Please go to our school calendar on the website or COMPASS for more details.

Please note that Friday 9 September is a pupil free day for professional learning for staff. Students do not attend school on this day. OSHClub will be available.

Term 3

Feast of the Assumption, whole school mass (Week 5)
Book Week Parade (Week 6)
Year 5 & 6 Camp - Birrigai (Week 8)
Walkathon (Week 9)
Last day of term - Friday 23 September

The school positive behaviour focus this week was:

Put rubbish in the bin.

Dear St John's families,

We continue to have pockets of COVID happening across the school. Recently a large group of Year 4 students had positive test results. Thank you to the families in Year 4 who immediately undertook RATs with their unwell children. It has helped to quickly curb any spread .

Staff availability at the moment is tight and teachers are generously giving up their preparation time to cover classes. We have some new relief teachers beginning with us in a few weeks time, which should assist with the pressure. Our goal is to keep students in their classrooms with their teacher and focused on their learning as much as possible.

Year 5 and 6 Camps

Great news! Our Year 5 and 6 students have permission to attend a camp again. I wrote to all families yesterday to let them know. Students were also told and very excited.

To enable this to happen in the most COVID safe way, both groups will be attending Birrigai Outdoor Education Centre on the 8th and 9th September. They will each have separate camp experiences. We look forward to walking alongside them during these experiences.

School Board and Community Council Review

The Catholic Education Commission established a Working Group to review various aspects of Archdiocesan School Board and Community Council models.

The Working Group has engaged in targeted consultation with internal stakeholders and has had some preliminary discussions with a narrow group of external stakeholders, including representatives from the Catholic School Parents Archdiocese of Canberra & Goulburn.

They are now now seeking to draw on the experiences, expertise and perspectives of parents and carers, school staff and members of school communities through a process of general consultation. An Issues Paper has been drafted outlining the key issues that the Working Group has identified to date and posing a number of discussion questions that the Working Group is seeking responses to.

The following link will outline further information from Mr Ross Fox, Director of Catholic Education. https://cg.catholic.edu.au/school-board-and-community-council-review/foreword/

The closing date for submissions is 2 September 2022.

Learning Journeys

In Week 5 we planned to undertake Learning Journeys. Learning Journeys are ES: Learning Journeys (Registration Begins) | SSIS eNews typically when parents could visit classrooms and their child would show them samples of their work, telling them about their achievements to date and goals for future learning.

To be COVID safe we won't have parents come into the school and have opted to provide families with an at-home Learning Journey. Teachers are currently preparing a set of slides containing examples of their child's learning at school. These slides will be sent to families next Friday and children will be asked to sit with their parents and carers and talk them through the slides, explaining what they have been doing in class.

Where possible, parents and carers will have the opportunity to write a comment to their child, responding to their work and achievments. We encourage you to sit with your child as soon as possible and enjoy their learning.

I hope everyone enjoys the weekend and continues to stay healthy and well.

Matthew Garton

Principal

The survey for young people on racism in the ACT

The ACT Children and Young People Commissioner is talking to children and young people about racism in the ACT. If you are between 5 and 24 years old, you can have your say. To answer the survey online, scan the QR code below. You can also contact them in the following ways:

Fundraising

Over the next 6 months, St John's will be holding a number of fundraising and community events. These include the Walkathon, a raffle and the St John the Apostle Multicultural Fete. If there are any families in our community who own local businesses and would like to support the above fundraising events, we would appreciate any donations including products, gift cards and vouchers.

Our school would be extremely grateful for your support and in return we would list and regularly mention our generous contributors in the school newsletter, in our social media platforms and on our school website https://www.sjaps.act.edu.au/.

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check - Information for parents and carers

What is phonics?

Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds and is vital in learning to read. Some children struggle with learning to read so it is important that these children are identified quickly so teachers can plan for any specific support they may need.

What is the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check?

The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is a short, quick assessment that tells teachers how your child is progressing in phonics. Your child will sit with Mrs Rebecca Neiberding (Inclusion Teacher) and will be asked to read 40 words aloud. These words include 20 real words and 20 nonsense words. The test normally takes a few minutes. If your child is struggling Rebecca will stop the check. The check is carefully designed not to be stressful for your child.

Why use nonsense words?

The assessment includes pseudo or nonsense words to see if the student is able to use their knowledge of blending to read a word rather than their memory of having seen that word before.

More information

If you have any further questions, please talk to Myself or Rebecca Neiberding (Inclusion Teacher).

Rebekah Brown

Assistant Principal and Inclusion Coordinator

What staff are learning about

This week during staff prayer, Mrs Love and Mrs Stevenson have shared reflections on St Mary McKillop. As educators we have a deep connection to her mission to educate all. Her courage and determination continue to inspire.

You can see our prayer for this week and next here.

You can see our prayer for this week and next by clicking here

Catholic Life and Reflection

Over the past four weeks a few staff members including myself have participated in a short course at Latrobe University entitled SOLAR.

It stands for the Science of Language and Reading. It has been a very interesting experience. One the the questions they asked in the last session was “How did you learn how to read?” I honestly couldn’t remember.

Oddly, I came across this photo the morning after thinking about reading in my youth. I think I am doing a school reader; my little brother Daniel is following along. I was lucky enough to have not struggled with reading (spelling was a whole other ball game!).

I read everything I could get my hands on. Anything by Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton or LM Montgomery was stacked up next to my bed and continue to be. I also devoured our prized set of encyclopedias that contained colour plates of the human body and internal combustion engine. Fascinating!

The words brought me comfort and made me wonder about far away lands, pixies, crazy inventions and how the world works. It is no wonder that words continue to have an impact of my life and faith. I love to read things that touch my soul. The simple and the complex. The well known and the new. I love to help children discover the joy of reading.

Scripture continues to fascinate and challenge me.

Luke 4:16

¹⁶When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,

God bless,

Stephanie Stewart
Religous Education Coordinator

Notices from the Parish

Latest Parish compact - 14 August 2022

Happy birthday to Allegra C, Charlotte M, Charlie J, Brenda G, Lilly V, Anna T, Knox K, Alexandra L and Elliott B who all celebrated a birthday over the last week.

Please note that we ask students to not bring home made cupcakes to share with the class for their birthdays. This is a precautionary measure for health and hygiene. The Canteen offers a number of options to share with the class. Purchases can be made through the QKR app.

Congratulations to the following students who will receive an award for the fortnightly Positive Behaviour Focus.

Class
KB	Ebube I	Alexandra R
KM	Duke M	Jackson L
1B	Lachlan F	Daniel K
1M	Oliver W	Archie A
2B	Aluel A	Alexander N
2M	Rylan R	Lewis B
3B
3M	Aravindya P	Campbell G
4B	Jack R	Felicity B
4M	William B	Emma D
5B	Destinee T	Thomas J
5M	Tyler R	Aliya S
6B	Seth W	Zara M
6M	Anna G	Toby F
Performing Arts	Charlotte S (1B)	Aston B (4B)

Thank you for supporting the school library through the book fair last week. It was a big success! It was so lovely to have a chance to meet parents and caregivers and chat about books, it’s one of my favourite things to do!

We will be celebrating CBCA book week with a book character parade on Friday 26th August. We look forward to seeing students dressed up as their favourite book characters! Costumes do not need to be elaborate. See below for some great ideas.

Book Character Dress Up Ideas

Parents and carers are welcome to attend the parade, which will start around 9am.

Looking forward to celebrating our favourite books!

Kind regards,

Ms Alcock
Librarian

Please note that The Uniform Shop will be open on the following day:

Friday 19 August 8:30am-9:30am

Hats can be purchased at the Front Office but must be paid for via QKR or by cash only.

Parents are able to attend in person.

If you have any questions or concerns please email the uniform shop on stjohnsclothingpool@gmail.com.

Supporting a highly sensitive child

Does your child cry easily? Is she prone to becoming overwhelmed in loud or busy places? Does your child seem sensitive to the moods and emotions of others? Does he tend to “meltdown” or “shutdown” when there is a lot going on? Does your child startle easily? Do you consider your child to be highly sensitive?

Raising a highly sensitive child can come with a unique set of parenting challenges but it also gives you—the parent—more influence to positively shape your child’s development! Yes, that’s right. Parents have even more influence on the development and wellbeing of their highly sensitive child compared to less sensitive kids.

Research shows that highly sensitive children are more strongly affected by their environment, including parenting, than less sensitive children. Let me explain.

Just as we all differ on temperament traits such as extroversion, agreeableness, and consciousness, we also differ on another temperament trait: sensitivity. All of us fall somewhere on the sensitivity continuum from low sensitivity to high sensitivity.

Approximately 30% of us—and our kids—are highly sensitive. Highly sensitive kids tend to process information from the environment more deeply, are prone to overstimulation, have greater emotional reactivity (think more crying and more intense emotions) and higher empathy, and have a greater capacity for sensing subtleties in our environment. We can think of highly sensitive kids as living smoke detectors who are capable of detecting subtle changes in the environment that the majority of people may miss. It is thought that a finely tuned, highly reactive nervous system underpins high sensitivity.

Research shows that highly sensitive kids tend to do exceptionally well in nurturing and supportive environments but are at higher risk for developing a range of physical and mental health conditions in harsh and unsupportive environments compared to children who are less sensitive. In other words, highly sensitive children are more sensitive to their environment for better and for worse.

So how do we support our sensitive kids and provide them with the nurturing environment they need?

Understand and accept your child’s sensitivity

Our temperament is biologically based, it is not something we can simply switch on and off or turn up and down. Learning more about our child’s temperament will help us to understand them better.

By seeing our child’s temperament as an important part of who they are, we can practice accepting their sensitivity rather than seeing it as something problematic that needs to be changed or ‘fixed’. Your child doesn’t need to be less sensitive. They need their sensitivity to be understood.

This can feel like a relief to parents who have been thinking that perhaps they had somehow caused their child to be sensitive. While nature and nurture do interact to shape our child’s development, your child was born with their own unique temperament, including their sensitivity.

Provide your highly sensitive child with the nurturing relationship they need to flourish

Highly sensitive children thrive in nurturing and supportive environments. We know that children don’t benefit from harsh or punitive parenting, but this is especially true for our highly sensitive kids who need a more nurturing parenting approach. In healthy parent-child relationships, our kids use us as their “safe haven” to come back to for protection and nurturing when they are tired, sick, stressed, or experiencing big feelings.

Often parents of highly sensitive kids will report that their child is “clingy” and tends to stay close to their parent until they feel comfortable in a situation. This is rarely cause for concern. Clinging is a child’s way of signalling that they need their parent to help them feel OK again. Sometimes they simply need our presence, other times they may need our affection and gentle words. We live in a society that has a history of discouraging children from being “too dependent” or “too clinging”. Often this view comes from a place of not understanding child development and not understanding children’s attachment needs. By trusting our child’s needs and responding to those needs with atonement and sensitivity, we can provide our kids with the support they need so that they can grow-up feeling secure in their relationship with us (knowing that we have their back), and, in turn, feeling secure in themselves and the world.

Be an emotion coach for your child

Highly sensitive children often have big emotions and lots of them! This means that your highly sensitive child will need your help to understand and manage their emotions. From as early as you can, label your child’s emotions to help them develop their own emotional vocabulary so that they can express their emotions as they get older. You can say things such as, “you look sad” or “I can see you are angry”. Once you’ve labelled your child’s emotion, it’s important to show your child that you accept their emotions—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It’s important that you validate your child’s emotions and avoid dismissing their emotions, even when your adult brain might judge their emotion as an “over reaction”. Instead of saying, “don’t be so sensitive” or “it wasn’t a big deal, she didn’t mean to hurt your feelings”, you can say things such as, “it’s okay to feel angry, I get it” or “I know you feel sad, that hurt your feelings”. By accepting and validating the full range of our child’s emotion, we not only help to soothe them in the moment, we also teach them healthy ways of responding to their own emotions—this is a lesson they will carry with them throughout their lifetime.

Rachel Samson

Rachel Samson is an Australian-based Clinical Psychologist and Family Consultant with a passion for supporting parents to develop healthy parent-child relationships that promote optimal child development. For further details visit Instagram @australianpsychologist and Facebook @sensitivityproject.

18 Nov	Term 4, Week 6 18 Nov 2024 - 23 Nov 2024

21 Nov	2025 - New Students Transition Day (Yrs 1-6) 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM

25 Nov	Term 4, Week 7 25 Nov 2024 - 30 Nov 2024

2 Dec	Term 4, Week 8 02 Dec 2024 - 07 Dec 2024

2 Dec	Kinder Nativity 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

4 Dec	Yr 6 - SFX Orientation Day 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

5 Dec	End of Term Awards 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM

5 Dec	Christmas Picnic 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

6 Dec	End of Year Thanksgiving Mass - Whole School 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

9 Dec	Term 4, Week 9 09 Dec 2024 - 14 Dec 2024

11 Dec	Sue Ferguson Award 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM

11 Dec	One Up Afternoon 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

11 Dec	Graduation Mass 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

13 Dec	Cornerstone Ceremony (Yr 5-6) 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

13 Dec	Teachers v Students Netball 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

13 Dec	Colour Run 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

16 Dec	Term 4, Week 10 16 Dec 2024 - 17 Dec 2024

17 Dec	Pupil Free Day All day