Kaya everyone,

Who can believe we are almost at the end of the 2023 school year? The last school day for students this year is Thursday 14 December. Our Year 6 students are feeling very excited and nervous about the end of the year, as high school becomes a reality. Our graduating students will go to five different high schools next year, and all have spent time transitioning and getting to know the school, staff and other students who will be in Year 7 with them. The Joondalup Schools graduation is next Tuesday 12 December at 9am in the undercover area.

2023 WA Awards – Winner Disability and Inclusion

Our school attended the WA Education awards yesterday as we were a finalist in this category. This year there were five categories across all our government schools. Hwee Peng Tan, our Board Chair, nominated us for this award. We became finalists and have had media and the judging panel come out to the school to ask us lots of questions and look at our school in action. Yesterday, at the awards morning it was announced that we won this category! There were four finalists including Geraldton Primary School, Malibu School and Bob Hawke College. We are extremely proud to win this award, and I want to take the opportunity to thank and congratulate all our students, families, staff, Joondalup Primary School, and community as this recognition belongs to us all. We are also awarded $20,000 for winning this award. As a staff we will decide together how best to use this funding for our school.

Christmas Carols and 30^th Anniversary

Last Friday night Joondalup Schools celebrated our 30^th Anniversary with a display in the library. The display incorporated photographs, newsletters, newspaper articles and trophies that showed our history to current day.

Joondalup Primary School organised the event, and we performed “Santa Wear your Shorts”, (thank you Mrs Parker for putting this together!) as well as a few other songs which students were involved in. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend and for giving such positive feedback about the evening. Thank you to Mr Rhys Sutherland for his expert organisation and musical talent which made the night possible and to Mrs Jayne Butler for her support of the School Choir.  Miss Penny Thornton created a beautiful backdrop made up of prints of reindeers. A huge thank you to all the staff from across Joondalup Schools who cooked the sausage sizzle, set up, packed away, attended rehearsals and helped on the night. 

Adventure Week

Is in full swing and those that have been to Outback Splash so far have loved it! This year junior, middle and upper primary have organised events for their students – however everyone is going to Outback Splash!

Schools Plus – Helping Students Succeed Grant

Heidi Brough, our STEM specialist teacher applied for this grant earlier in the year. She has been successful, and has secured a $90,000 grant ($30,000 over 3 years). Heidi has applied for the funds to continue to develop an assessment tool in the area of STEM (digital technologies), which will support staff, other schools and families supporting students to develop fine motor skills and the skills needed to access and use digital technologies. Watch this space!

Staff changes for 2024

We have a few staff who will be leaving us, and we will be welcoming some new staff. This year we say good bye to Vicky Morrison, Kirsten Mellows, Rachel Woodfield and Nicola Easson. These staff are going to be very missed, and hopefully we will see them throughout 2024. We do welcome Madison Ricketts, Emily Hall, Brett Scoble and Ashley Vincent who will be joining us next year.

P&C Association

The P&C Association have met for the final time this year. Thank you to all of the parents who have committed their time and energy to this group. Significantly, I would like to thank Jo Salmons as for her work as Secretary, a vital role for an effective P&C.  The school community is very grateful for the expertise that Jo brought to the role. The P&C plays an important role as it has financially supported the school through a number of avenues including subsidising the Year 6 camp cost, purchasing school choir shirts, and buying equipment used throughout the school.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the P&C through your involvement in the Colour Run, Easter Egg raffle, Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day stalls, chocolate fundraiser, and disco.  Every time you contribute, the school benefits and we are very grateful.

End of year student reports

Final school reports will be emailed home on Monday 11 December via email. Please make sure that your email address is up to date.

School Holidays

I would like to wish everyone a wonderful, safe and fun filled summer break. Enjoy spending time together, and take some time to care for yourself. Students return to school on Wednesday 31 January 2024.

Please note that the school office is closed from Thursday 14 December 2023 and will reopen on Monday 29 January 2024. During these times any emails sent to joondalup.esc@education.wa.edu.au will not be responded to immediately and phone messages will not be regularly checked. 

Natalie Hatton

If you notice any suspicious activity on School Grounds, please contact Security on 9264 4771 or the Police on 131 444.

Wishing our families a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Please enjoy some photo's of our recent artwork in the classroom.

In Talk for Writing Room 21 have been focussing on procedure writing. Our story that the students have been listening too is ‘How to catch a Gingerbread Man’. As a class, the students made Gingerbread man biscuits and wrote the procedure steps.

We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

What a fabulous year we have had in Room 23! We have made some wonderful friendships and enjoyed lots of learning throughout the year. We are finishing up the year with some wonderful Christmas activities and our amazing excursions for adventure week. 

We wish everyone a safe and happy holidays! 

From the staff and students in Room 23. 

Isla, Alpha, Kaiden, Chloe, Grace, Quinn, Eva, Ms Wilton, Mrs E and Mrs Legge. 

Hello from all the superstars of Room 22!

This year has been a journey filled with laughter, learning and friendship. We are grateful for all the support from our friends, teachers, and families as we grew and discovered throughout Year Two. We are now getting in the Christmas spirit and have started our own countdown. We would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas and are looking forward to more adventures in the new year!

Room 3 have done an excellent job helping to decorate the classroom tree this week. The students can all be very proud of working SO hard all year and are so excited to celebrate next week during adventure week.

We would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas  and hope everyone enjoys the school holidays!

Christmas Market Day

The Year 6 students went to Belridge for Market Day, and sold the items that we had made. We made gingerbread people, friendship bracelets, material bookmarks, glass candle holders, Christmas tea towels and Christmas cards. We also got to look at the other stalls and buy some items from there. Shia bought a hand-made bag, a cookbook and some ornaments. Jake B bought a candle holder and a glass jar. Levi bought a cookbook, a gingerbread biscuit, some shortbread and a heatpack. We all got to help sell the items and handle the money. We had a Jellybean Jar challenge to guess how many were in there. We also sold raffle tickets and Emmanuel won a whole decorated cake! The money we raised will help the Year 6's celebrate their Graduation.

Talk for Writing

Our Talk for Writing text is called “The World’s Best Mobile Phone”.  We have been learning about gadgets and spies. We did a spy obstacle course in K block practising some spy tasks like target throwing, invisible spy code, a physical obstacle challenge. We came up with spy names for everyone in our class and a spy disguise. Some of the spy names were Dragon Fawn, Flash Snake, Alpha Flame, Flash Dark, Silent Feather and Silver Phoenix.

Transition to High School

Our Year 6's have spent days at their high schools getting ready for next year. Some activities included meeting the support dogs called Oreo and Reggie, cooking, clay art, potting a plant, making slime, challenges with the Dash robot and playing on the ninja playground. Through these transitions, the students completed some stories with photos to prepare them for their new classrooms and school environment. We wish them all the best of luck with high school.

Room 29 has had an extremely busy Semester 2. One of our highlights was visiting Caversham Wildlife Park where we saw so many Australian native and farm animals. The children had a great time being able to interact with the animals and especially loved patting the goats, feeding the kangaroos and seeing the silly smile of the Wonky Donkey!

Fantastic Fun Fridays continued to be a weekly highlight. These afternoons allow Pre-primary and Kindy children and staff to interact with each other while experiencing different sensory activities based upon a common theme. Some themes this semester included pirates, castles & princesses, superheroes and transport.

Term 4 began with swimming lessons at Craigie Leisure Centre. While the two weeks were very tiring, all the children (and staff!) had a wonderful experience, learning how to engage in water-based activities safely. We also had our school sports carnival and Creaney Carnival. It was lovely to see all of our classmates giving it their best shot!!

The Colour Run was another amazing day that Joondalup Schools enjoyed participating in together. The foam cannon was a huge hit, and it was lovely to see the smiles on everyone’s faces as the children explored the bubbles. It was great to see some of the parents joining in too!! The children even got an opportunity to dunk Mrs Parker!! What a fun day!!

As we head toward the end of our school year, Room 29 would like to wish everyone a very safe and happy Christmas and New Year!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

See you in 2024!!!

Kapture photography have advised they still have school photos from this year available to purchase.

All photos will be available to purchase until the end of Term 4, after which they will be removed from the website in readiness for the 2024 School Year.

The Joondalup Schools P&C has had a wonderful 2023 and would like to thank the school community for all your support. We have raised a considerable amount of money which will go directly back into our schools. We will be sure to keep you all updated on P&C purchases. To everyone who has joined our P&C this year or helped in any volunteer capacity, THANK YOU! We simply cannot operate without the tireless efforts of volunteers.

On behalf of the current P&C, we would like to extend a HUGE thank you to Joanne Salmons for her extraordinary efforts as Secretary of the P&C for three years. Jo did not miss a single meeting in her time as Secretary (apart from her very last meeting when she was struck down by COVID-19 on her birthday!) Thank you, Jo, for your volunteer commitment, consistency and always bringing a smile to meetings. We wish you all the best as you embark on your new career in nursing. 

P&C PRESIDENT 2024 – Lisa Gibb 

It's my pleasure move into the P&C President role, to connect with our fabulous school community and be part of my children’s school experience.

I have been working with the P&C since our arrival to the school in 2021, assisting with fundraising events and organising the school disco for the past two years. Outside of my volunteer role, I work in housing and student support in the university sector. I’m passionate about building community connectedness to support wellbeing in young people and families. I have three children who are moving into years 1, 3 and 6 next year and showing my support for the school in an active way has given them a great sense of belonging to the school community. I look forward to working with everyone and will always welcome new ideas, suggestions and a general chat about the P&C.

P&C SECRETARY 2024 – Tammy Miller

Hi I’m Tammy and I’m honoured to be taking on the role of P&C Secretary for 2024. My son just started PP at JPS in Term 4. Having moved from a younger school, it was very apparent to me how lucky JPS is to have had 30 years of P&C contributions to bolster the school resources. This has motivated me to contribute to the school community as much as possible. I am grateful to our predecessors for their contributions and hope the P&C and school community as a whole can continue this great work for our children and future children of the school.

Looking ahead, if you would like to be more involved in your children’s school, and have more insight, and input, into decision making, we would like to extend you an invitation to attend future P&C meetings. Membership is not compulsory, our doors are always open, and extra hands, and fresh ideas, are always welcomed. Keep an eye out for the first meeting in February and please join us.

Thank you for the support.