ST JOHN'S... INSPIRING
STUDENTS FOR LIFE

WEEK 4

WEEK 2

WEEK 6

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Father's Day is a day that recognises and appreciates the influence, love, and support that fathers and father figures provide. It's an occasion that can strengthen family bonds, foster emotional connections and remind us of the enduring importance of fatherhood in our lives.

It's not just a day for biological fathers. Father's Day also acknowledges and honours stepfathers, grandfathers, uncles, and other male figures who have played a significant role in someone's life.

I have been blessed to have a father who was an extremely strong guide throughout my formative years. My father unfortunately passed away in 2006 and there is now a gap in what would’ve continued to be an important relationship as an adult. However, I look back over my childhood with gratitude and hope I can be the positive influence in my own children that my father had on me and my brothers.

Yours in Christian service,

Brad Moss
Principal

As I shared in last week's Chapel, being present in the moment is a foundation to building relationships. Being intentionally present fosters strong emotional bonds between adults and children. When kids feel that they have your undivided attention, they are more likely to open up and share their thoughts and feelings.

Children who feel valued and heard, are more likely to have higher self-esteem. Your presence communicates that you care about their thoughts and feelings, boosting their self-worth.

The time you spend with your children forms the basis of cherished memories for both you and them. These memories contribute to a positive family culture and can have a lasting impact on their adult lives.

In our fast-paced world filled with distractions, being intentionally present with kids can be challenging but is all the more essential. It requires making a conscious effort to prioritise your children and create meaningful connections with them.

To me, there is a purpose to Father's Day. It is a day set aside for us as father figures to reflect on how we, as men, speak life into the children in our care. Our role is to be the wisdom and encouragers to raise the next generation of strong, empathetic and confident people.

Ephesians 3:15 - God is the Father above all fathers.
"God is the Father from whom all fatherhood derives its name."

Appointment of a New Year 2 Team
Following Rose Thomas’s retirement, I am grateful to announce our Year 2 Teaching and Learning Team for the remainder of 2023.

Introducing Mrs Alison Perdon (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday) and Mrs Emily Sarroff (Monday/Friday). Alison and Emily are already part of our staff teaching team and have begun building the ever-important relationships with our Year 2 students. They join our Year 2 Learning Coach, Mrs Kaylene Severin, to provide a high-quality learning experience for the rest of this year.

Retirement of Rose Thomas
It is with sadness that we announce the retirement of Rose Thomas. Due to health reasons, Rose informed the school of her immediate retirement. This will enable Rose to have the time to focus on her health.

Through dedication and passion, our staff team contribute daily to the strength of our culture. We would like to thank Rose for her contribution to our school over many years. We pray for positive health and blessings on her future.

Our Leadership Team has met with Alison, Emily and Kaylene to ensure a smooth transition and continue planning for consistency, growth and inspirational learning at St John's.

Both Alison and Emily are looking forward to connecting with the Year 2 families to do all they can to support your child.

FROM THE DEPUTY DESK

At St John’s, we love involving school families and their friends in school community events. This term, we are delighted to have significant celebrations such as Book Week, Father’s Day Chapel and ‘coffee and kick’, and our School Concert.

Book Week
What a wonderful fortnight we have had celebrating books with Book Week, our Parade and Book Fair! Thank you so much to parents, families and friends who helped our students come up with such amazing costumes for our Book Week Parade. Students participated in activities that delved into this year’s shortlisted books in the CBCA Awards. Then our library was buzzing with excitement as students came to our Book Fair to browse and purchase books. Thank you for supporting this special celebration of reading and the gift of books!

Father's Day
Huge thanks go to Emma Chambers and Katrina Passey for organising and running our Father’s Day Stall last Friday. Emma currently has children at St John’s and although Katrina’s daughter has now finished primary school, she continues to serve our school community so graciously. We hope all fathers and father figures had a terrific Father’s Day! Thank you to our Kinder staff and class who led us in a special Father’s Day Chapel last week.

School Concert
Our School Concert is approaching quickly and excitement is building! This is our first school concert post-pandemic and we are thrilled to bring back such an important event for our school community. It brings so many of us together to celebrate the arts, give all students a chance to perform and build their confidence.

Thank you for providing costume items and sending them into your children’s classrooms. We will have a sound and lighting rehearsal this Friday 8th September, dress rehearsal Monday 11th September, Matinee performance at 12:30pm on Tuesday 12th September and our evening Concert on Wednesday 13th September.

We would like all students to arrive at school on the night of Wednesday 13th September at 6pm so they can put on costumes. Classes will stay in their classroom with their teaching team until is it their turn to perform. After their performance, they will sit on the floor at the front of the hall to watch the rest of the concert.

Concert Video
St John’s will create a free video of the concert which families will be able to access via a link that will be emailed to you. You will be able to take photos and video of the concert, but due to privacy requirements of students, please do not post any images of other students on social media.

Book Week Video

ST JOHN'S CONCERT

Have you heard the good news? The St John’s School Concert is back, presenting St John’s News.

Bringing you news about the many happenings at St John’s and Jindera. Please join us as we share our talents and community spirit. All funds raised from entry fees will go towards new decodable readers for our school to support our Literacy program! Doors open 6 pm for 6:30 pm start.

Please join us as we share our talents and community spirit.
Dates:
Tuesday 12th September – 12.30 pm Matinee
Wednesday 13th September – 6.30 pm Evening
Location:
St John’s Hall
154 Adams Street, Jindera NSW 2642
Bookings:
Please book your tickets through the link below
www.trybooking.com/CKWVT
Tickets $10 (Children under 12 years free)

DESIGN LAB

This fortnight in Design Lab our Kinder students finished off their ‘Not a Box’ creation. The students were tasked with creating something new with just a box.
Year 1 and 2 put on their engineering hats and began to design a putter and minigolf hole with obstacles and traps made from our Maker Space. They have chosen various themes such as under the sea, Frozen, Barbie and jungles.
Year 3 and 4 are now in the cosmetic stage of their carnival game. The students only have one more lesson until we start to play the games. We have games such as basketball shooting with a catapult, ball toss, spin a winner, foosball and plinko.
Year 5 and 6 have nearly completed their homemade rollercoasters. This has been a really engaging unit for the students that has involved a lot of testing and redesigning. The students have demonstrated a growth mindset and excellent collaboration skills.

Mrs Jessica Cottrell

CREATIVE ARTS

It's already Week 4!
Which means we only have 5 more weeks until concert. The students are getting very excited and are having an amazing time. Concerts create such a fun atmosphere as the students love to get up on stage and perform with their friends. We can't give too much away but it is going to be spectacular!

STUDENT INFORMATION
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN CLASS

KINDERGARTEN

The Kinders have had a very busy couple of weeks, with excursions, book week dress ups, running Father’s Day Chapel and then the normal daily happenings of school life.

In Maths, we have been doing a lot of hands-on learning. We have been looking at ordering numbers up to 20 and explaining numbers by using the terms ‘less than’ or ‘more than’. We then have been practising counting backwards and forwards from a given number, which can be a bit tricky!

For PBL we had the privilege of having Daniel and Liz (Piper’s parents) come in and talk to us all about their farm; what crops they grow and foods that come from them and the animals they have. We learnt a lot about where our food comes from and were able to explore even more by drawing, observing and feeling what canola, wheat, barley, lupins, faba beans and many more seeds feel like. We loved it!

One of our many excursions this term was to the Lavington Library for an amazing Book Week session run by the library. The Kinders LOVE books, and so this was perfect in sparking our curiosity and engagement to read some amazing books such as ‘Hide and Seek’, ‘Lyrebird’ and ‘Our Heroes’. We may have had a little stop over at the Turtle park for Recess and a play…what a beautiful day it was to be out and about running around.

A big thank you to Mrs Male for helping us with our learning as a student teacher over the last three weeks and being an amazing encouragement in Kinder!

YEAR 1

Week 8!! How is it already week 8?
We have done so much fun stuff the last fortnight that we cannot wait to tell you all about!!

In InitaLit we continue to learn all about Graphemes and Phonemes. We have started on a new tricky sound which is the ‘au’ making an ‘or’ sound. The Year 1’s have been doing a marvellous job at working out the sounds.

In maths we have been looking at the most efficient way to count a big group of numbers. Trying to group and count their piles of counters by 5’s or 10’s. Having a lot of class discussion afterwards as to what ways of counting work better and why.

We went to see St Pauls students at Henty perform their remake of the classic Toy Story and it was great! We loved seeing all the students perform and they did such an amazing job!! The Year 1's thought it was the best!!

Cannot believe how fast this term is going, bring on the next 2 weeks!

In PBL we have been learning all about different things we can make out of wool. The Year 1's have mastered their construction of friendship bracelet's and a God's Eye Dream Catcher. We have started this week trying to learn how to finger knit a bookmark, fingers crossed (pun intended) that one is not too tricky!

Book Week was so much fun! It was lovely to see all the students dressed up and having the best fun!!

YEAR 2

Saying farewell to our teacher Mrs Thomas at assembly on Monday this week was a sad occasion. We made her a love heart card with special messages from each student. We are glad that we will still be able to see Mrs Thomas in our school community and thank her for all of the effort she put into being our teacher.

Last Thursday we went on a very exciting excursion to the Jindera main street as part of our PBL unit on Local Heroes. We looked at some of the historical sites of significance and discussed how they are were used in the past compared to how they are currently being used. We will be using this information in class over the next few weeks to help us work out who ‘important people’ are in the Jindera community and the services that they provide. Special thanks to Mrs Perdon, Mrs Severin and Mr Moss for coming along with us.

In Mathematics, the students learnt that multiplication can be represented by making and using equal groups. They used blocks to represent this concept.
In literacy, we have been reading the book ‘You Me and Murrawee’ which looks at what life would have been like two hundred years ago, through they eyes of a young girl camping on the river with her family. On Tuesday we did some persuasive writing where we explained whether we preferred to play inside or outside, there were lots of different reasons for both!

YEAR 3/4 PV

Book Week
Students had a blast dressing up for the Book Week parade in Week 6.

'The Dreaming' Artist Book
Each class is assigned a short-listed book for Book Week and create a piece of art. The Year 3/4s read 'The Dreaming' by Kirli Saunders & Dub Leffler. The book takes you on a walk through Country by a mother echidna and her baby goodjagah. The mother introduces words and ideas using both English and Gundungurra languages to teach her young. Students loved using fine paintbrushes and watercolours to create mini artist books. These are now on display in the library window.

Treasure HuntStudents discovered the different ways information is presented by going on a treasure hunt to find text features using nonfiction books. Working in pairs and armed with a book and sticky notes, students had to find if their texts had bibliographies, bold print, italics, captions, glossary's, index's, maps, charts, diagrams etc. It was a great lesson investigating how texts can be structured when presenting information.

YEAR 3/4 LK

Week 7 and 8
In English students have been examining some of the key features of informative and hybrid texts. They have been learning how to navigate both non-fiction print and digital texts to find information. Students had some fun going on an information treasure hunt. Armed with a variety of non-fiction texts and sticky notes they identified the different ways information can be presented. Students had to find if their texts had bibliographies, bold print, italics, captions, glossaries, indexes, maps, charts, diagrams They were also looking to see how writers use text structures such as headings, sub-headings, maps, charts and diagrams to organise information and ideas.

YEAR 5/6

Book Week
Two weeks ago, our school held the annual Book Week Parade where we got to dress up as our favourite characters. There were many cool costumes such as a digger, the super vowels, Minecraft Steve and even an inflatable dinosaur!

This was year 6’s last Book Parade so Jake Anderson dressed up as the inflatable dinosaur for his last Book Parade. The main event of the day is the part where all the staff and students get to show off their costumes. The star of the show was Jake Anderson when he entered the hall.

I asked what people thought of the parade:
“I thought the book parade was lots of fun and was a good opportunity to dress up as our favourite characters. Overall, I thought it was pretty good,” said Ryan Pisani.

“It was good I liked the inflatable dinosaur. Everyone was dressed up really good,” said Billy Proctor.

“I thought it was fun and it was one of the best days ever!” said Jake Anderson.

By Ben Code
St News

Concert
Only one week to go till our whole school concert. Our students are very excited and have been enjoying making props and doing some extra rehearsals

St John's Cafe
During recess on the 5th of September, the cooking team and Kristy Wenke provided a mini café. At the café students could purchase a cup cake, choc chip cookie, brownie or lemon slice and a milk shake, for two dollars. The money raised will go to the Carevan foundation which is a charity in Albury. They provide meals for people who are experiencing difficulties.
We raised $320.
Ben Wenke, Vivienne Jarick and Zoe Podubinski

Shape Poetry
A shape poem is a poem that is shaped like the thing it describes. The shape adds to the meaning of the poem. When writing a shape poem, it helps to start by writing down all the words that come to mind about the chosen topic. The topics the student chose were on Natural Disasters.

Project Based Learning
Our driving question this term is “How can the impact of natural disasters on people, places and environments be reduced?”

This term students have been investigating the impact of natural disasters on people and places. They further investigated one contemporary bushfire or flood and its impact on individuals and communities. Students have been collaborating and examining how people can prevent and minimise the effects of bushfires and floods in the Jindera community.

On Monday the 18th of September we will be having our PBL show case in our classrooms at 2pm. You are all welcome to attend.

THEIRCARE
BEFORE & AFTER SCHOOL CARE

This week:
In honour of book week, we really tried to get around the theme here all week as well! It was fun to get creative and talk about our favourite books and costume ideas for Thursday’s school book parade! The dress ups on Thursday morning were very impressive! We had the Madhatter join us, Hermione, Harry Potter, football players and more. Earlier in the week we had a go at making our own comic books, these were super fun, and the kids are very creative story tellers! This week we celebrated two TC regular’s birthdays. A big happy birthday to Molly and Eloise H!! To celebrate we got hands on doing our regular Wednesday baking and made chocolate crackles. We also had fun baking and decorating cupcakes on Thursday afternoon.
Next week:
Father’s Day is coming very quickly, which means so is Spring... yay! But before we make the theme here ‘welcome to spring’ we best celebrate the dads. There are lots of craft activities planned, such as card making and DIY gifts which will be super fun and thoughtful. Our Wednesday bake of choice is going to be a Maltese slice, very keen for this one. If the warm spring weather decides to show up and not the rain, we will also spend a lot of time outside. Everyone has been loving playing in sun, enjoying the warmth and fresh air. We will continue our morning group games in the hall, please bring along any suggestions, we love playing new and different games!

21/08/23 - 25/08/23

This week:
We celebrate dads, grandads, and fatherly figures in our lives! There is a special day coming up this week, so it was only fitting that we spend the days making and creating for Father’s Day. I have a feeling there will be some very spoilt dads out there on Sunday morning. We got to work doing lots of colourings, cards and craft and they all looked beautiful! On Wednesday we made another successful treat that was loved by most, it was a super sweet Malteser slice. Another one to add to the recipe book! We also entered a TheirCare competition for creating the best ‘Glow Topia’ poster, this is an end of term party on Wednesday the 20th of September at ASC to celebrate the hard work TheirCare has done raising money for different charities. Hope to see you there and fingers cross we win best poster! I think they look great. 😊
Next week:
It’s finally Spring!! Super excited to soak up the sun and enjoy the warmth, it feels like we have been waiting for this forever! It is time to remove the winter wonderland room decorations and replace them with everything that reminds us of Spring. On the program next week, we will spend a lot of time crafting and creating to get new decorations put up around the room. We will make handprint bees and ladybugs, sunflowers and rainbows that will for sure bring our room back to life. On Wednesday for our weekly bake, we will attempt a choc raisin slice which sounds delicious, hopefully it’s a hit!

28/08/23 - 01/09/23

MERIT AWARDS

Year 3/4 LK
Jack Mighalls, Ari Severin & Ben Baird
Eden Lawrence & Emma Sumbler
Year 3/4 PV
Harrison Connelly & Ayeva Walters
Tully Heath & Deon Byers
Year 5/6 GC
Hudson Piltz, Meggie Kinning, Frankie Tuohey Jaxon Fraser & Maddie Baker
Year 5/6 FS
Molly Ginnivan, Finn Condon & Xavior SarroffVivienne Jarick & Eve Barclay

Little Saints
Arthur Litschke & Elsie Carey
Emilia Schmidt & Levi Eames
Kinder
Noah Sims & Lewis Schilg
Theo Merkel, Anthony Yong & Eloise Sutcliffe
Year1
Benji Keen & Evie Pendergast
Will Jensen, Norah Heath
Year 2
Fletcher Barber & Angel Baker

Week 7 & 8

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 8
Charlie, Eloise & Lewis Schilg
William Scolyer
Joel James
Jethro Harpe
Alex & Edith Hoek
Rose Thomas

Week 9
Jacob Rudd
Benjamin & Samuel Busch
Archer Walker
Xavier Biggs & Elsie Carey
Fiona Schulz

ST JOHN'S... INSPIRINGSTUDENTS FOR LIFE