ST JOHN'S NEWSLETTER INSPIRING
STUDENTS FOR LIFE
TERM 3 WEEK 4

previous newsletters

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Yours in Christian service,

Brad Moss
Principal

The Upcoming New School Strategic Plan
As we embark on the development of our new strategic plan, we recognise the invaluable role that parents play in shaping the future of our school. I strongly encourage all parents to actively participate in the upcoming feedback surveys and meetings. Your insights are vital and we deeply value your voice in this process.

Our staff have already begun contributing their perspectives and desires for our future. The School Board will begin sharing their initial thoughts at our board meeting next Monday night. Students will also provide their feedback through surveys and meetings with me. Once staff, parents, students and the board have had a chance to contribute their voice, the School Board will construct the 2025-2027 Strategic Plan and share it with our whole school community later in the year.

Please keep an eye out for the parent survey and face-to-face feedback sessions, which will commence in Week 6. Your involvement is key to ensuring our school continues to thrive and grow.

As you prepare your reflections, feedback and desires for the future direction of St John’s, I encourage you to read my Principal message, which helps frame our school direction and articulates what we value at our wonderful school.

Our dedicated staff place the needs of our students at the core of everything we do. We take the time to build relationships with each student, understanding their unique strengths, challenges, and aspirations. By investing in strong, supportive relationships, our educators create a safe, positive and caring learning environment where every student is valued, feels safe and is part of the team.

Our learning studios are designed to empower students by fostering flexibility, collaboration, and creativity. These dynamic environments adapt to our range of teaching approaches and learning styles, allowing for seamless transitions between individual work, group projects and whole-class instruction. By removing the constraints of traditional classroom setups, our agile learning studios encourage students to partner with educators to take ownership of their learning, engage more deeply with content and collaborate effectively with their peers. This approach not only enhances academic achievement but also prepares students with the critical thinking and problem-solving skills needed for success in an ever-changing world.

My goal as Principal is to create a powerful community where students are running into school each day, excited about learning and inspired for life. I warmly invite families to come and visit St John's to experience the positive impact we can have on your child and discover the difference that St John's Lutheran School can make in your child's life.

Term 3 Week 5Monday 19 August to Friday 23 August - BOOK WEEK

Monday 19 August - ICAS Assessment Science and Spelling

Tuesday 20 August to Wednesday 21 August - Partnership Meetings

Thursday 22 August - Book Week Parade

Term 3 Week 6Monday 26 August - ICAS Assessment Maths

Wednesday 28 August - Kinder excursion Lavington Library

Thursday 29 August - Fathers Day Stall and Didgeribone Cultural Performance

Friday 30 August - Fathers Day coffee and kick

IMPORTANT DATES

From the deputy desk
School Happenings!

Cruz Smith cuts his hair for Kids with Cancer!
We are so proud of Cruz Smith for raising money for such an important cause. So many of our school families have been affected by cancer. Channel 7 News on the Border has now aired two stories about this event. On Wednesday this week, we gathered around Cruz at lunchtime as our own Mrs Aiyana Eames (former hairdresser) cut Cruz’s impressive locks, which he is donating to be made into a wig in the hope it can help someone undergoing cancer treatment. Families can still donate to Cruz's fundraising efforts using the link at the end of the newsletter.

Parent Information Session - Numeracy
It was wonderful to see families in attendance at our Parent Information Session on Numeracy on Wednesday night. Thankyou to Fiona Walker, AISNSW Consultant for making the time to present to our families. A copy of the video from the night is currently being edited and will be available to view on our school website. We will email a link to all families once this has been uploaded. We have copies of the Parent Workbook that was produced for the Numeracy Information Session available at the administration office. Please feel free to pop in and request a copy. This document has invaluable information about how Numeracy is taught at our school and provides helpful ideas and tips for how to assist your child at home with their numeracy skills.

Partnership and IEP Meetings
A reminder to book your Partnership Meeting or IEP Meeting (this term, IEP meetings are combined with Partnership meetings). You will have received an email last week with details on how to make your booking. Our teachers and learning coaches are looking forward to touching base with you on your child’s learning and how they’re going.

Concert
We’re excited about our upcoming school Concert! All families received an email earlier this week explaining costume requirements. We appreciate your help with this. Classes have been learning and rehearsing their concert items during Creative Arts lessons. Please see the flyer in this newsletter for more information. Bookings will open on Monday 26 August.

RAS Athletics
On Friday 2nd August, a range of Year 3-6 students competed in our Regional Associated Schools (RAS) Athletics Carnival at Les O’Brien Park in Albury. They displayed wonderful team spirit and sportsmanship. We’re so proud of the courage with which they competed and did their best on the day.
Congratulations to the following students who had some notable results:

Angel Baker:
+ 2nd - 9yrs Girls 100m
+ 2nd - Junior Girls High Jump
+ 1st - Junior Girls Long Jump
+ 3rd - Junior Girls Age Champion

Fletcher Barber:
+ 2nd - 9yrs Boys 100m
+ 3rd - Junior Boys 200m
+ 3rd - Junior Boys 800m
+ 2nd - Junior Boys 1500m
+ =2nd - Junior Boys Age Champion

Maddison Baker:
+ 1st - 12/13 Girls Shot Put **NEW RAS RECORD**
+ 1st - 12/13 Girls Discus **NEW RAS RECORD**
+ 5th - 12/13 Girls Age Champion

Jaxon Fraser:
+ 2nd - 12/13 Boys Discus

Levi Wilson:
+ 3rd - 12/13 Boys 1500m

Special thanks to Felicity Habermann, our PE Teacher, for her organisation, and to Aiyana Eames and Kaela Hutchinson, our staff who assisted with student supervision and events. Thanks also to parents and family who attended to show support for our students. Parents will be notified soon if their child has qualified for Country Independent Schools Athletics in Sydney (please note this is based on achieving CIS qualification times/results as well as placings in RAS events).

Alison Jafari and Anna-Marie Bothe

FROM THE CHAPLAIN

God works through all of us
Thanks to everyone who made our German Night great! We had so much fun learning about our history, trying German food, and making lanterns. It was also fantastic to see so many families take part in the lantern walk!
This week we are learning about how God works through all of us. Have you ever felt like other people are better than you? Like you don’t have the same skills as others? Like you just can’t do anything right? Like you don’t fit in? This week we are going to be doing a massive interactive activity to show how God chooses people.

Peter Reed, Chaplain

Games Night
Fox and Brew host a community games club every Wednesday after school. Kids: come along and challenge your friends to a wide variety of board and card games! Parents: join in the fun or have a coffee with others parents.

New Bible Study
Have you ever wondered who wrote the bible?How was it put together?
Is there a coherent message in the eclectic mix of 66 books?
Join us for conversations over coffee and snacks right here in Jindera where we will try to explore all your questions and more!

BOOK WEEK

Children's Book Week is an annual celebration of reading for pleasure for children of primary school age. During this time we will be spending one glorious week celebrating books and Australian children's authors and illustrators.

St John’s Book Week 2024 returns with the theme of "Reading is Magic”.

To start off Book Week St John’s will be having our annual Book Week Parade with students dressed up as their favourite book character.

Our Book Week Parade will be held on Thursday 22nd August at 9.30 in our school hall.

Parents are most welcome to come along and support our students and be part of this fun event.

Book Fair
Children are encouraged to visit our library during Week 7 and peruse the delightful range of books available at the Scholastic Book Fair. All books are available to purchase. More information to come in upcoming newsletters!

It’s not too late to start… Challenge closes on Friday 23 August 2024
So far St John’s student’s have read a staggering 2705 books…. and we still have two weeks to go!

Many students are very close to completing their Premiers Reading Challenge. Please encourage your child to log on and record the books they have read.

To log in

Use the button below:

Go to ‘Logon’ on the left pull down box.

Then enter your child’s username and password (Sent home by their class teacher)

If you need a new username and password, please email Therese Schmidt on [email protected]

NSW Premier's Reading Challenge

ATHLETICS CARNIVAL RESULTS

HOUSE CUP RESULTS ATHLETICS CARNIVAL 2024

1st Place: Dight (404.83 points)

2nd Place: Goessling (386.16 points)

3rd Place: Luther (363 points)

STUDENT INFORMATION
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN CLASS

KINDERGARTEN

Using iPads to show our learning
The Kinders have loved over the last few weeks, taking a picture using the iPads of their learning in English and Maths. They get their name rocks and love the enjoyment of taking pictures of what they have learnt. The students have loved the achievement of showcasing their learning through photos.

100 Days of kinder!

The Kinders have made it to 100 days!! What an achievement that is. We celebrated by having a day of dressing up and all things 100 related games and activities! We made special crowns, wrote about what we have learnt after 100 days of Kinder, counting to 100, ordering numbers to 100, making 100 number posters, reading a 100 book and seeing whether it takes 100 licks to eat a lollipop.We can’t wait to see all that the Kinders continue to learn and how they continue to grow over the next 100 days!

Top job Kinders, we are so proud of you!

YEAR 1

PERSUASIVE WRITING
Year One have jumped head first into our persuasive writing tasks. They have loved sharing their opinions on topics such as should we get a class pet, what our favourite colour is and what is the best sport. Our next step is to understand how to write an opening statement and conclusion.

SWIMMING
Year One thoroughly enjoyed their swimming lessons at Gould. They were so responsible with their belongings and representing St John’s positively whilst out in the community. It is wonderful to see so many strong swimmers and students improving their confidence and technique in the water. Well done Year One!

YEAR 2

DAILY REVIEW
The Year 2’s continue to develop their fluency and confidence in mathematics during ‘Daily Review.’

WHAT AM I?
During our Reading and Comprehension activities we have been learning about making inferences in text. We have been exploring a range of visual skills at the word, visual, sentence and passage level. Students enjoyed making inferences from the text “What am I?”, which launched more learning about how to infer. We discussed how it can be harder to guess from early clues as they needed to be more general. Then later clues needed to be more obvious. We enjoyed creating our own “what am I?” and sharing these as a class. .

GOULD SWIMMING
We were so proud of the Year 2 students as they showcased and learnt swimming skills last week at Gould. They were enthusiastic, encouraging to their peers and took risks when learning to swim. Look out in 2032 when we host the Olympics in Brisbane, there maybe a few Olympians in the making!

OLYMPICS PBL
This term in PBL we are looking at communities which is the way people living in one particular area as a unit because of their common interests, social group, or nationality- this ties in perfectly with the Olympic Games. What a perfect place to start!
Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi! What a wonderful two weeks of Olympics. Each day in the morning the students have loved sharing what they have seen, heard and watched.

Over the last two weeks in class, we have been investigating different Olympians and typing up our research to create their biography, learning about the history of the Olympics and what sports are part of the Olympics. This inspired students to imagine and think creatively of what they would like to compete in if they were an Olympian. Students also enjoyed learning about all the countries and therefore wanted to learn more, so we have started a mini project researching their own country. Watching the Olympics inspired us to then organise our own mini-Olympics, which you may have seen on Facebook.

YEAR 3/4 PV

WEEK 4

In Science, we are looking at ‘changes of state’. Students were introduced to the three states of matter – solid, liquid, gas. The class loved the opportunity to get their hands dirty to see what happened when cornflour was mixed with water. They found it difficult to classify when they poked, punched, squeezed and held the mixture.

During maths, the Year 4 students enjoyed playing a game, Decimats, to make sense of decimal place value.

During news (show and tell), Harper shared with the class the story of a late family member, Beverley Whitfield. Beverley was inducted into the Hall of Fame for swimming. Her achievements included: winning 2 gold medals at the 1970 British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, competing and winning medals at the Munich 1972 Olympics and winning medals at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch at the end of her career.

YEAR 3/4 LK

Week 4
We have had a very busy few weeks in Year 3-4. Chappie Pete dropped in to talk about all things musical and gave us a demonstration of his keyboard skills. This linked in with our current book in English Piano Fingers. The students went all out for Green and Gold Day and they looked fantastic. The class prepared a wonderful Chapel about the stories of the bible that are important to them. Year 3 took our place value lessons outside for an active maths activity.

YEAR 5/6

Year 5/6 Canberra Camp
We had a fantastic time at Canberra and Warrambui. We spent the three days exploring many sites of Canberra as well as spending some quality time together at Warrambui testing our knowledge in trivia and our teamwork skills on an obstacle course. It was great to have St Paul’s Henty join us and build our connections with their students. All students should be proud of how they represented the school and made the most of their camp experience.

WELLBEING and the flu season

Flu season

It's that time of year again when coughs, colds and covid are about in the community.

NSW Health advise we are currently in the moderate level of COVID-19.

For everyone to stay well this season please follow the recommendations of the NSW Government and keep your child home when sick.

You can find out more via the following links

https://education.nsw.gov.au/schooling/covid-19/advice-for-families#Staying1

https://www.nsw.gov.au/health/covid-19/testing-managing/symptoms

Whilst we understand how challenging it is to be called at work, we also know parents value a safe school and we thank you for your support.

STAY HOME WHEN SICK!

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 3

Darcy Wright
Ava Terlich Eloise & Lewis Schilg
Charlotte & Beatrix Phelps
Hudson Chettleburgh & Lincoln Steeper
Aiyana Eames

Week 4

Grace Allan
Jim Berry
Mannix & Ava Dowell
Delilah Harrington
Jax Marshall, Elsie Carey & Lucille Harb
Kerrie Gordon

MERIT AWARDS

Kinder
Lola Delphin-Lee and Finnley Cox
Theo Bakes and Ava Jones

Year 1
Molly Barclay and Isla Gorton
Lachlan Paris and Lewis Schilg

Year 2
Eloise Hartley and Norah Heath
Ryder Bakes
Sophie Chang and Ivy Lawrence

Year 3/4 LK
Cruz Smith and Jim Berry

Year 3/4 PV
Pippa Groenewald and Evie Noordam
Harper Sutcliffe and Audrey Sarroff

Year 5/6 GC
Hudson Piltz and Ryder Reid
Jaxon Fraser

Year 5/6 DB
Kade Anderson & Billie Groenewald
Molly Ginnivan and Thomas Chambers

THEIRCARE
BEFORE & AFTER SCHOOL CARE

29/07/24 – 02/08/24

HOLIDAY PROGRAM

05/08/24 – 09/08/24

Next weeks theme is Children’s voices! we have planned some fun crafts and activities that have been hits with the children in the past! Like crumpled paper turtles, clay creations and DIY paper robots 😊We will also spend some time outside once again, playing on the oval and playground! On Wednesday we will continue our baking, by making some sweet scones, with raspberry jam and cream! 😊On Thursday we are going to get creative with making some creations of our choice out of recycled materials! As well as spend time out in the hall playing some group games and sports! And of course, for Friday we will have a fun colouring competition in the morning and a movie and popcorn to finish off our afternoon! 😊

This Week:
Week 2 done and dusted already! This week we immersed ourselves into everything to do with the Olympics! We got very crafty with some activities, like making Olympic torches and Olympic flags! We also got very active with lots of outside games, out on the park and the oval, we definitely took advantage of the beautiful weather this week! 😉On Wednesday afternoon we indulged ourselves in our all time favourite, nachos! Thursday afternoon we spent some time in the hall, competing in some relays and our very own Olympic games and then to finish the week off on Friday we all wore green and gold at school and TheirCare in honour of the Olympics and continued our sessions with some fun Olympic activities and games! Overall, a very fun week, celebrating the Olympics!
Next Week:
This week the theme is under the sea! We have some extremely fun crafts and activities planned, some of them include making paper plate fishes, paper hand fishes and paddle pop stick sea animals! Fingers are also definitely crossed for some nice weather again, so we can spend some more of our time outside soaking up the sun! 😉 On Wednesday we will be making one of our past favourites, apple fruit doughnuts! They were an absolute hit last time so I’m sure we will have some happy children! 😉 Thursday will be spent with some more fun crafts and a lot of hall games! Friday, we have a fun colouring competition planned as well as a fun movie and some popcorn to finish off the week! 😊😊😊

Reminder

Strict 'no hat no play' rules apply at here at ThierCare, so remember to bring one along just in case and we can enjoy the sunshine together outside.

CARPARK - SAFETYEVERYONES RESPONSIBILTY!

Use the footpath to enter the school

Walk

Use dedicated parking bays

DO NOT walk/ride/scooter through the carpark

DO NOT park in driveways

ST JOHN'S NEWSLETTER INSPIRINGSTUDENTS FOR LIFETERM 3 WEEK 4