Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome Back to Term 3!

We hope all our students and families enjoyed a well-earned break and are feeling refreshed, recharged, and ready for an exciting term of learning! I would like to firstly thank Mr Michael McClafferty who has backfilled Mrs Maree Harris during her leave.  We appreciate you taking time out of your Regional Office position to support our school.

Our School Values: Safe, Respectful Learners

As we begin Term 3, we remind everyone of the importance of being safe, respectful learners each day. A few important reminders:

• Toys are too cool for school – please ensure toys stay at home to avoid distractions and lost items.
• Full school uniform - At our assemblies, I will often discuss the pride that our students show by not only participating to their full potential but to also wear our school uniform with pride. Every child is a proud Freshwater State School student, and as such have made a real effort to wear the correct uniform to school – proving to our whole community, that we excited learners and we are proud to demonstrate to our community that this is where we come to school.  One thing I would like to ask from parents and caregivers is to ensure that your children are wearing the full uniform, from socks, to jumpers, to school shirts and shorts.  Our uniform policy is in our handbook and is signed off by the P&C.  Thank you for your help in this situation.

School Opinion Survey

Parents are their children's first teachers and play an essential role, as equal partners, in the education they receive at school. Parent engagement in school communities can improve students' self-esteem, school attendance, behaviour and student achievement.

School Opinion Surveys canvass the views of parents/caregivers, students and school staff from every state school on what our schools do well and how they can improve.

There are 4 different confidential surveys:

• parents/caregivers
• students
• students in special schools
• school staff.

Opinions on the school, student learning and student wellbeing are sought from a parent/caregiver in all families and students in selected year levels from each state school.

Respondents include:

• Parents/caregivers—every family in the school with a child enrolled in kindy to Year 12.
• Students—all students from Years 5, 6, 8 and 11 will be invited to participate in survey.
• Staff—all principals, teaching and non-teaching school staff employed during the survey period. This survey includes permanent, temporary, casual, part-time and full-time staff and excludes staff on leave during the survey period.

The surveys will be available to complete between 28 July and 22 August 2025.  We appreciate your input into our school and appreciate the time taken to complete the survey.

Save the Date – School Fete

Our much-anticipated School Fete is happening on Friday 15th August. Mark your calendars for a fun-filled afternoon with stalls, food, games, and entertainment!

Congratulations – Cairns Show Display

A big congratulations to all the classes who contributed to our fantastic display at the Cairns Show. Your creativity and hard work truly shone! As Principal I was proud to see the effort that went into the artworks.  I would like to thank Mrs Miller, Mrs Petrie and Mrs Davis for giving up their time to organise and set up the display.

4MW Finalists – Trash to Treasure

Well done to 4MW, who have been named finalists in the Annual Cairns Council Trash to Treasure competition! Their project was selected as one of the top entries, and our school is now in the running to win $1,000. What a brilliant effort in sustainability and innovation! A heartfelt thank you to all the families who contributed to our bottle top collection – these were used to create the display. Your support helps bring community projects like Trash to Treasure to life!

We’re looking forward to a fantastic Term 3!

Yours in Learning,

Welcome back to Term 3

This past fortnight we have celebrated two big events in the lower school calendar with 100 Days of School in Prep, and the P-2 Athletics Carnival. Later in the term we have our Annual Book Week dress up assembly, Freshie Fete, Prep 2026 enrolments, our Prep Stay and Play for 2026 and finally our Prep Father’s Day event!

100 Days of Prep

Our ‘100 days of school’ Prep event in week one was a great success. We celebrated 100 days of learning, growing, and having fun in Prep! To mark the occasion, our amazing little learners put on a heart-warming concert for their families, singing some beautiful songs by Ian Ross Williams that the Prep Team and myself practiced during Semester 1 with the Prep students. It was such a joy to see their smiling faces, engaging actions and hear their proud voices filling the undercover area. Thank you to all the families who came along to celebrate with us — your support means the world! Thank you also to our amazing staff in Prep who helped to set up and organise so many fun and engaging activities for our little people.

Student highlight

This week I had the pleasure of reading some Year 2 student work from 2NJ. I was so impressed with their sensational writing, excellent bookwork presentation and neat handwriting! Congratulations to Drew and Indi for your outstanding bookwork.

RAK Club

This term we have continued our mission to make Freshwater State School the kindest school in Cairns by running a ‘Random of Act of Kindness’ Club each Monday at first break. Thank you to Ms Nicola Mellick for volunteering your time each week to support this exciting new club. In week one we continued our kindness chains from Under 8’s Day and began brainstorming with the students all the ways we could show kindness around the school and what this could look like. This week we created fruit skewers and delivered these to staff on a playground duty with a cold cup of water as a random act of kindness. Staff were certainly confused to be presented with fruit and cold water on duty however quickly understood the intent with students thanking staff for doing a duty and being a great teacher!

Students also made an acknowledgement board for Mrs Glaspy covering it with post-it notes of kindness and gratitude messages acknowledging everything Mrs Glaspy does in our school library to support students. We can’t wait to share our next random act of kindness task that will take place next week. Check out our latest video to hear all about this RAK club. Finally, the random acts of kindness are rubbing off on staff with Mrs Brunetto being gifted a coffee voucher this week from a staff member. Let’s continue to spread kindness through our words and actions at Freshie.

Have a great weekend,

Invoices 

A friendly reminder to pay any outstanding invoices, our preferred payment method is BPOINT. There are still a large number of unpaid Student Resource Scheme Fees including Instrumental Music, invoiced at the start of the year.

In Week 4, without payment or payment plan, Instrumental Music lessons will be affected. Similarly, items under the Student Resources Scheme will need to be supplied by parents. Please ensure all outstanding invoices are paid or a payment plan is set up at the start of term.

If you would like to set up a payment plan please complete the below payment plan  and return to the office or email ayoun401@eq.edu.au. If you require copies of any outstanding invoices please check on QParents or contact our office on 4058 9222 or via email. 

Payment_plan.pdf

Payment_plan _pdf 344.20 KB

Abby, Lexi, Sam and Natasha

Administration Team

Respectful Relationships

Respectful relationships education is a primary prevention approach that aims to stop violence before it starts, by changing people's attitudes about respect and equality.

Respectful relationships education is required learning of the Prep to Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education which includes focus areas such as relationships and sexuality, mental health and wellbeing, and safety. These focus areas ensure students develop an understanding about the rights and ethical responsibilities of individuals in respectful relationships.

Respectful Relationships Education Hub for Parents and Carers 

Parent’s Guide for supporting Respectful Relationships Education

The Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA) has published a Parents Guide for supporting Respectful Relationships Education. The guide helps parents and carers to use storytelling to explore the importance of empathy and communication skills for healthy and positive relationships. 

On the 8th August we will be holding a Pyjama Day to raise funds for the Pyjama Foundation. 

Thank you,

Student Council &

At lunch time our Lego Club is getting very popular, unfortunately, we do not have enough Lego to go around. This term we are hoping to hold a Lego competition similar to the show ‘Lego Masters’ If you have any redundant Lego that your child has outgrown, please donate to our Lego Club. We have some very keen future Junior Lego Masters ready and waiting to make their creations.  

Congratulations

Congratulations to Rose (6NL)  for being selected in the TCN girls 11-12 years Rugby League team. Rose will now represent the district at the Peninsula 11-12 years girls Rugby League Championships later this month. Well done and good luck Rose.

Congratulations to Ryan (6GH), Shenuka (6GH), Aadit (5/6NT), Jacob (4MW) and Hayden (5/6 NT) for being selected in the TCN 10-12 years Cricket team. They will now represent the district at the Peninsula 10-12 years Cricket Championships next month. Well done to you all.

QRSS State Cross Country Championships

For the first time ever, FIVE students represented Freshwater SS at the QRSS State Cross Country Championships in Brisbane! From all accounts it was a fantastic experience and our superstar runners did extremely well against the best in the state! Well done to you George (6NL), Riley (6GH), Evangeline (5KA), Oliver (5KT) and Nina (5GC)!

Prep – Year 2 Athletics Carnival

This year’s Prep – Year 2 Athletics Carnival was awesome! Well done to everyone involved, especially our students had so much fun, demonstrated great sportsmanship and were happy about being active!

Final scores were:

Marlins – 192

Crocs – 175

Eagles – 172

Taipans – 171 

Well done Marlins!

Extra special thanks go to –

• Mrs Roxby for all her work behind the scenes and record keeping on the day.
• Our Sports Captains for their excellent assistance in setting up, looking after our junior students, and leading their houses well.
• All Year P-2 teachers and teacher aides for their assistance.
• Year 4-6 teachers and students for their assistance as buddies in preparing our P-2 students for their carnival.
• Mr Hornett for all the grounds preparation.
• Ms Jappe for doing a wonderful job on the microphone.
• Ms Overall, Ms Turvey and Ms Johnson for judging.
• Mrs Brunetto for being our Super Starter.
• Ms Neubecker for being an awesome marshal.
• P and C for organising our tuckshop for the day.
• All the parents/carers/relatives/friends who came to support our students.

 Kind regards,

Book Week Celebrations

Thank you to the Gale family for contributing to our Book Week display, the students are enjoying the many adventure artefacts!

Commencing week 3, students will be engaging with the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) short-listed stories.

 Celebrations will centre around 3 categories:

• Picture Book of the Year
• Book of the Year: Early Childhood
• Book of the Year: Young Readers.

Students are will be able to 'judge' who they think will win the coveted Book of the Year Awards.

Our writing and colouring/drawing competitions will begin week 4.

The annual Dress Up as your Favourite Book Character Parade will be held at the end week 6, Friday 22nd August, 9am at the Canopy.  

 

Please go to the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) website for the complete list of nominees.

Visiting the Library at Lunchtime

To ensure everyone has an opportunity to visit the Library, each day is designated to a different group. Please note that returning and borrowing are available every day at first and/or second break. Alternative arrangements to suit the needs of our students are always available through communication with myself and their teacher. 

‘Fairy tales are more than true

not because they tell us that dragons exist,

but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten!

-Neil Gaiman, Author-

Yours in literary adventures,

Amanda Glaspy
Library Officer

We would like to advise, due to family reasons Mel will be stepping back from the convenor role. We are pleased to advise that she will still be with us on a casual basis.  

Please welcome our new Tuckshop Convenor, Gabby Ingram. Gabby has recently moved to Cairns from Groote Island where she worked for Community Development Program in the very busy kitchen, organising meals for 100's of community members daily.  Gabby loves a joke and is looking forward to working with our amazing tuckshop team. 

Please contact the tuckshop or pop in and say hi. 

Gabby, Mel, Gale, Tomo and Kat

Tuckshop

Freshwater State School P&C Association 

tuckshop@freshwaterpandc.com.au

4058 9252