Leadership Communication

Our Year Two students have been fully engaged in their swimming program. It has been wonderful to see their confidence grow in the water as they develop important swimming and safety skills.

Meanwhile, our Year Three and Year Four students attended Mass to celebrate the Feast Day of Mary MacKillop. They participated with great reverence and respect, honouring this important Australian saint and role model of faith and service.

Our Year Five students also had an exciting opportunity to take part in a Maths competition this week. They worked together with enthusiasm and focus, applying their problem-solving skills in creative and challenging ways.

We also had school photos, where our students looked proud and well-presented as they smiled for the camera and created lasting memories.

As always, learning oozed from every area of the school. Whether in the classroom, at the pool, during Mass, or in competition, students were engaged, curious, and enthusiastic about their learning.

A big well done to all of our students and staff for their wonderful efforts this week, and a sincere thank you to our families for your continued support and encouragement.

Don't forget we have a pupil free day on Monday 11th August. All staff will be engaging in Session Three of the Berry Street Education Program offsite.  We look forward to seeing you all again in Tuesday 12th.

Sarah Chappell

Professional Development and Leadership Coach

National Action Against Bullying Week

At St Thomas the Apostle, we have a whole school preventative approach to bullying called 'Upstanding U have the POWER.' This preventative approach has been designed specifically for our context as the evidence tells us the best way to prevent bullying is to build proactive behaviours in our children, specifically skills to be an upstander. 

We review our upstanding strategies each term in our classrooms and each semester in our specialists subjects. In week 2 of Term 4 we will have an additional focus on our Upstanding framework approach given the busy nature of Term 3. We look forward to sharing more of our student's learning with you and our understanding of the role they play in preventing bullying next term.  

To recognise 'National Action Week- Bullying No Way' next week our Student Voice Group will be interviewing some of our other students about what they understand about upstanding and why it mattters. 

Look out for their responses in next week's assembly video!

Please see below some quotes from our Student Voice Group regarding their throughts on 'Upstanding U have the POWER.'

'If we don’t have upstanding how will we help other people'

'In STSS we learnt that upstanding is trying to help someone.'

'The reason we have upstanding is when someone is being bulled or being mean, that person who is being bulled if they don’t’ have courage, someone can upstand for them and help them out.' 

'I think the posters should be around the school, because bullying can happen anywhere and there should always be people who upstand and when they look at the poster they’ll know how.'

'In the beyblade area we could put a sign up there.'

Please get in contact if you have any questions,

Kind regards, 

Emily Robertson 

(Mental Health & Wellbeing Leader)