St Joseph's Oamaru News Blog: 1. Principal's News Term 2 Week 8 2021

Exploring our Past helps Determine Our Future

Oral Language Celebration

Last year when we were considering the future of St Joseph's school the phrase, "Ka mua, ka muri," guided our thinking. That means - we walk backwards into the future. In te ao Maori the wisdom of the ancestors and all the knowledge of what has come before, leads us into the future, therefore we walk backwards with a view to the past.

Through our inquiry learning this year we have encouraged the children to look at our local history and how it has been curated and kept alive including the history of our local iwi, based in Moeraki. We have considered that people have to make choices about what they keep and bring forward as their history. This term the children have investigated their own personal histories.

Yesterday was the first stage of our celebration of the children's learning. All children have had to write a speech about an aspect of their personal history. The children had marking criteria and they were part of determining which speeches best met the criteria. These were then selected for our Celebration of Oral Language.

This was an absolutely stunning celebration. We know that our families come from a range of backgrounds and it was truly inspiring to hear the stories the children told indicating the depth of research they had undertaken, their skill in putting it together, and their confidence in presenting it. I think one of the features of our school is how capable the children become at standing up and speaking. They start this age 5 when they proclaim at our masses. We are also lucky to Michele Fatafehi on staff who is a qualified speech and drama teacher.

There were some themes that went through all of the speeches and I think these really illustrate the people we are. These themes were:

Christianity - the love and teaching of Jesus came through strongly.

Church - our families have come from all over the world and in the children's speeches, church was mentioned quite a few times.

Resilience

Courage

Adventure

Innovation

Standing up for justice

Love, and

Kindness

We are so proud to bring these qualities and stories together and know that we are winding them together to create a future here in St Joseph's and in our Catholic (and wider) community in North Otago.

There are more pictures on our Facebook page.

Dorothy wowed us with her confidence, humor, and personality

Children's Museum

On Thursday 8th July the children will be presenting the pieces they have curated in their own personal museum. Please come and see it. We will be open from 11.45-12.30pm.

The junior school will be presenting in three classrooms in the juniors

Intermediate will be in the library and STEAM room (opposite the hall)

The seniors (years 4-6) will be in the hall.

Each child will have a desk where they will have their presentation and they will be ready to talk about it and explain it. So please come and join us for this.

If you wish to bring your lunch and sit with your child to eat lunch afterwards, you are most welcome to do this.

Photography Competition

We would like to share Jessie's photos that she has entered into the Otago Museum photography competition 2021. Her photos will be on display at the Otago Museum this Saturday.

From Jessie: "Hi, I'm Jessie, and have recently moved to Oamaru, I got into photography last year in 2020 when I was in year six. how I got interested in photography was actually because of my school teacher. She did this project with my class which was about taking photographs of different themes with an iPad, I really enjoyed doing that project, so afterwards I kept trying to get better, and I did. For my birthday this year, my parents got me photography lessons which I really enjoy. I don't have my own camera yet, but one of our neighbours is letting me borrow his for a while, anyway, that brings me to now. My next goal is to get my own camera and try different types of photography. Thanks."

Here are Jessie's pictures