Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the first school newsletter for term 3, 2020. It was wonderful to return to school after the Winter Holidays with all of our students back at school following the disruption of Covid-19 during Terms 1 and 2.  Welcome to our new families whose children have commenced this term. From next Monday, we have 68 students enrolled at our fantastic school. 

It has been pleasing to see how our students have settled back into routine, working hard with their learning and behaviour. Our Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) Team has worked hard with staff to target behavior outside of the classroom over the past few weeks, both before and since the holidays, resulting in a clear reduction of reported behaviours. Well done to our students and staff!

Thank you to all parents who have been so supportive of the staffing changes we have had to make due to our increased enrolments. Everyone would have received an information letter yesterday detailing the classes and staff across our school effective next Monday 27^th July.

The formation of our fourth Junior Secondary class ensures that the number of students in each class remains small and assists with the delivery of quality, individualised teaching and learning for your child. All Junior Secondary parents have received information over the past week regarding these changes detailing if their child is moving rooms or changing teachers or aides. Mr Andrew Stokes has moved from Primary 1 to become our Technologies teacher for the rest of this year as Ms Jodie Sargeant commences full time in Junior Secondary.  Miss Libby Bowness and Jan MacAlister are now the Primary 1 class teachers.

Report Cards for Semester 1, 2020 are currently being completed by our teachers and your child’s report card will be emailed to you on Friday 31 July. Please contact our office if you would like a printed copy of your child’s report card. Your child’s teacher will be contacting you shortly to discuss the Semester 2 ICP goals for your child.

Part of our Annual Implementation Plan is to build staff capacity, in line with the North Coast Region Operational Plan. Our staff have engaged in an additional full day planning day with our Head of Department- Curriculum, Shellie Pursey, over the past 2 weeks. These days support our staff to deepen their knowledge of the Australian Curriculum, gain a clear understanding of the targeted achievement standards for the curriculum levels within their classes, develop quality assessment tasks and develop engaging learning sequences, differentiated for individual students within their classrooms. We will continue to work with our dedicated staff to increase their capabilities to ensure we have ongoing development of quality teachers at our school.

We recently purchased 25 computers for our classrooms! We also purchased 2 computer charging trolleys to ensure the laptops are charged and ready for classroom use at all times. These will be a valuable resource for our students’ learning. Staff and students are busily anticipating using the new computers in their learning experiences.

If any of our families have not yet engaged in NDIS or require some support with NDIS please give Carolyn Weldon a call. Carolyn is the Team Leader for our area and her contact details are below:

Carolyn Weldon   Team Leader (A)

Community Development Team, NDIS LAC PITC Program

Carers Queensland

Level 2, 43 Plaza Road, Maroochydore QLD 4558

National Disability Insurance Scheme Partner delivering Local Area Coordination services

P 07 5409 3300  E carolyn.weldon@ndis.gov.au

Parents are welcome to join us at Parade from Week 4. Please advise our office if you would like to attend as we can only comfortably have about 5 adults due to Covid-19 safe distancing practices.    

Best wishes always!

Sarah

Greetings parents and caregivers,

Work Experience

Work experience placements assist our students in their transition from school to post-school opportunities and aim to provide them with new knowledge and skills, improve self-confidence and provide a valuable link between school and our local community. 

Some of our Year 11 and 12 students recently began their work experience and we have been very proud of the way our students have conducted themselves. They have been learning new skills, working hard and actively contributing during their respective placements.  Thanks to Landcare, RSPCA and Little Haven for supporting our students in this venture.

Sporting Schools                            

The AIS Sporting Schools offer the opportunity for schools to apply for grant money and we have been successful in our application for a $650 grant.  We have purchased a swirl parachute, parachute play is an enjoyable way for children to develop motor coordination, team play and collaborative decision making skills. We have also purchased two good quality portable soccer goals for our students and cannot wait until they arrive!

Kind Regards,

Rachael Pelling

Deputy Principal

HOC NEWS

What a strange beginning to a new semester, writing reports whilst planning for a new term of work has been a very different feeling for our teachers. I am so proud that everyone is ‘nailing it’. Our new units are based around the context of animal characters in books and how they change and grow in their lifecycles. I have been purchasing resources to support the teaching and learning of shapes in Mathematics and a variety of books about animals and their lifecycles, and stories with animal characters. I am looking forward to watching these resources being explored by our wonderful students.

I am also very happy to announce we will have a large friendly visitor to our school this Tuesday the 28^th of July at 10 am. The Giant Kookaburra was built during isolation by and Australian Sculptor Dr Farvadin Daliri, and he is travelling around Queensland with the goal of spreading laughter and optimism. Families are invited to participate with this whole-school event.

Over the past two weeks I have been forward planning with teachers our Mathematics, HPE and Science units of work. I really enjoy these professional learning days with our teachers, not only because we discuss and plan for our students learning, but also because I get to hear all of the wonderful progress that is happening. My favourite story has been from a Primary classroom, using speech output devices with the whole class to include everyone in the book of the week. A message is recorded and the switch is touched by a non-verbal student to say ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo’ with the whole class. There have been some interesting techniques used to hear every persons voice in the classroom, much laughter has been had in making these recordings. A happy experience for all involved.

Kindest regards

Shellie

As the Arts is such a practical subject, it was great to have our students return to school after week five. We certainly packed a lot of learning into the rest of term 2. The older students revisited and developed the skills they had learnt from previous Drama Units. Senior students explored different types of contemporary theatre. For their drama performances they learnt about Mime and practised using some of the classic techniques. Junior Secondary classes studied Melodrama. It was not difficult for the students to get the idea of overacting in a melodrama. We had quite a few ‘Drama Queens’ that caused some hilarious moments in our lessons. The Primary classes learnt about Country and Place. Their final drama performance was a role play telling a dreaming story about the black cockatoo. Shadows and puppetry was the theme for the early years and they responded well to making shadows with their bodies and hands and developing to use shadow puppets in a little puppet theatre. One of my favourite moments was when one of our students came into the classroom and said, ‘Oh, here we are in Shadowland!’

The following photos are of JS2 performing their Melodrama. The play was called ‘My Hero’. It involved a hero, a villain, his henchman, and the damsel in distress. The hero was a retired pirate living on a farm. The hero had to fight the villain and rescue the damsel who had been tied onto the railway tracks. During the JS2 rehearsals the villain’s character developed into a wolf.  JS1 rehearsed and performed a similar storyline.

The next photo shows P3 playing percussion instruments.

Dressing up and performing was the fun part of the Drama unit, however, there was much work being done and many skills to learn before the final performances. The following photo is of JS3 who were learning to create a character and stay in role. In their final performance it was pleasing to see how much of the learning and practice they brought to the play to make it a success.

There was so much enthusiasm from the Primary students for their Drama lessons. They enjoyed learning skills about movement and using body levels to create interesting performances. We played games to develop these skills and also practiced and rehearsed sequences to include in the final performance of the black cockatoo story.

This term in the Arts we are studying Music. The theme for all classes is Musical Characters. In our first weeks of Music, students are learning to read basic musical notations to perform group percussion sequences.

We are looking forward to seeing some skilful musical performances by the end of this term

Regards, Chris, (The Arts)

Welcome back to all our students and families.  Semester 2 is shaping up to be a great learning time with all sectors changing from History to Geography. Early Years will be looking at special places, specifically their classroom. Primary students will investigate special places in the school and caring for these spaces. Junior Secondary embark on a unit of work about caring for special places in the local area. While Seniors will look at place and liveability. There are many geographic terms and language involved in these learning topics. Throughout these units, there will be a focus on Indigenous perspectives.

We have a very busy Term 3 planned for our students. We are completing our morning English routine as usual. The literature we are using for our books of the week will be related to Pets. We have chosen some interesting and fun texts and some old favourites like, “Who Sank the Boat?” which should engage our students interests. The boys have been participating in sensory activities as part of their English learning. These are fun activities such as making slime with corn flour, using shaving cream, mixing pudding mix to mold letters and condensed milk with food colouring to paint their Letters of the Week or Words of the Week. So when they come home with blue hands or flour on their clothes, you know what they’ve been up to!  

 In maths, we are continuing with number, particularly counting goals and looking at 2D shapes and 3D objects. In science, we are observing the features and behaviour of small animals, including insects and mini beasts! Initially, we are establishing the difference between living and non-living things and how we, as humans, grow and change. Our boys will observe the external features of small animals leading to a better understanding of how their features change as they grow, to help them survive in their habitats. Our HPE unit will have a health and physical component as usual. Our specialist teachers will again be taking HASS, Music and STEM. So our students will have many communication partners and interesting learning environments to encourage their learning.

Thanks for your support,

Libby, Andrew, Jan, Chrissie, Emma, Jordan, Miss A, Chris, Jodie and all the boys!

Welcome back. Term 3 is here already.  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. This past week we were excited to welcome a new student into our classroom. We have begun our exciting units of work for the semester. In English we are focusing on pets and animals. This week we read the book Kip the noisy rooster. We all had fun using talking buttons and switches to crow very loudly just like Kip. In science, we are investigating life cycles of different animals. Finally, in maths we are looking at shape, number and data collection.

Over the holidays, our “measure me” garden continued to grow. This week we harvested some radish and lettuce. Our largest radish measured a whopping 10 cm in circumference.

This term we hope to plant another garden for science to investigate what thing plants need to grow.

Miss Erin, Miss Jenny

Week 2 and we are in full swing. Our literacy unit is about pets and links beautifully to the Science Unit called ‘Fins, furs and feathers.’ Maths will include number, shape and data collecting.

In English, we have been reading text about a range of animals. The current book we are reading is about a bent-winged bat called, ‘Warambi.’ She gets separated from her colony and hides in an old house. This week, we have constructed a book about possible places Warambi can hide.

JS1 students will continue their individual number goals to increase their knowledge and have begun to explore 2D shapes. We are enjoying using rulers to draw more accurately. You may like to look for the shapes; square, triangle, rectangle and circle at home as they can be found in many places.

In Science, we will define animals and plants. We will also be investigating life cycles, especially of native local animals and plants.

We also welcome Ms Karen (teacher aide) to our room. Mr Tony has moved to another class. Already Ms Karen has become a ‘part of the furniture.’

Take care and stay safe,

Karen, Bree, Debbie and Deb. 

JS2 has come back from the holiday break with a new passion for learning. They are highly motivated to complete their written work using the neatest of handwriting, backed up by some amazing illustrations. Anne-Maree found a jigsaw puzzle of roads and it also included 3D buildings and people. We had a great time putting the puzzle together and playing on the jigsaw puzzle roads with matchbox cars. While we played we ensured the cars and pedestrians were obeying the road rules.

During first lunch we often play badminton or handball. This week we put up the badminton net and tried our hand at volley ball. It was a little more difficult than badminton with 2 out of 3 balls ending up on the roof. Volley ball is fun, however we think we will stick to badminton from now on.

JS2 Students, Anne-Maree, Cann and Jodie

We are up and running for Semester 2. In English we have been exploring the world of heroes and language we use when we are talking and writing about heroes. Week 1 there was lots of discussion about both fictitious heroes and real heroes. This week we have read a text about Helen Keller. We have explored the meaning of the following quotes from Helen Keller:

‘The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness but the attitude of seeing people towards them’

‘Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope and confidence’

‘life is a daring adventure or nothing’

Maths has been all about shapes, corners, symmetry, sides, angles, vertical, diagonal, horizontal, straight and curves.

We began our unit on team skills in PE. The students really enjoyed the AFL skills we practised this week. Their only disappointment is that they are not allowed to tackle.

Next week we start our Healthy Plate unit. This will be on Monday morning. Later in the term the students will prepare some healthy meal options. Please let us know any allergies we do not already know about. The meal will not be very healthy for anyone if we use ingredients that students are allergic to.

Vocational education will begin next Friday.

Students have set their own term goals this week. Ask them what they are and perhaps they could work towards them at home too.

We welcome new teacher assistants into our classroom. Jasmin, Tony, Andrea and Judith will share the load this semester.

Thanks for your ongoing support. Hopefully we will have a smooth semester with no invasion of Covid restrictions. You are very welcome to call and discuss any concerns you may have.

Alison Huth, Andrea, Tony, Judith and Jasmin