Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome everyone to our second newsletter for this term. Seeing our students so well settled after the disruption caused by COVID-19 earlier this year has been wonderful. As I move across the school visiting classrooms, talking with students during break times and at Clyde’s Corner in the mornings and afternoons I have been impressed with the levels of engagement and effort our students are demonstrating.

Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) is a key element of our approach to improving student behaviour, engagement and connection and it is wonderful to see so many of our students receiving multiple ‘Ardy’ Tickets each week for doing the right things and following our 3 school expectations. 

Student Code of Conduct

We will shortly begin work on our new Student Code of Conduct. The Student Code of Conduct replaces the:

• Responsible Behaviour Plan for Students
• Statement of Expectations
• Code of School Behaviour

The Student Code of Conduct clearly sets out expectations about staff responsibilities to support students to understand and meet discipline expectations of the school, and guidance on the application, where required, of disciplinary consequences. This document will be available on each school's website early next year and provided to newly enrolled students and their parents. Until a school finalises their Student Code of Conduct, the existing Responsible Behaviour Plan for Students continues to apply

Queensland state schools have the full 2020 school year to develop and consult with their community on the new Student Code of Conduct. We will asking for families to provide feedback to us during the consultation period which we aim to commence early next term.

Teacher Aide Appreciation Week

During the Week of Monday 31^st August to Friday 4^th September of August we will be celebrating and thanking the teacher aides who work hand in hand with us to provide the best educational outcomes for our students. Our teacher aides are valuable members of our staff who support the work of our teachers across all settings in our school. We are very fortunate to have experienced, supportive aides in our school who often go beyond their job description. Please join us in celebrating the wonderful work of our Teacher Aides during this time.

New Playground

It is very exciting to announce that plans are underway to revitalise our current playground with an expansion and new equipment. We have been organising quotes and site meetings and hope to shortly announce who has won the contract and when construction might commence. The aim is to ensure the playground is more inclusive and provides a range of activities to cater for all of all students. As soon as the contract has been won we will be able to share the plans!

P&C News

We held our P&C meeting last Tuesday night. I would like to introduce your P&C executive:

President: Juanita Sempowicz

Vice President: Ange George

Treasurer: Krystal Mitchell

Secretary: Cann Taylor

I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our previous P&C executive and members for their hard work and commitment to our school. It is through their efforts that we are able to provide extras for our students and ensure collaboration between families and school. If you have any suggestions or would like to contact the P&C or attend one of our meetings (3^rd Tuesday of the Month at 6pm) please do not hesitate to contact us.

Secondary School Shirts for 2021

The P&C has decided to introduce a Secondary School shirt for 2021 for our High School Students in Years 7 to 12. Please see information further in this newsletter regarding this initiative.

Upcoming events:

• Every Monday @ 2pm Parade. Parents are welcome (for Covid-19 social distancing purposes please ring office to advise numbers) 
• Friday 4^th September is a Student Free Day.
• Thursday 10^th September - Chappy Morning Tea.
• Tuesday 15^th September @ 6pm P&C Meeting
• Friday 18^th September is ‘Talk like a Pirate” Day - please come to school dressed as a pirate. No swords or guns please.

Best wishes always!

Sarah

Greetings parents and caregivers,

Welcome to the end of Week 6 at Gympie Special School, we are now more than half way through our school term and it has been really nice to see our students settled and learning  

Week 6 ARDY Prize winners

Our students have been earning Ardy tickets for following our school rules of being safe, being a learner and being respectful.  All of the tickets are then put into a box for each sector.  Four lucky students have their names drawn out each week and then get to choose a prize.

A BIG congratulations to students who received prizes for great behaviour this week: including being respectful, being safe and being a learner.

High School Shirts - expressions of interest

Traditionally our school has had the same uniform for all students from Prep through to Year 12. Our P&C have decided to offer a High School uniform shirt for students in Years 7 to 12.  This shirt will look different to the Primary one and is designed to acknowledge our students moving into the next phase of their schooling. 

An expression of interest will go out to all families who have students enrolled in our High School classes.  The expression of interest is designed to help our P&C gauge the level of interest and also help to predict how many shirts will need to be purchased for the start of 2021. 

Make sure you look out for the expression of interest and return it to the school via email or via a note as soon as possible. Please note that Year 12 students in will have the option of personalising their shirts with a name of their choosing and the year. 

A massive shout out to Bunnings Gympie who donated a $100 gift voucher and 3 planting trolleys to our gardening program.  The gift voucher was used to purchase a worm farm.

Miss Trista teaches our senior secondary gardening program and the students are learning contextualised mathematics through recording and tracking the rain gauge and calculating money through the production and sale of “worm wee”.  The students are very proud of their gardens and the bumper crop of vegetables they are producing.

Kind Regards,

Rachael Pelling

Deputy Principal

HOC NEWS

When I arrived at the beginning of this year one of the first things I noted is that we desperately needed to increase our range of high interest reading books, and Big Books that could be shared as a whole class. I have been having so much fun researching and buying new books for our library. Our first shipment of readers have arrived and are ready for covering and sharing in our classrooms. Our library will also undergo a slight make over before the end of the year (hopefully end of term) as we will be moving all of our levelled books into the main library for students to access as part of their self-selected reading choices. Self-selected reading forms one of the four parts of a balanced literacy approach to the teaching and learning of literacy skills. Self-selected reading ensures our students choose books to explore that interest them and is a great way for them to practice the reading strategies and skills that are taught in shared and guided reading with their teachers. To offer access to books to all of our students we also have access to electronic books and texts via iPads, laptops, electronic whiteboards and switches. If you have time to visit our library, or support us by covering books, feel free to drop in anytime.

Kindest regards

Shellie

Good Day Families,

I have been told that some families have not yet registered their child for NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme).  

Some say it is just too confusing and they don’t know where to start.  

If that is you, then we have someone who can help. 

Please let me know if you would like some assistance to complete the registration.

The Arts.

The Music Units in the Arts are progressing well.  All classes are studying the topic of Musical characters. We are investigating how music can reflect a character’s personality. Students have been responding enthusiastically to the lessons and it has been rewarding to see the progress of many students. They are learning about the elements of music and have been developing skills through their knowledge and practice. All students have been learning to read, write, copy and create music using symbols. We have been using repetition and memorisation to make sound combinations.  In the next half of term students will be progressing from skill building and improvising with percussion instruments to creating a musical sequence for a movie or television character of their choice.

The photos below show our student learning rhythm with fruit and vegetable beats, playing synchronised drumming and working hard and having fun play with the Djembe drums.

Regards Chris (The Arts)

This week in Digital Technology we have explored the difference between Hardware and Software.  Hardware are the parts of digital devices that you can see or touch  like keyboards or screens. Software is the information inside those digital devices including music, videos and photos, apps and games.  We watched two videos (software) on the big screen (hardware) then the students had to construct a hardware device that would store some software or need software to run it.

Students constructed robots and vehicles that relied on software to operate. 

Until next time Andrew

HASS - Geography

It has been a very busy first 5 weeks of term. All classes are well and truly into their Geography studies. In these times of healing and recognition, students are accessing an Indigenous aspect to their learning. All sectors are looking at Dreaming stories or concepts of Country and Place. This is important learning for all Australians. Early Years are reading stories and completing activities about what it is like to learn in a remote place and what those classrooms look like. Primary students are investigating the special places in our school and what makes a place special from the perspective of the Indigenous author’s stories we are reading. Junior Secondary classes are investigating this too, including what it may mean to have a connection to Country and Place. The seniors are looking at factors influencing the liveability of places and why people may choose to live in a remote area.

Miss A

Hello from the Early Years.

Over the last few weeks in Maths, Early Years have worked very hard learning all about shapes. There are many shapes in the school environment and we enjoy going on shape hunts and taking photos of the shapes we find. We play games finding shapes which match objects in the classroom and play Shape Bingo. We also sing songs and watch video clips about shapes.

We are using choice boards in HPE and music and movement. We takes turns to choose the elements to build our obstacle course in the gym. We like the way it turns out differently every time. During music/movement sessions, we choose our favourite songs from the choice board. We know most of the words and really enjoy doing the movements to them. Friendships have developed amongst the three classes and we have great fun being altogether during these times.

We continue to work hard during English doing shared reading, independent writing and predictable chart writing.  Lately we have read some Fairy Tales and stories about feelings.

Every day we practise the school rules, learning how to be safe, how to be a learner and how to be respectful. The many smiley faces we earn and the awards on parade show how hard we are trying.

We are having a great term!

Liz, Tricia, Janet, Megan, Katrina, Jas, Lynne, Michelle and Kym.

Who would have thought we are half way through Term 3 already! Some of the boys continue to complete their morning English activities, embedding their knowledge of the alphabet by sorting upper and lower case fonts of their letters of the week. Alternately, others are looking and listening to the letter sounds and sorting pictures that match the sounds of their letters. We read our Book of the Week every day and comment on it using ALS boards. The boys discuss the feelings and emotions displayed by the main characters and are learning to sequence the beginning, middle and end of each story. They describe their favourite or familiar events and their likes or dislikes about a character or book.

In maths, the boys are participating in number and counting activities, and consolidating and extending their knowledge of shapes. Others are distributing objects with one to one correspondence through matching, for example, placing one object in each bowl for three bowls. In science, we have been digging in the garden looking for small creatures, initially predicting what we will find, if we found it and where in the school grounds we found it. This week we welcomed some mealworms into the classroom for us to observe and study.

Warm regards,

Jan, Libby, Chrissie, Miss A, Chris, Andrew, Bree and all the boys.

WOW, half way through the term already. Time flies when you are having fun.

Erin and Jenny

Well, the weeks are going too fast for me. Already we are halfway through term 3. Our literacy unit continues with many texts about animals. We have begun to analyse the characters in the book of the week. The students are using ALS boards and PODD to respond to questions about the animals in the texts. Guluu, in the text ‘Mad Magpie’ had to learn from his elders that losing his temper did not work and that singing and ignoring was a better way to deal with being tormented. As a whole class we explored the magpie’s character and came up with many  words to describe him.

In Science, we have explored what livings things need to survive and have been investigating the lifecycles of Australian animals. We have found that baby bent wing bats are called pups and live in colonies.

JS1 students have continued to explore shape and have located the shapes in real life settings including both in and out of the classroom. All the students are continuing to work on their individual number goals, and we are seeing growth all the time.

We have increased our ball skills (teacher included) during first break in the quad by playing badminton, handball and volleyball with JS2. Our students often choose the day before what they would like to play the following day by voting. All students are accepting of majority rules to determine the following day’s play.

In addition, we have written a book a book about moving around the school safely. The photo in the lift is my favourite and also gave Sarah, Shellie and Rachael, a good chuckle!

Keep staying safe,

Karen, Bree, Debbie and Deb. 

The warmer weather is bringing with it the opportunity to spend more time outdoors and we are finding new ways to increase our physical activity as well. A change from taking the lift in the morning, to using the ramp, gives us time to practice staying in a group while we enjoy the fresh air and get our bodies moving. We are also breaking up the morning session with a 10 minute ball game in the quad area which is turning out to be a great motivator for the class to get their work finished in time to go outside for a few minutes of structured team building play. Our book of the week has been Eyes in the Dark to tie in to the theme of native Australian animals and their lifecycles. It has been fun to try to guess which nocturnal animal belongs to the eye we see first before we turn the page!

Until next time, Miss Jodie, Jordan and Emma

Sue, Grace & Darren

JS4 have been getting into shapes in a big way. We have photographed 2D shapes in our school environment and made many posters about various shapes, qualities of shapes and symmetry. We play a guessing game “Name That Shape” and are becoming experts at describing 2D shapes.

This week we began looking at 3D. We have discovered lots of templates on google and are in the process of creating our 3D objects display. It is very fiddly and sometimes difficult to create the 3D objects.

At playtime the Junior Secondary students have been enjoying the new soccer goals that have been placed on the oval. It’s fantastic watching the older students mentoring the younger students with their ball skills. Most of all, it is great to see everyone supporting one another and celebrating when a goal is kicked. We have included some action shots below of us playing soccer during play time.

Cann and Anne-Maree

The term is quickly disappearing. We have been so busy working in our class that Monday starts the week and in no time at all we are greeting Friday.

SOME GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS IN SENIOR SECONDARY

We are reading loads of books.

Five students scored 15 out 15 for their spelling test this week.

During PE students demonstrated amazing team work and scored goals from all over the field.

Students did brilliant job on their sections for our class road safety poster.

Our students are stars at drawing almost perfect 2D shapes and 3D objects.

The PE class are using great team skills in game like situations. They are following the rules and using great strategies to work together to score.

In English we are becoming more and more familiar with nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Students have been learning lots of new words and are using them in their daily writing. The last few weeks we have been doing lots of work on opinions and supporting their personal opinions with reasons. During our reading each day, most of the students have been choosing comprehension cards. These are short texts about all sorts of things followed by questions related to the text. They are doing an excellent job in this area.

At the moment, maths is focussed on building understanding of multiplication. We are learning through completing arrays and groups. The students are also applying these to real life situations. 

Students in my Road Safety class have been exploring statistics related to different accidents. They are part way through putting together some books for the younger students about pedestrian and scooter road safety. In the next few weeks we will begin to learn the rules related to gaining a learner’s permit.

Thanks for your support. The students are working very hard at their learning. 

Alison, Andrea, Tony, Judith, Jas and Cherie