Newsletter Term 3, Week 4 2022

Dear SJC Families and Friends

Our College has been a hive of activity lately with lots of wonderful things happening for our students.  Our Year 12 students are currently completing Trial Exams and work experience, our Year 10 students have recently returned to school after enjoying an activity week that saw some students attend the snow and others take part in an alternate programme, our Year 8 and 11 students spent a day each last week working with the motivational group, Unleashing Personal Potential and lots of our students have taken part in various sporting and social justice activities.  As I said, there is plenty occurring at the College. 

My challenge for our students across the last two terms has been to get involved and ensure they add value to the College.  I continue to reiterate with students; DON'T JUST EXIST. The opportunities for students to be actively involved in College life are numerous and many.  The students who feel most connected to the College and as a consequence, thoroughly enjoy their time with us, are those who give their all in everything they do.  This includes the learning environment. 

It is in the classroom that the core purpose for each student comes alive.  It is vital that each student, be they Year 7 or Year 12, understands what they can do to further their learning journey and achieve the best they can.  This includes being prepared, completing home learning (even when nothing is set by a teacher), asking for help when required and being a positive influence in the class.  I ask that all parents and carers spend some quality time with each of their children to review the recently compiled Semester 1 report (that you can access through the Parent Portal).  If there are areas that require support, please don't hesitate to reach out to the College for help. 

I am pleased to report that currently in our AWC (Academic and Wellbeing Care) groups, teachers are spending time with each student reflecting on their Semester 1 report and are formulating goals for Semester 2 on the basis of what they have seen.  I can attest that this has been a very useful and fulfilling process as I have completed this activity with a number of my students from the mighty Hanly 4!!

Subject Selection

We are currently engaging with families in the area of subject selection.  As was the case last year, our Year 10 students are required to meet with a family member, and a staff member, to reflect on their learning journey to this point and give due consideration to what their pathway will look like moving into Year 11.  Following this process, our Year 8 families will receive information about our Year 9 electives for 2023.  Thank you to all involved. 

Mr Scott Thomson
Principal

Term 3 Reflection Days

Students in Years 7 to 10 enjoyed their reflection days during Week 1 of this term.  Year 7 and 9 were led by the Passionist Retreat Team.  Year 7 explored how they could improve their relationships and work better together as a year group.  Year 9 looked at what some of the masks are they wear and how they can have the courage to be their true self.  Students explored these themes through games, small group activities and whole group sharing.  The feedback from staff and students was positive and we look forward to working with the Passionist team in the coming years.

Year 8 and 10 had Chris Doyle facilitate their retreat day, Chris is an experienced retreat facilitator and loved by the students.  He brings a serious message to life with his musical talent, sense of humour and fun group activities.  He explored topics like how to have more loving relationships, how to treat women with respect and how the Gospel values of selfless love, respect, kindness, forgiveness and generosity can support us and guide us to a more fulfilled life.

Thank you to the retreat facilitators for their generosity of time and energy and for the involvement and sense of community from each year group.

Catch the Wave

Year 10 Ministry students were the leaders of the Catch the Wave retreat for our Year 9 Ministry students last Thursday and we are so proud of the job they did.  They all had a leadership role to play on the day, including running games, organising lunch, sharing a testimony and running small groups and they all stepped up and exceeded our expectations.  Year 9 had a great day and this will launch their Ministry work and a great lead up to SHINE for both classes.  We look forward to Year 9 running it next year when they are in Year 10.

'Stay Out' and Personal Care packs for the Homeless

As you are aware, over the last four weeks the Mission Team has collected items for personal care pack for the homeless.

To better understand their plight, and to offer some practical assistance, donations were sought by students by the Mission Team, who have been collecting essential items and making packs for local charities You Have a Friend and Fred’s Place.  The Mission Team is also running a competition between House AWCs, culminating this week in the awarding of points in the annual House Competition, and for the winning AWC a pizza lunch by Friday this week.

We are still collecting this week, and we ask if your child might bring to their AWC any of the following items:

• Socks
• Muesli bars
• Women's sanitary items
• Toothbrush
• Toothpaste
• Body wash
• Conditioner/shampoo
• Packaged snacks (no canned items please)

Your help is very much appreciated.

A further opportunity to be involved in helping these local charites takes place in Week 6 this term, when we'll be hosting a ‘Stay Out’ at the College on the afternoon/evening of Friday 26 August.  It promises to be a fun - and informative - afternoon and evening.  Please see the attached flyer for more information.

Feast Day of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop

Prayer through St Mary MacKillop of the Cross
Bountiful and loving God,
You have filled the heart of Mary MacKillop with compassionate love
for those who are in need at the margins of our society.
Deepen that love within us that we may embrace the mystery of the Cross
which leads us through death to life.
We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus who having broken the bonds of death
leads us to everlasting life.
Amen

We hope you have the opportunity today to say a prayer through Mary.  If you can only find a moment, why not visit with St Mary MacKillop.  Pause and share with Mary the longings of your heart.  Ask her to pray with you to God for your needs and the needs of our world.

Mrs Hannah Ardrey
Leader of School Evangelisation

On behalf of the Mission Team

2022 HSC Study Guides OUT NOW

Attention:  Year 12 students and Year 11 accelerated students

This year’s HSC Study Guide is jam-packed full of useful information to help HSC students prepare for their final exams including: 

• strategies to manage and reduce exam stress 
• top scoring exam answers in 2021 
• study and exam advice from past HSC students

Mr Matthew Hall
Leader of Curriculum

Jingi Walla (Hello)

Last week we were lucky enough to celebrate NAIDOC week as a school community and had a range of interactive activities on offer for staff and students over the week.  One of the highlights was our whole school NAIDOC assembly with the visiting group, The Yugambeh Aboriginal dance troupe performing. 

Many students participated in this assembly which was a wonderful example of this year's NAIDOC theme, ‘Get up, Stand up, Show up’ showcasing our beautiful local Bundjalung culture.

Students and staff were also able to learn a new Bundjalung word/phrase each day, listen to Indigenous artists themed bells, view a library display of paintings and artefacts, participate in a Bush tucker talk and walk, Aboriginal art activity, learn to play didj or Learn to weave.

Our Allstars Non Indigenous Vs Indigenous students gathered on Friday for the final activity in our NAIDOC week celebrations.  A warm and sunny winter's day brought our school community down to the oval to watch the Indigenous side take out the honours for 2022 with Jayden Wilson and Blake Murphy being named best and fairest for their respective teams.  This was a spectacular way to wrap up a wonderful week of learning, sharing and celebrating our local Indigenous culture.

Congratulations and Thank you (Bugalbeh) to our St Joseph's community we 'got up, stood up and showed up'!!!

Bugalwan (good blessings)

Mrs Lexe Busbridge
Indigenous Education Worker

“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse

Eloise Thomson with her Henri Matisse drawing

This term we see a number of performances take place across our music and drama courses.  Year 12 creative and performing arts students will continue to show courage, creativity and collaboration as they commence their final school performances in music and complete their Visual Arts HSC major work this term.

Year 12 Music students performing ...

... for their Year 8 audience!

Congratulations to our Year 12 Music students who performed their in-class assessment in Week 3.  Students displayed a wide talent across a variety of music performance areas in vocals, drums, bass guitar and piano.  In preparation for their final HSC performance, Year 12 Music will be performing on the evening of Thursday 25 August, and we invite families and friends of these students to be their audience.  The evening will commence at 6:00pm and it will be held in the Music Room.  We wish them all the best for their upcoming final HSC performance in September.

Our Year 10 Drama students will be holding a Performance Evening on Monday 15 August where they will perform their recent Monologue assessment piece.  The performance is in the Drama Space and it will start at 6:00pm.  The class would like to invite their families and friends to come along.  Please check your emails for the latest information.

Year 9 Drama students will perform 'The Terrible Fate of Humpty Dumpty' in the Drama Space on Wednesday 10 August at 6:00pm.  Families and friends of these Drama students are welcome to watch this performance.

Year 9 Skatedeck artwork

Year 8 portraits

Year 8 Portraits

We welcomed new Year 7 and 8 classes into Music and Visual Arts at the start of this term as they continued their creative arts rotation.  Year 7 Visual Arts students are currently discovering the building blocks of an artwork and are looking forward to using these to create a portfolio of work that explores colour, line, shape, tone, texture and space.

Year 8 Printmaking

Save the Date:

ONSHOW 2022 - 9-11 November
Opening night 6pm Wednesday 9 November

We are excited to announce that in Week 5 of term 4 ‘OnShow’ will return.  This year our exhibition will run over three days in the COLA space and will feature student work across all year levels in Photography, Visual Arts and Visual Design.  Year 12 Visual Arts HSC major works will be on display alongside an ensemble of music performances.  Our Year 11 VET Entertainment students will be working with our art show curators to assist in the installation of the artwork and lighting.  We look forward to sharing this event that showcases our students' creative achievements with our College community.

Mrs Nicole Taylor
Leader of Learning - Creative Arts

Welcome back to term 3 for Team Dalton!  Semester 1 was pleasing and now we are well and truly into the vertical streaming of AWC classes and being part of Dalton House.

We have commenced this term with a focus on ensuring AWC is used appropriately for completing academic studies, assessments, homework and revision as well as strengthening relationships with students and teachers in our community.  We have reflected on the bullying survey, SEAAR results and Semester 1 academic reports.  Community spirit has been and is on show with collection of the hampers for the homeless and our strong representation in NAIDOC week activities. 

We welcomed three new students to our house at the start of this term: Adam 10F, Grace 7A and Coco 7B with all three students settling in well to SJC life.

Year 10 have had a wonderful start to the semester with the Snow trip for most and alternate activities at CYC Burleigh for those unable to attend.   

The Trial HSC exams have commenced and we hope the Year 12 students (and accelerated Year 11 students) were able to put their best foot forward in all facets.  

We took our U14s and U16s girls Rugby League team to Ballina and then to Coffs Harbour for the regional finals and Dalton was strongly represented by Summer, Bec, Riley, Jorja, Areeya, Sierra, Fallon, Jemima, Ruby, Jenna, Sienna, Lillian, Olive and Caitlyn - well done girls!  Also this term, we competed in mountain biking for the first time and Cooper J, Dylan, Bryce and Mraz represented us well. 

A reminder of the importance of using our diaries and being organised for upcoming tasks as well as our uniform requirements for PE/Sport. 

Please refer to the uniform policy if you have any queries as we have seen an increase in poor choices of haircuts, jumpers, jewellery and shoes. 

Keep up the good work team and enjoy Term 3.

Mr Quinn
Leader of Dalton House

It was with great excitement that nearly 20 mountain bikers from St Joeys converged on Nerang State Forest last week for the annual Mountain Biking Championships.  Representatives from as far west as Chinchilla, north as the Sunshine Coast and as far south as Ballina comprised the field consisting of more than 200 students on really sweet bikes.  The format saw students complete five runs on each of the three courses (two downhill and one a cross country course) with the best times tallied up to provide a total.  Whilst we did not have any students make the podium, there were some great displays of skill, courage and endurance throughout by the SJC students.  Most pleasingly, all students came away relatively injury-free (lots of skin missing but that is just a sign of a good ride). 

We would like to thank the many parents who transported their children to the event and supported the students so strongly, with lots of parents bringing their bikes and enjoying a few sick runs on the day.  We look forward to engaging with more events like this in the future.  Enjoy the snaps below!!

Mr Josh McCormack and Mr Scott Thomson

Looking for work?

Ms Frances Mason
Leader of Careers and EVET

Teacher Learning - Science Faculty

Year 7 Science teachers have taken the plunge into inquiry-based learning classroom practices this term.  The launch of their unit on living organisms began in Week 1.  Students were required to solve problems right from the get-go by classifying organisms according to any prior knowledge they had.  This stimulated many questions that students had about the topic.  Sparking such curiosity about learning is a significant attribute of this style of learning and teaching.  Upon visiting a variety of classrooms, I can attest that students were fully engaged in the learning process.

The Year 7 Science teachers are the fourth faculty group at SJC to take on an inquiry-based learning pedagogical approach aligned with the work of Michael McDowell.  They join other teachers across Years 7-9 in Catholic Studies, PDHPE and HSIE.  This approach to learning and teaching focuses on developing rigour.  This rigour combines surface, deep and transfer levels of learning complexities through dollops of reading, writing and talking.

These photos from 7E (and video below) show groups of students talking, listening and grappling with the problem of placing organisms into categories.

The next stage of the learning journey is to learn the actual groups that organisms are classified into and to correct any misconceptions.

As always, please feel free to contact me regarding learning and teaching at the College (carlo.trimboli@lism.catholic.edu.au).

Study Skills Tips for August: Expectations

Reminder for our Homework Hub 

This is in the College Library, Monday to Thursday, from 3:15pm to 5:00pm.

Mrs Fin & Mrs Williams