Dear Families & Friends,  

It is with genuine love for our community that I write this, my last newsletter article for St Joseph’s. This week began with lots of crying, and I am sure the tears will continue, as I experience my ‘last’ of everything. As I experience these ‘lasts’, the tears shed are a mixture of how much I am going to miss our community and happiness that I was blessed to work in such a special place for the last three and a bit years.

To all of our Parents, Grandparents & Guardians, thank you for your support and trusting me with your children. To all of our students, thank you for making every day exciting, for your smiles and your love; remember that each of you are special and capable of greatness in your own way. To our staff, there are not enough words to express what an incredible team you are. It has been a privilege working with you all.

Last week, I had the joy of attending Year 6 Camp, and loved that I was able to spend quality time with our Year 6 students. They participated in activities including beach raft building, rock climbing, coastal bike riding, ziplining and had lots of time in the ocean. Thank you to Miss Thomas, Mr Watson, Mrs Curtis and Mr Ewing for attending camp and looking after our students so well. Special thanks to Father Ruben who visited us at Woodman Point to celebrate a very special Mass with our students.

May you all have a blessed Easter and many opportunities to spend quality time together as a family.

Michelle Christian
Head of Primary

Class in Focus: Year Three Gold

Year 3 Gold sat down this week to discuss what has been happening in our classroom this term and we were astounded by just how much we have already accomplished! No wonder we are all ready for holidays!

In Maths this term, Mrs Kaur has been teaching us about measurement and we have had some wonderful hands-on learning using assorted tools to measure small, medium and large objects around the school, using things such as trundle wheels, tape measures and rulers. Mrs Kaur has also taught us how to construct tally charts and graphs during Mathematics. Our favourite lesson was definitely having to tally the Smarties, as we got to eat them at the end.

Mrs Adams has been teaching us all about number and we have been working on recognising and making 5 and 6 digit numbers using MABs and expanded notation. We have also been looking at the characteristics of odd and even numbers and conducting a small investigation into addition and subtraction using odd and even numbers.

Mr Matthys takes us for Science and this term we have been learning about living and non living things, including conducting an experiment to determine whether larger seeds will sprout and grow faster than smaller seeds. We have also been having lots of fun demonstrating our Science learning through Blooket quizzes.

In English we have been sharing the BFG as our class novel and creating our own narrative story, containing the suspense features we have been learning about in class. This year the Year 3 classes are also learning spelling through a new program called SpellEx. We are all thoroughly enjoying learning our tricky words, as well as the meanings of special spelling words such as phonemes, graphemes, prefixes and suffixes.

During HASS, Mrs Kaur has been teaching us all about rules and laws and how we can contribute in our community. We also took a secret ballot within the classroom to vote on our class rules.

Religion has taught us all about the Church community and all the different people who are welcomed into the Church. The last few weeks we have also been learning about Lent and Easter, which is a very special liturgical celebration in the Church community.

When you add to that Harmony Week activities, NAPLAN, Art with Mrs Smith where we have been using scratch art to create dragons, PE with Mr Watson and Technologies and Health with Mr James, it is no wonder we are all exhausted! Lucky it is not long to go until holidays!

Ruth Adams & Harpreet Kaur  
Three Gold Teachers 

Join the St Joseph's Equestrian Interschools Team!

Are you passionate about horses and riding? Do you dream of competing against other schools in thrilling equestrian events? St Joseph's School invites both Primary and Secondary students to express their interest in joining our Equestrian Interschools Team!

Event Details:

• Date: Wednesday 10th to Saturday 13th April (Easter School Holidays)
  
• Location: State Equestrian Centre 303 Cathedral Ave Brigadoon
• Events:

• Dressage
• Eventing
• ShowJumping
• Combined training (Dressage & Showjumping/no cross-country)
• ShowHorse (Hacking)

Requirements:
Students must be a member of EWA (Equestrian Western Australia), either as competitive or participant members.

Most competitive interschool classes require a qualifying event (except prep dressage and showhorse). Participant classes do not need qualifications.

Expression of Interest: Interested Primary students should talk to Ms Thomas in Year 6 Gold or email mikala.thomas@cewa.edu.au for any inquiries and to express their interest.