Newsletter No. 8 - 7th August 2024

Message from the Principal

Dear Parents & Caregivers,

As we embark on this exciting term, we're looking forward to the remainder of the year filled with enriching learning opportunities and engaging events. Stay updated by checking the Compass App regularly for notifications and the latest information. We also share highlights and stories about our events on our school Facebook Page. For your convenience, a Term Planner is included in this newsletter.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the Gomez family on the arrival of their new baby, Lucia (Lou-Lou), a precious sister for Henry and KoKo. We warmly welcome our new students and their families: Will (3/4W), Max (3/4M), and Bella, who joins Kinder.

Our deepest sympathies go out to the Kildey family following the sudden and unexpected loss of their father. We hope that the cherished memories they hold bring some comfort during this difficult time.

Despite being only in week 3, our students have already accomplished so much, and we are incredibly proud of their achievements. This newsletter celebrates their diverse talents and contributions.

With every best wish,

Nikki Norley

(Principal)

Message from the Assistant Principal

PMP/Homework at St Joseph’s Kilaben Bay

At the end of last term, parents had the opportunity to meet with their child's teacher regarding semester one reports and to have a conversation with the teachers at our school. It was so wonderful to be able to share with you the achievements of the year so far and the progress that your child is making.

A common theme that arose through these conversations was regarding PMP (Practice Makes Progress) and homework at our school.

The teachers at our school are constantly responding to best educational practice and pedagogy to provide your child with the finest learning experiences.

Australian research on the benefits of homework for primary students presents a mixed picture. While there is evidence suggesting some positive impacts, the overall effect appears to be small, particularly for younger students.

Educational researchers including John Hattie, Michael McDowell and Lyn Sharratt all agree that that homework in primary school has a smaller positive impact on academic achievement compared to secondary school. The effectiveness largely depends on the quality of the homework rather than the quantity. ​ Homework should not be overly burdensome, and the time spent on it should be balanced.

John Hattie's research on the effect of homework in primary education reveals that it has a relatively small impact on student achievement, with an effect size of 0.29. This finding suggests that while homework can have some benefits, its overall effectiveness is limited compared to other educational interventions.

SJKB’s  2024 learning goal is ‘To improve reading and writing through differentiated teaching practice’. This is why our teachers encourage reading at home every night as homework. Daily reading has many benefits. It will enhance vocabulary and comprehension skills and foster a love of reading. Reading stimulates brain development, particularly in areas related to language and cognitive skills. It helps children develop their imagination, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities. ​ 

If you have any questions about homework or daily reading at home, please reach out to your child’s teacher.

Colour/Slime Explosion

We are so excited to be having a COLOUR AND SLIME EXPLOSION this term!!! We will be fundraising for Literacy resources, including decodable and home readers for our students.  Fundraising will be organised through Australian Fundraising.

The Colour Explosion School Run 4 Fun will be on the 6^th September (Week 7). Parents are invited to attend so please save the date 😊

• Please make sure students wear a WHITE shirt and closed in shoes.
• Students will need to pack a spare change of clean clothes to change into after the event.
• Students will be covered in non-toxic, biodegradable colour powder and slime from head to toe.
• Colour Powder is made of high-quality corn starch and permitted food colours. Safety data sheet is available upon request.

To cover costs and enhance our fundraising efforts, we are asking for students to purchase a ticket for $15 capped at $25 per family. This ticket will allow your child/ren to participate in the colour/slime explosion and jumping castle. They will also receive sunglasses, a rainbow headband, a sausage sandwich for lunch, face painting, disco and a tattoo!

Tickets for the colour/slime run can be purchased through QKR and will be available for sale from today up until the day of the event.  Parents and family members are invited to attend this exciting day and sausage sandwiches can be ordered for $2.50 and ordered through QKR also from today. Drinks and snacks will also be available on the day (cash only).

How Do You Fundraise?

Fundraising for our Colour Explosion School Run 4 Fun is entirely online. Follow the instructions in your child’s sponsorship booklet (these were sent home last week)  to create a cybersafe, online profile page at www.australianfundraising.com.au. At the end of the fundraiser, student’s incentive prizes are ordered automatically based on their fundraising total and golden coins. Students can earn up to 15 unique prizes!

The top 5 fundraisers will also get to SLIME a teacher of their choice!!

Please note: all cash donations must be converted to online donations before. We cannot accept any cash donations for this fundraiser.

Monty Incentive Prizes!

• Online Golden Coins – complete fun online tasks to redeem an extra $75 towards your prize credit.
• Monty Hatching Egg: Achieve all virtual badges on online platform
• Monty Backpack: Highest fundraising student in each class will go into the draw to win
• Monty Scented Pencil: Every student who creates a profile page in first 7 days
• Monty Pencil Case: Raise $200 or more online
• 30cm Monty Plush + Champions Medallion: Highest fundraising student in each school

OUTLINE OF THE DAY

When: Friday 6^th September (Week 7).

9.30- 10.45am- Fun at the field! Including a jumping castle, DJ, face painting and tattoos!

10.45- 11.30am- BBQ LUNCH- sausage sandwich (covered in ticket cost for students, $2.50 for family members- ordered via QKR). Drinks and snacks will be available for purchase (cash only).

11.30am- 1pm- COLOUR AND SLIME EXPLOSION at the field!

1pm- 1.30- RECESS

1.30- 2.40pm- Students will change into their spare clothes and return to their classroom.

For more information about this event please contact Courtney Porter Courtney.howard@mn.catholic.edu.au or Courtney Albury Courtney.albury@mn.catholic.edu.au

We look forward to this exciting day with the students!

Happy Fundraising!

School TV

School is a wellbeing resource that can support you in the challenges relating to modern-day parenting.

This resource helps build relationships, foster connections, enable understanding and break down barriers to navigate a pathway towards better mental health and wellbeing for young people. It can assist in starting conversations on topics that are sometimes awkward or difficult to tackle.

SchoolTV topics are conveniently arranged into a number of series. Topics feature interviews with leading youth wellbeing experts and researchers from around the world offering hours of relevant and practical information. Additionally, each topic includes a compilation of related resources from key organisations providing a comprehensive stream of content. Resources include informative fact sheets, articles, apps, books, podcasts, websites, and other videos - all related to a single topic, in one place for easy access!

You will find school TV on our website under the parent information tab. 

PB4L

Last Monday all staff engaged in a professional development day with a focus on PB4L. Craig Moore (Education Access Officer - Positive Behaviour, CSO Learning and Wellbeing) spent the day with us supporting the staff with how we can improve student behaviour and learning outcomes.

Goals of PB4L:

PB4L is a marriage of behavioural theory, behaviour analysis, positive behaviour supports, and prevention and implementation science that has been developed to improve how schools select, organize, implement, and evaluate behavioural practices in meeting the needs of all students. It’s our lens for best practice.

We have a systematic approach on how we can achieve this goal, and we are very excited to reignite PB4L in our school.

To achieve this goal some planning and further development needs to occur. Some essential features of school wide positive behaviour support that we are renewing include:

• defining expected behaviours
• teaching expected behaviours
• encouraging expected behaviours

Consultation and evaluation are an important part in the renewal of PB4L. This may include revisiting our SJKB values and mission and vision statement to ensure alignment between our Catholic mission and our school values.  We will invite parent consultation and look carefully at data including the recent "Tell Them From Me survey questions related to PB4L. The staff are very excited for these changes and will communicate these with you further.

Message from the Acting REC

Grandparents Day

On the 26th July the St Joseph's community celebrated the feast day of Saints Anne and Joachim, the Patron Saints of Grandparents and the grandparents of Jesus. We welcomed many grandparents to our school and celebrated with a beautiful liturgy. Thank you to all the students involved who read, sang, performed and shared some special things about their grandparents. We shared a lovely lunch and activities before our Friday assembly which included performances from our School Rock Band and choir.  

We are very grateful to our Grandparents for their contribution to our school community.  

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St Mary McKillop Feast Day

Vinnies Winter Appeal - Pyjama Day

On the 26th July the St Joseph's community celebrated the feast day of Saints Anne and Joachim, the Patron Saints of Grandparents and the grandparents of Jesus. We welcomed many grandparents to our school and celebrated with a beautiful liturgy. Thank you to all the students involved who read, sang, performed and shared some special things about their grandparents. We shared a lovely lunch and activities before our Friday assembly which included performances from our School Rock Band and choir.  

We are very grateful to our Grandparents for their contribution to our school community.  

Upcoming Dates

August 8th - Mary Mackillop Liturgy, 2pm in the Church (3/4W organising)
August 9th - Pyjama Day for SVDP Winter Appeal, gold coin donation
August 15th - Assumption Mass in the Church, whole school attending
August 19th - Year 6 Religious Literacy test
August 30th - Father's Day Breakfast and celebration

Message from the Primary Coordinator

Cold Writes and Big Writes 

Last week, all students in our school participated in a Cold Write (Kindy did a Talk instead). A Cold Write is when all students in the school are given the same writing prompt to write about. The purpose is to capture how students write without any support, to see if they are independently able to apply the writing skills they have learnt in class. 

Usually if you walked into a classroom during a writing lesson, you would hear students talking to their teacher and each other, and you would see students referring to templates or anchor charts. During a Cold Write, the room is quiet and teachers cannot assist students as we usually do, to ensure that the writing sample is a true representation of student ability. 

Teachers then reflected on all the writing samples from Years 1-6 and used this data to see where each child sits against the Learning Progressions (for Creating Written Texts). We can now use this data to determine the ‘where to next?’ for every student to improve their writing. 

In Week 6, all students will participate in a Big Write (Kindy will do a Big Talk). This is different to a Cold Write as students are asked to show what they have learned in writing for the term so far, they can ask questions, use support materials and receive teacher support. This is a celebration of all their learning! We will provide more information to families about the Big Write in upcoming weeks.  

Joey Journos 

Joey Journos is our very own student newsletter written by Year 3-6 students with the motto of ‘written for kids, by kids’. The JJ published their first edition last term and whole school was buzzing when it was distributed! Very excitingly, the Newcastle Herald came out on Monday this week to interview three representatives from the JJ – Scarlett T, Matilda D and Paige S. These student representatives did a wonderful job speaking on behalf of the JJ team. The story was published online on Monday and was in the Herald hardcopy on Tuesday.  

Well done Joey Journos – you are doing a great job and we look forward to seeing your next edition later this term! 

Library News

Class News

2 Blue

Peer Support

We commenced our Peer Support lessons last Tuesday. The whole school participates in Peer Support for 30 minutes each week. Two Peer leaders from Stage 3 facilitate a small group of 8 younger students, who work together through a number of structured activities. We are working on a module called Living Positively helping us explore the concept of optimism. Students will learn about identifying their strengths, perseverance and positive self talk. This module will support students to develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to maintain a positive outlook on life. We encourage you to talk to your children about Peer Support every week, as it will help to reinforce the concepts learned in each session.

Gifted Education News

SJKB School Traffic Investigation and Guessing Competition

Congratulations to the Starkey family (Xavier 5/6 W) on winning the $20 SJKB Canteen Voucher as part our Guessing Competition. The Starkey family were the closest with their guess of 90 km/hr.  The top speed of the vehicles travelling through our School 40 km/h zone was 94.7 km/h … some 54.7 km/hr above our safe school speed limit!

Thanks to our students in Stage 3 for their hard work involved in this investigation. The Catholic Schools Office of Maitland / Newcastle have confirmed their commitment to student safety by funding some important improvements between the netball courts and the lower pedestrian crossing.

Minecraft Education Challenge

This semester, two student teams from SJKB will participate in the Australian eSports League Minecraft Education Edition Challenge. Team One includes Kobe (5/6 W), Zac (5/6 W), Audrey (5/6 B) and Harry (5/6 B) from Stage 3. Team 2 includes our Stage 3 Aboriginal students Aylah (5/6 M), Xavier (5/6 B) and Henry (5/6 W).

The Semester Two project is focused on the theme, Mythic Australia and will require each team to design and create a Minecraft Education Edition World that showcases an Aboriginal Dreamtime Story. In our case, we have chosen the Story of Puttikan, the Monster of Mount Sugarloaf. Members of our student teams will visit Mount Sugarloaf, accompanied by Mr Steve Newman (CSO MN) and myself, on Friday 9^th August to start building a geographical and cultural context for the build.

 Gemstem

Three of our GEMSTEM Stage Two students are busy working away on their Minecraft Education Edition re-builds of our own St Joseph’s Catholic Church. Ike (3/4 W), Charlie (3/4 W) and Elliot (3/4 M) are currently about one third of the way through their projects and are looking forward to sharing their final products with our school community when finished.

Aboriginal Education News

Cultural Guides Program

Aylah (5/6 M) has accepted the challenge of completing our SJKB Cultural Guides course during Semester Two of 2024. This course is open to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander students in Stage Three.

This course requires a high level of cultural competence and understanding with regard to a range of natural resources located in our school and local environment. Aylah will then complete a practical “on country” assessment which will require her to interpret a range of natural features of the bush trail area that leads from our ovals through to the Kilaben Bay area of Lake Macquarie.

Aspire

On Wednesday July 31st, our primary classes had the opportunity to see the 2024 Aspire production 'Disconnected.' It was a wonderful experience visiting the Civic Theatre in Newcastle, with many Year 3 students commenting on the beauty of the theatre and the intricate details. We had the pleasure of watching 3 of our Year 6 students Eve Rozenfeld, Lilly Kay and Abby Schmidt in their roles. It was exciting to see them on stage, performing their solo lines as their character or as part of the vocal ensemble. 

Sport News

Congratulations to Paige S who represented Westlakes at the Netball Junior State Titles. We are very proud of you!

School Fees Information

Collection of school fees is crucial to our ability to effectively provide quality education for our students. The fees go directly to paying for new technology, resources for the classroom, experiences for students such as excursions, costs of buses etc.

As always, if a family is experiencing financial hardship, it is imperative that you contact the school to make an appointment to meet and discuss school fees, so that a payment plan can be arranged and families are supported.

P & F News

Next P&F meeting is on Tuesday 27th August at 5.50pm in the library - All Welcome

Volunteering at SJKB

We regularly need volunteers for various roles within our school. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer at our school, please follow the instructions on the link below:

If you have been a volunteer in the past and your WWCC has expired, you can renew it for free at Service NSW.

Once you have been cleared, you will need to come in for a site induction (approx. 40mins). We appreciate you all so much!

courtney.porter@mn.catholic.edu.au 

PLUS

The PLUS Second hand clothing shop runs on Monday and Friday mornings from 8.20am to 8.50am during school terms. 

We have wide selection of secondhand uniforms available all uniform items are $5 and jackets are available for $10. All payments can be made via QKR! after your order has been received, we will attach the amount owing to the order.  

Alternatively you can order online and we will send your order home with your child via the link/QK code above. 

Hats can also be ordered via our system please specify new or used in the comments.

PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR CHILD'S NAME AND CLASS in the message as our volunteers do not have access to the different family surnames to make connections to students - therefore use your child's name first, then your name, especially if different surname.  Payment is via the Qkr! app. 

Thank you!

THE PLUS TEAM

Canteen News – Including Volunteer Roster

We are seeking new volunteers to help in the canteen.  With our new lunchtime the volunteers are only required to be here between the school drop off time and 11.15am.We ask any new or current Parents or Grandparents if if they could offer a couple of hours once or twice a term in the canteen so that the children can receive this service. They will love you being here too!

Qkr cut off times have been changed recently so please ensure Qkr orders are placed before 8.00 am each day.

If you would like to volunteer please call or email admin@kilabenbay.catholic.edu.au

Term Planner

Parish News

Good For Kids

Guitar Lessons