Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the final newsletter for 2019. It is an exciting time at school as teachers complete report cards, send home student work and celebrate the great learning that has been evidenced this semester. Individual student information has been shared across teachers and teacher aides and there is much excitement and forward planning for 2020. On Thursday 12th of December, at our Awards Night, we will hand out Report cards, the 2019 Yearbook, class lists and teacher allocations for 2020.

At this time of the year, I would like to thank students, staff, parents and carers for a wonderful year. Without your support, our work would be much harder. We greatly value our partnerships with families and the wider school community. Thank you!

It has been a period of change and improvements as we have celebrated great learning, improved curriculum delivery, a change in Principal and many special events. Janet Humphreys, our Deputy Principal will be leaving us at the end of this year. She has won a position at Lee Street State Special School as Deputy Principal. We wish Janet all the best in the future and thank her for her tireless effort, commitment and dedication to improving outcomes for students at our school. I take this opportunity to thank her for everything she has done for Gympie Special School. She has been a valuable staff member, and we will miss her greatly.

I am pleased to announce and welcome Rachael Pelling to our school next year, as our Acting Deputy Principal. Rachael has been working across the Region as a Principal Advisor: Australian Curriculum. She comes to us with a wealth of curriculum knowledge and skills.  We will shortly appoint and announce our Head of Curriculum for 2020 and I look forward to working with such a fantastic team in 2020.

Successful Students:

This semester has seen the school celebrate the great learning taking place in classrooms, students demonstrating pride in their work and staff engaging in professional learning with lots of enthusiasm. There has been high levels of positive behaviours demonstrated by students and many have achieved significant personal successes in their learning. I am particularly thankful to parents and carers who have sought to share information about their child, visited classrooms, attended events and ensured that we have developed strong partnerships.  I look forward to strengthening these partnerships in 2020 with both students and families.

Empowered Staff:

This year staff have engaged in many hours of professional learning.  We will start 2020 off with 3 solid days of professional learning in the week before school resumes. We have a packed agenda for these days and anticipate a great year ahead.

Engaged Partners:

A big thank you to our small, but dedicated P&C who have worked throughout the year to support our school and raise funds to support our school initiatives. The P&C will be renewing their drive in 2020 to seek more members and I would encourage everyone to consider becoming a member and joining in to ensure the best possible outcomes for our students.

NDIS: The department is committed to improving outcomes for students with disability by delivering high-quality education supported by reasonable educational adjustments. The department recognises that NDIS supports may contribute to improving a student’s ability to access and participate in education and achieve.

In some instances, parents may request that NDIS providers deliver supports included in their child’s NDIS Plans (NDIS supports) at school, during school time. The NDIS providers may be either engaged by the parent or NDIS plan managers.

These must be re-requested every calendar year. All current requests expire on Friday 13th December.

As Principal, I will consider requests from parents for NDIS providers to access Gympie Special School to deliver NDIS supports at school, during school time on a case-by-case basis. If you wish to request this please collect the paperwork from Cassandra in our office or request it to be emailed to you.

Facilities:

Over the holidays, we will be having some work done in a few classrooms to replace old vinyl flooring, an old basin and make our learning spaces more user friendly and attractive.

I wish everyone a safe, refreshing and happy holiday! I am really looking forward to working with you next year and enjoying a fantastic 2020.

Yours in learning,

Sarah    

From the Deputy

Moving forward, learning together

I am sad to advise that this will be my final newsletter for Gympie Special School as I have accepted a position at the brand new Lee Street State Special School which will commence in January.

I would like to thank all of the parents and students for your support over the past four and a half years.

Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL)

We have our final lesson promoting Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) this week.

Week 9

I am a learner

• I remind others of our school rules.

Next Thursday we will be holding our annual awards night where we will celebrate student achievements over the school year. 

Awards Night

Students will be recognised for their achievements in:

• Literacy
• Numeracy
• School Pride
• Quota Award
• All rounder award (Shannon Family Shield)
• Communication Champion

Students are asked to wear their school uniform on the night.

Please see the flyer sent home with your child form more information.

Welcome to the end of HASS 2019.

All the students have completed their assessments and have done a marvellous job with them.

We have said goodbye to our Year 12 students and they will be missed.

The Early Year classes are completing some basic mapping tasks until the end of the year.

Middle Year’s classes have been making treasure maps, to practise using directions and a compass rose.

Junior Secondary classes are honing their presentation skills by sharing their assessments with their peers and practising being great audience members.

Senior Secondary students are completing a timeline of migration to Australia in a multi-modal text. 

Thank you to all the Teacher Aides who I work with for bringing such enthusiasm to class along with the students! I could not do this role without you. Students will bring home their workbooks from this year, so that they can share their learning journey with you.

Have a wonderful and safe holiday and see you next year.

Miss A.

STEM CATCH UP

As I was thinking about how I could possibly convey the growth in confidence, skill, patience and exploration skills of our students in Digital Technologies this year, it occurred to me that all of those things happened in less than a semester!

From modelling digital systems with blocks and toy cars to learning about direction with programmable Bee Bots and learning the language of coding and cyber safety, there really has been something for everyone at every year level and I cannot wait to see what we achieve in 2020.

Here is just a sample of what we explored this year.

Miss Jodie

COMMUNITY LIASON & TRANSITIONS COORDINATOR REPORT

If you have a student in year 9, next year will be the year of challenges and changes as they transition from Junior to Senior schooling. Those of you who have already engaged in our family P. A. T. H meetings will hopefully be feeling a little more certain about some of the ways we can work together to prepare your family for life after school. The first 3-6 months of your student’s plan will no doubt contain a lot of wording around the changes coming up with a new classroom, new classmates, new teachers, new break routines, new support staff, basically – everything will be new! So as exciting as that can be, it can also lead to some anxious thoughts and behaviours. By starting the conversation about what Senior school might look like and keeping your class teachers up to date with any concerns or changes in behaviour, we can work together to minimise negative outcomes.

For those families with students moving up to years 11 and 12, this is also an exciting time of changes, challenges and opportunities. In 2020 our focus will be on supporting families to plan and access the ways and means of getting your child to and from work experience, training or volunteering programs so that by the time Graduation rolls around you all have a clear path to moving from the structure of school to community life. Supporting someone to transition from school is not the same thing as doing it for them, we will be focusing on ways your student can find some independence and what that may look like for individuals.

We have recently had some news of support for our kitchen garden program, which I look forward to telling you about next time.

All the best to you and yours this holiday season

Jodie Sargeant

Community Liaison & Transitions Coordinator

Email: jfdur0@eq.edu.au

Lego Club News

We have had a fun year in Lego club. Our Lego creators have shown amazing skills to use their imaginations and work with different people each week. Lego Club has been so successful that we will continue in 2020, see you there.

Finally I would like to thank Karen and the Lego crew for my beautiful Santa keyring gift and card, it is on my tree at home.

Build, create and make!

Regards, Deb, Karen and the Lego technicians.

EY2 News

We have come to that time of year where our classroom learning is about to wrap up for the year and our focus is Christmas celebrations. EY2 students have been revising maths concepts of numbers and number names as well as continuing our literacy routine. We have created some amazing class stories that we will continue to view next year. Our boys have made some great connections with staff and peers this year and have grown in leaps and bounds.   

We are starting to prepare for our end of year celebrations. We are looking forward to sharing some of our HPE songs that we have been practising with our peers from EY1 and EY3. We are also looking forward to sharing lunch with our parents next Wednesday the 11^th during second session.

Students scrapbooks will be sent home over the next week as well as some special surprises the students have started making.

EY2 would like to wish all of our family’s a safe and wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. We look forward to seeing you next year.

Take care

Liz and Chloe

Well the school year is nearly done! It seems to have gone so quickly. We look back now at all the things we did –the learning and the fun, and how we have grown.  We’ve worked hard all year and we feel proud of our achievements.

It’s been a very happy year and we’ve really enjoyed joining with our friends in the other early years classes for lots of activities.

It’s with mixed feelings that we say goodbye until next year as we’ll miss our friends and the school routine. It will be nice to sleep in though!

Thank you to all the people who have helped us this year in the room. Their support is very appreciated by us all.

How fast has term 4 gone!

The term started with the class enjoying going to the ARC for swimming on a Monday with Andrew and Tony. Followed by the rest of the week learning about word sounds and new sight words. We have been playing games around the word wall, the boys have liked trying to beat Mr Andrew and Miss Karen to work out the words of the word games. It is wonderful to see all the boys joining in and turn taking. 

On Friday's the class has been working hard with Trista and Miss Karen finishing off their science assessment, which was based around the weather. The boys have a great understanding of the weather and the different seasons. They have been making a weather book and chose pictures that best describe the weather that they then wrote a short sentance about. It is great to see how muchthey have learnt and what they want to write about.

 On a sad note however there is only one more week left of school. From Andrew, Trista, Karen, Tony and all the other staff that work with the students in P1 we want to wish you a safe and joyful holiday break. 

Andrew, Trista, Karen, Tony and class :) 

Salutations,

It’s hard to believe but we are already in week 9. This newletter is all about the big people. A big thankyou Jenny for your commitments in facilitating classroom learning while providing diligent health care to some of our students. Thank you also for  making teaching resources, a very time consuming process but has enabled our students better access to their learnings. Thank you for photo copying class booklets and the multitude of jobs that you have performed in supporting a class of eager learners. Your efforts have been immensley appreciated. Thank you also Jordan, Kim, Dana and Chloe for providing diligent health care at different times throughout the year.

Congratulations Miss Janet on your placement at Lee Street State Special School. Miss Janet will be Deputy Principal at a new school that will officially open its doors in 2020. Miss Janet has been at our school for 4 1/2 years and has made many significant changes to progress our school by embracing new knowledge and processes and educational ideologies. Bye Miss Janet and thank you.

Happy Birthday Miss Janet.  Last fortnight, Primary 2 students celebrated Miss Janet’s 21^st Birthday. I think Miss Janet has been stuck in a loop for quite some time as I distinctly recall celebrating Miss Janet’s 21^st birthday at least 10 years ago. Primary 2 students had lots of fun. There was plenty to eat and lots of reasons to be noisy.  Miss Janet welcomes our students to the library every Wednesday does awesome storytelling. Thank you Miss Janet.

Thank you Chappy Naomi for your visits to our classroom during the course of the year. Primary 2 students enjoy having your company.  We thank you for the interesting conversations as well as the classroom support. Finally; thank you Miss Andrea for your friendly visits to our classroom. I appreciate your support in teaching our students to use PODD as well as supporting a plethora of classroom learning opportunities to develop word knowledge and vocabulary.

To all my parents and carers, a BIG thank you for you commitments this year.  Be safe. Enjoy the school holidays and Miss Jenny and I look forward to happy smiley faces in 2020.

From Primary 2 Class.

Howdy to Everyone,

Well, sadly our term is coming to an end. We are creating our final predictable chart book for 2019. The book is about feelings and the images show what our face looks when we are experiencing different feelings. I have thoroughly enjoyed creating our books each week as it has given me an insight into the interests of our wonderful students.

Our maths continues to be a buzzing hive of workers that move through their tasks with independence and experience. All students have progressed and are demonstrating the ability to ask when they need help, follow task instruction and work with peers when required. We have students that have progressed to two and three digit partitioning in a range of ways.

To get into the spirit of the festive season, we are now reading some Christmas texts including a story about Santa taking a holiday in Australia where he visits Australia Zoo, Fraser Island and many other places of interest. We decorated a mini Christmas tree and we will begin some other festive tasks in the next few days.

Ms Bree and Mr Darren continue to support us all in all subject areas and we would like to thank them for all their help this year. We would be lost without them.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you for allowing me to work with your beautiful children. We have had a great time learning a range of subjects and skills and I will miss them over the holidays. Have a wonderful holiday, stay safe and we will see you next year.

JS1 students, Mr Darren, Ms Bree and Ms Deb.

Well, here we are! Finally at the end of an amazing year of growing and learning.  JS3 has had a number of transformations during the year. We began the year at the back of the school, below the ramp. We will finish the year at the front of the school in our multi-functional learning rooms.

We’ve also had many student changes with three students leaving us during the year, and two students joining us.

To top things off, we’ve also had lots of staff helping in our room, and all of us in JS3, both myself and all past and current students would like to thank: Ms Emma, Ms AnneMaree, Mr Tony, Mr Darren, Ms Bree, Ms Andrea and Ms Jodie for all their help during the year.  I have certainly appreciated the help we have had to achieve some amazing results in the learning progression of each and every student in JS3.

Each student in JS3 has improved in their literacy understanding during 2019.  This is not just my opinion, but rigorous assessment, and interpretation of the data gathered through that process, has shown a clear improvement in both reading and writing as a result of our balanced literacy approach. I’m sure you too, have noticed the improvement in communication, and maturity your child is showing at the end of a really productive year of learning. Thank you for the opportunity to work with your child throughout 2019. I have found each of them to be inquisitive, friendly and a delight to teach.

As you are probably aware, I am unable to continue in the classroom due to an injury and will be on sick leave for the remainder of the school year. Mr Stewart has agreed to continue in the classroom to provide continuity for the students, and I thank him for his kindness in agreeing to do so.  I wish all our families a happy and restful festive season, and I look forward to seeing you all again in 2020.

Kindest regards, Sharon (Tony, Darren, Bree, Jodie & Stewart)