21 March 2025

From The Principal

Empowering Student Voices

Our newly elected school captains are already making a difference! Committed to ensuring student voices are heard in decision-making, they have hit the ground running by gathering student feedback and presenting ideas to the leadership team. Their first initiative focuses on Free Dress – World Happiness Day. This event is sure to put a smile one everyone’s face!

A New Chapter: Our Library & Senior Student Area

Exciting news for all students! Our brand-new library is moving along well, ready to provide a modern and comfortable space for reading, studying, and collaboration. With quiet zones, planned interactive learning areas, and a new and evolving collection of books, it should be easier to get lost in a great story or focus on your studies. The library will also be more tech-ready to support our digital readers. All students now have access to SORA – The Queensland Department of Education’s online digital library. I’m hearing they are already using it in their classrooms! What a good way to prepare for the PREMIER’S READING CHALLENGE!

For our senior students, we are thrilled to introduce the new senior student area, complete with a dedicated eating space. Designed to offer a relaxing environment for Year 11 and 12 students, this area provides a perfect balance between study and downtime. We hope this space fosters a sense of community while supporting academic success.

The Power of Reading

Reading is at the heart of learning, and we encourage all students to make the most of the new library facilities. Whether you’re diving into an exciting novel, researching for an assignment, or just taking a break with a good book, reading helps improve vocabulary, comprehension, and critical thinking skills. Let’s make 2025 the year of great reading habits!

Get Involved!

With the new term underway, there are plenty of opportunities for students to get involved in clubs, sports, and leadership initiatives. If you have ideas on how to improve student life at St George SHS, make sure to reach out to your student leaders or school staff. Your voice matters, and together, we achieve!

Here’s to a fantastic year ahead!

Thomas J McKenna

Past Student Story

No past student story this week.  If you know of a past student who would be willing to write their story, please contact Nichole Taylor ntayl253@eq.edu.au

From HOD HPE & Strive

HPE Assessment Time

As we come to the conclusion of the term, students are preparing for their assessment items to be completed. HPE teachers sent out welcome emails at the beginning of the term. The purpose of these emails was to help inform parents of the unit topic, assessment date, assessment type and expectations. In Health, students complete a wide range of assessment types from exams, projects and ongoing research tasks. In PE, students are asked to perform movement skills and are video recorded as a means of collecting evidence of their performance. This typically occurs during Weeks 3, 6 and 9 to show student progress or to capture multiple skills. Students are required to come prepared for their practical lessons with appropriate shoes, a hat and water bottle. If students are unwell or unable to participate due to an injury, we ask that parents phone the school or email their students classroom teacher so that an alternative assessment date can be selected.

STRIVE update

Students across all year levels have continued to engage with their buddies, individual programs or with guest speakers including Claudia Todd, School Based Youth Health Nurse. The Year 9 Love Bites Program and Year 10 Rock and Water program has been successful in engaging students with the topics of resilience and respectful relationships. Next term students will rotate through different programs to ensure that each student has the opportunity to engage with each topic.

District + Regional Sport

Many sports have already taken place in Term 1 with a number of district and regional teams going away to access the school sport program. Stay up to date by following the Balonne District School Sport Noticeboard on Facebook.

Lions Youth of the Year

Lions Youth of the Year has run for more than 50 years in Australia. It provides Australian senior school students a forum to gain experience and confidence.

Qualities sought are leadership, personality, sportsmanship, public speaking, and good citizenship.

St George Lions Di Parsons and Digby Whyte produced the 2-stage event and partnered with St George Toastmasters, Win Salmon (Chair), Zenda Kellock, and Wendy Armstrong who provided the judging panel. Robert Baxter, St George Lions Vice President, was MC.

This year’s student entrants were: Harry Coltzau, Sigrid McCosker, Laura Scriven, Josie Small and Lillian Stenhouse. All were very strong entrants mentored by St George SHS Head of English and Humanities Jess Murray. 

 Assessment was done in two stages:

1. An interview by the judges on Sunday 2 March on initiatives taken at school, activities outside school, academic, general knowledge, and presentation; and
2. Two 2-minute impromptu questions, a prepared 5-minute speech, and presentation at a dinner event on Friday 7 March 2025.

The evening at the St George Cultural Centre had a cozy attendance of 27 people, chiefly family and friends, teachers, including Donna Potter Deputy Principal and Dee Harris, Toastmasters and Lions, supporting the students.

The overall winner was Sigrid McCosker from Year 10 who was the SGSHS Year 9 Dux and is highly involved in school and community activities. Sigrid’s speech was “Tattoos in Professional Workplaces”, for which she advocated in favour. Sigrid went on to represent St George in the Lions Youth of the Year regional finals in Stanthorpe on 16 March 2025.

The winner of the public speaking on the night was Laura Scriven from Year 12, who impressively handled the impromptu questions and spoke on “Misrepresentation of Women in the Media”.

 All St George Lions Youth of the Year participants are eligible to apply on graduation for the (Lions) St George Recycling Continuing Education Grant to assist them with gaining a qualification of at least 3-years study. Arabelle (Belle) Sing was announced as the 2025 winner. The grant of $5,000 spread over three years, will support Belle’s Bachelor of Nursing (USQ Toowoomba) studies.

Jess Murray

Snap look at the Year 12s for 2025

Prev

Showing images 1 - 8 of 28

Next

Sewing Club

Sewing group is enjoying learning how to do hand sewing.

Year 11 Chemistry

When you mix solutions of potassium hydroxide and calcium chloride, you get a white suspension of calcium hydroxide. Yesterday in Chemistry, the Year 11 students did that with several different volumes of 1 Molar solutions. The suspension will eventually settle to form a white precipitate at the bottom of the test tube and the height of the precipitate indicates how much calcium hydroxide formed.  To make this happen faster, they used the hand centrifuge which spins pairs of test tubes at high speed, forcing the solid calcium chloride to the ends of the test tubes (see photo).  Powered centrifuges are used to separate red blood cells & plasma from blood!

Year 11 Hospitality

Year 12 Hospitality students spent the day with 165 local women at Care Balonne's International Women's Day Luncheon. They worked under celebrity chef Matt Golinski, ex-local chef Sam Todd & local chef Renae. Students served entree share plates, alternate drop lamb and chicken mains and panna cotta and pavlova desserts. Their eyes were opened to some interesting ingredients and ways to plate food professionally in large quantities.

Year 9 Manual Arts

The 9A Manual Arts class tested out their PVC handline projects down at the Balonne river! Well done Ryder for catching the only fish of the day

Sport

Congratulations to the following students:-

Balonne Rugby League (11-12) – Jacob Kings, Kai’Koby Weatherall, Levi Riley, Harry Saal. 

P&C News

AWE camp is fast approaching and not only is it the last week of this term, it is also Week 2 of Term 2.  We are asking for home bake to help with catering for students who attend AWE.  Can be homemade or bought.  Please drop in to the front office. 

Ordering through Flexischools has increased and making the running of the tuckshop a lot smoother.  Thank you to those who are supporting the tuckshop as with your support we can hopefully continue running the tuckshop five days a week.  Remembering this was a trial for Term 1 to see if it was financially viable.

Unfortunately we were unable to proceed with the P&C meeting in March as the minimum quorum was not met.  The next P&C meeting will be Tuesday 13 May @ 5.15pm.  We hope to see you there!  Also we are still without a permanent Secretary and Media position.  If you are interested in either of these positions please reach out to the P&C.  Thank you to Amanda Stenhouse for continuing to cover the Secretary position in the meantime.

Community Notices