Week 3, Term 4 2023

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Acknowledgement of Country

Religious Identity and Mission

Bless the many parted souls
who lived their lives with grace.
Bless the saints in heaven,
gathered in that special place.

May we tell their stories

and remember all the ways

they lived their faith

and spent their days.

May we always hold them dear

and know their life and place.

May we know their inspiration

and aspire to their grace.

Amen

All Souls Day Mass led by 4/5 class

Reflection

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

Genesis 1:31

In the bible in Genesis 1, the creation story, every day ends with God seeing that it was good. But after God created humans, he saw that it was very good. Are humans the crown on creation?

As the Made in the Image of God curriculum is being rolled out in our school the coming week, I was thinking about who we are to God. I was thinking about how beautiful He made human beings and how much care He must have taken while creating us.

In psalm 139:13-16 it reads:

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

He made us little bit, by little bit, like an artist models his clay, careful and with precision. It is not coincidence that we are here. We were created individually by God. He might have given you a talent for music, or a talent for sport. Maybe he gave you a talent for communicating with others or an eye for photography. In the way the creation is written in the bible God seems to be like an artist who passionately and full of enthusiasm is creating his masterpiece. That same passion and enthusiasm God had creating the world; He has for you.

Therefore, he laid in each of us something that is uniquely beautiful. Celebrate who you are and discover what God put into you that makes you you; God’s beautiful and unique creation.

Beauty is God gazing at himself in a mirror

But you are God and you are the mirror

~Kahil Gibran~

From the Principal

This week we celebrated All Saints Day and All Souls Day. All Souls Day is a holy day that is celebrated in the Catholic Church on the 2 November each year. It is a day to remember and pray for loved ones who have passed away. Year 4/5, together with Fr Emil, led a whole school mass on All Souls Day.

Since the start of Term 4, the school has been a hive of activity. Classes have settled back into learning. All students have completed the Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT). There are two tests: PAT-R (reading) and PAT-M (Numeracy). These are diagnostic assessments conducted to measure a student’s growth throughout the year. They provide valuable information to teachers about individual learning strengths and needs. The tests indicate what skills students have mastered, what skills they are consolidating and even more importantly what skills they need to be educationally stretched. PAT also provide teachers with objective information for setting realistic learning goals and enables them to better plan learning programs as students’ progress through the year levels.

For the first time since the pandemic started the Year 6 students have travelled to Canberra, where they visited Parliament House, The Mint, National Museum, Australian War Memorial, Questacon, National Zoo and Aquarium, Australian Institute of Sport and more. The one-week excursion to the Nation’s capital, Canberra, is an exciting and valuable experience for our senior students. The Canberra trip complements learning outcomes in Civics and Citizenship. In Canberra students got the chance to see the icons of our Nation, develop a greater understanding of the democratic process whilst experiencing many hands-on activities.

Camps and excursions are an important element to our school community and are critical to effective learning - they provide real world experience for the students. In the coming weeks students across the school will engage in camps and excursions. The Year 2/3 will experience a zoo snooze in Adelaide Zoo, Year 4/5 will engage in activities at Roonka near Blanchetown. The Reception class visited Red Dog Ridge farm in Moorook and Year 1 will visit the Loxton Historical village.

Musica Viva visited the school in week 2 with their delightful performance ‘Walking with the Wilderness’, where students were invited to use their imagination to create music for the flora and fauna around us. We also travelled to Berri to watch Paper Boat Theatre Productions’ performance ‘When the Mirror Bird Sings’, a mythical tale of kindness overcoming greed.

Last week we celebrated World Teacher’s Day. At SJSB we have an outstanding team of highly committed educators, who provide a whole range of education opportunities for all our students. I love coming to school and seeing the smiling faces of children that are not only excited about learning but also excited about seeing the teachers that help them learn and are excited about the environments they do their learning in.

Next week the Made in the image of God (MITIOG) Human Sexuality Curriculum is taught in all classes. All students received a letter outlining the content covered in each year level. The MITIOG Human Sexuality Curriculum is mandated for South Australia Catholic Schools and each year our students engage with age-appropriate curriculum content regarding sexuality through this curriculum. Catholic understanding is that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore deserving of the utmost dignity and honour and that our sexuality is a fundamental dimension of the human person. We acknowledge that families are the first educators of their child’s sexuality and that it is the role of the school to support families in this area. We are committed to supporting and enriching these partnerships.

Whilst this curriculum has been mandated to be taught in Catholic Schools in South Australia, should you wish for your child to be excluded from classes and be given other work, please indicate this in writing via a seesaw message or email.

I have almost finalised the staffing and school structure for 2024 and I’ll be delighted to be sharing this with you very soon.

Nanda de Winter

Canberra Camp

On the 22nd of October, the year 6 class left for their trip to Canberra. everyone woke up at 5:00am and got to school by 5:45am to get everything ready for the trip. We left at 6:00am to get to Canberra and we made multiple stops to eat and stretch our legs and we got to Canberra at about 8:30pm at night.

In Canberra we visited many places like Questacon and AIS. My personal favourites where Questacon and AIS. At Questacon there was a long and big slide there and most of the stuff there was interactive. AIS there was Olympic games that you could play. My most favourite thing there would be the reaction time with the soccer balls.

We also visited the zoo, aquarium, and parliament house. The zoo and aquarium were fun we saw snakes, sharks, meerkats, and monkeys my most favourite animal there would be the painted wild dogs. At parliament house we did a play on a bill of “we should do sports at school for 3-hours a day”. I was the shadow minister for the play, but we all know what won the votes the votes were yes, we should do sports for 3-hours a day.

That was the end of the trip. Now another 14-hours back to Barmera we made stop after stop all the stops were 15- or 30-minutes stop but when we made it to Mildura, we stopped at MacDonalds to get dinner, I got a BBQ angus meal with a salted caramel frappe. After we made the next 2-hour drive back to Barmera, after we made it back our parents picked us up from school. And that is the end.

By Nash Drewett

Canberra Recount!

On the 22nd of October at 6:00am, the year 6's and 5 adults the school bus and a car and started our trip to Canberra. Over the whole 13-14 hours we stopped every 2 hours so the bus drivers could swap. When they did swap, we'd mainly stop at playgrounds. For the first time we were allowed to bring devices and headphones to entertain ourselves on the bus and to take pictures. When we got to Canberra at 8:30pm, we stayed at Westwood Lodge. At Westwood they had a hall full of games. The main things we used were the Ping-Pong table, Wii bowling but just the Wii in general and twister. We visited Parliament house, the war memorial for the last post ceremony, Anzac parade, CSIRO (commonwealth scientific and industrial research organisation) and many more.

In Canberra we visited 13 places including the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) and Cockington Green Gardens. When we got to AIS, we were greeted by two guides Steve and Lexi who worked at the AIS as volleyball players. They first took us to Sportex, a place with lots of activities which included a mini basketball court, rock wall climbing, a rowing simulator, and a few more activities. After about hour at Sportex, they took us for a tour. On the tour we first saw the gymnasium, the volleyball court (where Steve and Lexi train), the gym where everyone trains on specific machines depending on their sport, and lastly the pool. At Cockington green gardens were mini figures of houses, people, sport games, places designed from all around the world and even a mini–Star Wars battle. In the gift shop you could buy mini figures of things, I bought a mini golf cart as a Christmas present for one of my family members. Unfortunately, their train ride around the place was unavailable.

We also visited Questacon and the royal Australian mint. When we first arrived at Questicon we went to the Excite@Q, that's known for its two-story free fall slide. Also, in that room was a 4-player air hockey table which was challenging but also fun, a blue light optical illusion tunnel, a machine that measures how high you jump and tells you something like "on the moon you would have jumped___" and a few more cool things. Next, we moved to under the moon. Under the moon had a big balloon or projected moon in the middle of the room and 3 seats to sit and look up at the moon. Around the moon and seats, there was information about the moon and space. At the mint, our tour guide took us to different places to tell and show us about the history of the money we use. After that, we moved on to look at their coin factory. While looking, we were lucky enough to see one of their machines (its name was Titan) pour the coins into a funnel to get packaged and sent off. The tour guide told us that they only make coins to replace the ones that must be taken out of circulation because of how worn they were. Before the factory, we saw the room where they make some of the special coins like the Matildas coin.

Overall Canberra was a fun trip to take. The hall there was fun and most of the class would agree because most of us were playing games there. They also had half a basketball court, unfortunately, we didn't bring a basketball, so we had to use a soccer ball if we wanted to play. Some of the activities I liked more than others like the AIS for Sportex, Cockington Green Gardens for the mini figures and parliament house for the mock parliament and the Lego version that Brick Man built. I think I would recommend taking a trip to Canberra, especially if you want to learn more about the war or to learn about politics and how they pass a bill. I'd recommend this to kids maybe 7-12, it was fun but also a good place to learn about Australia.

By Avril Chabrel

Passion Projects

This term students are engaging in a lesson called Passion Project, where they get to work on a project that stems from their ideas, passions and interests. Over the course of the term, there will be a couple fundraisers as students have identified their interest in raising money for charity. From next week, on Mondays at lunchtime, students are selling Orange Juice and Fairy Bread to raise money for The Smith Family Foundation which support children living in poverty.

It is great to see students using their ideas to support foundations and raise money for awareness.

Musica Viva