God of love, creation and wisdom, 

Thank you for our Catholic school, St Joseph's.

We are grateful for our space. 

Our space to think, ...

our space to be ...

and our space for silence. 

An Excerpt from the St Joseph’s School Prayer

Welcome back for Term 4

Congratulations to all of the Pies supporters. Too good on the day and the best team all season.

There is a lot to learn from the way they go about it and the way they embrace their opportunities, live in the moment and enjoy the challenges. 

As I look at Term 4 I can see a wonderful term ahead filled with our own opportunities and challenges. I am inspired by both of the coaches and the teams to embrace each moment.

Transition and Class Groupings for 2024

Further into this newsletter is detailed information about our processes for grouping children into classes for 2024. I would like to draw to two important elements of the process:

• The green forms for parent input, closing on Friday 13th October.
• Children nominate four “Working Buddies” of which they will be placed with at least one.

School Closure Day

Our staff are undertaking professional development next Monday 9th October. There is no school for the children on this day.

Our junior teachers will be exploring the Little Learners Love Literacy (LLLL) program. LLLL research stresses the importance of explicit and sequential literacy teaching from the beginning of a child’s schooling to give every child the best possible chance of developing into fluent readers, writers and spellers. Little Learners Love Literacy® is a systematic and engaging program with focused explicit lessons, games, crafts, music, puppets, drawing and much more. This program is an extension of the phonics and phonemic awareness practises that our junior teachers are implementing.

Our middle and senior school staff will be engaged in an exploration of the updated mathematics curriculum. There are several changes that need to be implemented for next year which will include some adjustments to our scope and sequence as well as our ongoing assessment tasks. During this time the staff will also explore learning experiences to best support the children in understanding the concepts. This day will be led by Teresa Hadden (DOBCEL) and Joel Saywell our maths leader.