ST JOHN'S... INSPIRING
STUDENTS FOR LIFE

  • HOME
  • FAMILY HUB
  • LITTLE SAINTS
  • OUR SCHOOL
  • LEARNING AT ST JOHN'S
  • STUDENT SUPPORT
  • JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
  • GET IN TOUCH

TERM 1, WEEK 6

WEEK 2

WEEK 4

Yours in Christian service,

Brad Moss
Principal

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Brad navy

At St John's, we are always focused on creating an environment that supports positive mental health for the whole school community.

Investing in our personal well-being allows us to enjoy all the activities we want to participate in. It doesn’t mean we will never be sad or go through emotionally challenging times. However, those with positive mental health will be able to bounce back more easily from these experiences.

Facets of wellbeing such as gratitude, hope, and emotional regulation, have been found to improve academic performance across several areas. For example, students with high levels of hope can make adaptive attributions and overcome failure by making corrections and see mistakes as a learning opportunity.

It’s normal at various times to feel sad, stressed, angry or anxious. But when these feelings last for longer than usual and start to affect your everyday life, it's important to find out what's going on and what you can do about it.

I strongly encourage you to complete the Wellbeing Barometer Survey. The information gathered will enable us to focus on some of the key issues and highlight where further assistance may be required as we do all we can to support our students and families. 

The Wellbeing Barometer 2023
About the Survey

The Wellbeing Barometer 2023
COMPLETE the Survey

AROUND THE GROUNDS


NAPLAN
Our year 3 and 5 students have begun their preparation for the NAPLAN assessments which begin next week. While this is an important part of the school calendar, we have been normalising the testing process as much as we can with the students. Year 3 and 5 have been practicing entering the NAPLAN lockdown web browser, and have been looking at some of the different types of questions that may be in the NAPLAN assessments. If your child has been showing some anxiety around these tests, we get it! Participating in any formal assessment can be scary, particularly for those who are doing it for the first time. There are some great tips in this article for how to help manage exam anxiety.

LUNCHTIME CLUBS
Lunchtime clubs have been in full swing, and it is great to hear children in the playground discussing which group they are going to go to. Carmel (a parent volunteer), who runs the Garden Gang, was amazed at the number of children who joined her last week. Perhaps the smell of the delicious baking that she had done with home grown produce allured the increased number of participants!

TheirCare Welcome Breakfast


We've been so lucky to welcome TheirCare to St John's this year as our before and after school care provider - to say they have been amazing is an understatement!
TheirCare are hosting a 'Welcome Breakfast' tomorrow, Thursday 9 March, 8.45-9.20am, at the BBQ area outside of the School Hall.
All Families Welcome - Please join us!

SWIMMING CARNIVAL

On the 24th of February, 3-6 students and staff alike had an amazing day at the swimming carnival.
This day had so many highlights! Fun, cheering, chants, laughter, splashing, smiles, a little bit of pre-race angst and a HUGE amount of encouragement and perseverance!

We are SO incredibly proud of how all our Year 3-6 students conducted themselves at the Swimming Carnival last Friday!!
Our teachers were really proud because some students who said they didn’t want to swim still gave it a red-hot go! There were also novelty events for those who wanted to participate in some fun activities. We saw some outstanding sportsmanship, as kids weren’t just cheering for their houses, but they were also cheering for other house’s participants.

Also a HUGE thank you to the students from St Pauls College, Walla Walla, who volunteered their time to help with time keeping on the day!

A few teachers jumped in for the ‘Students vs Teachers’ race with St Pauls students joining in too. The winners of the race were St Pauls students!

CONGRATUALTIONS to our winning house - LUTHER


By Ben Code
St News Leadership Team

CONGRATULATIONS LUTHER

WATCH OUR SWIMMING CARNIVAL VIDEO HERE


12/13 Year Girls1st – Zoe PodubinskiEqual 2nd – Vivienne Jarick
Equal 2nd – Alannah Van Der Linde

11 Year Girls
1st – Meggie Kinning
2nd – Darcy Smith
3rd – Maddison Baker

10 Year Girls
1st – Scarlett Barber
2nd – Eloise Schilg
3rd – Emma Sumbler

8/9 Year Girls
1st – Indi Knight
Equal 2nd – Ivy Tervet
Equal 2nd – Thea Kinning

 

AGE CHAMPIONS 2023


12/13 Year Boys1st – Victor Wang
2nd – Jake Anderson
3rd – William Frohling

11 Year Boys
1st – Daigan Whelan
2nd – Jacob Rudd
3rd – Hudson Piltz

10 Year Boys
1st – Luke Schulz
2nd – Deon Byers
3rd – Ian Wang

8/9 Year Boys
1st – Joel James
2nd – Lincoln Heinrich
Equal 3rd – Noah Merrett
Equal 3rd – Jim Berry

 

IMPORTANT DATES


Kindergarten First Full Week
Monday 6 March
-TheirCare Welcome Breakfast
Thursday 9 March, 8.45-9.20am
BBQ Area Outside School Hall
-
Friday Night Chapel
School Hall
Friday 10 March, 6.00-7.30pm
-
Albury Netball NSW Schools Competition
JC King Park Albury
Monday 13 March
-
Parent/Family Team Initiative - First Meeting with Mr Brad Moss
(For further info, see the Principals Message in the week 4 newsletter)
School Hall
Thursday 16 March, 2.30-3.30pm
-
NAPLAN 2023 - Yrs 3 and 5
Wednesday 15 March - English
Thursday 16 March - Reading
Monday 20 March - Conventions of Language
Tuesday 21 March - Numeracy
-
St John's Open Day for Future Families
Meet at the School Hall
Wednesday 22 March, 9.30-10.30am

TEAM APPRECIATION

Our St John's team is an amazing group of individuals who contribute to our wonderful school, and the lives of your children!

From your smile to your beautiful dresses, your vibrant personality shines day in day out! You bring so much to the St John’s Team and we appreciate you!

We know you love connecting with your students, watching them develop and grow in confidence, whilst being yourself and having silly moments in class! Mrs Vaccaro loves spending her spare time doing jigsaw puzzles and drinking ‘coffee’ with friends!

Mrs Vaccaro - THANK YOU

At St John’s we highly value our connections with all of our school families. We want to support you as much as we can, as that benefits your children’s education and wellbeing. Sometimes families go through tough times – if that is the case for you at the moment, you may like to look into one of the following parenting supports through Mission Australia in Albury; Circle of Security and Keeping Children Safe.
Dates and further information can be found in the links below.

Parenting Riverina Family Skills Progam
Term 1, 2023

Program Descriptions

For information, please email parentingriverina@missionaustralia.com.au

The Cancer Council are promoting "How to Pack a Healthy Lunch Box" and we highly encourage all of our families to fuel your children with wholesome foods!
Check out the Cancer Council Website for recipes such as chocolate and coconut bliss balls OR read a blog including 'Top 5 tips to take the pressure off packing lunch boxes'

VIDEO: How to Pack a Healthy Lunch Box

WEBSITE: Explore recipes and blogs

BOOK CLUB

HEADING HEADING HEADING
text, text, text, text

text, text, text, text
text, text, text, text
text, text, text, text

SPECIAL EVENTS

text, text, text, text
text, text, text, text
text, text, text, text

HEADING HEADING HEADING
text, text, text, text

LEARNER PROFILE IN ACTION WITH YEAR 5/6

text, text, text, text

text, text, text, text
text, text, text, text

HEADING HEADING HEADING
text, text, text, text

DESIGN LAB

This fortnight the Year 3-6 students were given two basketball challenges. Following on with the ‘I am Collaborative’ theme of the learner profile, the students had to work in small groups to complete these tasks.

Already, I am seeing students learn to compromise, share tasks and work together in order to meet the challenges with the designated time and material constraints. Some are quickly learning that if they do not work together, they will not finish their challenge in time.

The first challenge was to build a catapult and a basketball goal. They then had to shoot a ping pong ball into their goal. The students came up with many creative designs and were quite competitive in their goal scoring.

The second challenge was to build a tower out of newspaper to support the weight of a basketball for 15 seconds. To do so, the students needed to find ways to make the newspaper stronger than it is. They experimented with rolling, folding accordion style and crumpling into a wad. For the senior students, we limited the amount of newspaper used.

In K-2 the students have been learning about the Engineering process of Ask – Plan – Improve – Imagine – Create. For the remainder of the term, they will be constructing the 3 Little Pigs houses, and thinking about materials they could use to stop the Big Bad Wolf (my leaf blower) from blowing their houses down.

Mrs Jessica Cottrell
Design Lab Teacher

STUDENT INFORMATION
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN CLASS

KINDERGARTEN

It has been a very exciting week in Kinder! Slothy went on his first weekend trip of adventures with one very excited Kinder student, and we started Show and Tell in the classroom to get to know more about each other and become more confident in sharing with the class, asking questions, answering questions and actively listening.

In Maths, the Kinders have been thinking like Mathematicians by exploring how to represent numbers 1-6 in different ways. They have been creating a mind map on whiteboards and drawing the different ways to show these numbers, while also looking at what smaller numbers might be in the larger number. We love celebrating in Kinder!

We got to celebrate Mrs Baird’s birthday with icy poles under the shade sail.

YEAR 1

PBL
In PBL we have come up with our driving question:
‘How can we help those who have been affected by floods?’
Farmer Brad came in and visited our class. He spoke to the students and showed them photos of how floods have affected his farm. The year ones are loving this subject and have had some brilliant ideas on how we can help people who have been affected by floods. The students are showing empathy when having discussions about those who have lost things in the floods. Some of them suggesting we can make things or even give them some of our own stuff.
We are very excited to show them what we have planned for them in the coming week. We love PBL!!

InitaLit
In year 1, we have started to do daily fluency pairs during our InitiaLit sessions. The students love having the opportunity to read to their peers. During this time the teachers listen to students read and asks a series of comprehension questions. We can see their confidence increasing as they accept new challenges in decoding unfamiliar words.  

YEAR 2

Mathematics
In Mathematics the students have been learning that patterns exist in natural and built environments. They went for a nature walk to find patterns around the school. They learnt that patterns occur in different contexts, and can repeat, grow, shrink, and combine. There was a lot of excitement especially when they got to use the magnifying glasses to see their patterns.

PBL
In PBL the students have been learning about different cultures and finding these countries on the globe and Goggle map. Students in small groups will be immersed in different cultures over the next 2 weeks.

YEAR 3/4 PV

SWIMMING RIBBONS

The Year 3/4 classes got together last Friday as students were presented with ribbons for swimming.  The age groups were 8/9 years and 10 year Girls and Boys. Apologises to Noah Merrett as his ribbon was missed during the photo. We were extremely proud of all the student’s efforts on the day, and it highlighted how the swimming lessons earlier on gave the students confidence to participate.

 

THE CHICKS HAVE HATCHED
Cluckington Palace is pleased to announce the safe arrival of 3 newly hatched chickens. They have been taken into a separate safe enclosure for mums to look after their chicks. Students were eager to catch a glimpse behind their classroom.

 

YEAR 3/4 LK

PBL
For our PBL unit we are learning about the structure of the earth and how it was created. The class are showing great interest in our rock collection which has raised many questions and created much discussion. The students have been exploring the characteristics of the rocks and looking for clues which might tell us how each rock was created. This week we have been learning that the Earth’s surface is changed and shaped in two ways, from movement deep underground and from forces above ground like the sun, wind and rain. As the Earth’s surface changes, different landforms are created and spectacular places are formed.

Maths
In Maths the students use many games as part of their learning and at the moment we are learning about place value, addition and subtraction. These games are thought provoking, very engaging and lots of fun! They encourage discussion and involve strategic mathematical thinking. Games can be played on increasing levels of difficulty often with a variety of scoring systems. One of our favourites currently is called Nice or Nasty? Starting with who can get closest to 100, which is the Nice level, progressing to larger numbers. The students can choose to play at the Nasty level, which lets them place numbers on their opponents’ whiteboard. Sometimes the number you roll on a dice can be really important!

 

The students really enjoy being creative during art. Our current piece involves learning about colour choice and line.

YEAR 5/6

ST NEWS
St News: Jake and Ben C have been writing articles and taking photos to put in the newsletter. We would like to do an article for Jindera News.

LEADERSHIP TEAMS
These are our leadership teams for year 6.

St News, Cooking Team, Perfect Pets, Outdoor Boys, Construction Team, Environment Team, Tech Team and Sports Squad!

All teams have been working hard since term 4 last year to come up with different initiatives to help make our school an awesome place to learn. Some of the initiatives are:

ENVIRO TEAM
This term Alannah and Harper will be doing a lunchtime activity with K-2 students. They are making Alfalfa Sprout Heads during week 7.

CONSTRUCTION TEAM
At the end of this term Matthew and Billy are going to hold a competition of the fastest balloon powered car.

OUTDOOR BOYS
Charlie, Casey, Jake A and Axel are organising a cricket match.

SPORTS SQUAD
Ryan, Jake S, Joel and Victor will be holding a basketball tournament.

PERFECT PETS
Hannah has a love for animals and her role this year is caring for our school chooks. Today Hannah was very excited to discover that one of the hens had three chicks. She has also organised Guinea Pigs for the Year Ones and 5/6 class. Another exciting initiative Hannah has implemented is incubating bantam eggs.


By Ben Code
St News Leadership Team

GOULD SWIMMING
In Week 4 the Year 3-6’s went to Gould, were we practised our swimming skills in preparation for the swimming carnival. At Gould we learnt lots of strokes and ways to improve our swimming. We had lots of fun and we enjoyed swimming with our friends. Our instructors were Kristy, Stacey and Harrison.
Big thanks to our Teachers and Mr Moss for this wonderful learning experience.  

By Jake Gaston
St News Leadership Team

NARRATIVE WRITING
Last week the year 5/6 class looked at narrative writing and in particular the use of adjectives to describes characters, here are some awesome examples:

 

BY LEVI WILSON
One cold and rainy night there was a big group of toys in a box. But one of those toy was different in a way no one will believe. But that one toy can talk and move not like any other Toy. His name was Slinky and he loves playing with his friend and He's always happy and surprised.

Slinky has bold eye's and big floppy ears, Slinky also is a dog but has a slinky as a body and tail. Sinky hates getting kicked around by little kids and getting wrecked and hurt. In that rainy night Slinky was really scared and stayed up the whole night. In the morning Slinky was really happy Because it wasn't stormy anymore.

Slinky's owner didn't know that he can move and talk so he had to try to keep it a secret.

BY GAN NEY COLE
Katniss from hunger games, has dark brown long hair, Fierce brave face that everyone is scared of. Her black armored hard fabric protects her from the mightiest of bullets. Her brown eyes struck fear into her enemies, the most terrifying thing about her is her bow and arrow. Her arrow packet on her back with her loaded bow. She was fit an agile, she was the boldest being ever. Her parkour and running skills were the best a man could see. The raging fire behind her didn’t stop her kill streak. She needed to win this game. She was aggressively and tough to take down her enemies. She was unstoppable. She was more fierce and brave than the grizzly bear! She was as Angry and ready for anything. She was Katniss

BY RYDER REID
Slinky is a brown dog with a lengthy nose and ears and he has a draged out slinky with sausage legs and big paws, he is a funny little dog but he can be a bit vicious towards the mailman and the garbage man, he wears an orange shirt and orange shorts, his favourite colour is orange. He likes playing soccer and he like parkour. He does not like the mailman and garbage man he loves kids and he likes riding bikes.

LAST WEEK
We said goodbye to Summer last week, so it’s only fitting that this week we say hello to Autumn! Not that the temperatures made it feel any less like Summer, but we still based this week’s program around the theme ‘Autumn’. We had Thomas joined us on Monday, both morning an afternoon as it was so busy. We were very lucky to have him here because he was kind enough to bring in his greenscreen set up! This allowed us to strike a pose and the background would change, from an Autumn leaf filled park and rollercoaster rides to a Harry Potter themed invisible cloak. We had a ball! We made super cute paper owls and handprint turkeys that are being displayed around the room and on Wednesday we enjoyed a tea party with a few yummy snacks.

THEIRCARE
BEFORE & AFTER SCHOOL CARE

THIS WEEK
Our theme this week is ‘Kindness’. At Theircare we strongly believe that random acts of kindness and showing empathy and compassion can make the world a better place. Our activities and programming will be heavily based on this theme and I have planned some fun things for us to do! I have teamed up with Maddy down the road at Jindera public school and we are going to write letters to the children that attend Thiercare. Hopefully we receive some back! We will be making rice paper rolls on Wednesday and doing lots of craft that fits the theme of kindness.

MERIT AWARDS

Year 3/4 LK
Louise Jarick & Evy Groenewald
Eden Lawrence & Jim Berry
Year 3/4 PV
Audrey Sarroff & Indi Knight
Pippa Groenewald & Ayeva Walters
Year 5/6 GC
Lara Male & Charlie
Daigen Whelan & Maddison Baker
Year 5/6 FS
Vivienne Jarrick & Alannah Van Der Linde
Isaabella Cameron & Levi Wilson

Little Saints
Philipa Louwrier & Ziggy Saggers
Noah Meade & Walter Cottrell
Kinder
Alex Hoek & Ava Dowell
Daria Jafari & Archie Brandon
Year1
Kayla Bowditch & Norah Heath
Ryder Bakes & Ivy Lawrence
Year 2
Beau Pitman & Jasmine Piltz
Betty Blackman & Coby Miller

PRINCIPAL'S AWARDS

Year 6 - Jacob Blackie

PRAYING FOR YOU

At St John's, we pray for our students and their families and staff members.
This week, we are praying for:

Week 5
Mannix & Ava Dowell
Sophie Chang
Lily Bales
Grace Allan
Jessica Cottrell

Week 6
Angel & Maddison Baker
Ben Code
Zoe & Thomas Hancock
Aiyana Eames

2011overheadhires
LOGO WHITE LS Lower