Term 4 Week 1 2025

Religious Life of the School

Dear families,

Welcome back to Term 4

I hope everyone enjoyed a restful and refreshing break with family and friends. It’s hard to believe we are in our final term of the year.  This term brings many exciting opportunities for prayer, reflection and community as we continue to live out our faith together.

Wedding bells for Miss Parsons 

We are delighted to share some exciting news from the holidays.  Miss Parsons was married.  It was a beautiful day celebrating the love of Emily and Ryan, and we wish them every blessing as they begin this new chapter together.

Welcome back Mrs Milan to Term 4.

Samaritan Award

What a great way to finish last term with our Samaritan Day. Students from each class were presented with the Samaritan Award, recognising the ways they live out our Catholic Identity of Love of God, Love of Neighbour, Love in Action. As William Ainsworth was away on the day, he received his Samaritan Award certificate and medallion this week. Congratulations, William!

Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary

On October 7th, we celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. This feast reminds us of the power of prayer, especially the prayer of the Rosary, which helps us reflect on the life of Jesus through the eyes of Mary. The Rosary is a beautiful way for families to pray together, offering thanks and asking for Mary’s guidance and intercession. As a school community, we give thanks for Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and ask her to continue to watch over and guide us in faith, love, and service.

Mission Month – Crazy Sock Day

October is Mission Month in our Catholic Church. This year, the focus is on Zambia, where we are helping to support mothers and their babies through the funding of health centres, hospitals, and maize mills for sustainable food production.

To contribute to this important cause, we will be holding a Crazy Sock Day on Friday, 17th October (Week 2). Students can wear their crazy socks to school while still wearing their sports uniform — and they can even get creative by wearing socks in their hair, on their arms, or as a necklace.

Students are asked to bring a gold coin donation to take part. This is a wonderful opportunity to live out our PATH value of “Help your Neighbour” and to show our love of neighbour in action.

Our Year 6 girls will continue selling their loom bands, with all proceeds going to support the Missions.

Wishing you all a wonderful term!

Maria

Learning Corner

LEARNING and TEACHING

Every minute counts!

Welcome Back!

How important is 5 minutes? Probably not very when compared to two hours. BUT those 5 minutes add up to 25 minutes in a week, over 4 hours in a term, and almost 17 hours in a year.

On Tuesday, all Catholic Schools in the Townsville Diocese spent time learning about the ‘why’ of the updated guidelines for Non-State Schools, the implications for our schools, and how we can ensure we are following these guidelines.

The focus on hours of schooling and allocation of hours to subjects is in response to the growing evidence that 30% of Australian students are performing below the expected standard in Literacy and Numeracy.

The guidelines specify that in the Foundation Phase of Schooling, (P-2), eight hours per week are to be devoted to English learning and six hours per week are assigned to Mathematics.

In the Breadth Phase of Schooling, Years 3-6, the priority is again English and Mathematics. In years three and four, eight hours are assigned to English and six hours to Mathematics. In Years five and six, seven hours are assigned to English and six hours are allocated to Mathematics.

In every class, 2.5 hours are set aside for the study of Religion. These hours do not include prayer or liturgies.

The hours allocated to each subject are for explicit teaching and learning. For example, the time taken to go to the library to change books, is not included in the hours allocated for English unless it clearly links to expected learning set out in the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0.

One of the activities staff completed on Tuesday was an audit of how time has been used so far this year. Time that is not used for teaching or assessing the specified subjects in the Australian Curriculum is referred to as discretionary time.  Included in discretionary time were subjects such as Languages, time above the allocated 45 mins per week for the Arts, assemblies, athletics carnivals, liturgies, class masses, excursions, eisteddfod, plus any other times that took children away from curriculum teaching and learning time.

Small durations of five or ten minutes may not sound like much, but when combined, it was quite a revelation. Classes that had an allocation of 136 hours of discretionary time for the year had actually used 216 -258 hours of discretionary time.

We do have interesting times ahead as we determine the best use of discretionary time and how we can keep activities we see as worthwhile without using discretionary time.

We will provide information and answer many questions as we can about the guidelines at the next FACE meeting.

Enjoy the weekend.

Rita

Anxiety & Young People

Water Safety Lessons

Water Safety lessons begin next week.  Please ensure your child has the following and all items are labelled:

Togs and towel

 Goggles

 Swim Shirt

Thongs / Slides

Birthdays

Community