Dear Parents and Carers,

We continue our year with a focus on improvement in reading for all students. You may have heard your children talking about how they are working in class to improve their fluency, but what does this mean? The picture below shows what we understand fluency to mean.

Parent Teacher Meetings

We invite you to attend our Term 3 Parent Teacher Meetings. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss your child's progress and to set some new learning goals for the remainder of the year. Bookings can be made from the 14th to the 18th of August at various times. If you are unable to attend any of the timeslots, please contact your class teacher to make an alternative time. If you have a class with more than one teacher, you are able to book a time with either teacher. Year 4 bookings will be available from the 7th to the 11th of August due to Mrs Bonser's upcoming maternity leave. Compass bookings will close this Friday at 3pm. If you need help to book, please contact the office.

Premier’s Reading Challenge

For those students who are participating in the Premier’s Reading Challenge this year, the closing date for book entries is the 18^th of August.  If you need any help with the recording of your reading, please contact me.

Diocesan Athletics

Well done to our school team who formed part of the Manning team to compete recently in the Diocesan Athletics. Our students had a fabulous day and competed well in an incredibly challenging field. Thank you to Mr Knoke for organising the day and travelling with our students.

Attendance Matters

Making sure our children are at school every day is so important. It is one of the biggest factors in your child being able to achieve to their full potential. Thank you for supporting your children in getting to school every day.

Thank you for supporting Caitlyn and Lucas

Recently Caitlyn and Lucas Lyon held a fundraising cake stall to help them with their goal of attending the World Pipe Band Competition in Scotland next year. Thank you to everyone who supported this by buying a cake.
I was so pleased to receive an email from Heidi Lyon which I wanted to share with you.
Thank you again for letting the kids have a cake stall at school yesterday. They made just under $300 to put towards their trip which is fantastic! It was so lovely to see the kids and school community support Caitlyn and Lucas.

You should be very proud of the all the Joey’s kids; they have such great manners! So many pleases and thank yous.

Welcome Miss Bennett

This week we welcome Miss Jessica Bennett to our school. Jessica is undertaking her last practicum placement and will be in Year 5 with Mr Buchtmann and Mrs Wheeler for the next six weeks.

Prime Drinks

Recently several students have been bringing Prime drinks to school. These drinks are not recommended for children under 15 due to the ingredients they contain. Could you please make sure that your child does not bring these drinks to school.

We're proud to announce that from July 2023 all of our Catholic Schools Office sites, including St Joseph’s Wingham, are powered by GreenPower – 100% clean renewable energy.

Run by the NSW Office of Energy and Climate Change, GreenPower is the only government accreditation program that guarantees electricity use is matched with power from renewable electricity sources.

The purchase of GreenPower guarantees the electricity is coming from renewable energy sources that meet strict environmental criteria. This ensures that the grid electricity we use has net-zero emissions.

The transition to GreenPower is just one of the actions Catholic Schools Maitland-Newcastle is undertaking as part of the Diocesan Sustainability Plan 2022-2025, to positively influence sustainability across our region. Another is to reduce electricity consumption across schools. New LED lighting is progressively being installed in all schools and at one primary school alone, there has been a 26% reduction in electricity.

With 58 schools, the impact of the lighting project is quite significant and combined with the installation of PV solar across all Catholic Diocese schools, further efficiencies will be gained. Reducing our demand on the grid is good for the environment but helps students too, with potential reduced operating cost savings being channelled to additional programs.

Parent Engagement Meeting

Please join me in a prayer that our children continue to be able to experience a high-quality Catholic education that allows them to grow and become the best people that they can be.

God Bless

Prime Minister Award

'Being a steward of creation’, ‘Trying your best’, ‘Speaking with kindness’ and ‘Being a responsible learner’ are some of the qualities that teachers consider when awarding ‘Prime Minister’ at our weekly assembly. It is an acknowledgement of the student’s efforts and they have the privilege of wearing the badge with honour, of suggesting a focus the school can work on, award Gotchas to other students at lunch time as well as earning Gotchas for themselves.  Congratulations to Emily Manewell (Week 2), Sienna Lapi-an (Week 3) and Alice Raison (Week 4).

MJR Awards

As part of our MJR system, we acknowledge that the following students, Susannah Healy has reached 200 Gotchas and Kaii MacMillan has reached 300 Gotchas. Well Done!

Naidoc Day

Dio Athletics Carnival 

On Wednesday 2nd August 9 students travelled to the Hunter Sports Centre at Newcastle. 

The students competed in various track and field events in the annual Diocesan athletics carnival. They displayed fantastic behaviour, competed fairly and tried their best in very competitive track and field events. 

Well done to Penny Van Vliet, Parker Hagarty, Charlie Crittenden, Jaxon Osgood, Daniel Sutherland, Sophie Hook, Eleanor Healy, Karlina Stoehr and Saul Simon. 

Mr Knoke - Sports Co-Ordinator

St Joseph’s Wingham – Helping Others in Need

At St Joseph’s Wingham, we have in each classroom a poster of famous saying of St Mary MacKillop that says “Never See a Need Without Doing Something About It.” During term 2, the students and families of St Joseph’s Wingham certainly put this into action by supporting two worthwhile charities in St Vincent De Paul and Catholic Mission. For 5 weeks, students bought in donations of food and other items for the St Vinnies Winter appeal that were gratefully accepted by Deacon Vince Ryan, President of the Manning Region chapter of St Vinnies. Deacon Vince explained to the students that these donations would go to help local families who are struggling to put food on the table for various reasons and that our small actions help to make Jesus real in the lives of those less fortunate. On the last day of term, our school also held a “Footy Colours Day” where students could come out of uniform for a gold coin donation that would go towards Catholic Mission’s Socktober appeal to help communities around the world. As a school we managed to raise over $100 and definitely lived out the words of St Mary MacKillop in “Never Seeing a Need Without Doing Something About It.”

What's happening in Kinder...................

Elke – I like learning numbers and sounds. I also like learning about the Holy Spirit.

Ava B – I like spelling words.

William – I like learning phonemes and making playdough pets in Science.

Ava G - I like using my phoneme fist to spell words. 

Zoe – I like learning digraphs.

Kyro – I like counting and writing numbers.   

Ella – I like learning numbers.

Charlie – I like learning to write sentences.

Ryleigh – I like counting.   

Kyron – I like learning to count and learning sounds.  

Meesha – I like learning the school prayers.

Alice – I like everything we learn at school. My favourite thing to learn is the sounds in the alphabet.  

Sione – I like learning about crickets in Science.

Hannah – I like learning digraphs. They are two letters that make one sound.  

Krystela – I like learning to read.

Edward – I like learning to write words and numbers.  

Samuel Ungaro turning 10
Joseph Ayres turning 8
Austyn  Hagarty  turning  8