Welcome everyone to our first Newsletter for 2023.

How wonderful to start the school year with all of our staff and students here and no disruptions to our school calendar! I would like to extend a big Gympie Special School welcome to all of our new families this year. We welcomed 7 new Early Years students, and several new students across Senior School and Secondary. We have had some student movement over the past few weeks, with some new students arriving and existing students moving away. We will be finalising our staffing over the next week, now that our 2023 allocation has been announced.

We’ve had a great start to the year, with many Student of the Week awards and a couple of ARDY awards already being presented on Parade. Well done, students! Check out our Facebook posts for each week’s behaviour expectation and the Rule of the Week.

Thank you to those parents/ caregivers who sent in all items on the booklists, so their students had their equipment, and were ready to learn. We really appreciate having all equipment supplied for your child. If you haven’t yet sent everything on your students list in yet, please do so as quickly as possible.

An important focus for our school is student communication and the opportunity for all students to have a voice. We started this year with some fantastic professional development for staff, including a full day of PODD training with Helen Tainsh, an experienced Speech Language Pathologist who specialises in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). PODD is one of the key communication devices we regularly model and engage with our students throughout the school. A large number of our staff are very well versed in using PODD and for them, this was a fantastic opportunity to refresh and refine their skills. For new staff this was a great opportunity to learn new skills and be ready to chat with their students from the first day. Staff thoroughly engaged in the workshop with Helen and came away with clear understandings and renewed commitment to using AAC throughout the day with our students. We have ordered new PODDs for each staff member across the school, more personalised to our school and context and are eagerly waiting for their delivery. Have you noticed the new PODD straps our staff are now wearing?

It was exciting to welcome a Chappy back to our school! Chappy Rachel has joined our team this year and has already begun to make a difference, engaging students with her friendly approach.  Girls Club is up and running, with 2 of our awesome teacher aides and Rachel, making sure the program is interesting and full of variety.  If you would like to meet with Rachel at any stage throughout the year, please just let us know and we will help organise a meeting. We are hoping to hold a parent/ caregiver morning or afternoon tea later this term for parents meet Rachel. Keep an eye out for your invitation over the next couple of weeks.

We have a new wheelchair pathway down to the Gympie High School oval! Workers have been onsite over the past few weeks, constructing a wheelchair accessible pathway down to the high school oval which we can use for sports, playtimes for our older students and activities requiring more space. A huge thank you to the High School for letting us share this space.

Our teaching staff have been very busy meeting with parents to plan curriculum needs for each student, as well as sending home parent consent forms, referring students to our speech language pathologists, occupational therapist or our physiotherapist. It’s a busy time of the school year as we set things in place to support our students in the best possible ways. Please keep your eyes out for notes, providing information and/or requiring your signature. 

Best wishes for a fabulous term of learning,

Sarah

What a great start back to the school in the New Year we have had! We have loved welcoming all of our new students into our school community! At the start of the year staff returned for our professional development days. We were privileged to welcome Helen Tainish to our school for a day of PODD training. Helen Tainsh is a Senior Speech Pathologist with 30 years of experience of working with individuals who have complex communication needs.

Developing communication skills is a high priority at Gympie Special School.  We utilise multiple methods of communication across the school and all staff professional development to build capability is highly valued! Please don’t hesitate to talk to your classroom teams about how communication skills are developed and utilised to enhance learning.

PBL News:

So far this term we have been working on ‘how we do school at Gympie Special School’. Our students are learning about being with their new classmates and classroom staff.  They have been setting up classroom routines and learning how to communicate with their new communication partners in their classrooms.

Regards,

Chrissie

The new school year got off to a great start in all of our three Early Year’s classes. The new prep children are having fun as they get used to the school routine and the returning children are setting a lovely example to them of how to do school. After the long summer holiday all of us had to get used to having a more structured routine again and the new prep students have done a great job of learning how to transition within the classroom, to the playground and around the school.

The Early Year’s class groups are as follows: Early Year’s 1 with Miss Cassie and Miss Kelsey are all new prep students-Charlie, Raphael, Jack, Harry and Evie. Early Year’s 2 with Miss Lynne and Miss Kate has a new prep student Indiana, a new year 1 student Dominic, as well as three returning students, Isaiah, Jade and Ayden. Miss Trista and Miss Maya have Miles, Henry, Isaac, Kruze and a new student, Rose.

There is so much to learn about being at school and being part of the school community. The children have attended parade each week and the new students did very well being part of the whole school group. We were extremely proud of them. As the weeks go by the Positive Behaviour for Learning award system will begin to make more sense to them and they will look forward to receiving an award on parade.

All classes are working hard in literacy and learning sounds and some are practising counting the syllables in words, all of which will help learning to reading. We’re having fun with rhyme in the books we are reading and listening to patterns in Maths. In Science we are learning about planet earth and using craft materials to depict how the earth looks from space.

All three teachers are enjoying having ICP meetings with you, the parents, at the moment and sharing information about your child so that their individual programs can be as beneficial as possible. We appreciate the time you give to come and speak with us.

Horse riding at RDA has been delayed for a little while but will commence in the next few weeks. Please return your permission forms if you haven’t already done so. We ask that you go to the Fairplay site and apply for your voucher as soon possible as they may run out before the end date of the 29th March. Don’t forget to save it once you receive it as a copy must be emailed to RDA or handed to us to give them.

From all of us.

Early Year’s sector.

P3 have had a fantastic start to the school year! We have quickly settled into our new classroom and learnt our daily routine all whilst being a safe, respectful learner. Patterns in Maths have been lots of fun. The students searched for patterns around the classroom and took photos of them on the iPad. We have utilised a variety of materials to continue and create our own patterns including watercolour painting, playdough, coloured paper, concrete manipulatives and the interactive smartboard. Independent writing has also been a hit by responding to video stimulus, creating funny feltboard scenes and also writing letters to Miss Sarah, asking her several questions. The students are listening for rhyme in story books and we are exploring a range of different poems through auditory and visual experiences. All students are on their way to achieving their Bronze Ardy Award. We can’t wait to continue and build on our great learning and engagement in the P3 classroom!

Welcome back to another year. My my time flies by when you are having fun. We are almost half way through the term already.

The primary cohort consists of P1 Miss Jennie and Bree, P2 Miss Carina and Deb, P3 Miss Monique and Dana, P4 Miss Jo and Naomi and P5 Mis Erin and Emma. Miss Jaz will be visiting all the primary classes to offer specialised health support.

Over the past few weeks, teachers have been busy with meeting parents, conducting ICP meetings. Our English unit is focused on poetry and humorous rhyme, Maths is sequencing time and events and patterning, Science is looking at the ground beneath our feet and how earth's resources are used and effected by the weather; and in PE we are looking at food choices and actions to keep us happy and healthy and Phys Ed with Mr Dale. 

Welcome, we are off to a great start with a bang! Our team is Kerri (teacher aide) and Deb (teacher). Declan and Tyson are with me for another year and we have Shyanne, Evie, Hayley and Mason to complete our classroom. We have enjoyed setting our room up with the help of the students to plan the layout.

Absolutely love our English unit about poetry. Tyson borrowed a book from the library called, ‘Disgusting McGrossface,’ by Rove McMannus. It became the stimulus for some rhyming sentences and of course we had to make a replica of the character to display in the classroom. We are already identifying rhyme in texts and will explore contemporary songs. I can’t wait to investigate other poetic devices with all the students.

Maths is shaping up to be a semester filled with pair and group work, where students share their knowledge with each other. Evie, Hayley and Shyanne are already demonstrating how quickly they can complete a range of patterning tasks. Mason is completing a range of maths tasks.

Swimming is on Friday with Coach Tim joining us at the pool each week. In addition, we will discuss healthy eating and which foods can be eaten occasionally or often.

We are looking forward to getting to know your kiddos as the year progresses. Fortunately, we will have Andrea working with some of our students in a weekly program and the girls are participating in girls club on Thursdays.

Watch this space,

Declan, Tyson, Shyanne, Mason, Evie, Hayley, Kerri and Deb.

S2 has had a fabulous entry into 2023 as we learn how to become high school students with high school expectations. We are enjoying using the laptops as an alternative pencil for many areas of the curriculum. We are learning to log in, pull up a word document, name our document and download it onto our USB stick. Once our laptop task is completed, we import pictures to illustrate our work and format them correctly. Miss Cann has brought in some flashy gaming computer mice to motivate us to do our very best work on the laptops.

Last week we joined forces with Miss Erin’s P5 class to begin learning about earthquakes. We all sat on the resonance board placed on essef springs to feel what it’s like to be in an earthquake. It was fun learning together and it was even more fun trying to write our name while sitting on the shaky resonance board. Some of us tried drinking a cup of water under earthquake conditions. It was a very splashy experience. Most of all it was a very fun way to learn, as you can see by our pictures.

In maths we have been learning about patterns using threadable beads and other items. We also make number patterns by skip counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. Sometimes it can get a little bit tricky and we have to remove some of the beads and begin again. We are learning to represent number patterns shown on the 100-number board using our beads and visa versa. It is helping us to learn how to count lots of things faster or better still, how to count coins.

Cann, Karen, Janet, Lukas, Rosie, Ky, Laila, Charlie, Locklan and Ryan.

Wow! We have started the year at a fast pace as we learn our routines and get to know our classmates. We welcome Marcus, who is new to our school and has settled in beautifully, showing us what a mature and thoughtful person he is. In English, our students are grouped according to their reading and spelling/ letter knowledge levels, receiving one to one instruction for short intensive periods every day. Whilst waiting for their turn, students complete word games and progress through a Sounds Booklet, targeting the sounds they find more difficult, or alternately completing sensory activities to reinforce their letter sounds. We are also undertaking three short dictation lessons and independent writing. These activities benefit not only our student’s literacy but also their social connections as we blend the two classes during this time. Our English focus is around rhyme and songs and we have fun listening to humorous rhymes each morning and working out the rhyming patterns.

In maths we are learning all about patterns, where we see patterns in the environment and making patterns of our own using shape, colour and familiar objects. We are extending these concepts with some of our students using number patterns and getting them to create their own patterns for others to solve.

We have started our Science by looking at earthquakes, and describing the devastating effects of these events, as evidenced earlier this week in Turkey. We all look forward to swimming Friday with S3 starting at 9.00am and S4 at 9.45am, a welcome change from the hot days at school.

Kind regards,

Libby, Tegan, Jasmine, Darren, Savannah, Marcus, Gorgia, Peter, Jed, Tommy, Tahlia, Zane, Ray, Henry and Braydan

Seniors have hit the ground running to start off this year. We have been learning our new timetable and settling in well to our home groups. In literacy we have been learning how to write letters to our penpals at Maryborough Special School. Maths has been focussing on time and money. We have been learning our new parade roles and getting excited to write our leadership speeches for school Captain. Our years 12’s can’t wait to receive their new Senior shirts in a few weeks’ time. Thank you to the P&C for supporting this.

We have been having great fun learning yoga in get Let’s get physical! During healthy options we have been learning about making healthy food choices in our daily lives. Artistic exploration as been such a creative and wonderful learning experience. Last week was very exciting with a school visit from members of the NRL teams the Dolphins and the Bulldogs. We have also started swimming this term with great progress in all those that attend.

The 2023 Communication Team is very happy to have a passionate group of members who all want to support the school community in the journey towards every student having a voice. The goal of the Communication Team is to support teachers, teacher aides and families to make sure each student has a communication system that allows them to say what they want to say and when they want to say it. Through the use of AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) which in other terms is PODD, Aided Language Displays, PROLOQUO2GO and Auslan signing, all students are exposed to and modelled communication all day, every day.

It makes a difference to be heard!

In each newsletter we will publish the Core Words that have been the focus of each week.

So, what are Core Words?

Core Words are a set of simple words that are used frequently. The children learn the symbol for each word, the sign for the word and they practise saying the word and see it modelled and used in different contexts throughout the week.

The words for the first four weeks are listed here. Each week they will be shown on the Gympie Special School Facebook page (link below).

https://www.facebook.com/GympieSPS/

Attached is the Communication Bill of Rights. It is very awe inspiring.

Communication is everyone’s right.

Last week our girls’ group for Secondary and Senior Secondary girls started. It has been a great time so far, with lunch being enjoyed together, lots of chatter, and art and craft activities. We decorated cut-outs of women with buttons, wool, glitter, and googly eyes last week. We have hung these up in the closed-in verandah outside the ESP room, which is where we meet. This week we continued the fun by making pom-pom creatures, folding origami bookmarks, constructing trees using paint and buttons, and colouring in. As well providing a range of enjoyable activities, girls’ group is an opportunity for students to practise their conversation and social skills, and talk about things that are on their minds. We plan to run girls’ group each Wednesday and Thursday during first break throughout the year.

Miss Michelle (teacher-aide), Miss Andrea (teacher-aide), and Chappy Rachel (chaplain)

Our school has an All Terrain Wheelchair available for short term loans. If interested, please see the office to complete an equipment borrowing form.