Happy World Teacher’s Day

On Friday 28^th October, we celebrate “World Teacher’s Day”. This is the perfect opportunity to thank the amazing teaching staff we have here at Gympie Special School, who make a difference every day for our students. Happy World Teacher’s day to our staff and thank you for the commitment, enthusiasm and support you provide each and every day.

Day for Daniel

Today we also raised safety awareness for our students by acknowledging Day for Daniel by wearing red to school. Day for Daniel is Australia’s largest child safety education and awareness day. This national day of action advocates for safer communities for children and empowering them to Recognise, React and Report when they feel unsafe. In 2022, the theme for the day is brave conversations. We believe Day for Daniel is the perfect opportunity to start conversations around personal safety.

Review Recommendations

Thank you so much to all of the families who contributed to our recent School Review. We received some very affirming results and are now busily working on our next 4-year strategic plan. Early next year we will share our 2023 annual improvement plan with our school community.

The Executive Summary will be posted onto our website next week and I will also do a Facebook post. The key recommendations, stated below, will be our school focus for planning over the next 4 years.

Key improvement strategies

• Collaboratively develop the whole-school approach to pedagogy and build teacher capability in effectively identifying and implementing the agreed pedagogical practices that meet the needs of students and the curriculum.
• Develop and document the whole-school approach to reading, to build clarity and consistency in teaching practice.
• Strengthen the distributed model of instructional leadership, to systematically build depth of, and consistency in, the agreed practices across the school.
• Systematically implement the agreed collegial engagement framework that details a range of options available to staff to receive feedback and strengthen teaching practice across the school.
• Strengthen and embed the staff and student wellbeing framework.

Sporting News

Congratulations to our 3 senior school students who recently competed in Tasmania at the Special Olympics. Georgia, Jasmine and Cody all travelled to Tasmania last week to compete. We are very proud of these 3 students!

We also had several primary students compete at the Queensland Schools Primary Track and Field competition as members of the Wide Bay Team. Well done to Shyanne, Mason and William. We recently celebrated their success at our weekly Parade.