St John the Baptist Ferntree Gully Newsletter

It was terrific to see the creativity and sense of fun amongst staff and students as everyone embraced this year’s Book Week celebration. Book Week is a wonderful opportunity to immerse ourselves in rich literature, as well as celebrate our favourite stories, authors, illustrators and characters. Congratulations to everyone for embracing the spirit of this year’s Book Week celebration.

We encourage families to enjoy this year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia stories. Enjoying quality literature and promoting a love of reading has many benefits for children and families.

We warmly welcome Mr Brodie Jacobs to the role of LSO at SJB. Brodie completed his placement at SJB whilst studying his certificate in Education Support. During his time at SJB Brodie built positive relationships with our students and has been a wonderful addition to our SJB team. We are thrilled to have Brodie join us Monday-Friday as a Learning Support Officer.

We are most excited to announce that Sophia A in Year 6 has been selected as a finalist in two categories of the Tilly Aston Community Awards. 

The Tilly Aston Community Awards are a recognition program that honours the outstanding contributions and achievements within the Aston community. Named after Tilly Aston, a renowned advocate for social causes, these awards aim to celebrate individuals or groups that have demonstrated exceptional dedication, leadership and positive impact in various aspects of community life.

Sophia has been selected as a finalist in the categories of Outstanding Young Achiever and Leadership.

We wish Sophia all the best on Saturday 30th August when the award winners will be announced.

Congratulations Sophia on being selected as a finalist for Tilly Aston Awards in two categories. This is an outstanding achievement.

We are most excited to announce that the library has been relocated to the room that was previously Prep BA. The library is now ready for use and we look forward to our students enjoying many opportunities to continue to build their love of reading.

The library will be open on Monday and Tuesday mornings from 8:35am for students to return and borrow books.

We thank Mrs Ursula DeCorrado, Mrs Franca Paduano, Mrs Sue Davey, Mrs Angela Cavarra and our site manager Mick Toward for all of their work in creating a seamless move of the library.

Our school chickens have been working hard, and we’re proud to say… they’ve laid enough eggs for us to share with you!

From later this week, you can buy fresh school eggs for $4 per half dozen (Cash preferred).

To spread the love far and wide, we’ll be limiting sales to one half dozen per family (for now!).  

Pick up your eggs from the school admin building—but be quick, our clever hens can only lay so many each day!

Keeping chickens is a sustainable way of sourcing fresh eggs, reducing food miles and helping us learn how to care for animals responsibly.

All money raised will go straight back into caring for our chickens—buying their food and special chicken snacks. 

Thank you for supporting our feathered friends and the students who help care for them.

Christian der Kinderen

Sustainability Leader

The Biennial St John the Baptist Art Show will be held in the school hall this year on Wednesday 17th September 2:30 - 4:30pm and Thursday 18th September 5:30 - 7:30pm.  We warmly welcome families to celebrate the artistic talents of all our students. This is a wonderful community event that celebrates our students' creative expression through their artwork.   

Mrs Renee Armstrong continues to work tirelessly with all students in preparation for the Art Show. We are most excited and looking forward to celebrating our students amazing efforts.

At the conclusion of this year’s Art Show a number of the students' work will be on display at The Hut Gallery and Burrinja Centre. We thank Renee for her passion, dedication and support of our students in preparing this wonderful event.

At St John the Baptist we strongly value our partnerships with our families and the importance of open communication.  To continue our strong partnerships we have introduced an Optional Parent Teacher Interview in Term 3. The Optional Parent Teacher Interviews may be booked by families or requested by your child’s class teacher, should they feel that it is important to meet with you.

Prep JD and Year 3/4RS will have their optional interviews on Tuesday 9th September due to members of staff being on Long Service Leave in Week 9. All other classes with have optional interviews on Tuesday September 16th at 3.30-5.30pm.

Optional Interviews can now be booked through our new booking system - School Interviews using this link -
 https://www.schoolinterviews.com.au/code/dpbgn 

Families are reminded that should you have a PSG for your child that this takes the place of the Parent/Teacher Interview.

A significant and formal way in which we engage and gather data is through MACSSIS, the Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools – School Improvement Surveys.

MACSSIS is a set of surveys that have been built specifically for Catholic schools in Melbourne by the Learning Services team at MACS, in partnership with researchers at Learning First and in wide consultation with principals in our schools.

MACSSIS surveys will be emailed home this week to 70 randomly selected families.  We ask that you look out for an email from ORIMA research which will contain the link to access the survey.  Your login details will be sent in a separate email from our school.

Our community’s opinions are critical to understanding how our school is performing – MACSSIS is a key data source so please take the time to complete the survey so that the thoughts and opinions of our whole school community can be used in guiding the ongoing work to improve our school.

If you would like more information, please contact the school.

Families who complete this year’s MACSSIS survey may send a screenshot of their completed survey to go in the running to win a $50 Village Cinema Gold Class voucher. Please email your screenshot to office@sjferntreegully.catholic.edu.au to be in the running to win.

The SJB Father’s Day Stall will be held on Tuesday 2nd September from 9am.  Families are now able to purchase tokens for the Father’s Day Stall through Flexischools.

Further information will be shared in the coming weeks as our terrific P & F team plan and prepare for this year’s Father’s Day Stall.

Save the Date: This year’s SJB Father’s Day Brekkie will be held on Friday 5th September from 7:30am.  We look forward to welcoming our Dads and special people to celebrate our Dads and the important role they play in our students’ lives. 

This year’s Dad’s and Kids camping weekend has been scheduled for Friday 5th - Sunday 7th December.

If you would be interested in assisting in the coordination of this year’s SJB Dad’s & Kids camping weekend please email either Ursula DeCorrado or myself at -

udecorrado@sjferntreegully.catholic.edu.au or kjohnston@sjferntreegully.catholic.edu.au 

Wishing everyone a fabulous week ahead.

Kelli Johnston

Term 3

August

26th - Inform and Empower Prep

29th - Assembly 2:45pm - 5/6GM presenting

September

2nd - Father's Day Stall

3rd - 9:15am Year 1/2 Level Mass

3rd - 7:00pm School Advisory Council Meeting

4th - District Athletics - Knox Athletics

5th - Father's Day Breakfast

7th - Father's Day

10th - Brendan Lee - Mathematics Masterclass

11th - Year 3/4 Camp

12th - Year 3/4 Camp

17th - Division Athletics

17th - SJB Art Show - 2:30-4:30pm

18th - SJB Art Show - 5:00-7:30pm

18th - Year 5/6 Level Mass

19th - Footy Day

19th - Term 3 Concludes @ 2:00pm

Below is a current stock list. We have very few Size 8 and Size 10 items. If you have any official SJB uniform items in clean, good condition that your child/ren no longer wear, donating them to the 2nd Hand Uniform Shop would be much appreciated. Donations can be left at the office, when convenient for you. 

Janice

Tuckshop orders can be placed via http://www.flexischools.com.au

Orders must be placed no later than 7.30am on the Wednesday or Friday.

Friday August 29th

Rients Huitema

Helpers Needed Please

 Friday September 5th

Maxine Schimizzi

Amy Chan

Kelly Brooks

Friday September 12th

Mel Price

Katrina Horne

Carrie Canton

Many SJB students celebrated the end of their Winter Season on Saturday. 

U9s Best n Fairest was Pippy R, Coaches Award Siella G, Most Improved Aurelia G, U11s Best N Fairest Jenna G, Most Improved Bella E, U13s finished Runners Up in their Grand Final. Best n Fairest Susannah D, Coaches Award Sarah G.