Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the final newsletter for 2022.  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 2023.

We have had some fantastic celebrations over the past few weeks, including our Year 6 Graduation today. 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 have 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, and attended events.  

I would like to thank students, staff, parents and carers for a wonderful year. Thank you to all of our families for the fantastic support you have given our school this year. The past few years have been challenging and your support has been invaluable. Without your support, our work would be much harder. We greatly value our partnerships with families and the wider school community. Thank you!

Rachael Pelling, our Deputy Principal who has been working at James Nash State High School this semester, has taken a position at another school for the start of 2023 and we wish her all the best. I am very happy to announce Chrissie Hansen will remain as our Deputy Principal for Term 1 2023. I look forward to working with such a fantastic team in 2023.

This year staff have engaged in many hours of professional learning.  We will start 2023 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.

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 2023 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 9th 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.

Report Cards will be emailed at the end of this week. Also, students will receive a letter detailing which class they are in for 2023 and who their teacher and teacher aide will be. If your student will be away on Friday, please contact the office via email at admin@gympiespecs.eq.edu.au  and we will email this information to you.

All students have now have received their 2023 Booklists.  You can also find these attached to this newsletter or on our Website or email admin@gympiespecs.eq.edu.au 

Please make sure you have purchased ALL items on the booklist and bring this equipment into school on your child’s first day. The school office will be open from Monday 16^th January to Friday 20^th January from 8.30am to 2.30pm if you wish to drop your child’s booklist items off before the first day or drop off Medication.  Any students on Medication will require new forms completed for 2023.

I would like to wish all of our families an enjoyable festive season, and a safe and refreshing Summer Holiday break.

I am really looking forward to working with you next year and enjoying a fantastic 2023.

Best wishes

Sarah Lester

Wow – I can’t quite believe it is Week 10 of Term 4 already! It has been an absolute pleasure coming to Gympie Special School for Semester 2! I look forward to continuing in Term 1 2023.

It has been a busy time in the school as we wrap up 2022 and plan for 2023. We have had a lot of professional conversations with staff about the 2023 Class List and staffing allocation. I am sure you are all excited about hearing where your student will be in 2023. Keep an eye out for the class list to be sent out soon. Over the last couple of weeks our staff have connected to share student information with the 2023 class teams. This is a critical process in supporting our students transition between teams.

PBL News:

We are excited to host our Term 4 Rewards Activity – Splash n Dash - tomorrow (Thursday). This is a great opportunity for our students to celebrate their positive behaviour for Term 4. Due to the extreme heat, outside activities will wrap up by 10:30am. Please ensure your child brings along their wet gear and some dry clothes to change into. Be sure to name everything!!

Medication News:

Please be sure to pickup all of your child’s medication before the end of the year. We are unable to store any medication at school over the holidays. All left over medication will be disposed of in the first week of the school holidays.

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.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and safe New Year! We look forward to seeing you in 2023!

Regards,

Chrissie

CURRICULUM LEVEL CHANGES

This is one of my favourite times of the year, not only is Christmas just around the corner (yippee!), but I get to appreciate and share student’s growth and learning over the past year. Teachers have collaborated and moderated student evidence and assessments and I was so very excited (and super proud) to be invited to 14 curriculum level change meetings.

Drum roll:

20% of our student from Prep to Year 10 will move up a curriculum level!

This is a massive shout out to our awesome staff for consistency in their teaching practice, focusing on language, literacy, interactions and relationships across all learning areas. Using visual supports to aide and provide the language for our students to communicate effectively to peers and adults is a vital skill for our learners. It is clear, we are focusing on the right work, the right way!

COMMUNICATION AND LITERACY IN 2023

In 2023 we have invested a large amount of funding into improving our language and literacy program across the school.

Firstly, we are investing in brand new PODD books, for consistency across the school. PODD books are used to provide visual supports and additional language to support communication. This is for all of our students, verbal and non-verbal. Research confirms that literacy development for reading and writing is strongly linked to vocabulary and language. Without language and vocabulary, literacy skills are difficult to develop. We have also invested in a literacy program to support a systematic approach to the teaching and learning of phonics to complement our Comprehensive Literacy approach. The program is called Promoting Literacy Development (PLD), and many schools in our region have chosen this program as it is easy to use for staff, engaging for students and flexible in its use to work at the students’ current working level.

We are very excited to seeing the growth and development in our students’ literacy skills. If you would like to look further into the program your can access information here https://pld-literacy.org/plds-downloadable-developmental-milestone-guides-posters-information-sheets/

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Last but not least, Thank you to everyone for your continued support at our wonderful school.

Happy holidays.

Shellie

Hi everyone,

Early Years students have enjoyed meeting the new preps during their transition days and look forward to making new friendships in the new year. Students have been enjoying doing Christmas craft in the lead up to the holidays. Even though students were sad that Splash and Dash didn’t happen in Week 9, they still got to enjoy a movie and chips and nuggets to celebrate being safe, caring and successful all term.  We also enjoyed our last horse riding for the year today.

Thank you,

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

Early Years Team

Our year is nearly done. We’ve all had a great time in Primary with lots of happy memories.

We’ve enjoyed swimming this term, learning how to be safe in the water and the different strokes. We thoroughly enjoyed Eddie’s visit. We hope he had a great time swimming with P1 and P2.

We’ve completed our classwork and are now enjoying some Christmas activities.

We hope you all have a safe and happy holiday. All the best to the year 6 students who move up to secondary next year. We look forward to seeing most of the smiling faces back next year and welcoming new faces along with saying goodbye to some students who are leaving.

What a fun packed year we have had. As the last days loom, I become a little excited (holidays) and a little sad, as I know that I will miss the students and staff. Throughout the year, the students have all grown and matured in many ways. They have proven themselves to be independent, hard working teenagers who have wonderful senses of humour.

Literacy and Mathematics have become opportunities to independently implement strategies. I was fortunate enough to have a proud teacher moment when I witnessed a student encouraging another to use a particular strategy during a maths task.

We finish the year on a high while reflecting on camp, presentations, concerts, awards and lots of laughter. Have a wonderful holiday, I look forward to seeing how everyone has grown in 2023.

Thank you for allowing us the privilege of working with your kiddos,

S1 students, Mary, Jodi, and Deb.

Hi S2 Families,

We are nearly there and Christmas is just around the corner! S2 have had a very busy last few weeks completing their assessments, consolidating learning and having some fun engaging in our Secondary Christmas rotations. We even had Eddie the Koala join us for a day. S2 encouraged his participation in our Christmas booklet activities and playing handball in the Quad at play time. Recently, our naughty elves have come to visit and this has been the perfect stimulus for our independent writing as we have been drawing and communicating about all of the mischievous things they have been up to in our classroom. We are looking forward to our PBL Splash and Dash Rewards Day and all of the other fun activities in the last school week of 2022. Congratulations S2 students on all of your amazing achievements this year. Have a very safe and wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We are all excitedly looking forward to the holidays and counting down the days! Over the last two weeks we have been busy making soaps, lavender bags and Christmas decorations as our culminating activities in science. We are really proud of what we have made and had fun watching the soap base melt, adding essential oils, colours, dried or pressed flowers and poppy seeds to the mix. The next day we checked it to see how it had solidified into a lovely cake of soap! On Wednesday, we combined as a sector to sell our soaps and lavender bags in a Pop-Up Shop, using our addition maths! We have continued our movement to music a few times each week with S1 and S2, in the comfort of an air-conditioned room.

We would like to thank our parents and carers for the commitment to their child’s education  throughout the year. We wish you a safe, happy and healthy Festive Season and New Year.

Warm regards

Libby, Michelle, Codie and S3 students.

The year 10 students completed their Trades Taster course at TAFE. It was so good to see them all arrive in their high vis clothes and steel capped boots each Thursday. Everyone learned skills relating to changing tyres and wheel balancing, engineering machines used on sheet metal and working with wood and wood tools. Each student participated in all tasks, which was scary for the teachers but so exciting for the students. The students were exemplary representatives Gympie Special School and helped to build a bond with the Gympie TAFE. Teachers from other TAFEs in our region came to watch our students so that Year 10 Trades Taster courses can be set up on other campuses on the Sunshine Coast.

Doing the assessments for technology is always exciting.  We get to see student progress in their understandings and skills.  Many of the students take on more than the expected learning, sometimes students teach us things as well.  It is often said that the youth of today are “digital natives”, that is, they are born and raised in a digital culture.  The older generations are considered “digital immigrants”, that is, we are learning new skills and a new way of doing things.  The advances in Digital Technologies is an amazing thing as is all technology - when used correctly for good. Teaching students how digital technologies can enhance their lives while helping them become aware of the possible dangers is a privilege and carries great responsibility.  We commit to doing all we can to keep our youth safe through education and awareness which will allow them to better enjoy the benefits of this exciting digital age.  Have a great holiday and we look forward to seeing our students return next year.

During the last two weeks of this term we have been enjoying the “post End of Year Performances” phase. We have been relaxing, making salt dough Christmas ornaments, small sail boats to race in a tub of water, and other fun activities, Christmas and non- Christmas related.

This wind down phase is always bitter sweet. We look forward to the summer, but also become very aware of the relationships we’ve formed over the year and how much fun we’re all having together. In these last two weeks of school we have continued to enjoy the strength of our relationships while embracing the opportunity to do fun crafts and art projects.

Dear Parents and Carers, 

In 2023, we are moving to individual student booklists.  The Student Resource Scheme will no longer be offered due to minimal participation. 

Please find attached booklists for 2023.   

There are a number of ways this list can be filled, you can drop the list at a local newsagent, online with Officeworks or simply shopping for items yourself. 

Gympie Special School will still be providing the following items: 

• Communication diary and protective zippered case 
• Velcro, laminating sheets, blue tac, white board markers etc 
• Hand sanitizer and sunscreen 

All clearly named stationery packs can be left in our school office from 16/01/2023 along with any labelled medication needed for your student in 2023. 

Sarah Lester 

Principal 

The Australian Federal Police through the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation is seeing a concerning global trend of teenage males being targeted to send explicit images of themselves and then blackmailed. This is called sexual extortion, or sextortion.

The AFP is urging families to have important safety conversations ahead of the school holidays to prevent young people from becoming victim. This crime can have serious wellbeing and psychological impacts.

How does sextortion start?

• Unsolicited friend and follow requests on social media
• Direct messages on one app and then being asked to keep chatting on a secondary app
• Conversations suddenly and quickly becoming sexualised
• Requests for sexualised images or content.

What can families do?

• Have open and regular conversations about your child’s online activities and interactions
• Know what platforms, apps and games they are using and who they are interacting with
• Remain open and approachable, victims will be reluctant to come forward if they feel they will be punished or blamed
• Ensure your child knows that it is okay to leave conversations if they feel uncomfortable or unsafe
• Support your child and know how to respond. The Online blackmail and sexual extortion response kit has been created to recognise sextortion and get help.

The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation is here to keep young people safe from online sexual exploitation and abuse.

You can make a report via accce.gov.au/report

For further information, resources and advice visit thinkuknow.org.au