Week 2 Newsletter, Term 3 2025

Principal's Messages

What a great start to Term 3!

While some days have been chilly and grey, everyone has come back ready for a great term. Term 3 at Corpus Christi always seems to be a busy one! Yesterday I attended the Aspire performance with Years 3-6, our students were wonderful audience members and the show was absolutely outstanding. We were excited to see four CCW alumni, Hayley (year 12), Micah (year 9), Nash (year 9) and Dante (year 8)  in the show and sharing their talents. 

A huge thank you to our canteen volunteers Jo and Janine for stepping and saving the day in the canteen on Tuesday morning. Our Canteen Manger Nicole had an emergency and Jo and Janine stepped and made sure every lunch order was filled and that the canteen ran like clockwork.  While we have an amazing Canteen Manager in Nicole, our small band of volunteers make sure Nicole is well supported – especially on Fridays where we have close to 100 orders. If you are interested in volunteering in the canteen please contact admin@waratah.catholic.edu.au 

Staffing 

At the end of last term, I shared the exciting news that Mrs Elise Tantos (Creative Arts) and her husband are expecting their first child. While this is a joyful time for Elise, she has made the difficult decision to commence her leave earlier than anticipated. Sadly, last Friday was her final day with us. 

We are currently mid-way through preparations for our end-of-term musical, which we had originally planned to complete before Mrs Tantos began her leave. However, with the performance date falling close to her due date, these plans have had to change. 

We wish Mrs Tantos all the very best during this special time. 

This week, we’ve had the pleasure of welcoming Miss Emma Davies, who will be leading Creative Arts lessons and supporting the musical production throughout Term 3. Emma is an accomplished musician and an experienced performing arts teacher and coordinator. She has already begun working with students and classes as part of the handover process, while also taking on casual teaching roles within the school. 

My sincere thanks to Emma for stepping into this role at short notice and for so generously sharing her talents and experience with our community. 

Faith in Focus

Religious Education and Spirituality

Celebrating St Dominic's Day at Corpus Christi

On Tuesday 5th August, Corpus Christi will celebrate the Feast of St Dominic. 

As a community, we celebrate Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order. St Dominic embraced a life of simplicity and showed thoughtfulness, understanding, and love to all people he encountered.

The history of school is steeped in Dominican charism and the work of the Dominican sisters. Our history is grounded in Truth, Justice, Service, Prayer, Community, Learning and opportunities for every person in our school to succeed. 

For Dominic, love for people was part of his love for God. In the same way, we strive to build a community where everyone belongs, everyone is understood, and everyone is loved. 

We will celebrate St Dominic with a whole school mass on Tuesday 5th August at 9:15a.m in the church.

              *All parents and families are welcome to join us for Mass

Students will return to school and participate in The CCW DOMINIQUEST! This will involve fun Science and Engineering challenges lead by our Year 6 students. Students will also engage in classroom lessons on our Dominican Pillars. 

Celebrating Mary MacKillop at Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi will celebrate Saint Mary MacKillop’s Feast Day on Friday 8th August. As a faithful community, we will gather for a liturgy in the hall at 9:00a.m, led by our K-2 classes.

Mary MacKillop was fierce in the face of adversity and fair where she saw injustice. Just like Mary, we are each called to "NEVER SEE A NEED WITHOUT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT."

Saint Mary MacKillop and the Sisters of St Joseph went wherever the need was greatest. And despite facing enormous challenges, they continued to walk with people every step of the way, serve the poor and creating educational opportunities for he disadvantaged. 

Year 5 Inquiry Learning in Religious Education Lessons

Year 5 have been exploring and questioning ways of knowing God and our relationship with God. Year 5 have been inquiring and sharing their own ideas and examining the scriptures for Christian perspectives. Year 5 have displayed an ability to reflect, communicate and respond to some very big questions in their Religion lessons, showing that children of all ages have a deep capacity for spirituality, questioning justice and curiosity about life.

Take a look at some of the student responses from Year 5 RE lessons below. 

Year 5 RE Responses

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) - Highway Heroes: The Learning Highway- Tricks for getting things done

This Term grades 1-6 will set off along the Learning Highway. Our Highway Heroes program will focus on  how to attend and focus, how to plan and organise our time and resources, and how to be resilient and persist when the learning becomes difficult or repetitive.

Learning to learn means understanding and practising the attitudes and behaviours that support higher level processing and that means starting with developing the inside skills that help the child to self-regulate and to choose positive and helpful ways to stay calm and optimistic despite challenges. For every child, knowing how they learn best – their patterns of motivation and procrastination and how to develop a Growth Mindset matter to later learning success.

The Executive Functioning skills of avoiding distractions, approaching a task with success in mind and applying strategies that increase learning persistence, confidence and resilience are those taught in our term 3 program.

On The Learning Highway there are the inevitable twists and turns, highs and lows and sometimes BUMPS and HAZARDS. In the classroom this can be:
• The behaviour of another child impacting on your child’s learning or emotional state.
• Your own child’s behaviour.
• Your child’s difficulties with their own behaviours to support their learning – like planning, organisation, focus and attention.
• Your child’s learning resilience – their ability to bounce back when a mistake is made, completing boring or repetitive content or content that simply doesn’t interest them

This term, students will be learning about their internal TOOLS to stay on The Learning Highway– it’s called their Learning CPR Tank – and it’s full of Confidence, Persistence and Resilience.

All learners need to be confident to ask for help when they need it, to work with - and in front of others, and to persistently ‘work tough’ when they encounter a BUMP or a HAZARD. Your child fills their CPR Tank, (their ability to bounce back when things get tough or boring), by using their self-talk or internal dialogue. When something happens – an Event,you say something to yourself – Self-talk; develop an Emotion or Feeling (which might grow into a mood if it hangs around); which usually leads to a certain way of Behaving. Here’s an example:

You’re given the task of presenting a report to the team at work – with very short notice – prepare the report and present it TODAY!

The Highway Heroes program teaches children to think about and change their self-talk, which helps to change the intensity of the feelings that they might have, and then also their behaviour - just like in the previous example. A HIGHWAY HERO uses CPR Supa Thinking - which is positive and helpful self-talk. This helps children to persist when school work is tough or boring, when they sit next to the child who talks constantly, or they have to do subjects that they don’t enjoy.

When a learning BUMP occurs - like being distracted - or a learning HAZARD occurs – such as being asked to sit out of the room due to poor behaviour - we want children to monitor their self-talk and minimise the psychological effect by choosing The HIGHWAY TOOL of CPR Supa Thinking.

Parent-Teacher-Student Conversations about Learning

Conversations K-6 will be held from Monday 11 August to Friday 15 August. This is a valuable opportunity to reflect on learning, share progress, and set goals.

Students in Years 2–6 are encouraged to attend with their parents to support learning ownership and strengthen home-school partnerships. Bookings are now open via Compass. Please note Year 6 conferences will take place next week.

If you’re unable to find a suitable time, please contact your child’s teacher or the school office.

Want to speak without your child present?
You may request time at the end of your session or arrange a separate meeting or phone call.

Have a child in Kindergarten or Year 1?
They’re welcome to join! Many younger students enjoy listening and contributing—just let the teacher know at the start.

Parent Trivia Night

Trivia Night Tickets Now On Sale
Purchase your tickets now for the Corpus Christi Trivia Night.

A fantastic night of fun with prizes (including cold hard cash and bragging rights) to be won.

Saturday 30th AugustHamilton North Bowling Club, 6pm start$20 per ticket, available to purchase on Qkr! or rustle up a team and book a full table of 8.
Fantastic lucky door, raffle and bonus prizes to be won. Bring your gold coins for bonus games. Eftpos facilities available on the night.

This event is open to parents, friends and family of the Corpus Christi Community and is strictly an adult only event. All funds raised are used for the improvement of school facilities and resources. We look forward to seeing you there!

Summer Uniform and hats

We will start transiting to summer uniform on the 8th of September. For the remainder of this term, either winter or summer uniform is acceptable.

As the sun is starting to shine again it is important that students wear hats when outside. By the time we transition back to summer uniform teachers will be enforcing the sun safe policy, which means student who don't have a hat will have to stay in the shade at lunch and recess and not be allowed on the playground. Please ensure your child has a hat at school everyday. 

Uniform Shop

Uniform Shop is open every Friday from 8:30am-9am.

Online orders via Qkr! close at 8:00am each Friday and will be sent home with your child.

To keep costs low and provide this service to Corpus Christi families, all items are sold close to cost price. If you are available to volunteer on a casual or regular basis, please reach out to admin@waratah.catholic.edu.au.

Dates and Reminders

Guitar Club

Aspire 2026 - Auditions

Event Dates Term 3

Staff Development Days for Term 3 and 4