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Parade every Monday at 2pm
Swimming every Monday for Junior and Senior Secondary Classes
Week 8
- Fudge Orders will be delivered this week
Friday 19th March
- National Day of Action Against Bullying
- Final date for Book Club Orders to be returned
Week 9
Friday 26th March
- Epilepsy Purple Day (Gold Coin Donation)
Week 10
Tuesday 30th March
- School Photos
Friday 2nd April
- Public Holiday - Good Friday - Happy Easter
Welcome everyone to our second newsletter for this term.
It has been exciting to see our classes settled and working well on their learning over the past few weeks. The initial settling in period has passed and students and teachers are now focussed on current learning goals. Thank you to all of our families for working together to establish ICPs and meet together to discuss student goals for 2021.
Unfortunately, during recent weeks, a high number of students and staff members have become sick with various bugs and viruses that are circulating at the moment. While we want our students to be at school as much as possible, it is most important that anyone who is sick stays home until they are well again.
Please understand that we will have to call you if your child displays obvious signs of being sick such as coughs, runny nose, possible high temperature, etc. We have to do everything we can to keep everyone safe and well during these challenging times around health and wellbeing. The school has continued to provide additional cleaning time each day to disinfect high use areas and equipment to limit the risk of infection.
We were very fortunate last year to win a grant to improve our playground space. The new equipment and surrounding landscaping is proving very popular with all sectors of our school as students explore the new equipment and spaces. I’ve enjoying seeing classes using the new playground for PE lessons. The new outdoor classroom is terrific and I look forward to seeing classes using this space once the weather cools a little. We will apply for some shade grants as the year progresses to ensure we are SunSmart.
We have had several enrolment inquiries recently and we have a couple of new enrolments starting in the next week or so. At times, new enrolments can result in a slight reshuffle to ensure class numbers are as equitable as possible. We are currently monitoring this situation and strategically examining how best to meet the needs of our students as new students come into our school.
I am very pleased to inform you that the Queensland Government has approved ANZAC Day ceremonies in schools for this year. Unfortunately, our much-loved ANZAC Day ceremony was cancelled last year due to COVID-19. The ceremony will be held on Friday 23rd April 2021 at 11:45am. We will provide you with more information about this important event as we get closer to ANZAC Day.
Learning together,
Sarah
Principal
Hi Everyone,
It has been a very busy, wonderful few weeks at Gympie Special School. As I walk around the school it is lovely to see and hear our students engaged in their learning.
Student Code of Conduct
Gympie Special School is committed to providing a safe, respectful and disciplined learning environment for students and staff, where students have the opportunity to engage in quality learning experiences and acquire values supportive of their lifelong wellbeing.
The Gympie Special School Student Code of Conduct sets out the responsibilities and processes we use in our school to promote a productive, effective whole school approach to discipline. The Code of Conduct has been reviewed by the P&C and our teachers have also had input. Below is a link to the full Student Code of Conduct document on our schools website. Please phone or email the school if you have any feedback regarding the code.
Pink Stumps Day
We were very proud of our Gympie Special School community on Pink Stumps Day. It was wonderful to see all of our students and staff supporting the McGrath Foundation by wearing pink and having a game of cricket with their friends. The Endeavour Foundation also came along to participate.
Congratulations to Oscar Hamilton who won the Best Dressed Student award and a big thank you to Gympie State High School for letting us use their oval.
Kind regards,
Rachael
Communication is a key focus for our school in 2021. We will be explicitly teaching visual communication across our school through a focus Core Word of the week. Each week a new focus core word will be introduced. Each core word will be explicitly taught and modelled daily using a variety of multimodal resources such as the Core Word poster, PODD books, individual symbols, key sign and communication systems on the iPad. Our first 10 Core Words will be:
- Go
- Stop
- Look
- Where
- see
- want
- when
- In/out
- On/off
- Up/down
Another incentive will be the ‘I have something to say’ wrist band. How do you get someone’s attention if you can’t call out? How can you tell someone that you don’t just want to smile, or that you aren’t just stretching, but that you actually raising your hand on purpose because you want to start chatting? Whether you use a PODD, Proloquo2go on the iPad or another AAC system (communication device), the wristbands mean you can move or raise your arm to tell someone that you ‘have something to say’ and that you need your communication system.
As a parent, teacher, carer or therapist, you can teach initiating communication by wearing a band and modelling when you “have something to say” too. If your child comes home with a wrist band on you know why and how to support their communication.
Kind regards,
Shellie
Happy Week 7
Book Club brochures were sent home with students today and orders close on March 19th.
Some highlights from issue 2 include:
- Over 30 Titles in Book Club at $5 or under!
- Learning Express Titles: fun workbooks designed to improve literacy and numeracy skills
- Mother’s Day and Easter Titles
- Discounted Boxed Packs
- And much more…
Student Resource Scheme Payment Plans - If you would like to set up a weekly, monthly or quarterly payment plan please email the office on admin@gympiespecs.eq.edu.au
Parent/Carer Reminder: If you have changed address, phone number or email address please email admin@gympiespecs.eq.edu.au so we can update your information.
Kind Regards,
Jo & the friendly office staff
P & C News
Our P&C are planning to commence a tuckshop for students every Friday. To achieve this we require additional volunteers. If you have some time and would like to assist please call Juanita on 0418 770 114
Kind regards,
Juanita Sempowicz P&C President
Since the last newsletter posting all of the students have been busy learning about Aboriginal symbols and how they can be used in Art works. This has included choosing symbols to make our own stories, practising drawing the symbols on paper and then in sand with our finger or a stick. After that we recounted our individual stories while we drew the symbol in the sand.
Regards, Miss Grace (Arts Teacher)
HASS
Welcome to the second half of Term 1! Students have settled really well into their routines and transitions to specialist learning areas. Everyone is putting in a great effort and studying hard. Early Years are exploring celebrations that are familiar to them. This includes birthdays and what things make this celebration special to them. Primary students are looking at how the same celebration changes depending on the different times, cultures and places around the world where it originated. Secondary students are investigating the various wars in which Australian troops have taken part. They are exploring how, during times of war, things change for those fighting and those left behind. Senior Secondary students have commenced their electives and I am teaching them the subject entitled ‘Digital Citizenship’. This covers important topics, including, information privacy, what cyber bullying is, avoiding fraud and other areas of operating in the digital world. Students are finding this extremely interesting and topical.
Miss A
We have started horse riding in Early Years 2 and 3 and we have all enjoyed getting back onto our favourite horses again.
All the classes combine on Friday for outside learning. We have fun with science using movement and motion and the children experiment with slides and chutes for little cars and balls to roll down. They work scientifically testing and constructing from a variety of materials suited for each purpose. Concepts explored include spinning, rolling and bouncing. We also explore some mathematical concepts, including measurement and shapes into these lessons.
We had a literacy cultural experience exploring Miss Jennie’s Scottish heritage. We read, watched and listened to texts, and learnt some highland dancing. What a fantastic learning experience encompassing so many curriculum areas. These learning episodes provide communication opportunities in a wide variety of fun ways.
From Megan, Jas, Sonia, Jennie, Andrea, Lynne, Jordan, Jodi and all the Early Year’s children.
Jambo, Ni hao, Konnichiwa, Hello
In English Primary 1 have been learning about different cultures within Australia. We have learnt about the different ways people from other cultures and countries greet one another and say hello. In maths, we have been looking at patterns: colours, objects, and are beginning to make patterns using musical instruments. We record the different sounds on our switches and take turns to complete the musical pattern. In science we have been looking at push and pull forces and how these forces make toys move (thankyou to the toy library for letting us borrow three big boxes of push, pull, spin and light up toys to use in our science investigations). In HPE Primary 1 joined forces with Primary 2 and 3 to complete movement and ball skills.
From Primary 1, Miss Erin and Miss Jenny
We have had a busy last few weeks with students actively participating in class and school activities.
During our English lessons, students have been focusing on creating their own sentences from a picture or idea as well as continuing to develop their knowledge and understanding of Concepts of print, focusing on letter, words and sentences. The students also created posters focusing on all the differences people from all around the world have, Ms Shellie even popped in to see the students work.
During our Mathematics sessions, our focus has been looking at the different types of measurements. We have looked at how long things are, how heavy things are and how much different containers hold.
In other news, Pink Stumps day was a massive success. The students all played their hardest when they got their turns to bat and field and all the P2 students had the biggest smiles on their faces. A big thank you to Ms Rachael for organising the day.
That’s all from P2.
Kind regards,
Trista, Tricia and Bree
Whoo hoo, we are on fire! 2021 is shaping up to be another fun packed year of learning at Gympie Special School. This year our team is Darren, Dana and myself (Deb) as teacher, along with our seven students. Each day we begin our morning with a yarning circle and state positive character traits about each other.
In Literacy, we are focusing on all the different people that make up our community in Gympie, we have also used a text about different foods in Gympie and where they originated. Our writing has already been for a range of purposes from describing ourselves to what makes us scared. Our first book was about our favourite foods, something very dear to Darren and my hearts. In the future, we will be emailing pen pals at another special school, we will keep you posted.
In maths we are working on a range of independent tasks to see how much the students know and can achieve. Many of our students have told us their favourite subject is maths. Yes!
Our swimming continues to be a favoured event on Monday mornings. Each week I look forward to seeing our pod of dolphins trying their best in the water. We are quickly realising we have an exciting crew of learners this year,
JS1 students, Darren, Dana and Deb.
Over the last few weeks we have been learning about different cultures in our community through reading some interesting picture books and non-fiction texts. We read two books titled, “Flood,” one had words and the other one didn’t. So some of us worked together to create our own text for the pictures. The finished book was really great, showing that we understand a lot about context and vocabulary. We also learnt that we can be both imaginative and informative in our writing. We can also compare the texts for similarities and differences. Another enjoyable text was from Stories Online called, “The Hula Hoopin’ Queen.” We not only responded to this text by identifying our favourite character or event, but also looked at the spelling of ‘oo’ and ‘qu’ words, made smaller words from ‘chocolate’ and ‘celebration’ and actually had a small celebration of our learning!
We also used hula hoops to explore their movement at breaks and in science, by pushing and spinning them to see what these ‘forces’ would do. Over the last few weeks we have experimented with ‘pushing’ dominoes and creating a Newton’s Cradle to explore movement of objects. We have been investigating how cars speed up with the force of gravity, down a stunt ramp. In maths, we have been measuring lots of classroom objects (and ourselves) with informal units to gain a better understanding of length.
We all continue to learn and have fun during swimming, too and can’t wait to go to the library to change our books each week!
Yours in learning,
Miss Libby, Miss Sue, Miss Michelle, Miss A, Mr Andrew, Miss Grace and students.
It is week 6 and we have settled in to a routine that helps each of us to make the most of our learning time. Our morning session seems to be the most productive and one of our students is exploring being the teacher as he uses the class ASL (Aided Language Stimulation) Boards to “ask a question” and support his classmates to register their attendance. Each morning we check the previous day off the calendar, and match the day, date and month to our display. We also include mathematics instruction as we count how many students are here and how many are away.
As we are exploring movement and measurement in Science and have resident stick insects in the classroom. Everyone was tricked into thinking the biggest stick insect was a male but things are very different in nature and our lovely big Tessellated Stick Insect is actually a girl. We enjoyed collecting twigs to make our own stick insects but they definitely don’t move as well as the real thing!
It was exciting to see some of the crew stepping up to bat on Pink Stumps Day. Taking turns and sharing is also a regular lesson on the new playground equipment and it is wonderful to see many new friendships evolving as common interests are found.
We mix and match digital and hands on activities for maths, and are tuning our gross and fine motor skills. Individually, we are all at different levels so are working towards our ICP goals which are also connected to our communication goals.
Until next time, all the best from
Team JS3, Miss Jodie, Miss Emma and Miss Dana
Senior School - Years 10, 11 and 12
The senior sector have all electives up and running. Year 10 students are joining in with the years 11 and 12 to participate in the Health and Physical Education elective. We will be alternating the Health component with the Physical Education component between terms 1 and 2.
The Physical Education elective provides students with the opportunity to set and then reach some fitness goals using the fabulous equipment in the new playground. The smiling faces in the pictures reflect the fun we have through carrying out our fitness program and recording our progress in our student folios. Student groups are also producing posters giving information on the types of fitness activities available and how this benefits our general health and wellbeing, as well as the mental health benefits of keeping active.
Last Friday the senior students coordinated an outstanding Parent “meet and greet” afternoon. Many thanks to all of the parents, carers and invited staff members who attended. It was wonderful to touch bases and to give parents and carers an understanding of the senior schooling program. The students prepared a very tasty afternoon tea, after which they proudly showed off the new and improved playground equipment.
The majority of Year 10 ICP meetings have been completed. Thank you to all parents and carers who made the time to meet at school to discuss our educational plans for your student. If you have not yet had your ICP meeting, could you please contact your child’s classroom teacher immediately to set up an appointment date?
From Amanda, Cann, Liz, Alison, Anne-Maree, Deb, Judith, Jaz and Chrissy
