St Joseph's, Tara - Term 2 Week 2 2025 Newsletter!

Our Vision & Mission Statements

From the Principal

Welcome to the Term 2 Week 2 Newsletter!

Unpacking the Strategic Plan

Develop and embed the qualities of a life-long learner, being a St Joey’s learner. 

Over the past three terms we have worked hard to develop our Life-Long Learner Qualities, ensuring that each Quality has a way for students to be successful and a link to our Josephite charism. We have moved our previous Student of the Week Awards to Recognition Certificates which reflect the success students have had.  

We are currently in the embedding phase. Staff at the beginning of the year developed lessons and resources to explicitly teach each Quality. These provided students with opportunities to understand how to be successful and gain confidence as a life-long learner. A Joey’s learner!  

Staff and students are now beginning to use the language of our Qualities, the success criteria and able to recognise when they need to display the Qualities in all that they do. This is all part of the steps to having them well and truly embedded across the school. 

Small Schools/Tara & District Cross Country

Congratulations to the 27 students who represented St Joseph’s at the Small School/Tara & District Cross Country Carnival yesterday.  

All students participated and displayed their best Joey’s Way Qualities throughout the day.

Courage – to attend and be prepared to run the race  

Persistence/Resilience – there were challenges for some throughout the course which had to be worked through to make it to the end successfully.  

Every student should be proud of their efforts and what they achieved.  

Thank you to the parents of these students who drove them out to The Gums and spent the day with us. Congratulations to Damon Grose who took out the 2015 Age Champion for both Small Schools and Tara & District. He will now go to Chinchilla to compete at Southwest. 

Welcome to our new Guidance Counsellor

This week we welcomed Mr Henry Logan, our new school Guidance Counsellor. It is a great opportunity for our school to have a counsellor who will regularly work with our community. Mr Logan will be on-site every second Wednesday (even weeks) and then online from Toowoomba every second Monday (odd weeks). He will provide individual sessions for identified students, small group and whole class sessions with a particular focus such as friendships, resilience, monitoring and self-regulation of emotions.  

Henry will make contact with parents of students he will be working with to gain consent and discuss the student’s needs and strategies that have been suggested to the student so that they can use them at home and at school. Part of Henry’s role is also working with the staff to provide them with the understanding of student needs in the classroom setting.  

I know that you will all make Henry feel welcomed into our Joey’s community.  

2025 Enrolments and 2026 Prep Enrolment

We are currently taking enrolment applications for various year levels for this year and also for children who will be entering Prep in 2026.  

We currently have a large number of applications, and this is wonderful news. Even to go on our waiting list, an application needs to have been received, and an interview held.  

Please spread the word through our community as we do not want anyone missing out on the opportunity to become a Joey’s student.  

God bless,

Kylie Williams

APMI

Christian Meditation

As part of our Being distinctively Catholic component of the Strategic Plan we have identified a need to Develop and implement whole school Christian meditation. Christian meditation practices are also part of our Religious Education curriculum and aligns with our beliefs and values of the school’s well-being framework.  

At the Pupil Free Day at the beginning of last week, staff identified what Christian meditation is and then discussed ways we could successfully implement this into our school.  

Christian meditation is a practice that involves deliberately focusing on specific Christian thoughts, such as Bible passages, and reflecting on their meaning in the context of God’s love. It includes relaxing the body and stilling the mind while contemplating Scripture or the nature of God. At its core, it aims to engage the mind and heart in devotion to God, allowing individuals to be receptive to His influence in their lives. This form of meditation can also be seen as a type of prayer that emphasises silence and listening to God’s Word. Ultimately, true Christian meditation is an active thought process that encourages the study of Scripture and prayer for deeper understanding.  

Sometimes we get Christian Meditation and Mindfulness a little confused. Mindfulness is usually a form of meditation that helps with practicing relaxation and managing stress. Clearing the mind from distractions. This is often done with relaxation music, mandala colouring in and the like.  

Staff have collaboratively decided to begin implementing Christian Meditation into their classrooms every Monday and Friday afternoon at 1.50 to 2.15pm. This will ensure that each class has limited distractions to ensure the best chance of success. Students will begin with the meditation practice of The Examen. The Examen is a technique which was first used by St Ignatius Loyola and is a prayerful reflection on the events of the day, the emotions that were felt through the day, to detect God’s presence and discern his direction for us. New meditation strategies will be practiced every few weeks to provide students with the opportunity to learn and practice a variety of ways.  

PLEASE NOTE: This is a time where interruptions are to be kept at a minimum. If you are needing to collect your child during this time you will be asked to wait until our meditation time has finished. We thank you for your understanding with this to ensure that students can participate fully in this experience.   

Learning at St Joeys

From the Prep - Year 1 Classroom

English

In Term Two English, the Prep/One class is exploring sentence construction, text recounts and identifying and using nouns. Students will listen to texts, create short spoken texts and retell stories. They will continue to build their vocabulary knowledge through the exposure and exploration of authentic and rich language texts. Students will continue to practice writing the correct letter formation of unjoined letters, linking these formations to their sounds. Students will practice blending and segmenting words and sounds for reading and writing. They will continue progressing in their letter and diagraph sound knowledge, building this knowledge to read and spell an increasing number of words.  

In Prep, students will develop oral sentences and will identify and edit simple sentences that are used to recount and sequence familiar events from their lives.  

In Year One, students will develop a written text. They will create and edit a recount of their day for a familiar audience. They will identify, create and edit simple sentences.  

Religion

In Religion this term, students will be exploring some of the good news stories of Jesus within the Bible. They will be investigating the time of Jesus, what the authors of these stories are trying to convey and what messages we can take from these stories into our own lives. Students are using these stories as a starting point to develop our own understanding of the good choices we can make to be kind and caring people of God.  

Mathematics

In Term Two, students will continue to develop their mathematics knowledge and skills while beginning to understand more complex mathematical knowledge.  

In Prep, students will continue to explore patterning and the naming, representing and ordering of numbers 0-20 and beyond. They will continue practicing their subitising skills and begin to compare collections using these subitising skills and the counting skills they have been learning throughout Term One. Students will begin to partition and combine collections and sort, name and create familiar shapes.  

In Year One, students will continue to explore patterning and begin to use this knowledge to help them in skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. They will explore the topic of measurement of length and continue to develop their knowledge and skills around the ordering and partitioning of numbers. Students will make, compare and classify familiar shapes.  

Science and Design Technology

This term, students are learning about the different materials objects are made from and how different materials are used for different purposes. They will conduct an investigation into the parts of different objects, such as houses and shoes, and recognise what these objects are made of. Students will use observation, prediction and experimentation skills to recognise and develop their own pair of shoes out of everyday materials.  

HaSS

In our Humanities and Social Science lessons this term, students will develop an understanding of different types of families and recognise that families all take part in celebrations in different ways. They will pose questions, record and sort information and draw a conclusion sharing information to justify their conclusion. Students will do this by explaining their favourite celebration and justifying it using example from their own family celebration.  

The GOSSIP - Student Newspaper

From the PEN

From the Parish

St Mary Of The Angels - Tara

Mass Times

Tara: Sunday: 9am

on the 1st & 3rd Sunday of the month

Meandarra: Sunday: 11am

on the 3rd Sunday of the month

St Joseph's Student Recognition

Bronze Award

Jaycob deBoeck

Certificates of Recognition

Nil due to week 1 being a short week Certificate of Recognitions will be starting next week.

From the Administration Officers

Monthly customer statements have been emailed out today, including this term's fees. Please check your junk mail.

If you need any financial assistance, be sure to come in and see myself or Kylie to see how we can help. It is completely confidential!

HOW TO PAY YOUR SCHOOL FEES:

*Cash / Cheque, at the office.

*BPoint, in person at the office or over the phone.

*Direct Deposit:
Bank: ADF
Name: St Joseph’s School
BSB: 064-786
ACC: 100-025-583
Reference: Your Name/Customer Code eg. TRA1234             

*Centrelink Centrepay Deduction Payments can be made fortnightly or monthly.

The School’s CRN: 555075545A 

*Direct Debit: Forms are available in the office. Please see me or call the office.

Not Sure how it’s done?  Ask at the office for assistance.

Term Dates

2025

Term 1 2025 – Wed 29 Jan (Public Hol 26 Jan) - Fri 04 April

Term 2 2025 – (Easter Monday, 21 Apr) Wed 23 Apr - Fri 27 Jun

Term 3 2025 - Tue 15 Jul - Fri 19 Sep

Term 4 2025 - Tue 07 Oct (Kings B'day 06 OCT) - Fri 05 Dec

Professional Development and Planning Days (previously called Pupil Free Days)

• Wednesday, 22 January - Friday, 24 January 2025 - Professional Development
• Tuesday, 28 January 2025 - Planning Day
• Tuesday, 22 April 2025 - Planning Day
• Monday, 14 July 2025 - Planning Day
  
• Wednesday, 30 July 2025 - Bishops Inservice Day (BID)
  
• Friday, 5 September 2025 - Consistency of Teacher Judgement (CTJ)

Public holidays

• Australia Day public holiday – Monday, 27 January 2025
• Easter – Friday, 18 April – Monday, 21 April 2025
• Anzac Day – Friday, 25 April 2025
• Labour Day – Monday, 5 May 2025
• King’s Birthday – Monday, 6 October 2025

Student Safety

EVERY CHILD HAS THE RIGHT TO FEEL SAFE

It is a legislative requirement that all non-state schools have at least two nominated staff members to whom a student can report the behaviour of another staff member that the student considers inappropriate.  We call these specially trained staff members School Student Protection Contacts, or SSPCs.  Each SSPC has been nominated by the principal in recognition of their integrity, approachability and knowledge in the area of student protection.  Whilst students are encouraged to speak up to any trusted adult in the school community, it is important that they know they can access these specific staff members at any time should they have worries, queries or concerns. You will have noticed posters throughout the school depicting our current SSPCs.  The SSPCs are also published on our school website along with information about our student protection processes.  In everything we do at St Joseph's Tara student safety is our highest priority, therefore the SSPCs at our school are key personnel in our overall safeguarding processes.  Please see the poster below depicting our current SSPC team.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT