Gympie Special School eNewsletter

Dear Parents and Carers,

It has been exciting to welcome 3 new students to our school this term. Layton has started in Early Years with Miss Lynne’s class, Mason started this week with Mr Dale in Primary, and next week we welcome Ruby to one of our Senior Secondary classes. A huge welcome to our new students and their families as they join the Gympie Special School community. As I mentioned in our last newsletter, we are getting regular enrolment queries at the moment. It is a testament to the hard work and gains the school has made with communication, literacy, numeracy and behaviour over the past few years that we have so much interest from families.

After walking around our school over the past few weeks, I have been impressed with the overall behaviour and engagement of our students. As a staff, we have been focussing on transitioning as part of our Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) around the school and we will continue to focus on how our students transition for the rest of this term. We have made some changes in how we pack up at the end of a play time, how students move from one area to another and how we stop doing one activity before moving to another. I have been impressed with how quickly most of our students are adjusting to these small changes to make our school a safer place.

Thank you so much to those families who have started sending in some donations for our CENT SALE on Saturday 6^th November. If you have any suitable donations, please drop these into our office. We need approximately 200 prizes for the Cent Sale to be a success. Children’s toys, household items, grocery items, decorative items, Gift vouchers – any new and unused items will be welcomed as donations. If any businesses would like to donate a prize, please let us know.

I will be on sick leave from Thursday 26^th August to Monday 13^th September as I require some surgery. Rachael Pelling will be Acting Principal and Shellie Pursey will be Acting Deputy Principal during this time.

Last week we received the sad news that one of our students had passed away. On Monday, some of our staff were able to join Harris’ family in celebrating his life and farewelling him at his funeral. Our thoughts and prayers go to his family. If any of our students require any support and someone to talk to, please do not hesitate to let us know so we can organise this.

Moving forward, learning together,

Sarah Lester - Principal

Good afternoon Gympie Special School families and friends.

District Athletics Carnival.

Last week we received the news that the Gympie District Athletics Carnival for 2021 is cancelled due to COVID-19 related issues. Lockdowns and restrictions in other Local Government Areas has meant that state championships have also been cancelled for 2021. While this difficult decision is disappointing for our multi-class competitors, it has been made in the interest of public safety.

Work Experience

Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to talk to work experience supervisors and visit one of our students while on the job. Our students have been making us proud with their work ethic, eagerness to learn and ability to take on feedback. I look forward to visiting all of them in their work experience environments before the end of the year.

P.A.T.H. Planning Alternative Tomorrow’s with Hope

Miss Shelley, me, classroom staff and families of our Year 10 students are currently having their P.A.T.H. meetings at school. P.A.T.H. is a really effective tool to help students to set goals and work towards engaging in rewarding post-school options. The student is supported by those who care about them and who are interested in helping them move towards their goals.

P.A.T.H. uses pictures to map out a vision of a desirable future for our students and they have the opportunity to have their goals and dreams expressed in their way.

Book Fair! Get excited!

Next week is Book Week. The theme for 2021 is Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds. On Monday 23^rdof August each classroom will have an entry in the ‘Best Dressed Door” Competition, last year there were some very creative doors and we are really looking forward to seeing the 2021 creations.

On Friday 27^th of August, book week dress up parade is on at 9:00am and parents are welcome to attend but must sign in at the office. There will be book prizes up for grabs for the best dressed students in each sector.

Advertising for the book fair, it’s opening times and some of the items and books available for purchase will come home later this week.

Kind regards,

Rachael

Hi everyone,

One of my favourite things to do during the week is spend time in classrooms, as I have moved around classrooms over the past few weeks I have enjoyed observing and engaging with a variety of activities with the students. One of my favourite activities has been listening to rhyming texts, when I read texts that rhyme such as ‘Hairy Maclary’ books I can get quite animated and loud, which usually ends in fits of laughter, or eye rolls from some older students.

It was great to see how writing has progressed for some students to using the PODD book to find words and images to share their ideas and represent these in their writing books. It has also been wonderful to see pencil grip improvements for some of our Early Years students. Some of our students use alternative pencils for writing such as switches, iPads and alphabet charts. I get quite a kick out of students sharing their comments and ideas using their Proloquo2Go on their iPad or using their PODD book.

We have been very lucky to be funded once again by Sporting Schools so that we can have Coach Tim back again this time supporting our students with learning and practicing ball skills such as soccer. All of the students presented Coach Tim with a very special hand-made card at parade to say thank you for all of his help with athletics training and sports day last term. Coach Tim happily received the card and has told me he has it on display at his home and he looks at it every day and smiles.

Miss Shellie

Early Years Sector News

Over the last few weeks, we have been enjoying rhyming texts. The focus has been on how students interact with these books, or what we call the observable behaviours. Students have been enjoying these rhyming texts and building their awareness of how to react and respond to a text appropriately. For example, some students might respond to the repetition in the text and predict words or events and some students might anticipate favourite pages and phrases.

We have been looking at night and day in Science. Students have been exploring and manipulating a variety of materials to assist in building an understanding that night and day are different and different things happen depending on whether it is night time or day time. Our outdoor learning activities have incorporated black paper for wet chalk drawing to simulate night time.

Physical Education has provided opportunities for co-operative and social play. The students have been working on fine and gross motor development through the use of a variety of textured balls.

In mathematics we have been focussing on positional language in a variety of settings. The students have had fun in the playground going DOWN the slide, UNDER the fort, ON the swing and IN the sandpit. You might like to carry on with some of this fun learning at home.

Warm regards,

Megan, Lynne, Jennie, Jas, Janet, Jordan, Jodi and Deb.

Technologies

Early Years students are exploring educational apps on the IPads while assisting Mr Andrew to make a class alphabet book that the students get to star in. The School IPads have several educational play-based apps that the students enjoy interacting with. They are learning to navigate the IPad, to select approved apps and appropriately engage in a digital learning environment.

Primary and Junior Secondary are learning about Microsoft Word on the school laptops. They are making posters displaying preferred subject material as a catalyst for learning how to create visually appealing informative media. They are also learning how to access their school emails and how to appropriately interact with each other and staff through this safe on-line Managed Internet Environment.

Andrew Stokes

Design and Digital Technology Specialist Teacher

Primary Sector News

Its hard to believe that we are already half way through term 3.

Over the past few weeks we have been busily learning about rhyming. The students have been immersed in different books and poems all based on a rhyming concept. We are starting to find words that sound the same and where they might appear in a book or poem. It is fantastic to see how engaged the students are with learning about rhyme.

Mathematics learning is focused on our understanding of number and developing our ability to work with them. The concept of time has also been a focus. Students have been looking at different activities and events and how long they take, as well as what happens on different days of the week.

Coach Tim is back and his lessons have focused on ball games. We are tying this in with our HPE unit which will provide our students with more opporunities to develop their fine and gross motor skills through ball games. The students have loved being outside with Coach Tim and playing his fun games.

Kind regards,

The Primary Teaching Team: Miss Erin & Jenny & Dana, Mr Dale & Katrina & Ev, Miss Trista & Bree & Tricia.

GSS Arts Room News

The students are now becoming more familiar with their percussion instruments and vocalisations for forest music compositions, as well as their Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander song lines and lyrics.

Regards, Miss Grace (Arts Teacher)

Here we go, making rhymes that flow, some that seem slow. Yes, that is how we roll in JS1 at the moment. Morning message begins with a rhyme and the students have come up with many of their own. We are thoroughly enjoying our poetry unit in English and the students have found some interesting images online to add detail to their writing.

Our core word development is definitely increasing as we learn certain words using PODD Proloquo2Go and Auslan to communicate these words.

Maths is giving us many opportunities to see how much we have learned so far. We are enjoying using number-lines and a range of objects to create collections and build our conceptual understanding.

This term, our soccer skills are being improved with coach Tim’s guidance. These skills are transferring to the quad with a number of Junior Secondary students participating in a daily game of soccer, including myself and Ms Libby. Other students are creating games using their imaginations and other resources.

In addition, the students are investigating a range of emotions and how and when we experience them. We have started taking photos of each other demonstrating these emotions. It has been a lot of fun!

Keep Safe,

JS1 students, Darren, Dana, and Deb.

Junior Secondary 2 News

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at texts that rhyme and comparing them with non-rhyming texts. Some of the texts we have enjoyed are: Madeline in London, It’s Time for School Stinky Face, Piranhas Don’t Eat Bananas and The Little Queensland Alphabet Book. We are using these texts to listen to, identify, reproduce and experiment with sound patterns and rhyme. The latter book was used for us to experience alliteration in texts and we really liked what was said about our town, “Goannas gold panning in Gympie,” and the very colourful and playful illustrations of the Rattler, Jacaranda trees and the Mary River. All students have been working hard on their listening and reading comprehension and making sentences using their word wall words and different sentence beginnings or endings.

We have used our Scientific word wall and pictures of natural phenomena to describe events occurring in nature, such as, the change of seasons and how it affects what we wear, day and night and other weather events. We enjoyed using paper cut and mixed media to illustrate the seasons and day and night.

During our structured first play break, many of us are playing soccer, throwing balls or using hula hoops to stay active. The more creative of us, often tell stories and dramatise these with our friends in the other Junior Secondary classes. It is great to see the deeper friendships forming during this time.

Warm regards,

Libby, Michelle, Chris, and Kate.

Hello Parents and Carers,

We have settled very well into the new routines of Term 3 and every one is happy and trying hard to produce their best work.

We have been focused on rhyming words in English and reading some great rhyming stories. There are one or two champion rhyme detectors in the class who listen carefully and pick the rhyming words. They sometimes manage it before I have even finished saying them.

Last week we invited the JS2 class over for a session of Science based Art activity. The focus was on day and night with students working together to produce some amazing works of art. It was wonderful to hear students being supportive and making positive comments about each other’s work.

Until next time, all the best

Gavin, Naomi and Dana.

HASS - Learning World News

Term 3 is going well and all sectors are working hard. Early Years classes are investigating texts about familiar places and some new places.

Primary classes continue to amaze me as they really try hard to complete all the tasks using directions, data collection and then displaying this information e.g. by creating pictographs and great posters.

Junior Secondary and some Senior classes are so interested in the world we are exploring each week. This includes Australia’s connection to other countries through sport, trade, social media and aid, to name a few.

The Year 11s have embarked on a topic exploring games in the community and will investigate options they may like to pursue as they get older and more independent.

Miss A

Senior School News

Welcome to our families,

This term our senior students have started back at work experience and other post-school options to build on their skills and make connections in the local community. SS3 and SS4 have also started their cooking program, ‘Food on Friday’ along with the car washing program. Both of these programs have provided our students with the opportunity to develop work skills and knowledge, including getting along and working as a team.

We have began training with Coach Tim on Monday morning, our focus this term is ball skills and teamwork, our students really enjoy working with coach Tim.

SS1 and SS2 have started their kitchen skills and market garden programs that enables students to learn important life skills.

Our Health unit has been focusing on healthy food options and our students have been amazed at how much sugar content different products contain. Students participating in PE have been learning about which muscle groups they use when participating in physical activities.

Father’s Day is also fast approaching and all of our senior students have been busy producing items that will be for sale on Wednesday of week 8 (1^st of September), please look out for future advertising.

We thank our families for their continued support, until next time, stay safe and stay warm.