Happy World Teacher’s Day

On Friday 28^th October, we celebrate “World Teacher’s Day”. This is the perfect opportunity to thank the amazing teaching staff we have here at Gympie Special School, who make a difference every day for our students. Happy World Teacher’s day to our staff and thank you for the commitment, enthusiasm and support you provide each and every day.

Day for Daniel

Today we also raised safety awareness for our students by acknowledging Day for Daniel by wearing red to school. Day for Daniel is Australia’s largest child safety education and awareness day. This national day of action advocates for safer communities for children and empowering them to Recognise, React and Report when they feel unsafe. In 2022, the theme for the day is brave conversations. We believe Day for Daniel is the perfect opportunity to start conversations around personal safety.

Review Recommendations

Thank you so much to all of the families who contributed to our recent School Review. We received some very affirming results and are now busily working on our next 4-year strategic plan. Early next year we will share our 2023 annual improvement plan with our school community.

The Executive Summary will be posted onto our website next week and I will also do a Facebook post. The key recommendations, stated below, will be our school focus for planning over the next 4 years.

Key improvement strategies

• Collaboratively develop the whole-school approach to pedagogy and build teacher capability in effectively identifying and implementing the agreed pedagogical practices that meet the needs of students and the curriculum.
• Develop and document the whole-school approach to reading, to build clarity and consistency in teaching practice.
• Strengthen the distributed model of instructional leadership, to systematically build depth of, and consistency in, the agreed practices across the school.
• Systematically implement the agreed collegial engagement framework that details a range of options available to staff to receive feedback and strengthen teaching practice across the school.
• Strengthen and embed the staff and student wellbeing framework.

Sporting News

Congratulations to our 3 senior school students who recently competed in Tasmania at the Special Olympics. Georgia, Jasmine and Cody all travelled to Tasmania last week to compete. We are very proud of these 3 students!

We also had several primary students compete at the Queensland Schools Primary Track and Field competition as members of the Wide Bay Team. Well done to Shyanne, Mason and William. We recently celebrated their success at our weekly Parade.

We have hit the ground running in Term 4!

In week 1 we welcomed Jane Farrall to the school to work with staff building their knowledge of literacy instruction. At GSS we believe every student can engage with literacy instruction. Jane Farrall supports our staff in differentiating our practices to ensure all students have access to daily literacy instruction. 

This term, the Year 10 students and their families have joined GSS classroom staff to participate in the very important PATH Plan meetings. PATH stands for Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope. It is a visual person-centred planning and goal setting tool. We use this tool to support the creation of student-centred year 11 and 12 programming. Within the process families are supported to think and start planning for post-school options. Recently three staff attended the 2-day PATH plan training at Maryborough Special School.

PBL News:

This week we were visited by our Regional PBL coach conducting a survey on our whole school implementation.  We will be using this information to help us create the next 12-month action plan. It has been fabulous to hand out all of the Ardy Certificates on parade each week. Many of our students are powering through to the Silver awards!!

Have a great month everyone!

Regards,

Chrissie

Last Wednesday Aunty Christine visited us to teach the Primary and Secondary students more Gubbi Gubbi language. Students practiced ‘The Warbu (Green Tree Frog)’ song they learned in the last session and learned some new animal names:

• Wongai - Carpet snake
• Kakkar - Echidna
• Durra - Mullet Fish
• Gilla - Honey bee
• Warbu - Green tree frog
• Gigum - Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
• Mari - Kangaroo
• Dala – Mary River Lung Fish

We also learned some other words:

• Bauple – nuts
• Konai – spear
• Worai – water
• Nguam or dilly – bag

We are looking forward to our next session with Aunty Christine, because we will be doing Ochre painting and making a mural for our school.

It has been delightful to watch the Year 10 students access the Trade Taster course at TAFE experiencing a variety of new skills like light automatic, plumbing, cookery, engineering, hairdressing, health care and carpentry.

The Senior students have also been accessing the community on their very own quest to find their favourite sporting and leisure activities across Gympie. These learning experiences offer our students and their families hands-on understanding for their future pathways beyond school.

Hi everyone,

Early Years students and staff thoroughly enjoy our swimming lessons at the aquatic centre each week and it’s the hot topic of discussion all week in the lead up to Friday. Mr Wayne our groundsman, drives us there and back each week and the students always use their manners and thank Mr Wayne. We have also had fun in the sandpit now that the weather has started to warm up. We have been learning our new sandpit rules and enjoying working together to dig holes to be buried by Miss Cassie! This week we have enjoyed playing in the corridor area outside our classrooms due to the weather. We have played with bubbles, balls, animals, trucks and made chalk drawings on the concrete.

Thank you,

Miss Cassie, Miss Lynne, Miss Caroline, Miss Deb and Miss Kate

Early Years Team

It is so hard to believe we are already approaching the mid-point of the semester.

Our students are busy learning so much in class and we are excited about what our students are achieving.

In science, we have been working on changes of state and students have experimented on how different everyday items can change from liquids, solids and gases. Some of the classes have looked at Jelly and toasted sandwiches to look at how the states of food can change.

We have really enjoyed the first weeks of our swimming at the Gympie ARC. Students have been learning different ways to interact with water and are all enjoying their time there. The students are learning different strokes and ways to survive in the water.

Our students are also busy learning about their focused goals in mathematics and English. The mathematics focuses have been: working with numbers, informal length measurements and a focus on shapes.

In English, we have been reading some amazing stories and discussing what has happened and what we liked or disliked about characters or events in the story.

That’s all for now.

The Primary Teaching Team

Hi! Secondary 2 have had a brilliant and fiery start to the final term of the year! We have continued our weekly Science experiments and even made a lava lamp which was very entertaining and calming to watch how the bubbles moved through the oil. It has been a very fun few weeks for Maths as the class has become actively engaged in many hands-on activities to explore 2D and 3D shapes. We have made shape robots, learnt some new games and have also made models using playdough and match sticks.

Independent writing has been regular in our classroom as Miss Monique uses a variety of tools to get the creativity flowing including visual stimuli, writing prompt videos, which encourage the students to think differently about concepts and also hilarious felt board scenes where we have to discover what mixed up things are happening. HPE is always something to look forward to on a Tuesday! The students are becoming quite competent in their physical skills when playing games such as Heads and Hands, Steal the Bacon and Fruit Basket. We had another visit from Aunty Christine in the Gubbi Gubbi Workshop where we learnt some more vocabulary for different animals and people.

We are looking forward to the remainder of the term and celebrating all achievements!

From,

Secondary 2 students, Miss Monique & Miss Dana

Welcome to Term 4! We are continuing our learning in English, using imaginative texts to explore characteristics and features, such as characters, beginnings and endings in stories and rhyme in poetry. We have also been exploring the connection between words, objects and images in stories and information texts. As a class, we use comprehension strategies to understand and discuss texts listened to and viewed or read independently.

Currently, in maths we are participating in 2D and 3D shape activities by matching shapes with like shapes of different sizes and colours, discussing how many sides or edges, corners and faces. Also, sorting 3D everyday objects and packages into groups, playing shape bingo and making shapes with ropes in the Quad! 

Our science experiments are always fun and exciting to observe. This term we are still looking at materials used in experiments and how they change. So far, we have done a Magic Milk Experiment and experiments with Jelly and Skittles. Once we have discussed the material’s properties, according to our senses, we write up our experiment and sometimes draw and label before and after observations. As you can see we are very involved learners!

Kind regards,

Miss Libby, Miss Michelle and students.

The Year 9 and 10 students are enjoying their new work skills programs that will be happening every Thursday. The Year 10s started their first day at TAFE, enrolled in a Trade Tasters Course. They were every excited to learn how to remove, attach tyres using a rattle gun or the old-fashioned way with a lug wrench. Students also gained skills in removing and reattaching hub caps. It was very interesting exploring underneath a car that was hoisted up into the air. We made friends with 3 other students from Cooloola Christian College who were completing the same course with us. The students looked very smart in their tradie work clothes and they were a credit to themselves, representing Gympie Special School in the best of ways.

The Year 9 students have started a new cooking program where they will learn how to run their own baked goods delivery service. They will learn how to bake, make menus, make online food orders, present their food to customers and much more. Last Thursday the Year 9 students learnt how to write a resume and make their first Woolworths order online using the new touchscreen TV. The students are looking forward to baking a chocolate cake for their next work skills lesson.

Welcome to term 4,

This term is set to be a very busy term with Graduation and whole school production, students are involved in practising their roles for the production and making decorations for the year 12 Graduation.

Some students will be participating in Roadcraft where they will be learning skills associated with being a safe driver/passenger or pedestrian.

Recreation and Leisure students have already started visiting various locations in the community, and our Recreation and Sports students have been accessing the Outdoor Gym to expand their knowledge of what they can access in the community.

Our English focus for this term is based around communication in the community and what it takes to become a school leader, including composing speeches for leadership roles.

Maths, students will continue their learning around maps, timetables and making collections of money to make small purchases.

Our car washing program has been very successful and our students involved in this program have learnt some very valuable skills that they will be able to practise at home and in the wider community.

The other program that is running full steam ahead is the market stall enterprise. Students have been creating Christmas craft to sell at the Duckpond Markets in November, we will notify parents about this day in the near future.

Until next time

Senior staff

Deb, Gavin, Sue, Liz, Darren, Anne- Maree, Kelly, Chrissie and Jasmine.

We have had a few fabulous weeks back to work in the Arts Room. The students have been engaging with tasks such as charades and character circles to better prepare them to face the audience for their performances in weeks 5 and 6. From voice recording of our scripts, to practising dances, songs, and beats, we are certainly learning on the job and enjoying it too!

We have found it much easier to practise our performances now that the majority of our props are made, so these next few weeks will be spent adding the final touches and practising our lines, developing our characters and roles. We are excited to share the fruits of our blossoming imaginations!

In HASS this term with Primary and Secondary students, we are having fun exploring places using our 5 senses, adding descriptive words to explain what things in the environment (look, feel, sound, taste and smell) like. In Early Years, we have been looking at rules at home and at school, in particular How to be Safe in these environments, and the rules we need to follow.  Primary students, next week, will be starting to look at simple maps of places, around the school environment.  Later this term we will be discovering how Rules and Laws are similar and different, at home, at school and within the government.  I am thoroughly enjoying these topics and exploring them with all students.