From the Principal's Desk

Dear Members of St Joseph’s Family,

We have finally crawled our way to the end of what has been the longest term of my career.  I would like to thank you all for your support along the way as we navigated our way through each week and the challenges that came our way.  The students demonstrated great resilience as they faced daily changes to their timetable and had a revolving door of different teachers in front of their classes.  I am proud of each staff member who played their role in maintaining learning platforms during this time so that we were able to put a teacher in front of every class and keep the School open.  I sincerely thank each and every one of them.

Today we farewell Mrs Lauren Everett as she begins her maternity leave.  The Year 2s farewelled her in style with a very pink baby shower and the Primary Campus farewelled her with a giant hamper of goodies for both her and her baby.  We wish Lauren and her husband, James, all the best for the exciting adventures which lie ahead.  Ms Carly Allen will be replacing Lauren in Year 2.

School Advisory Council

We are searching for new members to the School Advisory Council.  We are particularly looking for people who have an interest in building/maintenance to help work on a sub-committee with the Principal and the Business Manager.  These people do not have to be a parent at the school, they can be a grandparent, relative or friend.  If you or someone you know has an interest in finding out more about the role, please email Andrea Woodgate at andrea.woodgate@cewa.edu.au or Andrew O’Sullivan at hostautos@westnet.com.au

Semester Reports

There were some technical hitches with the reports which has seen their release delayed until this afternoon.  These can be accessed through SEQTA Engage.  If you have not accessed this before, then you will receive an activation email today as well.

Parent/teacher interviews will take place on both campuses early next term.  Online booking information has been included in both Heads of School sections below.  Parents are offered the option of face-to-face, online or phone interviews.

2023 Planning

We have begun our planning for the 2023 school year already and as we do this, we take into account our class size numbers when allocating staff to subjects and classes.  This is also the time when we would like to let those on our waiting lists know whether they are likely to have a place for the following year.

If you are planning to withdraw your child at the end of this year and place them into another school, we ask that you complete the attached form so that we can factor these students into our planning.  If your child is staying at St Joseph's School then you DO NOT need to complete the form.

It is a requirement that you let the School know, in writing, that you will be withdrawing your child.  By completing this form, you will not need to send another form of notification - 2023 Destination Form.

Term 3

Term 3 begins on Monday 18 July.  Please note that our Pupil Free Days will be Monday 15 August and Tuesday 16 August.

I would like to wish you all a wonderful holiday.  I hope you get a chance to rest and recharge.

God Bless

Andrea Woodgate
Principal 

Faith in Action

Speak For Faith Competition

Congratulations to Mackenna Cousinery and Wendy Chen for competing in the State Final of the Annual Speak For Faith competition in Perth last Saturday.

Both students performed incredibly well as they were required to speak for 5 minutes on a Religion & Life topic.  This was followed by an impromptu speech on a topic they are given on the spot to speak for 2 minutes about.

Mackenna and Wendy's main speeches were judged extremely highly, but it was the impromptu section that really sorted out the competition.

It is with great pleasure that we announce Wendy Chen finished 2nd overall and received a medallion and $350 for her achievement.

Congratulations to both girls and we look forward to continuing our ongoing success in Speak for Faith in future years.

Lloyd Reidy
Religious Education Coordinator

Parish Sacramental Program

The Parish Sacramental Program Coordinator, Mrs Kathy Pollard, wishes to advise families that the Parish is considering holding the Commitment Ceremony for each Sacrament prior to or at the first parent/student workshop.  If you have any queries regarding the Sacramental Program, please contact Kathy on 0429 685 632.

Primary News                                            

Congratulations to our Year 6 students, and some talented Years 4 and 5 students, who competed in the NSSA Winter Carnival earlier this week.  These students represented our School proudly with outstanding sportsmanship, energy and enthusiasm.  Thank you to Ms Frost for the time and energy she put into organising the carnival, and to all the staff and parents who volunteered their time to ensure that the carnival was a success.

Semester One Reports

Later today, you will receive your child’s Semester One Report via SEQTA.  Due to the impact COVID has had on schools across Western Australia, including here at St Joseph’s, the Primary Report will only have grades allocated for English and Mathematics.  All other learning areas will receive an effort scale only.  Reports will contain a general comment, as well as comments for English and Mathematics.

Semester Two Parent/Teacher Meetings

Parents/Caregivers are encouraged to book in a time to meet with their child’s teacher early next term.  Meetings will be held across Weeks 1 and 2 of Term Three.  These meetings will provide parents with the opportunity to discuss their child’s Semester One Report and set goals for Semester Two.  To book in for your face-to-face or phone meeting, please follow the below directions:

Go to www.schoolinterviews.com.au and enter the code hz4gj
Enter your details
Select the teachers you wish to see
Select the appointment times that suit your family best
When you click FINISH your selected bookings will be emailed to you immediately.  If you do not receive your email, please check your junk-mail, or enter the event code again and check your email address.

May you all have a wonderful July school holidays with your children.

Michelle Christian
Head of Primary

Class in Focus:  Year 5 Blue

We have finally made it to Week Ten.  What a busy term it has been.

Year 5s have been studying America and creating informative lapbooks on different North and South American countries.  Did you know that there are 50 stars on the United States of American flag that represent their 50 States or that Latin Americans in Mexico were the first to turn the cacao plant into chocolate?  It’s been interesting to learn so many exciting facts from a wide range of cultures.

Our class have also created Keynote presentations about a chosen native American animal.  We have researched a range of facts about our animals and specifically studied what adaptations it has that help it to survive in the wild.  Hopefully, we will present them at the end of the week.

              
              

To get us excited about animals, we went on excursion last week to the Perth Zoo.  The weather on the day was just magical.  Some of the highlights of the day were seeing the otters play fighting in their burrow, the penguins being fed, cassowary hiding in the bush and meerkats playing with a ball.  Thank you to our parent and grandparent helpers for coming along on the day.

             

We have also had a fun time rehearsing and performing our Assembly item on Lenihan Day.  To celebrate our founder, Monsignor Lenihan, we recreated a play about how he established St Paul’s School at Fermoy House.  Some of the key characters in our Lenihan retell were members of the Northam community, the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition, the Marist Brothers and Dean Thomas Lenihan.  A key part of our Assembly item was our Fermoy House background.  Makayla drew Fermoy House using the Sketchers School app, then Matilda, Lizzy and their helpers painted it.  We think it looked amazing.

                                    

Year 5 Blue are looking forward to a restful holiday so we can get back to learning next term.  Happy holidays!

Michelle Smith
Year 5 Blue Teacher

NSSA Primary Cross-country Event

The NSSA Cross Country was held on Monday 20 June and it turned out to be the perfect day for such an event.  Schools gathered at West Northam Primary School to compete.  All our students should be extremely proud of their performance, regardless of where they came in their race.  We were overall winners on the day and walked away with the Shield.

Results on the day:

Year 6 Girls	Maddison Haddrill 1st	Marley Ferguson 2nd
Year 6 Boys	Parker Byfield 1st	Marcus De Barros 2nd
Year 5 Girls	Mackenzie Miller 3rd	Elise De Barros 4th
Year 5 Boys	Logan Collins 1st	Cooper Marris 2nd
Year 4 Girls	Imogen Wesley 2nd	Evie Retallack 3rd
Year 4 Boys	Liam Ryall 2nd	Jax Don 3rd
Year 3 Girls	Charli Wallis 1st	Mia Parker 2nd
Year 3 Boys	Jackson Byfield =1st	Oscar O'Brien =1st
Year 2 Girls	Evelyn Sharples 1st	Maia Parker 2nd
Year 2 Boys	Caleb Battista 2nd	Raylan White 3rd
Year 1 Girls	Amber Dempster 1st	Imogen Smith 2nd
Year 1 Boys	Chase Manners 1st	Charlie Elkington 5th

Carrie Frost
Primary Health & PE Coordinator

Secondary News

Wow, what a term!  I am amazed at how week out students and staff have managed to navigate to the end of ten weeks (yes, despite feeling like a fifteen-week term it was only ten weeks).  I was so delighted to join the Year 12s at their Nahra Retreat.  The strength of character amongst these young men and women is truly inspiring.

On Wednesday night we invited the Year 10s and their parents in to discuss pathways in upper school and the process for selecting their subjects for Years 11 and 12.  It is definitely not the simple process we went through when we were their age.  There are so many more options available to our students.  The PowerPoint, Handbook and Year 11 Selection Grid that we spoke about will be uploaded onto our website for those who were unable to attend.  Can we please have the Selection Grid handed in to the office at the beginning of Week 1 next term so that we are able to make consultation appointments early in Term 3?  Feel free to email me throughout the holidays with any questions you may have.  I may not reply the same day but it will be within a couple of days.

Reports will be out later today.  Please ignore any requests for interviews by the Homeroom teacher, it is a glitch in the coding system.

Parent/Teacher/Student Interviews will be on Thursday of Week 1.  You will be able to choose Face-to-Face, Phone or a video Teams call for your interviews in this round.  Please book in your interview early using the information below:
https://www.schoolinterviews.com.au/ and enter the code g589q
Enter your details
Select the teachers you wish to see
Select the appointment times that suit your family best
When you click FINISH your selected bookings will be emailed to you immediately.  If you do not receive your email, please check your junk-mail, or enter the event code again and check your email address.

I hope our Secondary students had a wonderful, well-deserved Reward Day today and look forward to seeing everyone back on Monday 18 July.

Have a safe and relaxing holiday.

Sharon Cusack
Head of Secondary

Learning Area in Focus:  Science

This term, the Year 10A Science class entered the world of Chemistry.  They have observed everything from colour changes, precipitates forming, and funky smells produced from different chemical reactions.  An exciting experiment for our Year 10’s was the flame test, where our different elements each burnt to produce unique bright and colourful flames.  See if you can match the element to the flame colour below!  It was a great start to Chemistry – even if the Periodic Table Song will be stuck in our heads these holidays……

 

This term, our Year 11 Human Biology ATAR class studied the digestive, excretory and musculoskeletal systems of our bodies.  It changes the eating game when you can picture the mechanical and chemical processes involved in digestion!  Our Year 11’s did very well as they performed dissections on kidneys and long bones to study the structures within them.  The class then put their slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibres to the test with a lesson of wall sits – that will be a lesson to remember!

 

Our Year 11 Physics students are investigating forces and motion.  Students have looked into verifying the acceleration due to gravity, timing the swing of various pendula.  From this task, the students are examining how the acceleration due to gravity is not the same for all locations on the Earth and how the influence of gravity is different here in Northam, compared to other locations, even compared with Perth.

Year 12 students have been consolidating learning in light and the electromagnetic spectrum.  The students have used the dual nature of light to identify various interference effects such as refraction and dispersion.  From here the students are now looking at Blackbody radiation and using this information to determine key facts about stars including their surface temperature and luminosity, which means understanding how old the star is and even the types of elements it contains, not bad for objects that are hundreds of light years away.

It is all happening in ATAR Chemistry.  The Year 11 Chemistry ATAR students are investigating how different solvents can separate the colours in the food dyes to different components.  Why is this important?

Well, there are different intermolecular forces between the dye and the stationary phase, the dye and the solvent, and the solvent and the stationary phase.  These forces play a very important role in the separation of the food dyes into different components.  Why is this necessary?

Well, chromatography is a very important technique to separate components in materials, some of which may be of therapeutic value. So, we begin from small things and move to bigger things. These techniques will be applicable in the future.  Thus, the Chemistry students will reap big rewards.

Jada Yengkopiong, Syona Fernandez, Mark Bundock, Gerhard Vogel, Kylie Wallis, Amanda McLaughlin, Nita Budas & Mark Gargano
Science Learning Area Staff

Learning Area in Focus:  Health & Physical Education

WBGF WCF High School Cup

Five teams attended the Wheatbelt Goldfields West Coast Fever High School Cup on Thursday 23 June.  We were represented by teams in the lower Years 7/8 Girls, Middle Years 9/10 Girls and Open Years 7-10 Boys divisions.  The day was a great success with both Lower Girls teams winning their divisions and the Open Boys taking home the gold in a 4-point Grand Final win.  The Middle Girls teams also saw success taking home second and fourth places.  We are extremely proud of all the students who attended the carnival.  A big thank you to Michelle O’Driscoll, Kylie Wallis, Nicki Parker, Grace Whiteaker, Matilda Lyne, Azariah Wallis, Charlee Fricker and Hannah Morrel for helping our teams achieve their best.

Outdoor Education Bush Craft

During the last four weeks in Outdoor Education, students have been creating and building their bush shelters.  The Task was to build a durable shelter big enough to fit the group in and protect them from the elements.  Students were challenged to use as many natural resources before finishing the shelters off with man-made materials, if necessary.

 It was a great success with 7 out of 7 shelters lasting through some challenging weather and sheltering each group.

Adrienne Suckling
(HoLA) Health & Physical Education

Students’ Workplace Success

Congratulations to Nate Rose and Sarah Moses who finished their first work placement through St Joseph’s Work Placement Program. Sarah has been offered an apprenticeship from her host employer following her workplace learning.  Well done, Sarah!

                                             

Work Placement is available for students in Years 10, 11 and 12 whereby a student works in one or more paid or unpaid workplace/s for one day per week to develop a set of transferable workplace skills.  Please follow the link on the St Joseph’s website to the VET information page for more information.

Caroline Marriott
VET Coordinator

Our School

School Calendar

We advise the school community that the 2022 School Calendar has temporarily gone missing from our website and we are investigating the reason for this.  In the meantime, a PDF version of the 2022 Term by Term calendar is available from the Class Information page and also attached to the newsletter.  There have been several events updated for Term 3 so please do check this for upcoming events that may involve your family.

Andrea Woodgate

Uniform Shop

Opening Times:                             Mondays - 3.15pm to 4.45pm       
                                                      Thursdays - 2.45pm to 4.15pm    

Families wishing to access the Uniform Shop are advised that the online shop is the preferred method of ordering uniforms.  If items are required to be tried on, then an appointment should be made by contacting the Primary Admin on 9621 3500.  We are continuing to limit numbers in the Uniform Shop so an appointment is preferred.  Please note we can not accept email or telephone orders.

Please also keep in mind when ordering, that your items will go home Tuesday and Friday of each week, as Monday and Thursday are the days the Shop is open.  When placing an order via the Online Shop, it will appear on a report the following day.  For example; if you place your order on Monday, the report issues on Tuesday which means it will not be organised until Thursday and so go home on Friday.

Michelle James 
Primary - 9621 3524

Canteen News 

Canteen Support - Volunteers Required

In Term 3, the Primary Canteen will continue operating with the Winter Menu with Soup added to the Friday options.  You are encouraged to check out the daily options before ordering lunches.  If we experience connectivity issues with the online ordering, please revert to using lunch bags to place orders for that day. 

Recess or snack items ordered online are available for students to collect from the Canteen at their Recess break.  Milo pops and icypoles can be collected from the Canteen following the second lunch bell.  

Due to high demand on our quality food and service (we recently had 125 lunch orders on one day!) we need helpers to ensure that our kids get their lunches on time.   In order to function to our highest potential, we ideally need 2 or more  volunteers a day.  Volunteering is a great way to teach your kids about giving, modelling them for the future.  Also, every shift you do at our School helps you towards qualifying for a Parent Participation discount on your annual fees.  We would love to welcome you into our fun, and busy environment and see the smiles on your children’s faces when they see you in their school.  This year is a busy year and we would love to have some new faces in our canteen.  If you are able help, please sign up online at https://signup.com/go/xTdBXsh

Our Primary Canteen Helper Roster for the first two weeks of Term 3 is below.  Volunteers are urgently needed so please consider offering an hour or two one morning.   

Primary - Week 1  

Tuesday	19 Jul	Lisa Hasson
Wednesday	20 Jul	no volunteer
Thursday	21 Jul	no volunteer
Friday	22 Jul	Desrae Smith	Soup of the day:  Pumpkin

Primary - Week 2

Tuesday	26 Jul	Lisa Hasson
Wednesday	27 Jul	no volunteer
Thursday	28 Jul	no volunteer
Friday	29 Jul	Desrae Smith	Soup of the day:  Chicken & Sweet Corn

I look forward to working with you.  If you have any queries, you are always welcome to contact the Canteen on the number below.

Angela
Canteen - 9621 3525 

Our P&F

Thank you to all the parent volunteers who offered to assist with the Secondary Rewards Day Amazing Race stations today.  We hope everyone had a great time!

Our next P&F Meeting is on Monday 25 July at 6.00pm in the Secondary Admin Meeting Room.  Everyone is welcome to come along and join us.

A reminder about Canteen assistance - if parents have an hour to spare after dropping off their kids, or between 11.30am and 12.50pm, Angela would appreciate any help you can offer her.  The number of lunch orders coming in is the highest it's ever been, which means more food to get ready.  You can also have these volunteer hours marked off on your Parent Participation Card, which deducts $100.00 from your school fees.  Your kids will also love seeing their parents at School!

See our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/1764507137145087/?ref=share for more updates.

Lauren Holten
President

Our Community 

Extend B&ASC

Extend offers after-school care during term time.  During Term 3, we will have a variety of fun activities on offer.  Check out these by visiting: www.extend.com.au/families/initiatives/.  Enrolling is easy and ensures we have the information to safely care for your child so enrol now and book via extend.com.au.

Northam Holiday Activities

This coming holiday break will see lots of fun activities for children to participate in.  Sponsored by the Shire of Northam, Northam PCYC, Bilya Koort Boodya, beyond blue, Skateboarding WA and other community organisations the following activities will be on offer over the two weeks.  Posters are available at the venues for full details of what is on which day.  Check out some of them below:

Winning Edge Football Camp at Jubilee Oval.  Cover charge applies.  Register at: www.winningedgeacademy.com.au
Beyond Skateboarding Workshop (Beginners & Intermediate).  Free.  Register at: www.beyondskate.com.au
Indigenous Wellbeing & Sport Arts & Craft.  Northam PCYC.  Free.
Kwobidak Creations Rock Painting.  Northam PCYC.  Free.
BKB Noongar Language.  BKB Centre. Cover charge applies.
STEM at the Northam Library.  Free.  Register at: library@northam.wa.gov.au or phone 9621 1600.
Board Games at the Northam Library.  Free.  Register at: library@northam.wa.gov.au or phone 9621 1600.
Fair Game – Game On.  Northam Youth Precinct.  Free.

Employment Opportunity!

Subway Northam is preparing to re-open, and they are on the lookout for motivated and energetic people who would love to join Subway's  team as Sandwich Artists.  All training is provided!  Training is likely to commence during the coming school holidays.  Please apply by emailing Belinda at subwaynorthamjobs@live.com