Week 10, Term 1 2021

Welcome to Week 10, we have almost made it to the end of the term! The last few weeks have been busy and it will continue with our last day of term being Sports Day. I look forward to seeing many of our families and friends at Sports Day cheering on the children. We have organised a coffee van to be onsite on the edge of the oval for you all, to save you going offsite, so please bring along your loose change.
Throughout the week the children have been exploring Holy Week within their learning. We will come together for the Stations of the Cross, led by our senior children tomorrow afternoon at 2:30pm if you would like to join us. We will also return to school on Tuesday morning with an Easter Mass at 9:00am with Fr Peter you are also welcome to join us to celebrate the season of Easter.
A big thank you to the Parents and Friends group who have been busy over the last few weeks organising many events behind the scenes for the year. The children loved their orange donuts for Harmony Day. The Easter Raffle seems to be a big success with generous donations from families and most of the tickets being sold. We will draw the raffle on Thursday afternoon just before we break up for the Easter weekend. Good luck, I hope you have the winning ticket!
Our consultation meetings for St John Bosco School’s Master Plan with Edge Architects was very successful. Many of the same themes and improvements emerged from the different community groups. Pino and his team from Edge Architects worked with children, staff, families and parishioners ensuring all members of our community had an opportunity to voice their ideas and vision for our school. I thank the many community members who attended the sessions.
Last week during our Pupil Free Day the teachers worked with Barbara Murray exploring Inquiry Learning. Inquiry learning emphasises the child’s role in the learning process and encourages them to engage with an idea or topic in an active way, rather than by sitting and listening to a teacher. The overall goal of an inquiry-based approach is for students to make meaning of what they are learning about and to understand how a concept works in a
real-world context. Inquiry learning also encourages the children to utilise the skills and knowledge they have developed in explicit teaching from the different subject areas, particularly Mathematics and English. We will continue our relationship with Barbara throughout 2021 to support our work in empowering our children to be powerful thinkers and learners.
During the holiday break our Library will receive a fresh coat of paint and new flooring, with our old computer room being overhauled in the coming months into a contemporary STEM space. We do have many computers that we are selling for an extremely reasonable price, if you are interested please email Dino Zandona and he can pass on information about the computers to you dino.zandona@sjb.catholic.edu.au
I wish you all a lovely Easter with family and friends and I hope the Easter Bunny finds you wherever you may be at home or holidaying.

Kate Turner
Principal

Holy Week is the week before Easter Sunday, beginning seven days before with Palm Sunday. It ends with Holy Saturday. Easter is not part of Holy Week, but rather the beginning of the Easter season of the Liturgical year.
Throughout the season of Lent at St John Bosco School we have prayed for God’s help to be people planting seeds of love, friendship, forgiveness, good learning and hope.
On Thursday 1st of April at 2:30 parents are invited to congregate with our children on the oval to watch the Stations of the Cross presented by the Year 5 Learning Community. Following this will be a short assembly to draw and present the Easter Raffle prize/s.

Enhancing Catholic School Identity Survey
This week the Year 5 and 6 students and staff have participated in the Enhancing Catholic Identity Survey. Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Adelaide and the Diocese of Port Pirie aim for continuous school improvement.  An essential element of this improvement is understanding how students perceive the Catholic identity of our school and what they might like Catholic identity at St John Bosco School to look like in the years ahead.
Staff, student and parent surveys will assist us in better understanding how our Catholic Identity is expressed. The results will contribute to a reliable picture of our school’s Catholic Identity, which we will use to inform our School Continuous Improvement Plan in the future.
On Monday all families received an email with details including how to access the survey.  We invite parents to take part in the survey by clicking this link here.  The password to get started is Ghj654 and the survey access code required to participate is s27pt8.  
For those families who take the time to complete the survey your name will be placed in the draw to win a $50 Devon Clothing Uniform Shop Voucher.   Your responses to this survey are anonymous so to make sure you are in the draw please confirm you have completed the survey by email to louise.kennewell@sjb.catholic.edu.au
The survey will close by Friday 9^th April.  For more information please or asssitance please contact the school Office.

Sara Hart
APRIM

As part of our continued efforts to raise the standards of literacy in our school and to promote continuous improvement, we would love some family members to come in and listen to reading.
Reading regularly to an adult has been shown to significantly increase the rate of progress that children can make with reading.
As there are many of you who collect your children from school, we’re hoping that there would be some parents/grandparents/carers who would enjoy coming into school for the last 30-45 minutes of the day to listen to some children read.
Our Early Years classes may appreciate support with the Literacy Block (writing support or listening to reading) in the first 30 mins of the day as an alternative to the afternoon.Can you please add to the article that I wrote last week that the Early Years classes may appreciate support with the Literacy Block (writing support or listening to reading) in the first 30 mins of the day as an alternative to the afternoon.
Typically, you’d work one-to-one with children, talking about the book they’re reading and listening to them read.
We’re providing an information session on Tuesday 6th April from 2.30-3pm in the Year 5-6 Unit (Room 21) and invite those interested to come along.   The session will be run by Jane Bamford and Louise Kennewell. 
To volunteer family members will need to be a fully registered Volunteer with St John Bosco School and have a current Catholic Police Clearance.  Louise will also be available to talk with parents who would like to begin the process of becoming a Volunteer at our school on the day.  
To register your interest please email Jane Bamford via email jane.bamford@sjb.catholic.edu.au

Jane Bamford
Inclusive Education Coordinator

Your Membership, your way! Entertainment Memberships can start anytime and you will always get a full 12 months of savings. To raise money for St John Bosco School simply order your membership online by clicking the link below. 20% of each purchase goes directly to our school!  Click this link here to purchase your copy