I would like to send out a huge “THANK YOU” to Miss Rachael who was Acting Principal and to Miss Shellie for stepping into the Acting Deputy Principal role during weeks 1 and 2 this term while I was on long service leave. They did a great job during my absence.   

We are moving to 3 Sports Houses in 2022 and renaming the houses. We will be making some decisions shortly about our Sports Houses names and are asking our staff, students and families to think about the names and the colours of our 3 Sports Houses and support us making these decisions as a school community.  If you have any suggestions for the 3 Sports Houses for Gympie Special School please email them to admin@gympiespecs.eq.edu.au.

In week 9, on Friday 3^rd December, we are having our second Whole School PBL Rewards Day! This is very exciting and the PBL team has been very busy planning and organising the 4-hour event. We have having a water-based theme with a giant wet slide as well as organising many other fantastic activities to celebrate the wonderful behaviour our students have demonstrated this year.

Our students and staff will be very focussed over the next few weeks on gathering evidence and information to share in our report cards which will come home at the end of this term. There are plenty of things to celebrate in our students report cards- things we can check and measure and give a rating to. Some things though, are difficult to measure but are obvious within a busy, engaged classroom. As always, we are excited to share the work that is happening across classrooms and as reporting draws closer, we look forward to celebrating student achievements with you. 

It’s also the time of year when parents, students and staff start thinking about next year and class groupings for 2022. We are aiming to send home class groupings with report cards during Week 10. The process of developing classes is a multifaceted and exciting task. Because we try to make the best groupings possible it can take some planning and time. The following is a brief description of the steps that we take to formulate class groupings:

1. Confirmation of the total student population for 2022. Sometimes this is hard to know depending on late transfers as families move in or out of the area.
2. Determining the number of classes we are able to create depending on upon the number of teachers allocated to the school. We get indicative staffing numbers before the end of this year, but as always, Day 8 2022 numbers are the final determining factor.
3. The school is divided into 4 sectors consisting of: Early Years Yrs P-2, Primary Yrs 3 to 6, Junior Secondary Yrs 7, 8, 9, 10 and Senior Secondary Yrs 11&12. In 2022, we are looking at Year 10 students remaining in Junior Secondary as per the Australian Curriculum guidelines and to enable our Yr 9 & 10 students the opportunity to select electives.
4. We then create class groupings based on student’s educational and social emotional needs.
5. Once classes are developed, we allocate staff to each class. This may be subject to change as staff may receive transfers in or out of the school. We also have teachers who relocate, retire, take family leave and some who are on contract whose contract simply comes to an end.

Learning to work with new teachers, new staff and new classmates each year is an important part of the school journey as our young people build resilience, learning to work with a wide variety of people (as they will in other areas of their life), build their network of familiar adults and learn to make new friends. As you can see there are a great many variables, most of which cannot be controlled. We ask for your patience and support as we work towards a successful transition to learning in 2022.

Hi everyone,

Term 4, Who can believe it? Teachers are finalising evidence and assessments to support report writing for the end of the school year, it is always pleasing to see how much students have learnt and grown over the year. Year 12 students are wrapping up their final days at school and preparing for their upcoming Graduation ceremony. Everyone is getting excited for the end of year activities, PBL rewards day and finding out about their classes and teachers for next year.

Earlier this year the department release an updated version of the P-12 Curriculum, assessment and reporting Framework (CARF), this framework guides all Queensland state school’s curriculum, assessment and reporting decision making to ensure alignment with policies and procedures in providing the Australian Curriculum to all students. You can access this document by clicking on this link https://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/stages-of-schooling/p-12.

To ensure alignment with the new CARF we have had to make some changes to the structure of our sectors for 2022. The CARF outlines minimum requirements for all students to access all 8 learning areas of the Australian Curriculum based on their chronological age, not operating level. The 8 learning areas are English, Mathematics, Health and Physical Education, Science, Technologies, The Arts, HASS and Languages.  The two main decisions we have had to make are

• Students will access the Languages Curriculum: Japanese from their first year in the Primary Sector (Enrolled year 3 or 4). Japanese is the language that most schools in Gympie are teaching and assessing.
• Junior Secondary Sector will be divided into lower (years 7 and 8) and upper (years 9 and 10) to ensure that year 9’s and 10’s can access electives in Work Skills, The Arts, Technologies, HASS and Languages.

My door is always open if you would like to discuss these decisions, or any other curriculum related topics.

Miss Shellie

Hello Parents and Carers,

Welcome to JS3’s first newsletter for term 4. We have been very busy settling back into the routines of the classroom and school. It is great to see all students eager and ready to do their best when completing their learning activities.

Our literacy this term continues on from last term, with the focus being rhyming sounds and words and we get to read some wonderful stories and listen to some poetry.

Our maths focus continues on with number recognition, counting, direction and position. We should be able to spend some fun maths time in the playground “in” the sand pit, “on” the swing and “under” the climbing log.

We have had a visitor to the class for some short  “get to know you” sessions last week. His name is Jed, and his class mates have made him feel welcome. Jed starts with us this week so welcome to JS3 Jed.

Until next time, all the best

Gavin, Naomi and Dana.