Term 1, Week 4
Principal's Piece
Dear Parents and Carers
This week has seen us begin our six week Lenten journey. Lent is a time of reflection and preparation for the season of Easter. Often we think about Lent as a time of "giving up" something that we really enjoy, but perhaps we could think about what we might be able to "take up" as a way of helping out at home:
- Take up doing the dishes after dinner...
- Take up stacking or unstacking the dishwasher...
- Take up making my bed every morning...
- Take up putting my dirty clothes in the wash basket...
And at school:
- Take up including someone else in my play time...
- Take up choosing to have a go at answering a question...
- Take up asking for help if I get stuck in my work...
- Take up a challenge to use positive language at school...
- Take up offering to help another person in my class...
Each of these is a small or simple task that is easily done and might just help someone else out along the way. During this time of Lent, perhaps we could look to include them in our daily routine to help another member of our family or someone at school. Any small act of kindness or recognition will be greatly appreciated by the recipient.
Thank you to those children who are taking time to care for their equipment and belongings. It is great to see so many children proudly wearing our uniform. We currently have a large number of school hats and other items in the lost property basket at the office. Take the time to check through the basket - you might just find something that belongs to you!
Our swimming lessons are set to begin next week. Miss Marion is currently arranging groups for these lessons. Thank you to everyone who has returned the swimming note. If you have not returned a swimming note for your children please do so as soon as possible.
Next Friday (03/03/23) morning we will participate in Clean Up Australia activities to ensure that our little part of Kununurra is looking tidy and cared for.
Our Canteen provides a fantastic service for our school. Please help to keep the Canteen operating smoothly by ensuring that:
- All lunch and recess orders are written on separate bags.
- There is only one student per bag.
- A name and class is on every order.
Further canteen information:
- Toasties are not available at recess.
- Lunch specials are now available Monday to Friday.
- Icy Poles and ‘Frog in Pond’ are only available Friday at lunch.
Next week Vanessa and AJ from the Transitions Services Office in Broome will be here to meet with our Year 5/6 class to talk about the possibilities for attending boarding school in Year 7 and beyond. If you are interested in learning more about this, please let Miss Therese know and your details can be forwarded to Vanessa and AJ for follow up.
The next in our series of teasers for the 2023 St Patrick's Quiz night is about our local area:
"How many different speed zones will I pass through as I drive along Ivanhoe Rd from Great Northern Highway to Ivanhoe Crossing?"
The answers to last week's questions:
"Name the longest river in the world.
Name the longest river in Australia."
are
"Amazon River
Murray River"
Go well this week.
Miss Therese
Principal
Send Your Kids to School
Send your kids to school - it is the best possible way they can get a good education.
If your child misses one 1 day per week of school,
by the time they are in Yr 4 they will have missed 1 whole year of school.
Already they will by 1 year behind expected learning!
It may take some tough love, but it is worth the effort to make your child go to school every day.
Set a good routine from Kindy, don't let them miss a day.
It will give them the best start in life.
SACRAMENTS and other matters
As in previous years, all classes will learn about Sacraments and rites of initiation in their Religious Education programs. For students of the Catholic faith, there will also be an opportunity to receive these Sacraments at St Vincent Palloti Catholic Church. In this case, please contact the school office to place your child’s name on the Sacrament list for 2023. The schedule for Sacraments is below:
Baptism
Please contact Sr Julianne or Fr Vinu, at any time, regarding a date.
Reconciliation
Year 4 children in Term 1. Date to be confirmed with Fr Vinu.
Eucharist
Year 5 children in Term 2. Date to be confirmed with Fr Vinu.
Confirmation
Year 6 children on 27th August, during the pastoral visit of Bishop Michael Morrissey.
Other dates/times
- The Season of Lent commenced with Ash Wednesday on 22nd February.
- Each weekend, Mass is held at St Vincent Pallotti Church on Saturdays at 5.30pm and Sundays at 8.30am. On Sundays, we also have Children’s Liturgy during mass.
Please don’t hesitate to contact Sr Julianne or Miss Marion Roberts, through the school office, at any time if have queries or questions about our Religious Education program.
Sr Julianne
Aboriginal Families as First Educators (AFaFE) News
We've had a wonderful start to the year and have enjoyed welcoming back families from 2022 as well as new ones. It has been a joy to see our children from past years now starting at Stepping Stones or Kindy and we are so proud of how well they doing in these fabulous spaces.
We are having fun creating and have a great weekly program to enjoy with families:
Monday: Exploring food and learning with Sim, a knowledgeable and playful Nutritionist from Boab Health.
Tuesday: Continuing to be supported by Gen from Driver Training and welcoming Jolene from Wunan Jobs and Services, assisting with licencing and IDs. We also share morning tea and craft on Tuesdays and will be doing swimming Lessons from Week 5 at the swimming pool.
Wednesday: Language Nest with our awesome Miriwoong teachers and cooking with the ladies from Waringarri with high school students from Alta-1 coming to support our learning and play.
Friday: Shared playgroup with Stepping Stones on Pindan Avenue continues to be a highlight of our week!!
We look forward to growing friendships, playing and learning together over the year.
The AFAFE Team
Leigh, Veronique and Emma
Science News
This term in Science classes are learning about Biology. The Year 2 class had a special visitor this week after they compared the life of a duck to a human; a real duck came to visit! Students got to pat Curly the duck and enjoyed talking about the similarities and differences between humans and ducks.
Miss Roberts, Specialist Teacher
Year 5/6 News
The Shrove Tuesday pancake race was a highlight for our Year 5/6 students. As the final day before the Lenten fast, Shrove Tuesday has customs pertaining to food. Pancakes are traditional in a number of countries because eggs, sugar, and fat were commonly forbidden during the Lenten fast and used up so they wouldn't go to waste. We certainly enjoyed cooking, eating and decorating our pancakes with our Buddy Class too!
Miss Silvia, Yr 5/6 Teacher
Visits to Juniper Aged Care
Due to COVID, it has been a long time since our classes have visited Juniper Aged Care, although we have continued to support them with gifts and letters.
COVID rules have now changed, and visits will resume. The Year 5/6 class are visiting next week, and other classes will receive information in due course about their visits.
We look forward to reconnecting with our Juniper friends and staff, especially with the NAIDOC theme this year being “For our Elders”. I think the experience can have a great impact on both parties, children and residents, and it is a great example of following Jesus’ way.
Sr Julianne Murphy

Art News
Year 5/6 Mirima Excursion
On Friday last week the Year 5/6 class visited Mirima National Park to observe the patterns and marks in nature for Art. They chose 6-12 of their favourite photos and will incorporate these into a final piece of artwork to showcase our beautiful home. Students successfully used technology and demonstrated great listening while taking fantastic photos- stay tuned for the final art pieces!
Marion Roberts, Specialist Teacher
MacqLit
In Term 1 we had a great start to MacqLit with all our groups working hard to improve their reading skills from the first lesson. We are proud of our students who already understand that it takes hard work and resilience to really improve their spelling and reading. Moving forward into this term our goal is to keep up this impressive attitude and have everyone reading with fluency and comprehension every day.
Please see below for some further information about the MacqLit program.
Report by Dr Nicola Bell and Emeritus Professor Kevin Wheldall 2019
Since the release of MacqLit in 2016, we have loved hearing from teachers who have implemented the program and found it successful. As a company founded on delivering evidence-based programs, MultiLit has also been very keen to back up this positive anecdotal feedback with hard data. With that in mind, we’ve recently taken a close look at the data we’ve collected while running MacqLit programs. The analysis included 292 students, from Years 3 through 6, who attended MacqLit at school for two terms. Trained MultiLit tutors delivered the program for roughly four hours per week during the semester, and trained MultiLit testers collected the assessment results at the beginning and end of the program. According to the raw score results, the students made substantial and statistically significant gains across the semester in word reading accuracy, nonword reading accuracy, spelling accuracy, passage reading fluency, passage reading accuracy, and reading comprehension.
This is very exciting information and captures what we are experiencing at St Joseph's with the MacqLit program.
As alwf you would like to know more about the program and how it works or would like more information on how your child might be involved, you can contact the school and ask to speak to me.
Shaun Joseph
Assistant Principal
Sugary Drinks
Sugary drinks make it harder to learn in the classroom, so please avoid sending them to school with your child.
Problems with sweet drinks
Sweet drinks can cause a range of problems including:
- excess weight gain
- tooth erosion and decay
- small appetite
- picky eating
- change in bowel habits.
Children do not need to include any fruit juices or other sweet drinks to have a healthy diet. Intake of sweet drinks reduces the quality of your child’s diet, has links to weight gain and poor oral health, and also exposes them to the ‘habit’ of drinking sweet drinks.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines do not recommend the consumption of sugar sweetened drinks such as soft drinks, cordials, fruit drinks, vitamin-style waters, flavoured mineral waters, energy and sports drinks.
Fruit and vegetable juices contain sugars that are found naturally in fresh fruits and vegetables, but become very concentrated when made into juice. Children do not need any fruit or vegetable juice to have a balanced and healthy diet. Encouraging children to eat the whole fruit or vegetable, and drink plain tap water or milk rather than juice is the best way to establish good eating habits early.
Encourage plain milk in preference to flavoured milks as flavoured milk is higher in added sugar.
Limit Artificially Sweetened Drinks
Some soft drinks contain artificial sweeteners instead of added sugar. Artificially sweetened drinks add very little energy (kilojoules) to the diet and therefore, do not contribute directly to weight gain. However, artificially sweetened drinks still maintain the ‘habit’ of drinking sweet drinks and do not add nutritional value to a healthy diet.
The acidity of drinks, whether sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners, and the frequent consumption of them, may contribute to tooth erosion and decay. For good oral health encourage children to drink plain tap water throughout the day.
Suggestions for Parents
Changing your child’s diet can be a challenge, but remember that young children can only eat or drink what is given to them. Suggestions include:
- Be a role model by not keeping sweet drinks in the house or consuming sweet drinks yourself.
- If your child is already used to sweet drinks, start to reduce their intake – for example, you could offer watered-down versions for a short time and then move on to water.
- Be patient. This may take time, particularly if your child is in the habit of wanting juice or cordial whenever they are thirsty or hungry.
- Encourage your child to eat fresh fruit and vegetables instead of drinking juice.
- Limit consumption of fruit juice to ½ cup (with no added sugar) only occasionally.
From the Victorian Government Department of Health
Olivia and Grace’s farm fresh
free range eggs
~ $8 a carton ~
Call or text
Mary (Mum) on 0428 524 611
Canteen Menu
Families at St Joseph’s to receive more affordable quality Catholic education
Families at St Joseph’s School will continue to benefit from high quality, Christ-centred and child-focused education in 2023.
Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA) has announced that the fees parents pay at St Joseph’s will be $739 for a single child in 2023 (see attached email for information about fees for additional children). This compares to current fees of $1,137 for a single child.
The changes to school fees have come about as a result of changes to the overall funding for Catholic schools in Western Australia. Our school and CEWA are able to utilise a greater level of data to inform how we determine fees in a way that better matches our school and community’s unique context.
I hope families will welcome this news as indicative of our school’s commitment to meeting the needs of the Kununurra community we serve. The reduction in fees has been impacted by changes to the Federal Government’s funding model, which is now based on the parent community’s Direct Measure of Income (DMI). We are strongly committed to delivering the highest quality education alongside all our other current programmes offered in 2023 and beyond.
The change in fees is a strong sign of Catholic education’s continued place as the best value for money education option for young people in Western Australia.
Miss Therese
Principal
~ 2023 Parent Planner ~
School Bus Contact Details
The School Bus Contractors are Dylon and Chelsea Lodge.
Chelsea: 0450 250 691
Dylon: 0415 945 330
Please note that cash payments for Book Club are no longer accepted at St Joseph's. All orders should be placed through Book Club Loop.
See: https://www.scholastic.com.au/book-club/book-club-parents/
St Joseph’s Student Code of Conduct
The St Joseph’s Student Code of Conduct was developed by the students of St Joseph’s. Students participated in Steps 1 to 4 during Term 1 2021. Step 5 was worked through during term 2 and Step 6 completed during Term 3. The Student Code of Conduct was reviewed by students in Year 3 to 6 on two separate occasions. The Student Code of Conduct was shared with the wider school community during Term 3.
At St Joseph’s School, Kununurra we want to feel Safe.
1. In order to feel Safe we will follow school rules.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will ask an adult for help.
2. In order to feel Safe we will listen and follow instructions.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will ask an adult for help.
3. In order to feel Safe we will help and care for others.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will ask them why they are feeling that way.
4. In order to feel Safe we will keep our hands and feet to ourselves.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will ignore them or walk away.
5. In order to feel Safe we will treat others the way we would like to be treated.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will remind them of the golden rule.
At St Joseph’s School, Kununurra we want to feel Happy.
1. In order to feel Happy we will smile, laugh, sing and dance.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will ask them if they are alright.
2. In order to feel Happy we will be kind to others.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will ask an adult for help.
3. In order to feel Happy we will make friends and play with them.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will play with and include them.
4. In order to feel Happy we will come to school everyday.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will look after them.
5. In order to feel Happy we will listen to the teacher and other adults.
When someone isn’t feeling this way, or there is conflict, we will try to make them feel happy.
Our Code of Conduct prohibits bullying, harassment and other forms of peer-to-peer abuse and we require respect for the privacy and human dignity of other students.
Containers for change can assist in raising money for school resources. You can either deposit your cans in the school bins near the fence or take your own bag to the depot and write our school code on your bag.
Reminders
Term Dates 2023
Term Dates 2023
Term 1: Wednesday 1 February - Thursday 6 April
Term 2: Tuesday 26 April - Friday 30 June
Term 3: Tuesday 18 July - Friday 22 September
Term 4: Monday 9 October - Friday 8 December
Public Holidays During Term Time 2023
Monday 6 March: Labour Day
Friday 7 April - Good Friday
Tuesday 25 April: ANZAC Day
Monday 5 June: Western Australia Day
Pupil Free Days 2023
Monday, 24 April
Thursday & Friday, 1 & 2 June
Monday, 17 July
Monday, 4th September (Catholic Day)
Assemblies
Our assemblies are every second Friday afternoon at 1.10pm.
Week 2: 10 February - Year 5/6
Week 4: 24 February - Year 4
Week 6: 10 March - Year 3
Week 8: 24 March - Year 2
Week 10: To be confirmed
Kindy Days
Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday
7.50am - 2.00pm
Description Title
We are ready to collect your recyclable containers. Our drop off point is currently located in the staff carpark, just inside the fence. Money earned goes towards Mini Vinnies.
If you change your phone number, please tell us. We many need to contact you if your child is sick or doesn’t get picked up after school.
Most school age children are eligible for free dental care in Kununurra School Dental Clinic.
Primary School children become eligible to attend the School Dental Service in the year they turn 5.
High School children are eligible to attend the School Dental Service until they complete Year 11 or the day they turn 17 (whichever occurs first).
If you changed your address or phone numbers, please advise dental clinic staff. Missed appointments may result in suspension from the School Dental Service.
We are located on the hospital grounds in the Dental Health Building, 69 Coolibah Drive and are open Monday to Friday 7:30 to 3:30.
Please feel free to call us on 0419 939 179 or email: kununurramobile@dental.health.wa.gov.au to organise an appointment.
