Filter Content
Dear Parents and Carers,
With only 4 weeks left of term, things are speeding up as we head towards the Summer Holidays, and what a busy 4 weeks they will be!
Please keep an eye on Facebook posts and communication books as we approach the end of this year to make sure you are informed and up to date with all events.
Awards Presentation Ceremony Wednesday 16th November – please be seated by 9.10am.
This Wednesday we will be holding our Annual Awards ceremony at 9.15am in our Performing Arts Room. We have moved this event to during the school day as many of our students have been unable to attend events held outside of school hours. This way, every student is able to be present. Please be seated by 9.10am for a prompt start. Remember, Parking is sometimes difficult and you may need to come a little earlier to find parking.
Year 12 Graduation News
We are very excited to spend time with our Year 12 students this week as they prepare for their graduation. The Gympie Special School formal graduation dinner is this Thursday night at the Gympie Senior Citizens Hall and this is a very special celebration for our students, families and staff.
Students will be going to the Memorial Park from 5pm for photographs before moving across to the Senior Citizens Hall. The students and staff have been working hard on organising the night and making decorations and ensuring the night will be a memorable success.
On Friday 18th November at 9am we will be holding a short Graduation Ceremony for our Year 12s and their families, followed by cutting the Graduation cake. We will then farewell our Year 12s as they leave us for the last time. This is always a bittersweet moment as we wish our Year 12s, who have been such a huge part of our school life, all the best for the future.
PBL Rewards Day Friday 2nd December (Wet Play Day)’
In week 9, on Friday 2rd December, we are having our Whole School PBL Rewards Day! This is very exciting and the PBL team planned a great day of celebration to reward our students for their terrific behaviour. We have having a water-based theme to celebrate the wonderful behaviour our students have demonstrated this year. Please make sure you send in suitable clothes for wet play, a hat that can get wet and a towel and change of clothes for this day.
Report Cards Semester 2, 2022
Report cards will be emailed home at the end of the Term. With the report cards, we are aiming to be able to inform families of their child’s 2023 Teacher and Teacher Aide.
2023 BOOKLISTS/ Stationary Lists
Following consultation with our P&C, the school will not be offering the Student Resource Scheme in 2023.
Each student will be provided with a 2023 Booklist/ Stationary List (similar to those at other schools) at the end of this term, for families to purchase the necessary resources.
The school office will be open from Monday 16th January 2023 for families to drop their student’s stationary box off prior to the start of school. Thank you for your cooperation in ensuring all items are purchased, named and ready for the first day of school.
Medication
At the end of each year, all medication and medical equipment is sent home. If your child takes medication during the school day, it must be collected from the school office on your child’s last day of attendance.
For 2023, please ensure your child’s medication is in a clearly labelled pharmacy box with correct dosage, time of administration and is in date. The office will be open from 8.30am to 2.30pm from Monday 16th January 2023 for you to drop off medication and sign forms.
2023 Health Plans
For any students on a Health Plan, Lisa our school nurse will be available on Tuesday 17th January to meet to discuss your child’s plan. If you are attending any medical appointments during the holiday period, could you please organise the following for your child?
- New midazolam orders (required yearly)
- Updated Asthma Plan (required yearly)
- Updated Anaphylaxis plan (required yearly)
- Dietician letter if your child requires Gastronomy tube feeds (required yearly)
- Copies of any current health management reports or summaries that may assist in the management of your child’s specialised health requirements at school
Keeping the school informed about any changes to the health and management of your child, ensures we can work in partnership with you to better support your child at school, and maximise their safety and attendance.
I look forward to seeing many of you over the week as you help us celebrate the success of our students!
Moving forward, learning together,
Ms. Sarah
Deputy Principal News,
PBL News:
The PBL team are busy preparing an amazing End of Term Rewards Day for our students. The rewards day will take place on Friday the 2nd of December.
Please ensure your child brings either their swimmers or wet-play clothes along to school with a towel. Don’t forget to include a bag for the wet clothes to return home in. Keep an eye out for the flyer – this will be another great day for our school community!!
Specialised Health & Medication News:
We are in the process of updating our Specialised Health plans and procedures at school. Our Term 4 focus has been on updating our Asthma Action Plans. It is critical that we have a current plan and emergency medication on-site in the event your child has an asthma attack at school. Parents would have received a letter outlining our procedure and a recommended template for your doctor to use.
At the start of 2023 we will be implementing new medication records for all students requiring medication administration at school. This updated paperwork aligns with new EQ policies. All medication (including Emergency medication such as Asthma puffers and Midazalom) must be signed in via the Administration by a parent at the start of the new year.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any queries.
Have a great month everyone!
Regards,
Chrissie
GUBBI GUBBI OCHRE ART WORKSHOP
Aunty Christine shared and demonstrated how traditional peoples used Ochre rocks to make different coloured paints for creating art works. Primary and Secondary students created our very own Gympie Special School ochre mural with traditional symbols, words and images. These murals will be sealed and hung in our office foyer for all to share. It was a fun experience for all involved.
STUDENT PERFORMANCES
Last term I had a grand idea that our students should be involved in performing to an audience. I spoke with Miss Tara and Miss Sue about how we could make this happen, they did the hard work with planning and organising all the students to learn and present their performances. What a wonderful experience it was for all involved, I was so proud of each and every person who stepped up and conquered their fears to share their performances. This will become a bi-annual event for our students as it is a great learning experience for a everyone.
END OF YEAR ACHIEVEMENT
One of the events I love about term 4 is viewing student achievement data across the year and talking with teachers about student successes and growth. So far, we have 7 students (and the possibility of 5 more) moving up a curriculum level which is phenomenal! This demonstrates the adjustments being made for individual students to access learning at their level within the daily classroom environment and programming is working. Usually this is the focus on students having a means to independently communicate their thoughts and ideas through multimodal AAC such as PODD books, Proloquo2Go or other symbol-based supports.
Every student, every day, having a voice!
Early Year’s children have been busily involved in whole-school community events over the past few weeks. We had a very happy morning presenting our singing and dancing to the rest of the school and to our families. All the practice and preparations paid off and we really enjoyed the experience. We are excited to be in the audience this week to watch the big kids present their performances.
The African Drumming last week was great! Listening to Sam and his daughter Zara play the drums and then get the opportunity to play drums too was so much fun.
On Friday the 11th November we wore poppies that we made ourselves for Remembrance Day.
This week is the School Awards day. Even-though only some children will receive an award, it should be said that choosing a recipient is hard as all the children have worked hard.
We are so lucky to have great involvement from our parents who come to watch us horse ride regularly and some have joined us in the pool. Thank you!
The year is going so quickly and it is hard to believe we have only a few weeks left. We will make the most of every day in the Early Years, learning and having fun.
Cassie, Deb, Lynne, Kate and all the children in EY1 and EY2.
Hello to our Primary families!!!
We have been very busy in Primary learning and having fun!! We are over the halfway mark for Term 4, but don’t worry there is still lots of exciting learning to take place.
We have been involved in whole- school community events over the past few weeks. This includes listening how to play African drums with Sam and his daughter Zaki at the African Beat performance. Ochre painting and learning new Gubbi Gubbi words with Aunty Christine and performing in our school production. All our students did a great job and we are sure our parents who attended enjoyed it with us.
The students look forward to our Friday swimming pool sessions, and we are grateful to the parents who are giving up their time to support us.
Although not all of our students will receive an award this week during our award ceremony, we will also be celebrating many achievements with either bronze, silver or gold Ardy awards during Monday Parade.
All Primary Staff and Students
Well, as the end of the year looms closer, I have begun to reflect on the growth of our wonderful learners throughout 2022. We have a classroom that runs like a well-oiled machine, with students entering the classroom with confidence and comradery.
Our English and Mathematics could in fact be organised by the students as they have become familiar with specific concepts and how they best learn. They bring their preferred resources regardless of the subject or task when working with an adult, and demonstrate an eagerness to complete their work. Science has been most enjoyable with a range of experiments, usually with everyday items in the home. HPE with two other classes has helped all learners to join in a range of games and improve their skills.
In addition, we have enjoyed a range of performances and presentations. Aunty Christine has worked with our students to help them understand our Gubbi Gubbi culture with stories, words and ochre art. We attended choir presentations by Early Years and Primary, and Secondary students. An African drumming performance was also a highlight in week 6, with Ms Cann and a number of students joining in by drumming ad singing.
The students are looking forward to our PBL celebration on Friday in Week 9 as we have filled 2 buckets with Ardy tickets for being Safe, Respectful and a Learner.
Can’t wait for that,
S1 students, Mary, Jodi, Julie and Deb.
Hello S2 families! We have passed the half way mark and are already starting to enjoy the special events that have been occurring as we finish off the year.
This includes ochre painting with Aunty Christine, listening to the African Beat performance and learning how to play their drums and experiencing both school productions. It has been a very busy term and all students have been working hard, learning new concepts in the classroom and interacting positively with others outside of the classroom. We have enjoyed our predictable chart writing as it gives the students an opportunity to be creative and share their thoughts and ideas. Computer time has also been fun as the students have been using the draw tab on Microsoft word to actually draw their pictures to match their sentences. This takes a lot of concentration and fine motor skills! Reading has been an important focus in S2 as the students have engaged in a range of new activities to develop their comprehension and decoding strategies. Lastly, HPE has been a favourite on Tuesday afternoons. We have learnt many new games like stuck in the mud, ball relays and fruit basket.
We look forward to the remainder of the term and more importantly, finishing the year off by celebrating many achievements and successes including a lot of the students’ silver Ardy Awards!
Last week we had Auntie Christine come and talk to us about ochre painting and show us how to grind rock and mix it with water to create ochre. Some of us were lucky enough to experience painting on a small canvas with the paint we had made. During our science experiments we tested what dissolved in water by first predicting then testing different materials, like salt, sugar, dirt and oil. We were fascinated to see the way oil developed small bubbles when poured into water and how they joined to make bigger bubbles once the mixture was stirred. We used our senses to answer questions about oil, deciding that it looked yellow and was a liquid, felt slimy, smelled oily but you couldn’t hear anything! Most of us can describe the properties of a material after a change has occurred and enjoy being budding scientists!
Kind regards,
Miss Libby, Miss Codie and students.
So far this term, S4 have been engaging in a variety of fun science experiments including Mentos and coke explosions, making a DIY lava lamp, dissolving skittles and a variety of different materials such as coffee, sand, salt in water and making magic milk. The students have loved getting involved in the experiments and making predictions on what might happen before the experiment starts.
In Maths S4 have been making beautiful 3D shapes from nets and have had great discussions around shapes and their features. S4 have also been enthusiastically measuring different heights and lengths with a variety of materials. S4 started by measuring each other’s height with blocks and string and, then compared them. S4 then became quite competitive measuring who could jump the longest distance. We now have a dedicated string measurement wall in the classroom to compare and remember who jumped the longest and also who is the tallest in the classroom! In English we have been making personal connections to stories and talking about character development. HPE is always something the S4 students look forward to on a Wednesday afternoon. Last week the S4 class played ‘Run the Gauntlet’, where the students had to collect their teams bean bags without getting hit by a rolling sand bag.
We had another visit from Aunty Christine in the Gubbi Gubbi Workshop where we learnt about ochre painting and African Beat came and performed where students got hands on with the drums!
We've past the halfway mark in the term now and coming up to the final weeks of our 2022 school year! We were so thrilled to have so many smiling family and friends show up to support our End of Year Performances. Your support did not go unnoticed.
Now that we’ve wrapped up our performances, the last couple of weeks will be spent doing a few fun drama lessons and a couple fun visual arts lessons as well! We’re going to keep it light, creative and fun as we finish off the 2022 year in Performing Arts.
The students have been completing their technology tasks very well. We have been focusing on learning the fundamental skills which all computer programming is based on. Students have been writing code (a sequence of instructions) to program into the new Blue Bots to complete tasks. We now also have ‘Bulldozer’ attachments and ‘Pen Holder’ attachments as well as ‘Trailers’. This has allowed us to design a more diverse range of tasks to keep things interesting as the student’s skill levels develop. Many students have surprised us with how quickly they are learning the fundamental skills of coding and programming.
