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What a fantastic start to Term 3! We have had some great things happening here at Gympie Special School already this term.
A huge welcome to our new Deputy Principal, Chrissie Hansen. Chrissie has been the Deputy Principal at Palmview Special school for the last 2 years, following 8 years at Rosella Park Special School in Gladstone. Chrissie is a very experienced Special School educator who comes to us with a wealth of knowledge and experience and we are very happy to have her on our staff.
I was absolutely impressed with our students at our Sports Day in week 1. Our first time with 3 Sports Houses: Red House Mari (Kangaroo), Blue House Dala (Mary River Lung Fish) and Green House Gigam (Cockatoo) went really well and students embraced their new colours and mascots. Age Champions were awarded their medallions on a special parade last Friday – check out our Facebook post to see the photos.
Last Friday, we celebrated Schools Tree Day as part of Planet Ark’s National Tree Day held annually at this time of year. This event is Australia’s largest tree planting and nature care event and we were excited to join in for our second year of planting. All classes planted trees, shrubs or ground covers within our school grounds. We have started to cover the slope near our playground with a range of trees and it is going to be amazing in a few years’ time.
Thank you to all of those who have already completed the Parent/Caregiver Survey. If you have not had a chance to complete the survey yet, please note that the online surveys will remain open until Friday, 12 August 2022. This is your opportunity to provide feedback about what our school does well and how we can improve.
To have your say, check your email for an invitation from the Department of Education titled School Opinion Survey for parents and caregivers, 2022.
Can’t find your invitation? If your family has more than one parent/caregiver, check that they haven’t received the invitation and/or check your junk email folder.
This term in week 8 we have our school review. Every Queensland state school is reviewed by the Education Improvement Branch (EIB) at least once every four years. The reviews play an important part in how the department supports school improvement. They provide schools with independent feedback, tailored to their context and needs. Principals use the review findings to work with their school community and assistant regional director to develop clear actions to move the school forward.
Reviews are conducted by experienced educators trained in the use of the National School Improvement Tool, a nationally recognised framework for reviewing teaching and learning practices. Reviewers look closely at each school’s performance data and speak with a wide range of staff, students, parents and community members to get an accurate picture of the school.
Feedback from parents and the community is an important part of school reviews, with everyone encouraged to have their say. If you are interested in speaking with a member of the review team, please let us know.
Warm regards,
Sarah
Wow – what an amazing welcome I have received! It has been a whirlwind 4 weeks getting to know everyone at Gympie Special School- and I have loved every minute of it!!
Sports Day in week 1 was a great start and was inspiring to see the students jumping in to the experience boots and all. Due to weather our Sports Day events stretched out over a couple of weeks with us finishing the Shot Put and 800m races last week. We have a large number of students travelling to the District Sports Day events on Thursday the 4th and Friday the 5th of August. I would encourage any family member to come along to cheer your child on.
On more sports news, a massive congratulations to the students who participated in the Wide Bay Cross Country team at Yatala on the weekend of July the 16th and 17th. We had 4 students participate, and waiting to hear about qualifying for the Nationals competition in Adelaide later this year.
PBL: We have had a great start to Term 3 with our Ardy ticket box filling fast!! During the week students are awarded ‘Ardy Tickets’ when staff see them demonstrate key behaviours. This first few weeks our focus has been on learning and safe behaviours. It is great seeing so many students being safe by wearing their school uniform, hats and shoes!
Book Week: In week 7 we will be joining schools across the state to celebrate Children’s Book Week. This year the chosen book is Dreaming with Eyes Open. This theme is about stepping into your own story and listening to Country as the first storyteller. It’s about learning from friends (animals and plants) who help you on your way. The classes will be running various activities across the week, wrapping up with a whole school dress up as your favourite Book Character on Friday the 26th August.
Don’t forget there is a scheduled Pupil Free Day on Friday September the 2nd. Please be sure to make alternative care arrangements for your child that day.
Have a great month everyone!
Regards,
Chrissie
Hi everyone,
Early Years students and staff thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Gympie Town Library as part of our new Imaginative Stories Unit for English this term. The students listened to some familiar stories and some new ones too. They were excited when Curtis and Kimberley brought out the puppets and the coloured scarfs so they could join in during rhyme time. All the students are waiting in anticipation for our next visit in week 5.
Our Early Years classes have been combining for our Health and Physical Education lessons and the theme this term is group games. The students have joined in games including: Duck, Duck, Goose, musical chairs and Doggy, Doggy Where’s Your Bone.
We also welcome back Miss Lynne who was very excited to see the students. We were sad to say goodbye to Miss Monique but she is still with us in the secondary school and promised to come and say hello from time to time.
Thank you
Early Years Team
Dear Primary Parents,
I cannot believe it is week 4 of term 3 already!
The primary students had an amazing sports day on the first week back at school. The highlights included the student's excellent behaviour, enthusiastic participation and seeing them following the school rules during an exciting and fun fuelled day. Sportsmanship was evident throughout the day and students loudly got behind their team whilst also supporting their fellow students in other team colours.
Following on from this successful sports day (that Mari team won) Ryan, Mason and Arley will be going to Gympie district athletic carnival this Thursday and Friday. All of primary will be wishing you success.
In week three primary were all involved in planting for "tree day" and this also enabled us to recap on last semesters science learning. It will be fantastic watching these plants grow and thrive in our beautiful school oval.
Already this term multiple primary students have received Ardy awards and student of the week awards in parade - well done everyone.
Our English focus of imaginary texts is capturing the students' interest as are the props and ASL boards that are enabling fantastic communication and interactions.
We welcome Tara Zahn and Carina to the Primary team. Tara is teaching P4 Mondays and Tuesday, with Dale Tucker, Wednesday to Friday. While Carina is the full-time teacher for P5 this semester.
Trista, Jennie, Dale, Tara, Erin, Carina
Well, we have passed the halfway mark already for the year. Where does the time go? We welcome Mary and Janet, our new teacher aides, to our classroom, and hope they enjoy it as much as we do.
We have decided to keep the same classroom rules for term 3 as we believe they are still relevant to our learning.
In Literacy, we are focusing on characters and settings in imaginative text, especially in fairy-tales. Our class is already composing great sentences with several descriptive words. We will continue to work on reading, writing, and letter and word knowledge.
In maths we are working on addition, subtraction, 2D shapes, 3D objects and measurement. I am continually amazed at our students’ dedication and application to their learning.
During science we are exploring Chemical Sciences, in particular the properties of objects and whether they can dissolve in liquid.
We thoroughly enjoyed our athletics carnival and the students participated and cheered with much enjoyment.
Will keep you posted of our learning in the classroom,
S1 students, Mary, Janet and Deb.
Hello and welcome to Term 3! Wow – we are past half way of the year already. Miss Dana has returned and Miss Monique has joined the Secondary 2 team at Gympie Special School. Miss Monique is very excited to establish and maintain strong relationships with the students and build effective routines in the classroom over the coming weeks. She is excited to bring fun, creative and hands-on learning into the classroom.
In English, we are examining and creating fantasy texts, particularly focussing on character development, plot and setting across texts which have ‘good’ vs ‘evil’ elements.
In Maths, we are exploring addition and subtraction in a range of practical experiences, discovering 2D shapes and 3D objects in Geometry and also investigating Measurement (length) by using everyday materials.
In Science, students will become detectives when exploring properties of materials before and after changes. We will be identifying if they are reversible or irreversible in the processes of melting, dissolving and evaporating.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Miss Monique – mchee29@eq.edu.au
Here’s to a happy, positive and successful term!
Kind Regards,
Secondary 2
In S4 and S5 we have been busy learning about work readiness and post school options. We were very lucky to have FOTS come and visit us at school and talk about post school options and the many courses and opportunities they offer. The students were very excited to learn about the different courses and fun activities you can do at FOTS. Each student received a gift bag from FOTS for your perusal. S4 and S5 are looking forward to more organisations coming and talking to them and also the opportunity to go and visit a few!
This week students in S3 explored adding more by making paper chains. The students used two colours and created links to show their learning. Tahlia wrote, "I had 6. Then I added 7 more. Now I have 13." Miss Sarah visited to see their amazing counting and paper chain making skills!
Welcome to the Senior Secondary Week 4, Term 3 newsletter. Well what a start to Term 3 it has been, with Covid disruption continuing to affect both staff and students. The Senior Secondary students have managed the disruption very well and continued to produce their best efforts in the classroom.
We have relocated SS3 into the other Senior Secondary building giving us 3 classes across 2 rooms. This allows for greater consistency and enables the teaching team to deliver targeted lesson content and work on a more individual and smaller group basis.
Electives are progressing well with students exploring the sporting and leisure activities available in the Gympie area. We have also had some board games out to play to give the students the idea that you don’t always need to go out to have fun. It is great to see the friendly competition and the very positive and sharing behaviour of the students as they play.
Sports day and follow up events have concluded with a number of Senior Secondary students selected in District Representative events for the school. Congratulations to Kaidyen, Cody, Emma, Aliera, Geoffrey, Grace and Maddy for your efforts and being selected to represent the school. Well done to Cody and Kaidyen for being awarded Senior Secondary Age Champions.
We ended the week last week with a tree planting session for the School National Tree Planting Day. Students under the guidance of Wayne and Miss Sarah planted a number of Australian native trees and shrubs in the garden located at the top front corner of the school. Again, it is wonderful to see the Senior Secondary students working together and helping others to enjoy the event.
We will be working hard over the next few weeks to finalise our works of art for the Art Show and Auction, and exploring work experience options for some of our students.
All the best from the Senior Secondary Team.
In Technology this semester, students will be learning about the basics of coding for programming technology. The fundamental principal of coding is the importance of correctly following a sequence of instructions to achieve the desired outcome. Students were introduced to the importance of instructions needing to be in the correct order when they followed the instructions for how to make the worlds best paper plane.
They were very pleased when their paper planes flew – and I’d have to say, they are in fact the best paper planes I’ve ever made and flown.
We then moved on to their first taste of writing code to program a Bee Bot to complete a challenge.
After ‘writing’ their code (sequence of instructions), students programmed the code into a Bee Bot to see if it ended up on the correct square. Mostly they did, some drove off the edge, some did circles etc, but if it didn’t make it the first time, each student was able to fix their coding so their Bee Bot would complete the challenge correctly. This ‘test, diagnose and fix’ is akin to programmers finding and fixing ‘Bugs’ in software. Because coding in the real world can be quite complex with multiple layers, there will nearly always be errors that have to be corrected. Students can practice following a correct sequence of instructions at home. You can help them learn programming at home by giving them a sequence of instructions when getting ready for school e.g. 1) get dressed, 2) Brush your teeth, 3) grab your bag, 4) get in the car. ?
Andrew
Welcome to Semester Two!
In the Performance Arts Room, we love to move, laugh, create, and imagine! We are excited to share with you that this semester the arts focus will be on performance arts. Your student will be learning a number of performing arts skills such as the elements of dance, drama, and music.
During this time, your students will be building the skills they need to knock your socks off at our end of the year performances (dates TBA). As well as developing aural skills, an understanding of the setting and circumstances of drama, the who, what, where, when and what is at stake of the roles/characters. They will be learning rhythm, space, and timing of movement, all whilst building relationships, collaborative skills, and confidence.
Miss Tara
This term in HASS, Humanities and Social Sciences, our topic is Geography.
Early Years - We are looking at Special places to the individual student. Exploring home and school Environments with regard to rules, labelling features, places and things.
Primary – Special Places near and far, exploring what is the same and different in our school community and capital cities across Australia. We will be labelling features, places and things on maps. We will also be focussing on how our school rules are similar to rules and laws of Australia.
Secondary – Exploring Australia and its states, capital cities, key features and places to visit. They will also look at simple key features of the Australian justice system and how the rules and laws protect the rights of the individuals.
I enjoy exploring and experiencing these topics with all students at their individual learning level.
HASS Teacher Debbie Kitchin