Term 3 Week 10 | 17 September 2025

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Sunday September 14, 2025

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrates the Cross as the sign of Jesus’ love and victory. It honours the sacrifice Jesus made to save us from sin. The Cross, once a symbol of suffering and death, became a sign of hope and new life because of His resurrection. It shows that God can bring good even from pain.

This feast also calls us to live with faith and trust. The Cross teaches us to face our struggles with courage, offering them to God as Jesus did. It is not only a symbol to look at but a way of life. Carrying our own crosses means accepting hardships with love and hope. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross invites us to place our trust in Christ and believe that His victory over death can guide us through our own trials.

Principal - Ms Megan Pearce

Dear Families and Friends,

As we come to the close of Term 3, I am filled with gratitude and pride for all that our students, staff, and families have achieved together this term at St Mary’s. It has been a wonderfully busy and rewarding time, filled with learning, faith, community, and opportunities for our students to shine.

This term we have been blessed with an array of cultural, sporting, and academic experiences. From the Queensland Opera visit, our Performing Arts Festival, and the Army Band concert, to the “Soccer the Liverpool Way” clinic, touch football carnivals, and dance workshops, our students have been immersed in opportunities that enrich both their learning and wellbeing. Our Readers Cup finalists represented St Mary’s with great pride in Brisbane, reminding us once again of the talent, commitment, and spirit within our school community.

I also wish to acknowledge the wonderful community support shown during our Father’s Day Amazing Race and the many ways families contribute to school life. These gatherings highlight what makes St Mary’s so special.

As we pause now for the holiday break, I thank our staff for their tireless dedication and our students for their hard work and enthusiasm. I encourage families to take time to rest, enjoy time together, and recharge for the final term of the year.

We look forward to returning in Term 4 with renewed energy as we continue to live out our mission of nurturing every child to learn, grow, and flourish in faith and learning.

Wishing you all a safe and restful holiday.

Megan

This Week is Child Protection Week at St Mary’s: Every Conversation Still Matters

This year, Child Protection Week continues to build on the powerful message from last year: “Every Conversation Matters.” At St Mary’s, we believe that open, honest conversations between children and their parents or carers are essential. These everyday chats help children feel heard, supported, and safe, reinforcing that the adults in their lives are their strongest advocates.

We’re encouraging families to talk with their children about what safety means to them and who they feel they can turn to for support. One area of growing concern is online safety, and we urge parents to explore this topic with their children. The eSafety Commissioner’s website offers excellent resources to help guide these important discussions: The hard-to-have conversations | eSafety Commissioner.

Throughout the year, students have engaged in a range of activities designed to reinforce key safety messages. Last week, Detective Sergeant Matt Symons visited us to speak with our Year 3–6 students about staying safe online. His engaging and informative session helped students better understand the risks associated with digital platforms and how to protect themselves while navigating the online world.

We’ve also reminded all students about our School Student Protection Contacts (SSPCs), trusted staff members who are here to listen and help. These individuals are clearly displayed on our ‘Keeping Safe’ posters around the school, so students know exactly who they can approach if they ever feel unsafe or unsure.

At St Mary’s, we are deeply committed to creating a learning environment where every child feels secure, supported, and protected. Child protection is a shared responsibility, and together, we can ensure our school remains a safe place for all.

Blue Card Changes

Changes are coming to the blue card system to strengthen safeguards for children in Queensland. These changes will come into effect from 20 September 2025.

Volunteer Parent Exemption: From 20 September 2025, parents volunteering for an activity their child directly participates in generally will not need a blue card. This exemption will be standardised across all child-related employment activities and allows parents to continue to participate in activities with their children.

However, from 20 September 2025 this exemption will not apply to parents volunteering for activities

• not involving their own child
• overnight excursions or camps
• if their volunteering includes close personal contact with another child, or
• if the parent is a restricted person.

Parents who have been relying on the volunteer parent exemption for any activities listed above, must obtain a blue card that is linked to their organisation by 20 September 2025. If they do not, they will need to stop volunteering immediately and cannot resume until they do.

Please let us know for any clarification sought around these changes.

Save the Date – Grandparents’ Day

We are excited to invite our St Mary’s community to celebrate Grandparents’ Day on the first Friday back of Term 4 – 10th October.

Grandparents are treasured members of our families and school community, and this special day is our chance to honour the love and joy they share with us. The morning will include a liturgy, classroom visits, bingo and morning tea. To make the day even more memorable, our students will take their grandparents on a “Treasure Hunt” around the school. A chance to share stories, discover special places, and create new memories together.

We can’t wait to welcome our grandparents and special friends to St Mary’s for this very special celebration.

Swimming in Term 4

We are looking forward to another exciting swimming season at St Mary’s in Term 4! Swimming is an important part of our sport and health program, giving students the chance to build confidence, develop water safety skills, and have fun together.

This year’s swim block will run over six days:

📅 Wednesday 12th, Thursday 13th, Friday 14th November

📅 Monday 17th, Tuesday 18th, Wednesday 19th November

The block will conclude with St Mary’s Swimming Carnival held during the day Friday 21st November!

To ensure our swimming program runs smoothly, we welcome the support of our parent community. Training is available for any volunteers on Saturday 9th November for any parents or helpers interested in assisting poolside. More details about class timetables, transport, and what students need to bring will be shared early next term.

Learning Support - Mrs Majella Lynch-Harlow

Celebrating reading growth this term!

Over the last two weeks, Mrs Mac and I have had the great pleasure of reading with every student in the school.  This is always a highlight of our term – especially when we could celebrate with some students who had doubled or even tripled their reading rate!

The growth in our reading data clearly shows the powerful impact that explicit teaching and strong Tier 1 support has had across classrooms.  Thank you to our amazing teachers and school officers who have been supporting students with Tier 2 interventions within the classrooms.  Thank you to Mrs Pearce for her work with Year 6 students with her explicit lessons in teaching spelling for reading and reading for spelling.  And finally, well done to the students who have been working with Mrs Mac on an intensive reading program.

Thanks to the success of all of these interventions, we now have fewer students who require substantial and intensive reading support.  This is definitely something to celebrate and to closely monitor every term to ensure this success is maintained.

Looking ahead, we will work closely with classroom teachers to analyse their class reading data.  We will identify those students who require ongoing support and progress monitoring and the specific skills that they need to develop. For some students, we will conduct further diagnostic testing to learn more about their reading, writing and spelling difficulties and may refer them to specialist advisors in order to determine the best course of action. 

Over the holidays, I hope that every family continues to take the opportunity to read for enjoyment!

Prep - Mrs Bernie McPhee

Last week of Term 3. It has flown by. It has been another busy term, with 100 Days of School, Sports Day, Performing Arts, Prayer Assembly, Character Day and Father's Day. Thank you to all our families for supporting us at all these fun events throughout the term.

Just a few photos to help celebrate some of the later ones. Character Day is always such a fun event; kids do love to dress up.

Performing Arts can be very scary, but after all the practise of our poem, Prep came home with a tied 3^rd place. Students were very excited to receive medals for their efforts. They then backed up this performance with another 3^rd place medal for their song "Miss Lani". Two of our Preps were very lucky to also receive a 1^st place gold medal for their performance with the school choir. Great job Orla and Maggie!

Yesterday, in our last week of school, we had a very exciting visitor come flying in, a brolga. It was wandering around at our back door. The students were very excited to see the brolga, which was quite unconcerned with all of us being so close.

Wishing all our families a wonderful and restful holiday. Looking forward to hearing all about your holidays next term!

Year 2 - Miss Shauna Gallagher

Year 2 have once again been superstar learners throughout our busy term 3.

They have engaged in lots of learning opportunities across the curriculum areas as well as so many exciting, extra-curricular activities.

In maths we were very excited to begin multiplication. We learned all about arrays using counters and real-life examples. Challenge us to a competition in 2 times, 5 times or 10 times tables (if you’re feeling brave). We have been working hard at reviewing our previous maths learning in our Friday groups to support the consolidation of different topics like number, money and time.

In English, we have explored the different tiers of vocabulary through our learning about Country as well as many local and national indigenous traditions and language in the wonderful book, “Welcome to Country” by Aunty Joy Murphy. We explored our multicultural backgrounds in “I’m Australian Too” by Mem Fox. We took a tour around Australia, learning about different outback, rural and urban areas. We added our own pages about Charleville to the book, “Under the Southern Cross” by Frane Lessac.

We have really engaged in our new phonics and reading programme. We have loved the fun and routine activities, learning all about the rules and reasons behind the way we spell words. Check us out using our whisper phones to read our new words.

We studied our local history in HASS, which supported us when creating our opinion pieces on where we should take a class field trip to, within our local area. We discovered so many learning opportunities around our wonderful small town.

In science, we explored different ways in which we can manipulate and change materials. We practiced some paper weaving techniques and created a beautiful picture using some natural materials in our local school environment.

Amongst all of the learning, we also got involved in so many extra, fun activities!

• We had a much-appreciated visit from Eleanor’s puppy for her Show and Share.
• We dressed up as our favourite book characters for our Book Week celebration.
• We had a crazy hair day.
• St Ursula’s and the Liverpool academy taught us lots of new dancing, soccer and athletics skills.
• For Father’s Day we lead the prayer assembly and had so much fun at the Amazing Race Day.

Finally, we had a wonderful day at the Charleville Performing Arts Festival where we took a well-deserved first place in our category for choral verse speaking and another well-deserved second place for our beautiful singing in our choral group singing category.

We had another fabulous term, and we really look forward to seeing what term 4 has in store for us.

Readers Cup - Mrs Majella Lynch-Harlow

Celebrating Our Readers Cup Team!

We are thrilled to celebrate the incredible journey of our Readers Cup team, made up of five outstanding students from Years 5 and 6: Clara, Billy, Adison, Abraham, and Dominic. It was my great pleasure to accompany them and our Teacher Librarian Mrs Vanessa Alexander on their recent trip to Brisbane.

This talented team of readers began their adventure among nearly 500 primary school teams across Queensland, diving into five novels and preparing each other for an intensive quiz that tested their knowledge on every aspect of the texts. Their dedication and teamwork paid off when they won the district finals, earning a place in the prestigious State Finals.

With renewed enthusiasm, our Readers Cup team tackled five new novels, spending countless hours during lunch breaks and after school with the encouragement of Mrs Alexander.  While they were studying, Mrs Alexander prepared every detail of their trip to Brisbane.

Our students loved every moment of the trip – from the excitement of flying to Brisbane, the thrill of exploring the AirBnB (thank you Mrs Pearce!) by playing epic games of hide and seek, enjoying delicious food and sharing the camaraderie of last-minute study.  The competition venue was Moreton Bay College – it was eye opening for students to see such a large and prestigious school.  We enjoyed a very funny and inspiring talk from one of the authors of the books they had studied.

The students proudly represented not only their families and our school, but also the wider Toowoomba Catholic Schools community. Although the competition was fierce and we didn’t place in the top ten, they all felt that the experience was truly unforgettable. Our students showed remarkable commitment, gratitude, and camaraderie throughout the entire journey.

They would like to thank…

• Mrs Pearce, who arranged a wonderful BnB for the team and organised the financing of the trip. Their trip to Brisbane was both comfortable and memorable.
• Mrs Alexander for her support throughout the year and especially for the care and attention she put into planning their itinerary
• Acacia Care for their generous donation towards the cost of the trip
• Their parents for their love and support
• The authors of all their favourite books!

Uniform Shop

Please be advised that prices for our school uniform will be increasing by a few dollars per item.  This change will take effect around the end of Term 4 and will apply to uniforms sold for the 2026 year.

The price adjustment is necessary due to rising production costs, which have now exceeded our current selling price.  We will ensure any price changes will be kept to a minimum.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

September Birthdays

Flyers