Week 6 Term 1 2022

Student Leadership

Last Friday I had the pleasure of listening to our Year 6 children who made their speeches advocating why they wanted to be a House Captain for 2022. It was truly inspiring listening to the children outlining how they would lead our community, upholding our school values of belonging, loving-kindness, excellence and service. Well done to all the candidates who put much time and effort into their polished speeches. I would like to present and congratulate our 2022 House Captains:

St Maria Mazzarello: Indigo and Liam

St Dominic Savio: Aria and Sia

St Francis de Sales: Marco and Jessica

Student Voice Representatives for Semester 1 have also been elected. Student Voice is a school initiative that comprises student representatives from Reception through to Year 6. These children gather on a regular basis, conducting meetings to plan and organise events and discuss ways we can improve our school community. Congratulations to our 2022 Semester 1 Student Voice Representatives:

RJ: Freya and Allison

RBL: Sofia and Lily

1-2N: Nate and Ilia

1-2R: Ruby and Alexis

1-2SS:Gia and Camden

3-4E: Joanna and Lilly

3-4H: Alayna and Dean

5-6DM: Victoria and Bailey

5-6L: Jessica and Naish

Our Year 6 Fitness Leaders for Semester 1 have also been selected. On a Friday morning our community comes together for morning fitness led by our Fitness Leaders. The fitness session is much loved by the community, as our Fitness Leaders plan and implement a solid session that certainly gets the community active, both children and teachers. Congratulations to the following Semester 1 Fitness Leaders; Sophie, Ruby, Jessica, Naish, James, Caroline Scarlett and Alec.

It was wonderful to welcome parents and friends to our assembly on Tuesday morning to acknowledge our elected leaders and to welcome all the new children to St John Bosco School.

Farewell

Karen Matthews has been enjoying Long Service Leave this term, she has been enjoying herself so much that she has decided to hand in her resignation. Karen has been the face of St John Bosco School for 17 years serving the community by assisting parents, children and teachers in her role in the front office. On behalf of the community I would like to thank Karen for her passion, dedication and for responding to requests before they have even been made; she had a knack of knowing exactly what everyone wanted. We wish Karen well with her future endeavours and look forward to farewelling her in true style, as she deserves.

Uniform

With the cooler autumn mornings arriving it is a great time to invest in one of our new St John Bosco Soft Shell Jackets. I am beginning to see children in the community looking smart in their new jackets. You can purchase the jackets online through Devon for $65.00 or visit their new shop located in the western suburbs at Fulham.

Finally I would like to thank the community for responding positively to the recent COVID-19 cases within our school. Over the last fortnight we have had many children and staff absent due to a positive result for COVID or being a close contact outside of St John Bosco School. The school works closely with Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) and SA Health reporting every COVID case in our community and in turn we respond by following instructions directly from SA Health. Thank you for your understanding as we apply necessary COVID controls to keep our community safe.

Wishing you a fantastic long weekend.

Kate Turner

Lent

Last week marked the beginning of Lent in the Liturgical calendar.  Lent is a 40 day season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday.  This year the teachers and children at St John Bosco School held small prayerful Ash Wednesday gatherings which were very special.

Clean Up Australia Day

On Friday 4th March St John Bosco School participated in a clean up of our beautiful grounds.  The good news is that there was significantly less rubbish and waste around to pick up in comparison to last year.  The children determined this was because they are eating inside their learning spaces and taking some wrappers and waste home.  We are also composting food scraps and have encouraged children to have a nude food lunchbox.

Well done to the St John Bosco community on keeping this tiny part of Australia beautiful!

Last week some Year 6 students participated in an election to become the St John Bosco House Captains for 2022. 

In celebration of our new and important positions we attended the National Young Leaders Day with Ms Hart and Mrs Hardy which was held at the Entertainment Centre.  It was a day where we had fun, danced, played games and learnt about leadership from some very special guest speakers. Each of these speakers were compelling and had very interesting stories to tell.  There was a common thread amongst them all about believing in yourself and knowing your values, setting progress and end goals, making mistakes are grand opportunities for learning, the power of having a support team or community around you and never giving up in something you truly believe in. - Indigo, Aria and Ms Hart

The first speaker was a pilot called Lachie Smart.  In 2016 he became the youngest ever pilot to travel the world in a small plane.  He explained the challenges he went through like flying into a storm and almost getting shot down entering into Egyptian air space. He stayed strong and got through it.  He was 18 at the time he broke the record.  It took 2 years of prep to get where he was; and he never gave up. - Marco

Jessica Trengove taught us a lot about embracing challenges.  She is an Olympian and marathon record holder.  She told us to step out of our comfort zone and always have a positive mindset especially when life gets on top of you and everything goes wrong. I think her most powerful message to me was ‘run towards opportunities not away from them’.  Her powerful messages were grest and very strong.  It helped me understand stress, pressure and leadership.  She taught us to believe in ourselves.  A memorable moment for Jessica was when her brother told her to ‘think about today, set goals for today and tomorrow’ and step by step work towards your goals. - Jessica

Alex Ross is a Cricketer who plays for Sydney Thunder and Brisbane Heat.  He taught us that a good leader is empathetic, kind, a good communicator and embraces life’s opportunities. - Liam

Guy Edmonds was a very funny guy.  He is an Author/ Actor/Producer/Director but as he would call himself the mega slashie. He is 39 years of age and he has written and starred in an ABC ME show called Hard Ball.  He says that success and failure both rely on; resilience, acceptance and determination. - Sia 

It has been an exciting and jam-packed start to the year in 5/6L. We have spent time connecting with one another, getting to know each other and have already engaged in many learning experiences. Some of the learning that has already taken place in 5/6L includes our new spelling program (which the children are fully engaged in), identifying pattern types/families, exploring the meaning of Prayer through mandalas, representing ourselves and our interests through self-portraits and participating in Clean Up Australia Day. The children have shown great responsibility and leadership already this year and are looking forward to the many more opportunities that will arise. Here are some thoughts (so far) from the learners in 5/6L:

Prayer is a quiet time for you to connect with God.- Sophie 

Prayer is a time we thank, forgive and ask God for certain things.- Jess 

Prayer is a time where you take some time out of your day to talk to God about things, like asking him to forgive you for things.- Mark 

Prayer is a time to pray to God, Jesus, loved ones and people who have passed. - James

In Mathematics we’ve been learning about patterns. We have been sorting patterns into different families. For example, cyclic patterns include lifecycles of creatures and humans. - Mark 

We’ve been learning about the five mathematics drawers, as well as patterns, rules and relationships. We chose a career we are interested in and discovered how it uses the five drawers of mathematics. My career interest, Equestrian, uses measurement to weigh the horse and work out the height of the horse (for its health). - Mia 

Our self portraits reflected people’s true colours – what they are really about and how they spend their free time. Our Spelling program is a fun, fast and an educational task/subject. - Jess 

Our self-portraits represent our personalities and hobbies. - Ivy 

On Clean Up Australia Day, our class collected a lot of rubbish. We then sorted the rubbish and put it into the correct bins. - Marco 

We placed the rubbish on the blue tarps and sorted it into paper, plastic, hard plastic and rubbish. - Adriana

I can see leaves as they flutter down from the trees.
I can hear the laughter of the children running through piles of fallen leaves.
I can taste mums hot delicious bowl of pumpkin soup.
I can feel the crunchiness of the leaves in my hand.
Autumn makes me feel alive!

by Ruby 1-2W