30 August 2023

Our Mission @ SJM

St James’ Primary School community excel in education through living and learning in Christ.

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Father’s Day Blessings

May the Lord bless you and keep you;

May the Lord shine his face upon you…. and give you peace.

Principal’s Message

Last Tuesday I had the privilege to be part of the Regional Public Speaking day at Denman. Our society is in good hands with these tremendous young people that are coming forward in our Upper Hunter Schools.

I would like to congratulate our students that represented SJM in the Public Speaking Final for the Upper Hunter:

• Early Stage 1 – Holly & Lacey
• Stage 1 – Charlotte J & Samantha
• Stage 2 – Katie & Halle P
• Stage 3 – Justus & Abi

I would like to further congratulate:

• Charlotte J on winning Stage 1
• Lacey on coming second in Kindergarten
• Justus on coming second in Stage 3

These three students have qualified for the Diocesan Public Speaking that will take place at Singleton on 7^th September.

School Fees – Directly Affect Your Child At School

At SJM we are seeking your help to recover unpaid school fees from this and previous years.

You may be aware that when parents fail to pay school fees, we may be forced to reduce or eliminate certain services and programs. This could include extra curricular activities like incursions and excursions.

Unpaid fees can make it difficult for our school to maintain and upgrade our facilities, such as classrooms and grounds. Other items like computers, sporting equipment etc might have to be put on hold. This can directly affect your child’s education.

Currently we are owed over $325,000. As you can appreciate this will have an impact on purchases at SJM moving forward.

I ask that you as parents recognise the importance of paying school fees on time and I encourage you to get support where needed. We can help by offering flexible payment plans.

Finally, I encourage you to please finalise your fees by 30^th November or contact myself or Virginia for financial support.

Staffing for 2024

I would like share with you several staffing announcements that will affect SJM in 2024.

• Miss Gabrielle Dafter has been appointed as a permanent teacher to the Diocese.
• Gabrielle will be with us at SJM next year.
• Miss Rachel Cooper has been appointed as a permanent teacher to the Diocese.
• Rachel will be with us at SJM next year.
• Miss Caitlin Maher has been appointed as a permanent teacher to the Diocese.
• Caitlin will be with us at SJM next year.
• Mrs Jane Baker will be returning next year.
• Jane will be working 3 days per week.
• Miss Eloise Hand will be continuing her leave in 2024
• The temporary clerical position, currently filled by Mrs Dureau has been made permanent.
• This is currently advertised.

We hope to have further announcements in the coming months.

Canberra Excursion – Parliament & Civics Education Rebate (PACER)

The countdown in on until we head off on the Stage 3 Canberra excursion. I am heading away this time, and I am a little excited as well.

Students from our school will soon be undertaking an education tour of the national capital. Students will be given the opportunity to participate in a variety of educational programs with a focus on Australia’s history, culture, heritage and democracy. The Australian Government recognises the importance of all young Australians being able to visit the national capital as part of their Civics and Citizenship education. To assist families in meeting the cost of the excursion the Australian Government is contributing funding of $67.50 per student under the Parliament and Civics Education Rebate program towards those costs. The rebate is paid directly to the school upon completion of the excursion.

Pupil Free Day

A reminder that Monday 11^th September is a Pupil Free Day and no staff will be on-site.

Staff will be attending a Diocesan Spirituality Retreat.

Visit to St Joseph’s Wauchope

Next Thursday and Friday Mrs Jacobs, Mrs Gehrig and myself have been invited to visit St Joseph’s Primary School in Wauchope. This school, led superbly by Mr Brendan Kiely, is a school in the Lismore Diocese that is also on the ‘Leading Learning Collaborative’ journey. In fact, they are well on the journey.

We hope that our days in Wauchope inspire us and show us some further opportunities to enhance the teaching and learning at SJM.

Assistant Principal

ELECTRICITY SAFETY WEEK 4^TH-8^TH SEPTEMBER 2023

Electricity Safety Week 4-8 September 2023

During this week we will be talking in our classes about how to be safe around electricity. There are many resources for parents to help you have this discussion about keeping electricity safe on the Ausgrid website – see link.

Electricity Safety Week is a state-wide program designed to teach students in primary schools about electricity and how to be safe around it. The aim of Electricity Safety Week is to teach children to stay safe around electricity both at home and outdoors. It is a hands-on program that shows young people how electricity works, how to use it and how to stay safe around it. The teaching resources are supported by the NSW Department of Education and align with the NSW Science, Technology and PDHPE (Personal Development, Health and Physical Education) syllabuses for K-6. Electricity Safety Week is part of Ausgrid’s Public Electrical Safety Awareness Program.

You will also find a social stories resource designed to help students with learning disabilities understand key electricity safety messages.  

This year, Ausgrid have launched a Scratch block-based coding project for Years 3 and above in collaboration with Code Club Australia, and an on-demand video with DART Learning on electricity safety and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics). These will be available on the Ausgrid website ahead of Electricity Safety Week.

There are many environmental educational sites and events for our students to learn from and get involved with. Our environment award at school helps students to care for their local environment at school and at home, and wider across our community and the local area.

Some of these include:

CLEAN OCEANS project
PLASTIC FREE JULY - where we try to reduce our use of single-use plastics.
BEES – how can we attract more bees to our areas?
MUSHROOMS – Growing in our backyard – being safe around fungi – how to grow and use food safely.

MUSHROOM PROJECT

Despite some setbacks all our mushroom boxes are started, and the majority are growing! There has been a lot of news around being safe with mushrooms and I must stress the importance of only eating what you know is completely safe. Our mushroom boxes were given to us by the Australian Mushroom Growing society and students are being taught about the safety around mushrooms and how they can potentially kill you.

Here are some recent photos of how the project is “growing”. The mushrooms are popping up now and some have been harvested. The box of mycelium should yield a few harvests we hope.

Mrs. Douglas’ bumper first crop of mushrooms. She said they tasted amazing!

Prizes for the best kept boxes! Look at our boxes if you call into school. Happy growing and remember to be safe out there!

God bless you and your family,

Mrs Helen Feeney
Assistant Principal

Religion

Happy Father’s Day to all our fathers and men who are like fathers to our wonderful students at SJM. KG and KM did an amazing job leading our school community in our liturgy on Friday. Even though it can be extremely daunting standing up and speaking in front of a crowd, all the Kindergarten students should be extremely proud of their efforts.

On Monday 11 September the staff at SJM will be participating in Religious Education Professional Development. The staff will be learning about how rich and lifegiving Scripture can be, revealing a God whose story intends to renew our lives and calls us to actively engage with the world. The day will be presented by Dr Michele Connolly, current Associate Professor of Biblical Studies within the Catholic Institute of Sydney and University of Notre Dame Australia.

May your light continue to shine brightly

Mrs Jane Jacobs
Religious Education Coordinator

Awards

Class News

ES1

This term in Creative Arts the children have been exploring drama and dance. We have been pretending to be dads and engaged in readers theatre to prepare for Father’s Day liturgy. There have been many giggles.  Students helped create a script for our whole school play for next term about Sputnik and space. Kindergarten have started dance using our bodies to express ourselves and develop our movement skills. We have moved to music and made body percussion to keep a beat.

We are looking forward to our excursion to Highbrook park. We will be exploring our senses and developing mapping skills. It is important to make connections to our local community and important places. We will build our understanding of Aboriginal perspectives and how to care for our environment. It will be loads of fun.

Mrs Donna Smith and Mrs Trishelle Threadgate

Stage 1

Year 1 and year 2 have had another fantastic two weeks. We have enjoyed dressing up for each ‘Wacky Wednesday’ and look forward to the remaining two Wednesdays in August where we can show off our crazy hair (23^rd) and come out of uniform (30^th).

Students have thoroughly enjoyed supporting our school’s ‘Mini Vinnies’ program by dressing in their pyjamas last Friday, and decorating biscuits. These two wonderful activities were organised by Mrs Jacobs to raise money for individuals experiencing homelessness. Thank you, Mrs Jacobs, for promoting our students to raise money for such a worthy cause.

We thank Miss Brimble for spending the last 5 weeks with Miss Fitzsimmons and 1G. We wish Miss Brimble good luck with her final University internship. We would also like to welcome Mrs Norman, who is completing her practicum with the wonderful 1M and Mr Sabotic. Mrs Norman is a familiar face for our students, and we look forward to her being a part of the Stage 1 team for her prac.

As always, please do not hesitate to reach out to your child’s classroom teacher for any questions you may have regarding your child’s learning. Thank you for your ongoing communication and cooperation.

Kind Regards,
Miss Cooper (2M), Miss Becus and Miss Janik (2G), Miss Fitzsimmons and Miss Brimble (1G), and Mr Sabotic (1M).

Stage 2

We have had a wonderful fortnight, working extremely hard towards our learning goals. During Personal, Development and Health, students have been discussing the effects of cyberbullying and what they can do to protect themselves online. Many insightful comments have been made around this topic.

All of stage 2 have started practicing for the upcoming Drama production which will be held early next term. Students are very excited and are enjoying the process thus far.

We have had two more Wacky Wednesday’s, involving crazy shirts and crazy bottoms. Students looked fantastic! There are now only two wacky days left.

Friday the 11^th marked our annual pyjama day where both staff and students looked very comfortable in their favourite pj’s. We give thanks to all who brought in a gold coin donation on the day, this has allowed us to continue raising funds for the homeless.

3G have been very committed to SJM’s mushroom growing challenge. So far, students have been taking turns in watering and monitoring the mushrooms for 3 weeks. Last week, we saw our first mushroom pop up from the soil. Now.. There are lots! Have a look below:

Mr Cody Somerville, Mrs Jane Dengate, Miss Gabrielle Dafter, Mrs Jane Jacobs, Mrs Mary Ballard

Stage 3

Stage 3 have been hard at work preparing and presenting speeches as part of the Diocesan Public Speaking competition involving all catholic schools in our region. Students shared highly informative and entertaining content on a wide range of topics. Some of the topics included: “Junk food”, “Playing outside”, “If I ruled the world”, and our deciding topic being “Family”. The depth of knowledge and the impact of those closest to us has been wonderful to hear about. We are proud of each one of you as you progressed and developed your public speaking skills. Our Stage 3 representatives at regional level at St Joseph’s, Denman were Abi Large and Justus Matheson. Their topics were “Love” for the impromptu round and “Lock down” for the prepared speech. Both competitors gave well rounded and original speeches on their two topics and entertained the audience and adjudicators. Justus was placed 2^nd in the region for S3 and will go through to the Dio level for Public Speaking. Well done to all of Stage 3 for taking part in the competition.

Year 5 Leadership Day

Year 5 attended ‘Burn Bright’ leadership training in Muswellbrook last week. Students learnt about the qualities leaders must possess as well as some of the challenges they may face. All children participated in games and activities to grow and develop their leadership skills.

They strengthened their ideas on what it means to be a friend, no matter who we are we are all leaders, appreciating others for their differences, what courage means, what it looks like to have a go and how support can impact others.

The students made new friends, while catching up with friends already made. 

They had a lot of fun and were wonderfully represented St James. 

Thank you to Where There's A Will for inviting our students to participate.

Year 6 have been virtually debating against Dubbo Public School, Gerringong Public School and Australian International Academy. We won our last debate! The students have made immense progress and used their developing skills to win in the affirmative to the topic:
“That we should have plain packaging for junk food”. The team comprised of Justus Matheson, Bronte Sullivan, Bradley Watt and Nicholas James. Well done. We await news of whether we progress into the next round!

Go team SJM!

Next term Stage 3 will be taking part in the Regional and Diocesan Debating competition at St Catherine’s in Singleton.

Miss Isabelle Lamont, Mrs Melissa McLennan, Mrs Lauren Gehrig, Mrs Helen Feeney, Miss Alyssa Pritchard

Leader of Wellbeing

In February this year I started participating in local park runs. When I started, I never planned on running. I am a park walker. A SJM parent warned me “Running can be addictive”. Several park runs (walks) later I was running. I have never been a runner or really sporty in anyway.

In April my friend signed me up for the City to Surf, she has participated before, it was something we had talked about years ago and it was on my bucket list. I now didn’t have a choice I was organised and paid for. I have been training since April (with Covid in between). I stared running at the gym. I did a trial run around Muswellbrook and could not believe it only took a couple of hours.

On the weekend I participated in the City to Surf fun run in Sydney. I ran, jogged, danced and walked from Hyde Park to Bondi beach. This was 14 kms of uphills and down hills. It was a challenge. But so much fun. It took me 2 hr 18 mins (with a few stops on the way) and I got a medal at the end. But the feeling of resilience and completing a challenging task was my reward not the medal.

Now people tell me running isn’t for everyone that’s okay, find what works for you. Let me tell you I was sore when I finished and the next day. The challenge of getting past the pain, the mindset of being too old/ too unfit and trying something new was rewarding. While I was training, I would step up the challenge each week run further, longer, faster, higher incline. I am still not fast, nor could I finish with an amazing world record time, but not once did I think I can not do this. I need to stop or it’s too hard. I was so distracted by the emotional positivity of all the people, the atmosphere, the adrenaline, and the fun.

I would encourage you to take up challenges, you don’t have run a ¼ marathon or become an athlete, but physical wellbeing is so important for you and your family. Set your goal low and build it up. Go for a family walk, participate in your local park run (walk), take up a sport you loved as a teenager, try a new sport, join a gym, buy some hand weights. For your physical health and mental wellbeing get active. You will be amazed at yourself. I am so proud of myself and the emotional feeling I have is still with me.

I plan on participating again.

I hope you are having a spectacular day.

Mrs Trishelle Threadgate
Leader of Wellbeing

Office of Safeguarding

National Child Protection Week 3rd -9th September 2023

National Child Protection Week will continue to embrace the overarching message that ‘Every child, in every community, needs a fair go’.

In particular, this year we will be shining a light on children growing up safe and supported.

Children and young people thrive when they grow up safe, connected and supported in their family, community and culture.

They have the right to grow up in environments that support them according to their needs, now and into the future.
This year let’s talk about how we create a supportive environment for every child.

National Child Protection Week will be looking at what works to keep children safe and supported… what children are telling us… what families are telling us… what the evidence is telling us… and how to translate this knowledge into action.

We know that too many children are not growing up safe and supported and that Child Protection systems are overloaded. There are many opportunities to change the trajectory for these children.

We can stop child abuse and neglect – and reduce its impact – by working together to make sure every child in every community has a fair go.

Community Notices

St. James’ P & F Association

P&F Committee Contacts