Welcome to our first whole school newsletter for 2022.

I am very pleased to welcome all of our new students and their families to our Gympie Special School community. We welcome Miles and Jade into Prep, Moni into Early Years, Evie, Jacob and Cody K into Primary, and Tyson into Secondary. We started this year with 78 enrolments across 14 classes.

We also have some new faces on staff to introduce. Welcome to Cassie Perry in our Early Years Sector, Tegan Atkinson into Secondary, Deb Campbell into our Senior sector.  Ellie Garvey as our new ARTS teacher and Deb Kitchen as our HASS teacher. These experienced staff members bring a wealth of experience and knowledge from their previous placements in other state schools and we are very happy to welcome them into our staff.  

Rachael Pelling is currently on 4 weeks long service leave and we have welcomed Annette Scanlon, from Currimundi Special School as Acting HOC, while Shellie Pursey has stepped up into the Deputy Principal role. Both of these fabulous admin staff have been working hard to support staff and students.

Whilst we have had a disrupted start to 2022, I have been very pleased with student behaviour and engagement over the last few weeks. Classrooms have been busy as students and staff get to know each other and establish new routines, make new friends and settle into their new units of work. I am really looking forward to the next 4 weeks of learning in our school. We have 20 days of schooling before the Easter Holidays to focus on learning. 

Our senior students from years 7 to 12 began swimming at the Gympie Aquatic Recreation Centre in week 4. Our primary students will be swimming in term 4 this year.

This year we have six Year 12 students who will graduate in November. Already we are starting to plan ahead to ensure they have a successful last year of schooling and a wonderful graduation.

Facebook: We regularly post on our school Facebook page. If you have not yet ‘liked’ our Facebook page, please go onto Facebook today and join our “Gympie Special School” community page. We will be posting news, photos, celebrations, inviting you to events and keeping you regularly informed via our Facebook page. To let us know you have read a post- hit the thumbs up or leave a comment.

Pick Up: Thank you so much for your patience at Pick Up time. We are working hard to move the line of traffic as smoothly as we can whilst maintaining a safe environment for our students, families and staff.

Parent/Carer access to school classrooms: If you are visiting the school during the day, or arriving late with your child, please enter and exit through admin. As the first lesson of every day starts at 8.30am, I would encourage all students to be at school prior to this starting time. We appreciate your support in having your student at school on time.

All parents/carers are required to sign in and out at the office when visiting. This is an Education QLD Health, Safety and Wellbeing procedure required for safety. We appreciate your support.

Parade is back from next Monday: Parade is each Monday at 2.00pm in the performing arts room. Parents and carers are most welcome. We look forward to you joining with us!

I am really looking forward to a fantastic 2022 and working with our terrific staff, students and families.

Whilst we have had a bumpy start to the school year, we have appreciated how school community has adapted to the changes positively. We feel especially lucky to have such a wonderful community and we thank you all for your patience, resilience and kindness during these times. We have especially enjoyed having our lovely students back on campus, listening to their stories and seeing how much they have grown over the holidays.

Our leadership team looks a little different this term as Rachael has taken 4 weeks leave, we will see her back at school in week 9. Shellie will be taking over Rachael’s Deputy role and we have the lovely Annette from Currimundi Special School stepping in as Head of Curriculum. Annette comes to us with a wealth of Special School experience and knowledge, particularly in the Secondary sector. Annette has been getting to know students and staff over the past two weeks and has slotted right into our Gympie Special School community nicely.

Despite the ‘hiccups to the term so far it has been lovely to wonder in and out of classrooms to see routines and curriculum taking place. I have been checking in to see the ‘living things’ that are growing for science, Early years grass heads are growing phenomenally well and I can’t wait to use the new digital microscopes in the secondary classes to explore moulds and fungi. Our Senior enterprises have begun planning for car washing and ‘Friday Foods’ and Tafe students have begun attending classes.

Yours in education

Shellie and Annette

What a blast the first official few weeks back at school have been for our students! Our secondary and senior students have been exploring the remarkable form of art called cubism. They have immersed themselves in the elements of shape and colour theory! Check out this art piece by Georgia in Year 11! In the words of Jerzy Kosiński: “The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke!”

Next week many of our students will be beginning collages and will continue to apply their knowledge of shape to create artforms that represent a place that is special to them. We can’t wait to see what our bright, inspiring minds create!

Hello everyone.

The Early Years have started the year off with a bang! Our new student Moni and Preppies Jade and Miles are all settling in beautifully and learning how to do school. The other children are all learning our new routines and are setting a very good example for our new students.

Some of the exciting things we’ve been doing so far include planting seeds and watching them grow. The little plants are doing well and we are very interested to see how they change each day. We like watering them too!

We started horse riding last Wednesday and everyone had such a good time. It’s definitely an activity that will be looked forward to each week.

As well as having fun, we are working hard too! We have read some great books, visited the library, chosen a book to take home for the week, completed lots of alphabet work and some writing. We love counting using ‘Helpkidzlearn.com’ on the big interactive screen.

Our two classes join up through the week for music and we enjoy singing and dancing to action songs.

We all agree that the big playground is a great place to play together.

It’s been a busy, happy term so far getting to know each other and the weeks are flying by. We’ll have more to tell you next time.

Lynne, Cassie, Kate, Deb, Jai, Layton, Moni, Henry, Ayden, Isaac, Jade, Kruze and Miles.

Welcome back to another school year. It has been great to see old and new faces returning to school with such eagerness to learn. We welcome three new students into the primary cohort; Cody in P2, Evie in P3 and Jacob in P4.

In English we are investigating fast food, cereal boxes, popular toys and movies to discover how companies advertise their products and convince us to purchase their goods.

In Maths we have begun working with numbers, number patterns, fractions and money.

We have joined together for science to begin our growing unit where we made a collage from materials to represent parts of a flower and its root system under the ground.

In HPE we will work together on our unit exploring life stages as we grow and activities we enjoy at different stages of our lives.  We will combine for physical activities, which are centred around skipping and gross motor movements.

Miss Erin, Mr Dale, Miss Jennie, Miss Trista

2022 has already shaped up to be a year where we will practice flexibility and patience. Our team this year who are working with wonderful learners are Judith (teacher aide) and Deb (teacher). Our morning routine has already become a time of sharing information about ourselves during our morning yarning circle. We choose positive character traits for each other, as well as discuss the day ahead.

In Literacy, we are focusing on a range of texts, including advertising with a focus on informative and persuasive features. We will continue to work on reading, writing, letter and word knowledge.

In Maths we are working on a range of independent tasks to understand how much the we know and can achieve. We are exploring number and fractions such as, recognising whole and parts of a whole. We are also learning about money by identifying notes, coins, value and situations where it is used.

During Science learning experiences, we have created scientific diagrams of a living thing and will explore the growth of a range of living things.

We are swimming on Monday mornings for 7 weeks. We are looking forward to watching swimming confidence and skill grow and will share some photos soon; keep an eye out on Facebook!

We are excited to work together as a team of learners this year,

S1 students, Judith and Deb.

Welcome to Term 1!

We have had a fantastic start to the term with many more exciting activities for our students to come.  We have been getting to know our classmates and making new friendships. A new activity that we have participated in this week is learning new ways to represent numbers. There are so may fun ways to teach Maths.

It has been lovely to meet and get to know our students and their mums, dads and carers. Although we’ve had a bumpy start, with Covid19 and flood issues, we are proud of the way our students have taken these changes in their stride, working hard at the learning experiences provided for them.

Our first two Books of the Week have been both interesting, factual and entertaining, as we discussed the differences between informative and imaginative texts. Using these texts and shorter examples of instructional and procedural texts, such as recipes, students participate in comprehension instruction by reading the text, answering or asking questions and sequencing pictures and text in order. We use the PODD book in our conversations to communicate our message or clarify details. This week we read a Weet-Bix and Banana recipe, which we extended to a maths activity involving ‘whole’, ‘half’ and ‘parts.’ Tasty too, with honey and milk! We also spent some time pricing fruit and vegetables, counting and sorting money for our class shop. A great start to what is sure to be an interesting and fun semester.

Warm regards,

Miss Libby, Miss Michelle and S3 Students.

2022 is looking at being a fantastic year for our year 9 and 10 students in Secondary 4 and 5 classrooms.

We have begun our electives and every Tuesday will now be “Elective Tuesday”. All of the year 9 and year 10 students participate, which means a couple of students from the Secondary 3 classroom join us for the day.

Our students begin the day with a Work Skills Elective, working on our kitchen skills to prepare us for our senior schooling enterprises. This subject is taught by Miss Tegan and Miss Cann. We will be learning health and safety in the kitchen and using our newly acquired skills to make simple things that we can remake at home for our families. We will become familiar with the school kitchen, it’s utensils and equipment so we are well prepared for year 11/12 hospitality electives. This is also a fantastic opportunity for the students to learn how to make their own lunch.

In the middle session on “Electives Tuesday” we split into 2 groups, with one group going to “Technology” with Mr Andrew while the second group goes to “Arts” with Miss Ellie.

Finally, in the last session, S4 and S5 split up for the “History” elective with either Miss Deb K or Mr Gavin. In History the students are looking at Australian past and present celebrations, such as ANZAC day.

At the end of the day the students gave feedback saying, “today should not be elective Tuesday but fun Tuesday!”.

Welcome to Term 1, it has been really lovely to see our senior students return to school with such energy and eagerness to learn. Our students have a busy term to navigate and with the changes to timetables and classes. We are very proud that all students have now settled into their new routines. 

Our electives on Monday have hit the ground running. Some of our students participating in Roadcraft are learning about road safety and road rules in preparation for the Roadcraft program which will begin in May. Other students are participating in Community and pedestrian safety learning how to navigate within the community following safe practices. Our students participating in the swimming and physical program have already had their first lesson at the pool and are really enjoying themselves.

Electives on Friday consisting of Car washing, Tuckshop and Daily living skills are full steam ahead and our students have been providing positive feedback regarding these programs.

English this Term focuses on ‘My obsession’, students identify what an obsession is and what types of obsessions they may have. They will be creating a presentation about their own obsession to share with their cohort.

Our Maths focus is about money and travel, including identifying collections of money, how much money needed to purchase certain items and how much change will be received back after the purchase.

Students have been planning for our Parade virtual presentations that will being in week 8, due to Covid guidelines we are unable to meet as a school group. Every Senior student has chosen a job to do and we are looking forward to our first presentation.

It is great to see how our students are cooperating in a team situations, supporting and encouraging each other.

Congratulations to our first students of the week, Taylor, Georgia and Ashley. Each Friday the senior students nominate each other for their achievements. They vote for  for  3 students of the week. This is a great process that helps promote positivity amongst peers.

Until next time, take care.

Senior sector team.

Alison, Gavin, Deb, Liz, Chrissy, Darren, Anne-Maree and Kelly.