharist and took their final step to become fully initiated into the Catholic Church.  I would like to congratulate all the children who were part of the program this year for their wonderful participation in our preparation sessions and the reverent way they joined in the Sacramental celebrations.

Altar Servers

If your child has made their First Eucharist and is interested in becoming an Altar Server for Sunday Mass, could you please send me an email by Friday 14th June.  My email address is ajones13@sjnwtsv.catholic.edu.au.  Fr Joseph and I will then organise a training session for the students. Once we have conducted training then your child will be placed on the Sunday Mass roster with more experienced Altar Servers to help them learn the ropes.  If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Class Mass

This Friday Prep, Year 3 and Year 5 will be attending Class Mass in the Church at 9am with Fr Joseph.  You are more than welcome to join us.

Parish Winter Dinner

Sunday’s Gospel

Luke 24:46-53 - Jesus is taken to heaven and the disciples remain in Jerusalem awaiting his sending of the Spirit.

Sunday’s Gospel was the liturgical celebration of the Ascension of the Lord, when Jesus was taken to heaven on the 40th day after Easter.

Any family that has tried to sit down to a family dinner or packed the car for a trip has heard children argue at least once about who should sit where. To sit next to someone, especially if that person is important, is to have a place of honour. Jesus has this place of honour, seated now at the right hand of the Father, but there's more to this metaphor than where Jesus sits in relation to God. To be in the place of honour is also to be in a place of power. Knowing people in powerful places can be very helpful. Children remind us of this each time we are called upon to referee a conflict. Jesus, honoured now at God's right hand, is a powerful ally for us.

As you gather as a family, recall a time when there was a discussion, or perhaps even an argument, about where people were going to sit. Talk about why it might be important to a person to sit in a particular place. Mention that in this Sunday's Gospel we learn about Jesus' place in heaven. Read together Luke 24:46-53. Talk about how in the Creed we describe Jesus' place in heaven as “seated at the right hand of the Father.” Discuss what we might learn about the relationship between God and Jesus from today's Gospel and from the Creed and what we can learn about Jesus' relationship to us. Observe that one of the things we learn is that Jesus continues to help us from this place of honour in heaven.

 https://www.loyolapress.com/our-catholic-faith/liturgical-year/sunday-connection/ascension-of-the-lord-cycle-c

 God's Love

Watch The Boy and the Ocean read by author Max Lucado.  The story is about God’s love.  God’s love is like the ocean. God’s love is like the mountains. God’s love is like the night sky.  It’s always here, it’s always deep. It never ends. God’s love is special.

http://bcewaystopray.weebly.com/c-week-17-2-8-june.html

Have a wonderful week!

Take care and God Bless

Amanda

This week we had Shell Questacon Science Circus visit our school.  It was a great hands on experience for the students to see Science in a different context.  The kids were all very engaged and had a wonderful time.

All of the students who attended the show during the week will have received a ticket to attend their Pop-Up Science Centre this Saturday 8th June at the Townsville Entertainment Centre from 11am-4pm.  It will be a great day out for the entire family, with over 40 hands on science exhibits, four exciting science shows and a Tots Space for the little ones! See their Facebook event for more info!
https://www.facebook.com/events/389265158292028/

Jan

Awards will be presented at Assembly on the 12th June at 2pm

Class in the spotlight is PrepM

http://readiscover1.blogspot.com.au/ 

Parent-infant reading linked to stronger NAPLAN scores

Parents who read to their child aged one to two years daily are gearing them up for stronger literacy, language and numeracy results at school.

That’s the message from new Charles Sturt University research.

https://www.educationreview.com.au/2019/06/parent-infant-reading-linked-to-stronger-naplan-scores/

Study lead and post-doctoral research fellow Dr Michelle Brown said parent-child book reading with infants is widely recommended and considered one of the most effective parent-child activities for promoting language and literacy development.

 “The positive findings from our study suggest that parents should not only be informed about the long- term academic benefits to be gained from parent-child book reading during infancy, but they should be encouragedand provided with support to engage in high levels of parent-child book-reading daily,” Brown said.

The number of minutes caregivers reported reading books with their infants were examined with NAPLAN results in grades three and five.

Small and positive relationships were found between parent-child book reading at one to two years and reading, spelling, grammar, and numeracy scores in grade three, and reading, writing, spelling, and grammar scores in grade five.

Aside from what the research says reading with your child is a wonderful way to connect and experience something profound together.

All parents are welcome to join our library and borrow extra reading material on Friday before school.

Your Teacher Librarian: This week you will notice the library has a display.  This school is one of the few that has a qualified Teacher-librarian teaching your child about literature and assisting them on their reading journey. If you need any assistance with finding the right book for your child, please pop in before school on Friday.

Readers cup Our 2 teams are busily rereading the 5 books for our competition coming up on June 12 at St Anthony’s.  The students have a speciality book which they are writing up questions on to quiz each other during in first break. These students are working hard to keep our winning streak happening.  Go the reading Knights of St Joeys.

Book Week celebrations term 3: If you are new to our school, ask someone about our long-standing dress up day for book week.  The students love looking at the theme and working out their favourite book character.  The theme this year revolves around the magic and power of reading. During term 3 I will explore this theme to assist children in dressing up as their favourite book character.  My Junior librarians have already said they love Harry Potter and our preps are looking closely at Magic Hat by Mem Fox.  Preps and year 1 will have a book chosen for them and guided closely to help them create their own costume.  Holidays is a good time to start preparing their costume.  We strongly advocate creating a costume rather than buying one which has been the standing tradition at our school.  Here are our Junior librarians from 2017 when we did our history theme.

Happy Reading   

Belinda Walker (Teacher Librarian)

2019 Putney Athletics Team

On Tuesday, our Putney Athletics Team, competed in the annual Townsville Primary Schools Athletics Carnival at the Townsville Sports Reserve. Our team acquitted themselves again with great pride and enthusiasm, demonstrating tremendous school spirit.

St. Joey’s were triumphant again this year, winning an unprecedented four trophies that were on offer. The team managed to collect the Aggregate, Boys, Girls and  Average Trophies. Our team managed to hold off The Cathedral School (2^nd) and  Wulguru State School (3^rd). The President of the Townsville School Sport Committee gave a compliment to Joey’s when stating, “Congratulations to Joey's The Strand for their clean sweep of the shields. They were dominant on the track as well as in the field. Must be something in the sea air for them to do so well at both swimming and athletics!”

Joey’s competitors never gave up throughout the day and showed much school spirit and a willingness to do our very best. Whilst our team performed strongly overall, there were some memorable individual achievements. Whilst we are proud of these achievements, it is a whole team effort to be able to achieve what we have. The entire team are to be commended for their effort on the day.

We have again students selected to attend the North Queensland Athletics trials this year. Our representatives are; Jy Gasa (100m, 200m), Charli Russell (High Jump, 100m, 200m), Thomas Griffiths (Shot Put) and Harper Ryan (100m). We wish them well at the NQ Trials on 17th June.    

As is the Joey’s tradition, our athletes have represented our school in a courageous and spirited manner. A special thanks to our assistants on the day, Miss Lisa, Miss Nicci and Miss Juanita... We certainly had another a big day out!

Joey's Stars Shine Brightly

Firstly, congratulations to our students who trialed at the North Queensland Cross Country Championships last week (Charli Russell, Quinn Pascoe, Sophie and Milla Hannay, Nicholas Barr and Estella Smith). We had Nicholas and Quinn making the NQ team and they will progress now to the Queensland Schools Cross Country championships.              . 

It was a massive week for Quinn Pascoe, as he was selected in the NQ Football (Soccer) team and will now represent at the State Championships held in Ipswich in August. We wish Quinn all the very best in his travels.

Further congratulations goes to (Nicholas Barr, Anthony Roveglia, Toby Kennedy and Orlando Lochowicz) who made it into the Townsville Schools Rugby Union team. All four of our nominated players were selected, demonstrating the wonderful depth of Rugby talent on offer at Joey's. They will participate in the NQ trials this month. We wish them all the very best.