Hi everyone, my name is Jami, I am new to Gympie Special School and am absolutely loving it so far. The S1 class has had a positive start to 2024. We have welcomed some of our new year 7’s to Secondary and all class members have transitioned well into a new year.

In English, we have been investigating short stories, looking at characters, setting and plot. Our class’s favourite book thus far was “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” sung by The Topp Twins. Students wrote and illustrated their own verses to this well-known tune and sang their hearts out to the audio. Some of the creative and personalised verses they imagined include “We’ll be eating chips and gravy when she comes”, “She’ll be going to Sephora when she comes”, “He’ll be skidding around Gympie when he comes” and “He’ll be driving an orange monster truck when he comes”.

Students are growing their independence in Maths, working on numbers and patterns. They are expanding their toolbox of strategies, using concrete materials, number lines and drawings to represent their number knowledge and solve problems. We are focusing on a number of the day where students are representing their counting with physical activity such as jumps, star jumps, high 5’s, spins, and claps. One student even challenged himself and did 16 push ups for the number 16.

Some other highlights of the past weeks include swimming at the pool where S1 has been making a splash and kicking goals. Students have been extremely responsible, checking everybody’s seatbelts are on when travelling on the bus. Another special day included Valentine’s Day, students wrote some lovely cards to their family members and created some special flower craft pieces to gift to some of the people they love.

Kind Regards,

Miss Jami, Eli , Azalia-Hart, Ryan, Mason, Thomas and Locklan.