It has been wonderful to see our students engaged and involved in their class activities over the last couple of weeks.  Our Book Week celebrations were wonderful and it was lovely to see all of our students involved in the Book Fair and the best dressed door competition. 

Calendar 

Please continue to check the Term 4 Calendar your child brought home at the end of last term to ensure you are aware of all that is happening this term at our school. As the end of the school year rapidly approaches both school and home life always gets really busy with lots of fun activities and extra events planned. 

Please note that there are two updates to our Parent Calendar:

1. PBL end of year rewards day - Friday 4th of December

2. End of year Awards Night - Thursday 3rd of December

End of Year -  PBL Rewards Day

Students are invited to attend our Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) Rewards Day. PBL provides a framework for our school to support the wellbeing of every student.  Throughout this year students at Gympie Special School have been involved in lessons that teach expected behaviours. As a reward for being safe, being respectful and being a learner we are hosting a really fun rewards day for the students.  

 2020 Term 4 PBL Rewards Day

Friday 4^th December

Where: Gympie ARC (Aquatic Recreation Centre)

When: 9:00- 10:30 - Early Years and Primary sectors)

          10:30 – 12:00 - Junior and Senior Secondary)

1:45 – 2:30: Afternoon Activities (whole school)

Please remember that this year, due to COVID-19, the school term will end early on Wednesday 9^th December.

End of Year Awards Night

This year our annual awards night will be at  6pm on Thursday 3^rd December.  As the Queensland government has further relaxed COVID-19 restrictions today, information regarding the Awards Night venue and format will be sent home by the end of next week.  

We will be presenting awards and staff will be completing nominations for these shortly. This year and from now on we will present awards for both a Primary and Secondary winner for all categories. Our Categories include: Communication, Literacy, Numeracy, School Pride, the Shannon Shield ‘All Rounder”  as well as our 2 Quota trophies for Most Improved.

The teacher aides at Gympie Special School are highly valued professionals who are very focussed on the learning outcomes of our students.  We are very proud of Tony Quigley and Darren Stockmeier who were recently awarded additional education qualifications.  Tony recently achieved a Certificate 3 in Education Support and Darren achieved a Certificate 4 in Education Support.  A huge congratulations to them both!

Best wishes to everyone,

Sarah 

Principal 

Hi everyone,

Last Friday we celebrated our Splash and Dash fun run.  Our students could choose between 1500m, 500m and 200m events.  The event was fun, healthy and inclusive for everyone and it was really great to see all of our students thoroughly enjoying themselves.  The staff dash was also well received by our students who were able to use the super soakers to ‘help’ staff cool down as they crossed the finish line. 

A big congratulations to Maddie who wins the title of being our highest fundraiser!!  All students who raised money can now go to the online portal to claim their prizes.  All money raised goes to the Daniel Morcombe Foundation.

Claiming Prizes

Watch the video below on how Children who have participated in fundraising can order their prize. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Watch the video

For children to order their prize, they simply need to log in during the prize ordering window. Once they log in, a pop up will appear advising them to Order Prizes. This will then allow them to select their prize.

Children will have from your Money Due Back date until the Order Prizes By date to submit their prize order online, so check your profile page at https://www.schoolfundraising.com.au to make sure you are happy with these dates.

Kind regards,

Rachael

Who can believe we are already at the end of week 6? This term has ‘flown by’!

This is one of my favourite times of the year, not only is Christmas just around the corner (yippee), but I get to appreciate and share students growth and learning over the past year. I was delighted to be invited to a Junior Secondary classroom to watch student presentations about their favourite book as part of their assessment for English. The students presented confidently, and shared their personal connection to the characters and events in their chosen book. Learning expressive language skills to share our ideas, thoughts and feelings is such an important skill.  Keep up the hard work students; we are so proud of all of you!

Teachers are working hard at collecting and compiling evidence to support reporting decisions. Report cards will be emailed home (unless otherwise organised) by the end of term. If you would like to discuss reports, please do not hesitate to give the office a call and organise a time.  

Shellie

Students have been continuing to learn about dancing like animals in our Wildlife Watch Unit. Students have observed the ways animals move and using ideas about movement in dance sequences. The following are photos of a range of animal movements the students have been practicing.

Students are doing their ‘warm up’ dance.  It is called the Tony Chestnut song. Tony Chestnut has a set of friends that become the dance actions.  By the end of term some of us should be able to keep up with the quick dance!  Maybe some of our students might like to practice at home?  Here is the link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1aYOPINZxE

Regards, Chris (Arts Teacher)

Greetings from Learning World

Students in all sectors have been working hard at their class activities and assessment tasks. Early Years are moving onto stories, including both fiction and information texts about the weather and seasons. Middle Years are classifying weather and seasons and comparing different types of seasons. Junior Secondary are looking at Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander seasonal calendars and how they compare to whole of Australia weather patterns. The seniors have finished comparing living in a remote community with living in the local area and will next focus on the factors that connect us socially and in our community. A busy time for all.

Miss A

Early Years News

The Early Year’s children are working hard in all subject areas as the end of the semester draws nearer. In English the children are reviewing the alphabet and concentrating on the letters of their names. During guided reading, the emphasis is on looking at the characters in the stories and using Aided Language Displays or the PODD to describe them, by responding to a question.

In Maths the children are collecting data using tally marks. Some examples of the data collected includes their favourite food or toys, counting the class Ardy tickets and asking other classes what animal they like best.

In HPE the children each choose a piece of equipment for the obstacle course from a choice board. The obstacle course is always different and the children enjoy the variety. They’re practising their movement songs too and we are excited about showing our families how well we are doing.

The children are enjoying swimming every Tuesday and gaining confidence in the water.

It’s been great to start riding again on Wednesdays and the children have picked up where they left off all those months ago.

The days pass so quickly when we’re busy learning!

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

As summer approaches we are really enjoying our swimming lessons and our water confidence grows each time we enter the water! We are using pool noodles and kick boards to improve our kicking. We are learning to dive from the edge of the pool and duck dive for rings at the bottom of the pool.

In the mornings we continue to complete our English activities, including: describing a character’s feelings; identifying the beginning, middle and ending of texts; sequencing events and describing our favourite parts of the text. The most recent texts we have studied are, “Dusty the Sheepdog” and “My cat likes to hide in boxes.” After ‘signing in’ and writing how we feel, we complete our letter and sound activities and independent writing. We are always happy to get to our ‘Words of the Week’ because we type these on the computer!

In Science, we are now looking at bigger animals, not just mini-beasts! We are deciding what their basic needs are and describing their habitats. In Maths, we have been practising our counting, playing shape bingo and collecting data from other classes. In Dance this week, we pretended to be birds and animals and had lots of fun! We also enjoy our time with the other primary classes, especially when we do our HPE!

Yours in learning

Libby, Deb, Chrissie, Miss A, Chris, Andrew, Bree, Tanya and Katrina

Term 4 and the school break is already looming. Our class continues to work like a well-oiled machine with students helping to adjust our daily visual timetable. I am finding that our learners are just as familiar with our routines as our rules. It is lovely to work with the students especially when they remind me of our daily schedule.

Our literacy is thriving as we respond to texts about animals by elaborating on the characters and settings. The students have also become adept at sequencing our text using PODD symbols and images from the text. Our word bingo has become a daily ritual with students more often than not beating the teacher aide. Our tally marks on the whiteboard grow daily. The competition is still fierce!

Maths in term 4 has become a fun collection of data in a variety of ways. The learners are collecting data using tally marks, then transferring the information to graphs. Our number focus is still a daily focus often incorporated into other subject areas.

In Science, we have continued investigating animals. The students are using technology to choose animals to study. We also indulged in looking at cute animals, if you have time, google cute animals. Baby goats are probably my favourite. We have been labelling scientific diagrams and looked again at the needs of living things.

Playtime is still an active session of play with students continuing to form new friendships and learn some new skills while at play. This semester includes quoits, bowling and hitting balloon with a racket.

Sadly, the end of the year is near.

Keep staying safe,

Karen, Bree, Debbie, Dana, Kylie and Deb. 

Another productive few weeks have flown by as we enjoy many reminders of what makes our school so very special! Dressing up for Book Week celebrations is always exciting and we all agreed that our Decorated Door with the theme of Wombat Stew, is too good to take down, so it remains a daily reminder of the teamwork it took to create and the fun we had on the day. Trying our personal best to each participate in the FUNraising Splash and Dash was exhilarating, and our class was represented in each of the 3 distances. Cooling down with bubbles and super soakers was a bit of a surprise for some but everyone was a great sport and we are already looking forward to next time.

In Science, we are all exploring the similarities and differences between the life cycles of plants and animals and while some finish up multi-media presentations about a chosen animal, others are making choices about favourite ages and stages of the various life cycles. Most recently we have been investigating NAIDOC Week and Remembrance Day so our English lessons also include some reference to these important dates.  

We continue to explore data and learning how to interpret graphs in math and have been checking our class made calendar each morning to consolidate counting backwards and forwards. Each student has their own copy at home with an original artwork to hang in their room. We encourage families to join in with adding special dates and counting down to birthdays and other events to support classroom literacy and numeracy lessons. Our classroom calendar has raised lots of interesting morning chats and helps us prepare for upcoming activities.

Until next time, Miss Jodie and Miss Emma

School is just too much fun!!!  We have had many highlights since the last newsletter including Book Week and the Splash and Dash Fun Run.  We have been putting in our best effort across all learning areas and like to reflect on our day before we go home by choosing to write something in our diary about the day.  As well as practicing writing for a purpose it has been wonderful hearing from parents as to how this has been a great conversation starter when their child gets home from school.  We have been lucky to have Ms Kate and Ms Bree work in our room from time to time too. 

Ms Sue. Ms Grace, Mr Darren, Ms Kate, and Ms Bree.

JS4 have been working so very hard on their learning and on completing assessment tasks for all of their subject areas.

This week our final assessment item was an English presentation. The ladies from administration were given invitations to come and watch our presentations. We each chose one of our favourite books and made a PowerPoint presentation using pictures from our books. Then we wrote a script outlining what we would say during our presentation. We practiced and practiced using the iPad to film ourselves and self-critique. Our presentations became better and better.

Finally the day came when we gave our presentations. Some of us chose to perform our presentation 2 or 3 times as the admin ladies entered and left the room. Each student gave a fantastic presentation. They found their confidence and even impressed themselves.

Even though our assessments are now complete, Miss Cann still has a Pandora ’s Box of learning activities and programs to challenge us until the end of the school year.

Here are some pictures of us presenting our English assessments.

Anne-Maree and Cann

Our community safety lessons have now moved on from crossing the road in the controlled environment of Road Craft to practicing crossing Cootharaba road at the crossing. Students, with a few verbal reminders, are able to successfully enact the skills they have learnt in the classroom and from the Road Craft lessons while in a real word environment. These key elements are STOP, LOOK, LISTEN and THINK, we are also courteous pedestrians and ensure to thank drivers. Our graduating students have been busy making power point presentations which included gathering some baby photos for what we hope is a very memorable experience for all in attendance at the graduation. We wish all graduates the best in their future endeavours.