Newsletter Term 1, Week 8 2020

Dear SJC Families and Friends

Welcome to our new newsletter platform. This is an exciting new venture that will see our fortnightly publication be more multi-device friendly and enable multi-modal delivery of content. A very big thank you to Mrs Jane Joseph for overseeing the transition to the Schoolzine product. You will note on the sidebar of this newsletter there is a link to the SZapp, our new app. Please take the time to read the instructions and download the app. Skoolbag will cease to provide our content very soon. 

COVID-19 Information

These times are unprecedented, I don't think there would be too much argument regarding that. Regardless of what various sections of the media and varying public opinion is saying about the Novel coronavirus, the impact we are feeling in society is undeniable. I spent the last half of last week at the CSO Catholic Schools Conference where our Priests, Assistant Principals, CSO Staff and Principals were in attendance. The changing landscape regarding new regulations and requirements pertaining to the virus was evolving on the hour. I would like to thank families and staff for their patience and understanding during these difficult and unknown times. 

As per the letter shared with families last Thursday, the CSO has asked all schools that they do what they can to mitigate the risk of introducing the virus into their community. This includes large groups of outside people coming into the school. As such, the decision has been made that no teachers will attend any external professional learning, no students will attend any external competition sport, faith retreats or excursions where they are exposed to many people and our Open Evening, one of the highlights of the year, has been postponed (rescheduled date is unknown). 

There will be no cap on the number of people gathering in the school. We will continue to hold assemblies as required to ensure our students are informed. The College's Professional Learning Day on Friday March 20 will go ahead and the St Joseph's Day celebrations will go ahead on his feast day, Thursday March 19. 

A decision will be made on Monday regarding our impending Parent/Student/Teacher Interviews that are scheduled for March 25 and 30.

As more information is provided, we will use multiple digital means to ensure that families are informed. 

BASE Youth Women's Awards

Last Friday morning, a number of staff members had the pleasure of accompanying our nine SJC finalists, and an additional five Year 10 students, to the BASE Youth Women's awards breakfast held at the Salt Bar. Our Facebook page has a great report of the event but in short, a very big congratulations to Jedda Gardiner-Dodd who was named the winner of the BASE Women's Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander Youth Spirit Award. Jedda also wrote and delivered the Welcome to Country to commence proceedings and in doing so, did her family, people and her school proud. Well done Jedda!

It was also wonderful to hear that Amy Mazzarella had been chosen as the recipient of the Southern Cross University Leadership Scholarship. The scholarship is ATAR-dependent but it could see Amy receive a substantial cash sum for four years of her bachelor degree at SCU. Well done to both young ladies on the awards, and to all of our finalists (Ashley Burns, Kasey-Ann Forbes, Holly McGuinness, Danielle Tait, Sabhbh Crosbie, Scarlett Magnus and Emilly Jones).

Family Support of College Events

To this point in the year, we have now held two parent evenings for Year 7. I am so humbled by the response to both of these nights where we have had over 130 parents, carers and students in attendance on both evenings. As I have previously mentioned, our theme for the year is 'Engagement' and we are so glad that what we are presenting for our parents and carers has struck a chord and in doing so, a large number of families are engaging with the College.

Over the next two weeks, we have a number of other evenings for families to be involved in. The first is tonight (Monday, March 16) where David Kobler from YourChoicez will present to parents and carers (not for students) on the topic of "Raising Young People in a Hypersexualised World". The following Monday (March 23), we will have a presentation by concussion expert Prof Jim Donnelly from SCU. Jim will discuss the clear and present danger of repeated head knocks in sport and the ramifications for young people presently in school and later in life. 

All of our parent events are held in the COLA (adjacent to the hardcourts) and we will always make sure there is something to eat and drink for you all. 

Events This Week (Catholic Schools Week)

This week, we will celebrate all that is good about Catholic education during Catholic Schools Week. Miss Helen Gooley has produced a programme that will focus on gratitude within our community and students will partake in various activities within and outside of the classroom. 

You will note on the College calendar that a number of major events are occurring this week. On Monday and Tuesday, our Year 10, then Year 9 students will spend time with David and Katie Kobler from YourChoicez (link provided above) where they will cover a range of topics including what it is to be young man or woman of values in this age. The young women and men will be separated during the relevant presentations and have staff who will facilitate conversation.

Thursday is the highlight of our College year; St Joseph's Day. The day will commence with a community liturgy and the last three periods of the day will be a celebration that includes bands, games, food and the annual Colour Run. This will be the conclusion of the week for students at the staff will engage in a staff development day on Friday and there will be no capabilities to provide care for students at the school. Please ensure you have arrangements in order. We have organised this day to coincide with St James PS to help our families. 

Kind regards

Scott Thomson

Student/Parent/Teacher Interviews – Term 1 2020

College staff welcome the opportunity to meet with you to share their knowledge and observations to date, as well as to listen to your thoughts on your child’s learning needs and their school experiences in 2020.

Therefore this term there will be two Student/Parent/Teacher interview nights: Wednesday 25 March (Week 9) and Monday 30 March (Week 10).

Please note that bookings close 48 hours prior to the evening but it’s recommended that you book early to avoid disappointment and don’t forget to print or save a digital copy of your schedule to bring along on the night.

To book now please click the link below:
1. https://booking.parentteacheronline.com.au/?school=tam32 
2. Ensure that the Obtain PIN/Password link is selected
3. Enter the email address on record with the school
4. Click ‘Send Email’. An email will be sent to the email address, providing it matches the data uploaded by the school
5. In the email sent by PTO, click the long link in the contents. This link will automatically log you in to PTO.

Student Engagement and Application Report (SEAAR)

Congratulations to the following students on their extraordinary achievement in the first SEAA Report for 2020. These students achieved a perfect grade average of 5.0:

Cycle One (Term 1, Cycle 1):

Mr Peter Lyon
Deputy Principal

Catholic Schools Week

This week, we will be celebrating Catholic Schools Week.

The week is an opportunity to celebrate our community and identity as a Catholic school. Students are also encouraged to be really thinking about thanking. It is an opportunity to show heartfelt gratitude to others and respect for what others do to help us grow and be better people.

We will have four Appreciation Days where specific groups of the St Joseph’s College community are highlighted. Students and staff can write letters of appreciation and/or help the highlighted group out in some way. The Friday of this week is a pupil free- Staff Development Day- 20 March.

The idea of attaching a year group to a group within the community is to ensure that as many members of the community as possible receive at least one letter of appreciation and an act of help or assistance in some way if at all possible.

Monday 16 March: Will see two appreciation days combined as we have a shortened week.

Teacher Appreciation Day.
Students from Year 10 are asked to take the lead by writing notes of thanks to all the teachers and present them to the teachers on this day. All students can be involved by making a super special effort to be on time to class, have the right equipment, and be really well behaved.

Support Staff Appreciation Day.
Students from years 11 and 12 are asked to take the lead by writing letters of thanks and volunteering their services to assist: office, library, canteen, learning support, IT support, ancillary and grounds staff. Also included with this group are Danny Shaw and Laurie Pratt, our Youth Ministry Officers, Monique Burns, Sports Trainee and TAS Trainee for 2020 and new members Miro Garzina and Deb Pirlo. If students are able to assist at break time, support staff might have the opportunity to have morning tea together.

Tuesday 17 March:
Parent Appreciation Day.
Students from years 7 and 8 are asked to take the lead by making this day their focus. Letters of thanks can be written to parents and acts of service to parents are to be the focus that day for everyone. It would be great to see heaps of Years 7 and 8 students, for example, volunteering to help with Open Evening.

Wednesday 18 March:
Parish staff and community support Appreciation Day.
Students from Year 9 will be going to the Wednesday Mass in the Holy Family Chapel and then they are asked to present Fr Wilber, Fr Rego or Fr Michael with notes of thanks for all the parish staff.

As well as thanking the priests, there are other parish staff to consider: Mrs Kathy Twohill (Pastoral Associate), Mrs Donna Neal, Mrs Sue Heffernan, Mrs Kym Lockley, Mr Bob Heffernan, Mr John Klein, Mrs Pam Harlock, Mr Algis Budzinauskas (maintenance) and John Lee (You have a Friend). It is important that because these people work behind the scenes, we show our appreciation of them.

Thursday 19 March:
Student Appreciation Day (St Joseph’s Day).
The Staff are going to be the facilitators of the St Joseph’s Day Liturgy. SRC students run the show with activities after lunch. It is still very important that students realise that their behaviour on this day still needs to be exemplary. We would like to show that they are appreciated for their good work and actions.

Friday 20 March:
Staff development day-pupil free.

It is hoped that the activities staged during this week will provide an opportunity for the whole community to be involved and appreciate others.

Miss Helen Gooley
Leader of Catechesis

St Joseph’s Day Liturgy – Thursday 19 March

The College will be celebrating the Feast Day of Saint Joseph, our patron saint, at the St Josephs’ Day Liturgy this coming Thursday, 19 March, commencing at 9:15am in the Holy Family Chapel. As with all our religious ceremonies, parents and carers are most welcome to attend.

Mrs Hannah Ardrey
Leader of School Evangelisation

Weekend Mass Times

St Joseph’s Parish

Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm

Sunday: 7:00am & 9:00am

Sunday: 9:00am (Bilambil)

Fr Michael Brady
Parish Priest

St Anthony’s Parish

Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm (Kingscliff)

Sunday: 7:30am (Pottsville)

Sunday: 9:00am (Kingscliff)

Fr Paul McDonald
Parish Priest

(Easter Mass times will be in the Week 10 newsletter.)

As outlined in our last newsletter, we include another two stories today which I encourage our families to read through together. We continue integrating our own theme for the year, ‘Do Not Be Afraid’ with Project Compassion’s 2020 theme, ‘Go Further Together’.

Week 3 Story: Barry, Australia

Project Compassion, Week 3, brings you the story of Barry, a Gamilaroi man originally from western NSW. Barry is a father of four and he embodies resilience and strength. Growing up in a tough environment, he had to look inside himself to make the right choices for himself and his family.

Barry, and others like him, were able to take part in a cultural healing program called Red Dust Healing. This program encourages participants to examine their own personal hurt and allows them to heal from within, addressing family and personal relationships and what may have been life-long patterns of violence, abuse and neglect.

Please donate to Project Compassion 2020 and help vulnerable people like Barry, so that they are empowered to assist members of their communities in Australia. 

Week 4 Story: Sakun, India
Sakun lives in a village in central north India. She developed polio as a child and has difficulty walking. Until now Sakun, an indigenous Gond woman, has been isolated in her community, unable to earn a livelihood and without knowledge of government schemes that could help her.

In 2018, Sakun joined a Caritas Australia-funded program which is implemented by Caritas India and its local partner, Samarthan. With your help Sakun now earns her own income and makes a small profit which goes towards her family’s basic needs. She is more resilient, more confident and more independent.

Please donate to Project Compassion 2020 to help uplift vulnerable communities and support the rights of indigenous peoples around the world.

Do not be afraid as together we have the power to build a movement and create lasting change for our global community. We can help break the cycle of poverty and injustice – to go further together.

Please support Project Compassion. Student donations are collected during morning homeroom during Lent, or you can donate by visiting www.caritas.org.au/projectcompassion, or phoning 1800 024 413.

To support this year’s fundraising efforts, Year 8 are hosting a Bake Sale at the College on St Joseph’s Day (19 March) – see flyer.

Mrs Hannah Ardrey
Leader of School Evangelisation

‘Seeds of Change’

In our new English unit, ‘Seeds of Change’, Year 10 students have been exploring humanity’s evolving relationship with our environment across time. They started by looking at poets such as William Wordsworth, William Blake and John Keats, who were writing around the time of the Romantic movement in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The Romantics were renowned for passionate, emotive poems that challenged the negative impacts of the industrialised world on our imagination. In response to the corruption and pollution they witnessed, they sought to reconnect with the sublime power of nature.

One activity the students completed was to appropriate the Romantic poems they studied within a new context, providing renewed perspectives on old ideas. In doing so, the students were able to develop an appreciation of how time and place can shape a person’s outlook and impact on their understanding of the world around them.

Here are some student samples. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did.

Mrs Charmaine Vella-Fox
Leader of Learning – English

Red Coloured Skies

I wandered along like a lost joey
That looks out for the mother roo
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A bunch of dead daffodils,

Besides my house under the burnt trees
Sighing and crying, the dead palm leaves.

Looking up at the red coloured sky,
And the ash that floats with the breeze.
My home burnt down to a crisp,
Nothing left but a shed tin screen.

The trees once standing strong,
The plants once bright and green,
The animals once happy and free,
Would they ever again be seen?

But the people now gather around,
Donations far and wide,
Australians standing strong
and working together with pride.

(Chelsea Clare)

Tweed

I wander thru' each Tweed street,
Near where the tweed river does flow.
And sickness in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of colds.

In every man's cry for toilet paper,
In every infant and elderly cries of fear,
In every voice in every supermarket,
The cries for hand sanitizer I hear!

How the media cries,
Every man and their dog appals,
And the unfortunate, regular people sigh,
As toilet paper runs down our house walls.

But most tho' idiotic people I hear
And how the youthful curse
The blasts of the elderly’s tears
The blights, the plague of coronavirus

(Callum Lindsay)

The Thorned Rose

O Rose you are sick.
Your secret has escaped,
It spreads through the night
In a red crimson cape.

He has exposed your thorns
You tried so hard to hide.
To the world you are a monster,
He has broken your pride.

(Isabella Anderson)

NAPLAN Online Practice Tests

Students in Years 7 and 9 will be completing two NAPLAN Practice Tests between 23 March and 9 April, in preparation for NAPLAN Online later in the year. The Practice tests will include a Writing test and an omnibus test (combination of Reading, Conventions of Language and Numeracy questions), both 40 minutes in length.

The practice tests will allow for students to become familiar with the types of questions they will experience in NAPLAN Online, and will allow staff and students to familiarise themselves with the functions of the online assessment platform. The actual NAPLAN Online tests will take place in Term 2, between 12 and 22 May.

An email has been sent home with further information about NAPLAN Online. Any questions or concerns can be directed to the NAPLAN Coordinator, Antonia Pratt.

Mrs Antonia Pratt
NAPLAN Coordinator

Exploring Virtual Reality in the classroom

This week Mrs James’ Year 7 HSIE class used the school’s newly acquired Virtual Reality (VR) kit to learn about physical geography. Firstly, the students visited Angel Falls in Venezuela to learn about physical geography and then they went underwater in the Philippines to explore the ocean. They also travelled to China to study landforms, and to the Grand Canyon to explore weathering and erosion. They went to Antarctica to study weather and climate, and they finished in East Africa where they learnt about ecosystems and biomes. Below are some comments from the Year 7 students:

Alyssa “The overall experience of virtual reality was very good and made me understand the content better. By visualising the content and doing the questions this helped me understand the topics better than I would have on pen and paper.”

Liam “Having the VR goggles on made it much easier to understand the content. They were very helpful and made it easier to actually understand what was happening, and what has happened to landforms and landscapes over time.”

Jacob “Virtual reality was really interesting! If we did something like this every day, I would be getting a 10 in SEAAR. It really spiked my attention and was engaging.”

Clare “I really enjoyed the virtual reality. I really liked going underwater in the Philippines and learning about the reef.”

Next week we will be learning about world heritage sites and we will visit the ‘New 7 Wonders of the World’
- The Taj Mahal
- The Grat Wall of China
- The Colosseum of Rome
- Chichén-Itzá
- Petra
- Rio de Janeiro
- Machu Picchu

Mrs Georgia James
Leader of eLearning

Please enjoy these photos from the recent Zeal Theatre Workshop for elective Drama students in Years 9-12.

Year 12 Legal Studies

Year 12 Legal Studies would like to thank human rights lawyer, Sean Stimson, for taking the time to speak to them about human rights.

Sean is the head of Redfern Legal Centre’s International Student Service NSW and was recently awarded the NSW Human Rights Medal which pays tribute to a person who has made a meaningful and lasting contribution to the advancement of human rights.

Sean spoke about the arguments for and against a Charter of Rights, the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, the treatment of migrants on student visas, as well as the role of courts, non-government organisations and the media in promoting and enforcing human rights.

Human Rights makes up 20% of the content in the Year 12 Legal Studies course and the students and I are greatly appreciative of Sean’s time and expertise.

Mrs Georgia James
Legal Studies Teacher

Study Skills Tips for March – Top Tips for Memorising Notes

Many students find it really difficult to cope with the memorisation that can be needed for tests and exams. Of course you can’t just rote learn and regurgitate, you need to be able to apply the skills of what you have learnt. However, there is also a certain amount of memorisation of content, formulas and definitions for example that will be necessary.

So how can students make this process easier?

1. Make your notes as brain-friendly as possible, point form, tables, diagrams and no big long sentences or paragraphs.
2. Start the memorisation process of your notes early, don’t wait until just before the test or examination.
3. Memorisation involves testing yourself over and over and over and over. So read a section, then see what you can say or write down without looking. Then go back and see what you got wrong or didn’t know. Put a pencil mark next to these bits.
4. Now focus on the bits you didn’t know. Say them out loud, repeat them to yourself, write them down a few times.
5. Then test yourself on those bits again and see if you remembered more this time.
6. Do this over and over and over again. Then do it one more time again.
7. Make flashcards or use a flashcard App on your phone to create flashcards on the parts you find hard to remember. Review these every day before the test.
8. Make a list of the key concepts you find hard to learn and each night read through them just before you go to sleep and first thing when you wake up as these are powerful memory times.
9. Do lots of practise questions without looking at your notes or the answers to see if you can (a) remember and (b) apply the information. Review the things you did not remember again.
10. Your job is to keep testing yourself in order to find out which bits have not stuck in your memory yet so you can review these until they do.

Learn more this year about how to improve your results and be more efficient and effective with your schoolwork by working through the units on www.studyskillshandbook.com.au. Our school’s access details are:

Username: sjc
Password: 24results

Mr Carlo Trimboli
Leader of Pedagogy