Term 4 - Week 2 - Newsletter

Prayer of the Week

From our Principal

Dear Parents,

Late last term, we received our 2021 NAPLAN results for our Year 3 & 5 students. It is always worthwhile to reflect upon our data to provide feedback as to the effectiveness of our programs.

Our results compared favourably to the state & national means across the 5 domains. The results also show a mainly upward trend compared to our 2019 results.

God Bless!

Michael Cash

From our APRE

This term, we celebrate Family Mass with the STM parish at the St Thomas More’s Church on Saturday, October 23rd from 6:00 pm. We are excited to invite our STM students to be part of this special celebration of the Eucharist by reading, singing, or bringing forward gifts and symbols throughout the Mass. If your child/ren would like to be part of our Family Mass this term, please use the link below to fill in the form ASAP. I will contact families as soon as I can to let students and adults know how students can be involved with the Mass.

Our Socktober journey kicks of this week. Make sure you check out the Socktober information further down in the newsletter. We are very excited to bring Socktober to STM again this year.  
 
Our wonderful Year 5 Social Justice Group has been doing some great work reaching out to some of our local community groups who support those who are marginalised in our society. To this end, the SJ Team would like to enter a STM Group in the 5km Hike for the Homeless on Saturday, October 30th. Families will be responsible for covering the cost of the entry fee but teachers from school are happy to supervise children on the walk if parents would rather sit it out. Below is a link to both the registration for the event and a form for us at school to keep a record of who will be 'hiking’ with us.

This year we will be supporting the Daniel Morcombe Foundation by hosting our Day for Daniel on Friday, October 29th. There are many ways that children can show their support for the Daniel Morcombe Foundation on our Day for Daniel.

1. Children can wear red accessories to school on Friday, October 29th (red socks, hair ties, ribbons, etc.) with their sports uniform for a gold coin donation.
2. Children can participate in the Walk for Daniel, meeting teachers at Thoms Parks (1D Garde Street, Centenary Heights) at 7:45 am and walking to school. Students will need to ensure they have a hat to participate in our walk to school. Children without hats will be sent with their parents back to school.
3. Students from Prep to Year 6 will participate in a Daniel Morcombe Foundation child safety lesson during the day, covering various key safety messages.     We will send out a form for families to register their interest in participating in the Walk for Daniel in the next week, so keep your eye out for it! If you have any questions about our Day for Daniel, please contact Miss Byrne (Kristin.Byrne@twb.catholic.edu.au) or the school office.

Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum

During Term 4, we will be implementing the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum. This curriculum has been developed to support Queensland schools’ delivery of key safety messages to students from Prep to Year 9. Through a series of lessons, students will learn how to recognise, react and report when they are unsafe or find themselves in situations that can have a significant detrimental effect on their physical, psychological or emotional wellbeing. 

We encourage you to talk to your children about what they are learning in class. The following table outlines the content areas to be covered by each class this year.

Further information about the Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum can be found at ...

We will send out a form for families to register their interest in participating in the Walk for Daniel in the next week, so keep your eye out for it! If you have any questions about our Day for Daniel, please contact Miss Byrne (Kristin.Byrne@twb.catholic.edu.au) or the school office.

Socktober

This year, STM will be participating in Socktober again to raise awareness and money for Catholic Mission. During Socktober, Service Club will be teaching the school about not just the history behind Socktober and the almighty sockball, but will also teach the school community about what life is like in Thailand. Socktober this year for schools focuses on the work of the Good Shepherd Sisters’ Kindergarten in Thailand. Students will learn a bit about what life is like in Thailand for students at this school.  Socktober uses the much-loved game of soccer to help students across the world begin to understand what life is like for others and to consider how they can support Catholic Mission in their work to help those less fortunate than us.

While the bulk of our fundraising will come from our Socktober Kick Off Day, if you want to donate money directly to our Socktober campaign, you can use the link below to access our school page. Students and families should also be able to join our school team if choosing to raise additional funds for this worthy cause. 

This week the theme for our Socktober journey is Creation. Pope Francis reminds us that,

“Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will … it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.” - (Pope Francis, 2014).

As we reflect on Creation this week, we can not only consider how we can care for Creation, but how we can also use recycled materials to make our very own sockballs. Our ‘Creation Mission Pack’ encourages us to be part of the Socktober journey this week with our heads, hearts and hands. See some examples below of just how you can do this!

Let's kick it to poverty this October with our Socktober journey!

Term 4 - Week 1 Awards

From the Office

The last Bookclub for the year is due 18/10/2021.

Just a reminder to keep the office up to date with any contact or medical detail changes. It can cause critical delays in the case of emergencies if the information is not current.

Given the ever-changing health climate, if your child is unwell, please do not send them to school. They will recover quicker with rest at home. We are all in this together and need to consider others.

If your child will be away from the school for any reason, please notify the office of your child’s absence. There are a few ways for parents to notify the school of a student’s absence:

• Send a text message to 0439 457 981,
• Email the student’s teacher and the office on stthomas@twb.catholic.edu.au
• Call the school’s office on 4591 3900 and leave a voicemail explaining the absence,
• Ask a sibling to inform the office of the absence

If your child arrives at school after 8:25 am, they must sign in at the office at the student entrance.

Outside of the Year 6 students, if you are leaving the school at the end of 2021, please let the office know as soon as possible. This helps with the planning of events and excursions for the following year.

From the Service Club

We have a few reminders this week. Our Term 4 Groups will start next week. All our groups this term will be at first break playtime.

Monday: P-6 Art Group in Miss Byrne's Room

Thursday: P-6 Study/Homework Group in the Library

Friday: P/1 Junior Group in the Junior Playground

From Week 4, we would like to extend an invitation to any children in Year 5 who think they might like to be in Service Club next year to come to our meetings to see what Service Club is all about. Meetings will be held in Week 4, Week 6, and Week 8 at the first break on Tuesday. Any Year 5 children who want to come along are to head straight to Miss Byrne's room at 10:30 am and bring their lunch box along with them.

This term we are excited to bring Socktober back to STM! Later this term, we will be having a Kick-Off Day where students can bring along their very own sockballs and see if they can score a goal against our mystery goalkeepers. Just like last year, students need to bring along a gold coin donation to have a kick and can use normal soccer balls as well. We will share more details about Socktober and Catholic MIssion in the coming weeks.

Finally, this term we will also be holding our annual Day for Daniel on Friday, October 30th. This also happens to be World Teacher's Day! Keep your eyes peeled for more information on how we will be commemorating these two special events later this month.

Have a wonderful week!

God Bless

Lara and Lucy from Service Club

School-Wide Positive Behaviour Information

St. Thomas More’s is proud to introduce you to School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS), a framework which we are now utilising to support positive behaviour within our school. The purpose of SWPBS is to establish a climate in which appropriate behaviour is the norm. Teaching behavioural expectations and rewarding students for following them is a much more positive approach than waiting for misbehaviour to occur before responding. The St. Thomas More’s community has identified three school values: Be Safe, Be Responsible, Be Respectful as being the key expectations required to develop a school culture and climate that would best facilitate increased student engagement, learning and wellbeing. 

As part of the SWPBS framework, we have a behaviour matrix that sets our expectations for all students across all settings of the school and is based on our three school values. The matrix outlines the behaviours we will be explicitly teaching and expecting our students to display. This matrix can be found in our Student Behaviour Support Plan.

As part of the SWPBL process, we will be implementing a school-wide behaviour reward system in the form of GOTCHA tickets. Gotcha tickets will be distributed to all staff members to be used on playground duty. When students are ‘caught’ following our school-wide expectations, particularly our focus area/s of expected behaviour for the week,  teachers will provide positive reinforcement to the child receiving the Gotcha ticket at the time the teacher sights the student engaging in the expected behaviour. The Junior Primary (P-1), Middle Primary (2-4) and Upper Primary (5-6) have a Gotcha box for playground Gotchas. Teachers will place completed Gotcha tickets in the appropriate box by Thursday afternoon ready for Friday morning assembly. The Gotcha tickets will be drawn each Friday morning at assembly as a way to celebrate positive behaviour as a whole school. The students whose names are drawn will receive a prize from the school prize box. One ticket will be drawn from each box – 3 in total. 

Names of students who received a GOTCHA ticket for the week will be entered onto a school Positive Behaviour database. Once a student achieves a set number of Gotchas, parents will be notified that their child will be receiving a certificate at assembly so that they can attend.

Our long-term goal as a SWPBS school is for staff, students and parents to name, acknowledge and teach these positive expected behaviours – Be Safe, Be Responsible, Be Respectful.

Swimming Carnival 8-12 Years

The 2021 swimming carnival will be held on Tuesday 30th November at The Glennie Aquatic Centre. This year the swimming carnival will be open to all students born from 2009 to 2013.

To assist with the planning of the carnival, please complete a form for each child using the following link.

The Central Zone and Catholic Carnival Teams for 2022 will be selected from the results of the 50m events. Correct technique is a requirement for some strokes. The Central Zone Carnival will have strict nominating times that will need to be adhered to. Children born in 2013 will be eligible to be nominated in these carnivals in 2022 if they choose to swim 50m events at our school carnival.

Please read the following information and complete the nominating form by Friday 12th November. Once all nominations have been completed a program will be created and available to students and parents.  

We will be offering a bus to and from the carnival. The school will cover the cost of the bus. If you wish your child/children to utilise the bus, please indicate on your child/children’s nomination form.

Important Information

• A teacher will be on duty from 8 am at the venue.
• Years 3-6 teachers will attend the carnival. We encourage and it is expected that all students attend the carnival regardless of their swimming ability and have a go in at least 1 event. There will be no supervision at school for these year levels. 
• Kickboard events are for competitors who are not competing in the 25m or 50m events.
• Competitors may only swim one distance per stroke. 50m Freestyle or 25m Freestyle or 25m Kickboard. Not all three.
• Students who are capable of swimming 50m in a particular stroke are strongly encouraged to do so.
• Only competitors who nominate as 50m swimmers will be eligible for age champion.
• Only 50m events will have heats if there are sufficient numbers. Otherwise, 50m events will be straight finals.
• Only 50m events will be timed.
• Ribbons will be given to 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th places of kickboard, 25m, and finals of 50m events.
• Age champion trophies will be given to 9yrs-13yrs champion swimmers who nominate/compete in 50m events.
• Some events may have to be combined due to the number of nominations but will be judged separately. 
• Open 100m Freestyle and Open 4x50m Individual medley events are for house points ONLY.

If you have any queries, please contact Stacey Hancock (Year5)

(Stacey.Hancock@twb.catholic.edu.au)

Road Safety around our School

We are experiencing some traffic issues around our school:

1. Vehicles parking in the loading zone in South Street waiting for children before 3 pm the loading sign says:
   1. 1. Loading Zone 5 mins max.
      2. 8.30 am – 3.30 pm School Days
      3. Therefore, you are unable to park and wait for your child. Please keep this area clear.
      4. DO NOT PARK IN THE NO-STOPPING AREA ON EITHER SIDE OF THE SCHOOL CROSSING AT ANY TIME.   This practice restricts the view to the crossing and makes it very dangerous.
2. Double parking – this is illegal and very dangerous. Never call your child to the car when you are doubled parked.
3. Never cross the road between cars
4. Always use the School crossing to cross the road. Demonstrate the safest way to cross the road. The crossing can be used even if unsupervised.

Tuckshop News

Our Tuckshop will start this Friday.  We are always looking for volunteers, so if you have some free time, please consider clicking on the link below to register.

Dates to keep in mind for Term 4...

Due to the availability of the pool, we have had to change the date of our Junior Swimming Carnival to Monday, November 29th. At this stage, we are still waiting on confirmation from the pool regarding their COVID safe plan and will let families know ASAP if parents will be able to attend.

Hike for Homeless

Uniform Shop News

The Uniform Shop opening hours are as follow:

• Monday Morning:  8:15 am - 8:45 am
• Wednesday Afternoon:  2:45 pm - 3:15 pm
• Friday Morning:  8:15 am - 8:45 am

If you are unable to make these times, please email the Uniform Shop at:  THOuniform@twb.catholic.edu.au

Parish News

Click on the link to download a copy of the Parish Bulletin.