St Joseph's School, Clare

Buddy Mass - Mothers Day

From the Middle School

St Michael’s Learning Centre is Operational!

In 1959, the Clare and Sevenhill Parish undertook the project of constructing St Michael’s Hall. The parishioners of the time saw a need for a meeting place for the Catholics of the Clare Valley. The school rooms had been regularly used for meetings, but a place for more social events was required. Funds were raised, and the building began. Since then, it has been used by the parish, school and wider community and over recent years, the St Joseph’s School Board has taken over stewardship of the building.
The vision of redeveloping this space has been in our Master Plan for the last decade and is another step toward making our school an even better regional school. The plan for this building has taken a few forms throughout the last ten years. At one point, it was potentially going to be the site for a two-story middle school building, however, plans changed.
We are in a unique position with this building project; it remains a shared facility between the school and the parish. There are few parishes that have such a strong connection with their local school as we do. Through this strong bond we have taken custodianship of the building, renovated it and given the space a new lease of life. Through the careful and considered design of this facility and the exceptional quality of build, we have transformed a building that at times, could only be utilised by one student at a time to an environment that can be utilised by two classes, three small groups of students, the uniform shop, the parish and Father Kieran all at once. As you can imagine, we are over the moon!
The potential for this space is exciting and we believe that its current form is truly doing justice to the hard work of the school, but even more so the parishioners, whose vision and hard work has allowed generations of young people to gather, socialise, celebrate and learn.
While the building has not yet been officially opened, we have moved in and have started teaching and learning in this space. This redeveloped facility has enabled us to provide additional music tuition, with students now engaging in private lessons in trumpet, saxophone and flute, in addition to drums, guitar, voice and piano which have been available for many years.
The middle school music class has found a new level of confidence through the ability to quietly learn their craft and develop their own self-assurance ready to perform. Mrs Bell has utilised the space for all performing arts lessons and has made herself right at home.
Mr Harding has introduced Drama Club for the first time, utilising the black box arts space as an area for performance and rehearsal. He has commented that the lighting alone has supported students in moving into performance mode and encouraged students to step outside of their comfort zones.
The maker space is enormous with the potential for all year levels to use this space. We encountered a slight hiccup with incorrect parts being supplied for the work benches which has held students up from using the space, however we hope this will be rectified in the coming days. It was fantastic to have several parents assist with the benches, as well as Barry Ahern (a grandfather at school), whose father played a key role in constructing the hall back in 1959.
Our minds are turning to how all these spaces can be utilised by the wider community, whether it be through Fringe performances, men’s groups or even play groups. We are excited and so are the students.
I truly believe that the opportunities provided by the newly refurbished St Michael’s Hall take us another step further towards our goal of educational excellence.
More information to come shortly regarding official opportunities to see the new life of St Michael’s.

Literacy & Inclusion

What can I read next? Is this appropriate for my child to read?

This excerpt from Megan Daley, Children’s Book Daily https://childrensbooksdaily.com/ gives some great tips for helping your child choose books to continue their reading journey.
Sometime within the first three years of schooling, most children start to read somewhat independently, and they start looking beyond classroom readers*, and early chapter books, to the great ocean of books in their school or public library.
Once your child hits a certain reading competency, they start to crave books with more complex storylines and ones in their area of passion: sharks; fairies; engineering; horses; family relationships; magical tales or true stories of heroes. This is a time when things can come unstuck for parents: ‘what on earth can I give them next?’; ‘how do I know what’s appropriate?’; ‘I know they are only seven, but they can read Harry Potter’; ‘they should read the classics that I read as a child, they are safe reads’…and so on and so forth.

For what it is worth, here are my thoughts:

Reading material should always be age appropriate. Yes, your child can read the words in Harry Potter, but really, do they understand the content? Same can be said for Wind in the Willows or Black Beauty. Books are only great when they are read by the age group for which they were intended. Your child will enjoy Harry Potter much more when they are 10-12 years old…so I say leave it until then! Of course, this is up to the discretion of the parents – if you are happy with them reading anything and everything, go for it.
The ‘classics’ or books you read as a child are probably fabulous, but for children of this generation the language can be quite inaccessible, and the classics contain terms that they may never have heard of. I throw in a classic every now and then to mix things up, but young readers can become disillusioned with them if they find them inaccessible.
Follow independent bookstores, blogs, favourite authors and publishers on social media, and suss out what your child and peers are reading and enjoying…this will give you a great indication of what is popular and appropriate.
Continue to encourage your capable reader to still engage with their classroom readers as these are designed to teach specific skills and even if they appear ‘too easy’ for your child, they serve a purpose*.
Visit your library and get to know the librarian. Chat to them…they love having our brains picked about ‘where to from here’ with reading.
Please never let your children leave picture books behind when they ‘move on’ to chapter books. Why would you want to leave picture books behind anyway? They are works of art and the best way to encourage visual literacy. We live in an age of visuals; picture books teach visual literacy like no other teaching tool and every child should always have picture books on the go. The language in picture books is often very complex and the storylines sophisticated and thought provoking.
Ensure your child reads a very wide range of genres and styles. I see so many young readers ‘stuck’ on the dreadful colourful fairy books (which shall remain nameless, but I know you know which books I mean) or a particular genre. Encourage young readers to read fiction, non-fiction, biographies, historical fiction, fantasy, graphic novels…
And finally? Don’t push the reading thing too much. Hands up to being guilty of this myself, and it really serves no purpose, in fact it can turn reading from a pleasure to a chore. Make reading a joy and your child will be well on their way to developing into a life-long reader.

*A word on ‘classroom readers’ v ‘library books’. Classroom readers are designed as teaching tools, with high frequency sight words, simple sentences, predictable storylines, pictures which help to de-code the text and a sequence where books increase in difficulty as reading mastery is achieved. Classroom readers are for teaching the mechanics of reading.

Books borrowed from a library or purchased from a bookstore are self-selected, recreational reads and are how young people develop an emotional attachment to reading and develop lifelong reading habits. Picture books and ‘beginner’ chapter books are complex interplays between words and text and require young people to think deeply, imagine, wonder and interpret. They contain sophisticated language which requires discussion and increases your child’s vocabulary, and they are full of images which add to the text and tell a whole other side to the story.

To become an ‘independent reader’, young readers need both classroom readers and recreational reads – each support the other and each have a distinct purpose.

For more information about books for your child hop onto Megan’s website https://childrensbooksdaily.com/ or pop into the library and ask about what could be a suitable next read for your child.

Michelle Edmondson
Literacy & Inclusion Leader