Greetings Gympie Special School Community,

Term 3 is rapidly progressing. One of my favourite things is hearing and seeing the terrific progress many of our students are making with their learning. At the end of last semester, we had many students move up a curriculum level. What a fantastic thing to celebrate!

We are really seeing some solid progress with communication and literacy skills across the school as students and teachers engage with our literacy program, working on phonics, word knowledge and decoding. In the very near future, we are expecting our new school PODDs to be delivered for use in every classroom.

This week, we celebrate Speech Pathology Week. This year’s theme is “Communicating for life.” Communication is a basic human right and Speech Pathology Week helps to raise awareness of communication disability and the role of speech pathologists. 

Improving the communication ability of all of our students continues to be a major focus of our school and we could not do this without the support of our Speech Language Pathologists, Claire and Simone. With our Communication Mentor, Cassie, they support our drive towards improving our practice and making a difference in the lives of our students by improving their communication skills.

We warmly welcomed Kate Cloete, our new Head of Department -Curriculum on Monday. Kate has joined our team having worked most recently at Nambour Special School. Kate met with our previous HOD-C Shellie, for a great handover day yesterday. Kate is excited by the teaching and learning happening here at our school – see her introduction later in this newsletter. 

This week from Wednesday to Friday, we have four staff members attending a major conference in Brisbane. The QASEL conference is an annual Special Education conference for Special Education Leaders. Our 4 Sector Leaders will be attending this year for the first time and we are excited to hear all about the great professional development they experience over these very full 3 days.

I am away on personal leave, for the next 5 days from Wednesday and will return to school on Wednesday next week. Phil Whatt, our Deputy Principal will be Acting Principal while I am away. 

As you would be aware from my correspondence over the past week, one of our Year 12 students Tom, sadly passed away last week. We thank you for your support during this difficult time and send our thoughts and well wishes to Tom’s family and friends.  

Lastly, just a reminder that on Friday 1^st of September, Gympie Special School is closed for the state wide Student Free Day.

Warm regards,

Sarah