Dear Parents and Caregivers,

The last couple of weeks at school have seen the children further settle in to 2021 school routines, and work has begun in earnest! It has been a delight to visit the classrooms and see such productive learning environments in action. All of the children are conducting themselves wonderfully in the class and school yard, and I have been especially pleased to be able to present so many Mary MacKillop awards during our Monday prayer services.

Thanks to all who attended our open classrooms and Picnic on the Green. It was great to see so many new and current families mingling and interacting. The sense of connected community was very present! Thank you to our wonderful P&F who did a great job of keeping our thirst quenched during the evening! We have since come together as a P&F to discuss further activities for the remainder of the year, so stay tuned for updates!

Recently we celebrated Shrove Tuesday with delicious pancakes cooked by Katina Dahdah and Bridget Hughes. It was great to see so many families come along and get involved. The following day the mood was more sombre as we celebrated the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday. Throughout the season of Lent, we will be reminding the children of the need for prayer, fasting and alms giving. We will be encouraging all children to “Be More’ in the way they live their lives.

Last Wednesday, Shaun and Martyn from Programmed visited the school to provide the SRC and Eco Warrior team with a presentation regarding plants, herbs and vegetables. They brought with them seedlings to plant in our vegetable garden beds in the Courtyard. The children enjoyed the presentation, and got to plant the seedlings together, before enjoying a delicious morning tea! Our Sincere thanks to Martyn and Shaun for their donation and efforts, which are very much appreciated.

As part of CESA’s commitment to high quality learning and wellbeing outcomes, a number of significant aspects of our school improvement agenda have been enhanced this year. At a school level I am delighted to inform you that our Deputy Principal, Jamie Deverson has been appointed to a system initiated role of “Leader of Learning” and he will be working with our newly installed “Quality performance team” consisting of Myself and Jamie, as well as Christine Farrugia our APRIM, Basia Steciuk (Early Years) and Emma Begg (Primary Years) as learning area leaders. As we have been doing in recent years, we will continue to work towards creating the best possible learning and wellbeing outcomes for all students.

This Thursday we will be having our term one “Learning walks” from 8.45-9.15am. This is an opportunity for you to visit the classroom and to see some of your child’s work. For those families unable to attend at this time, please feel free to find a time with the teacher to come for a visit!

School sport is underway and there is often a hive of activity before and after school as the various sports train for their weekend matches. I am now ‘enjoying’ a much earlier start to my Saturday mornings, taking Matthew to school cricket! Our SACPSSA Swim team has also been training together, at Mitcham Girls pool, in readiness for their carnival later this term. My sincere thanks to Steven DeGiovaniello for his coordination of all things sport related!

Hello everyone, I hope you are travelling well as we are in the full swing of Term 1 now. I also hope children are settled in to school life and have developed strong relationships with their teachers and peers.

It has been a great start to the term with children adjusting to being back at school rather quickly. We’ve been busy getting to know our new students, reconnecting with our continuing students, and we’ve also been testing our students to see where they are with their literacy and numeracy skills. It has also great to see our new buildings up and running. I believe it’s transformed the feel of the school with a brand new admin building and greater access to the oval making our school feel more connected. It’s been wonderful to see our students engaging in the new play spaces. We’re still figuring out how to best utilise these spaces so stay tuned for further re-imagining of how our students play at St Joseph’s Kingswood. 

For the past 3 weeks, we’ve held a Parent Info night each Wednesday evening. It’s been wonderful to see so many families engaged with the school and wanting to know more about what we do here at St Joseph’s. If you missed it, or couldn’t make it, and you feel you would like to know more, please feel free to make contact and we can support you in any way that’s appropriate for you and your family.

During Term 1 we have held a number of school tours for families considering joining our community. We love speaking to new families about the possibility of joining us so if you know anyone with children that are about to enter school or are considering a change in schools, please let us know or invite them to join us for a school tour themselves. Details can be found by ringing the front office or through our school website.

Take care, 

Jamie

Last Friday night, 4 St Joseph’s students-Arabella Waller, Claire Daunt, Eva Mannini and Emily Daunt took part in SAPSASA district swimming trials. All students did extremely well, placing in the first 3 places for all of their races. Results included:

Arabella Waller – 1 first place and 2 third places

Eva Mannini- 1 first place and 2 second places

Emily Daunt – 3 first places

Claire Daunt – 1 second place.

We are waiting to hear about their selection in the South East Metro District team for the State championships! CONGRATULATIONS to all the swimmers and their families and my thanks to Mr D for coaching the team!

OSHC NEWS

I am pleased to announce that at our Parent Committee Meeting held this week we elected a new Parent Coordinator who is Melissa Hughes (Piper’s mum).  We are looking forward to working in partnership with Melissa and our other Parent members this year who are Simon Larcombe, Justin Elder, Marnie Elder and Cheryl Schelbach.

Vacation Care will run this term from Monday 12^th April to Friday 23^rd April so mark these days in your dairies and will be available on SZapp in week 7.  We have put together another wonderful program for the children which is as follows:

Just reminding everyone it is compulsory to have a wide brimmed hat in after school care and Vacation Care.  Baseball caps are not acceptable.  If your child does not bring a hat or brings a baseball cap, we will issue them with one and the fee is $3.00.  You are welcome to supply your child with a hat that we can keep in our hat bag with their name on it.  We also have available 2^nd hand hats to buy for $5.00 and then we will mark them with your child’s name it an keep them for their use only!

Please note that if your child/ren will not be attending a regular session, even if they are sick you need to notify us by SZapp, text or email.  See policies regarding the times for late bookings and late cancellations.

Vicky Wilson & OSHC Team           

Thank you to everyone who joined us on Friday 26th Feb for the first P&F meeting for 2021. We have lots of exciting things planned for the year ahead, and if you were unable to attend but would like to join/help out with an event, please let us know. 

We are hosting our popular Kyton's Easter (hot cross buns and lamingtons) fundraiser. Our preferred method of ordering and payment is via Qkr! (this will be set-up this week and we will send a notification), otherwise orders are available with a physical form and EFTPOS at the Front Office. 

Entertainment Book memberships are back for 2021. Please support St Joseph's Kingswood and order your digital membership by following the link - https://au.entdigital.net/orderbooks/161n602

Stay tuned for details to come for a delicious Easter egg raffle too...!

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

Our students have the opportunity to be involved in an exciting program: ‘Children’s University Australasia and Africa (IO)’.  Children’s University (CU) aims to encourage high quality out of school activities for children aged between 8 and 14 years, engaging the wider community as learning partners in this process.  The most important principles of CU are that participation is voluntary and activities must take place outside the normal school day during lunch, after school, weekends and holidays. 

Led by the University of Adelaide, CU aims to nurture aspirations and develop a love of learning. Children and young people enrolled in CU are issued with a ‘Passport to Learning’ which records their individual learning journey.  After the first 30 hours of learning, children are rewarded for their participation at a graduation ceremony held at the University of Adelaide or a prestigious venue in regional areas.  Children can graduate multiple times depending on the hours they accrue. Information on the hours, and award levels, can be found in the ‘Passport to Learning’.

Participating students have access to activities at school, online and also in the wider community (Learning Destinations).  These activities have been validated by CU trained staff as good learning experiences.  Once your child becomes a member, a full list of Learning Destinations can be found at www.cuaustralasia.com by logging on to the Learning Portal*.

CU members are also able to earn 10 hours from Regular Restricted Activities.  These are external organisations where students are paying members and attend regularly (e.g. sporting clubs, dance studios, swimming centres etc.).  In order to earn hours, students who participate in these activities complete a ‘Review’ form either in the CU portal or in hard copy issued by the CU school coordinator.

Please note that CU is not compulsory, children are encouraged to take responsibility for their learning, choosing what to do from a variety of offerings.  All CU learning is designed to inspire children to think about their futures with a greater knowledge of the careers and professions that they could aspire to.

Students are enrolled in CU when they receive their Passport to Learning.  The annual fee for 2021 is $33.00 (inc. GST) with all replacement passports incurring a fee of $5.50 (inc GST). Please note that membership fees for School Card Holders will remain at $16.50 (inc GST) per student also.

* The Learning Portal requires children to log in using a username and password. Once your CU school coordinator receives your membership consent form it will be sent to CU, who will issue your child a Passport to Learning, login details, handouts and guidelines to assist you and your child with navigating the website.  These resources will be sent back to your CU school coordinator for collection.  Please note that Children’s University and the University of Adelaide take the privacy of our members seriously and a detailed privacy policy can be found here https://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals/privacy/.

If your child would like to participate, please click here to download the form (available from the Front Office if you are unable to download and print) and bring it into the Front Office, with payment, at your earliest convenience, by next week. 

Looking for a tutor during school hours to help with maths, literacy and organisational skills?

I am a registered teacher with SPELD SA and I am studying to become a psychologist.

Katherine Speed
MEd,  B Int Studies, Grad Dip TESOL

Educational Coach 

Literacy, Numeracy, Language, Creative Thinking, Memory, IELTS
mskaspeed@gmail.com
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