I would like to thank our school community for the wonderful support you have shown us this term. We have had a few difficult events to manage this term and the care and messages of support have made a huge difference to how we as a school have navigated through these events. It has meant the world to us to receive emails and phone calls telling us what a great job our families feel we are doing for their students. I see how hard the staff work every day supporting their students to make progress towards their goals, and to have this acknowledged by our families means so much to us.

I will be on leave for the first 2 weeks next Term. Chrissie Hansen will Acting Principal in my absence. We welcome our Deputy Principal, Rachael Pelling back to Gympie Special School next term following her completion of an acting position at another school.

When I return in week 3, Chrissie will be taking on some special project work for our school to help us enact our explicit improvement agenda. She will work with our Senior school for 2 days a week, as the Senior school Co-ordinator, co-ordinate our Students Services for 2 days a week and be a classroom teacher in Primary on Fridays. I am especially happy to be able to retain Chrissie as a valued staff member, helping drive our improvement focus.

I wish all of our families a Happy Easter and a safe, refreshing Autumn break.  I look forward to returning in week 3 to continue the great work happening here at Gympie Special.

Happy Easter!

Sarah

What a fabulous time I have had as Deputy Principal at Gympie Special School!! At the start of Term 2, we will welcome Rachel Pelling back to her position as DP. It is not goodbye from me as I move into an alternative role at GSS. After the first two weeks relieving Sarah, I will be working two days a week with the Senior Secondary team developing programs and post-school pathways for our year 11  and 12 students; two days a week overseeing Student Services; and one day a week as the P4 classroom teacher.

A massive thanks to all the students, staff and families, who welcomed me into the GSS community and supported me in my role. I am very excited about continuing my work at GSS!

COMING UP….. Cross Country! If you’re looking for a great holiday activity, schedule in some time training for our school cross country! It’s a great opportunity to explore the various running tracks of Gympie and building in some essential movement into your daily routine. Be sure to take some pics of all the places you explore to share with your classroom teams when you return!

PBL News

Last week the PBL Team Leader, Andrew Stokes, and I spent the day down at Woody Point Special School meeting with other Special Schools to share our PBL practices. These days occur twice a year and are a great opportunity to learn from and share our knowledge with our colleagues.

PBL Rewards Activities: This Friday, our students take time to celebrate the great work and effort they put in to learning and demonstrating positive behaviour across our school. The Early Years will be participating in rotational activities and enjoying chicken nuggets for lunch. The Primary, Secondary and Senior Secondary students will be enjoying pizza and a movie. What a great way to end the term!

Specialised Health News

In Term 4 2022, we updated our processes on how we managed the Specialised Health needs of our students. A key element to the efficiency of this process is a quick turn-around when sending forms home for signatures. This ensures your child is being supported in the safest way possible.

Important points to remember:

• When a student is diagnosed with a specialised health need or medical condition, we will either ask you to sign a Nurse Referral Form and Consent to Share Information forms, or discuss the need for a specific Action Plan from your medical team;
• If a referral is required, our Education Qld Nurse will contact you and collaborate to develop a health plan. These plans are critical to ensure we as a school provide the appropriate support to your child. Staff undertake specialised health training as needed.
• Copies of the Health or Action Plans are shared with the classroom teams, uploaded onto One School, and stored within emergency folders for quick reference.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any queries.

Regards,

Chrissie

At Gympie Special School we utilise the Communication Bill of Rights as part of our core work. Our vision as a school, is for all of our students to become autonomous communicators, we believe every person, everyday has the right to:

• To say what they want,
• When they want,
• However they want,
• To whomever they want.

As such, communication is key to our school activities throughout the week. We are communication partners, supporting our students to learn how to communicate with each other, and how to understand the messages given to them. We utilise AAC such as PODD books, iPad apps such as Proloquo2GO, visual time tables, communication boards, quick visual rules and we have a large focus on vocabulary and language teaching and learning in all classrooms, and all learning areas.

Speaking and listening skills are vital and are referred to as oral language skills. The main components of oral language include,

• Word knowledge,
• Sentence structure,
• Language understanding and
• Structured thinking to organise and sequence thoughts.

To become a skilful reader and writer, oral language skills are vital. The PLD literacy program we have embraced encompasses a structured approach to the teaching of the listening to and reading of letters and their sounds, motor and movement skills and most importantly Oral language skills.

I am so excited about how students have been enjoying the language and literacy games used through the program to practice and develop these skills.

During the term the Early Years children settled happily into the routines of the school week and embraced learning through fun, play-based activities. Making patterns in maths has produced some lovely necklaces and towers. Knocking the towers down is even more fun! Everyone loves painting and in science we’ve made rainy day pictures and sunny day pictures as well as painting and collaging planet earth pictures. In English, we’ve been learning sounds and using them in our writing. Some children are tapping out syllables and blending sounds to learn to read words.

Our playtimes are so much fun playing in the playground and in the ball pit and riding the little cars and scooter bikes in the corridor. Another favourite activity is the big tub of Barbie toys complete with a car and caravan!

The term is nearly finished and this week we will do some Easter activities and then on Friday we’re having our Positive Behaviour for Learning rewards day. A flyer is going home to inform you of the activities for the session. It’s a lovely way to end the term. 

Thank you for your support throughout the term.

Cassie, Lynne, Trista, Kelsey, Kate, Maya and all the children in Early Years.

In Science P1 we are working on a unit called Beneath our Feet.

We have done an experiment over the last few weeks.

First, we spooned some dirt into a big glass jar.

Then, we filled the jar with water.

Then, we stirred up the water and dirt.

We waited weeks and weeks to watch it settle.

We saw the dirt sort itself into different layers. There were layers of rocks and sand, dirt and fine silt with grass and bits of leaves on top of the water.

It was very interesting.

During individual tasks and group activities P2 students had fun exploring the world of patterns. They are super detectives in finding patterns in and out of class and love creating their own. We are looking at the time it takes for us to do certain activities. The students have to guess which activity will take the longest or shortest time to complete.

We have had a lot of fun exploring our Shared Reading books weekly. We ask the ‘where, who, why, when and what’ questions, then use our phonic knowledge to write sentences or answer these by using different communication systems. The students had a lot of fun baking and decorating a ‘Lamington Man’ each. 

In Health we are looking at different physical activities which will help us to keep healthy, like playing with our dog, swimming, playing in the park or going for a walk with our family.

During our Science lessons we are exploring different Natural Resources, specifically looking at water at the moment. Lots to discover!

Have a great time during the Easter Holidays.

Carina, Debbie and P2 students

The last few weeks have been great in Primary 3! The students are doing a fantastic job at recalling prior knowledge of the concepts we have been learning about. As we are heading towards the end of term, it has been a good opportunity to bring back some number work as we have been pretty busy with patterns and duration. The photos show some fun, hands-on activities we have been engaging in lately across many learning areas. Our 'Promoting Literacy Development' reading and spelling program is well under away as we continue to work on specific skills tailored to each student needs and abilities. This includes CVC words, working with word meanings, reading decodable passages and also listening for sounds. A new student has also joined the P3 team - welcome Pearl. She has settled in well and is continuing to learn our school rules, classroom routines and expectations. One week of term to go - let's do it! Enjoy your Easter break everyone. 

In P4 we have been working hard and having some great learning experiences.

In English we continue our exploration of rhyming stories and poems. We have developed some great skills in finding rhymes, alliteration and onomatopoeia.

In maths we have been getting very good at investigating time and duration, making patterns and exploring the sequence of how things happen. We have also been practising our addition skills when we add our scores from our cornhole game.

Science has been a fun discovery of the school environment around us. We have looked at soil samples and looked around to see if we have any erosion. This a picture we took as we explored the school.

Cosmic Yoga has become a favourite movement break and is helping us develop strong muscles and healthy bodies.

WOW time has flown by. We are already at the end of term 1.

Over the past several weeks, P5 have been participating in lots of hands on activities to go along with our learning. In English, students take part in a sensory arts and craft activity to acompany the book of the week and their sentences. Our latest has been Dinosaurs Love Underpants, Possum on the Porch and Noodle the Cavoodle. In maths, students have participated in hands on activities which focus on the sequence of events, order of completing tasks and comparing length of time to complete tasks.

As we near the end of term 1, I am realising how proud I am of the students in S1. All students have improved their abilities to be independent in our classroom setting. The Zones of Regulation have been integral to our ability to recognise our feelings and the strategies we can use to self-regulate. In term 2, we will also focus on the feelings of others.

English continues to provide many opportunities to write about a range of topics. We have included our ‘Hairy Toe’ game to help us to learn vowels and consonants. Evie can often find the word with very few letters. Our texts with rhyming words are a lot of fun that inspires our students to use their imagination to create their own rhymes, especially when we work in groups. The buzzers for quizzes are still a highlight during tasks to locate rhyming words.

Declan and Shyanne have a range of Friday tasks to help organise the following week which is proving to be enormously helpful. All students are taking turns to be the line leader, and organise the morning schedule and tasks. 

In Maths, we are learning how to explain our types of patterns that we are creating and the correct language to use to explain what makes a pattern. The group work in Maths continues to create opportunities for students to peer teach and show their understanding of the task.

I have noticed a marked improvement during swimming with Evie swimming the length of the pool. All students are progressing and Ryan and Tyson enjoy diving for swim toys. Shyanne and Declan are kicking on their backs with kick boards in straight lines (not an easy one). Mason and Hayley are becoming more confident in the water as they increase their skills.

The holidays are around the corner, this will give us all time to recharge and be ready for term 2.

Have a lovely break, see you in Term 2,

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

S2 continue to do our best in all subject areas. Miss Cann, Miss Karen and Miss Janet are all so proud of the great choices our students make in the classroom and in the playground.

In maths we continue to make patterns and skip count. This week we had to try and trick Cann by making the most confusing patterns ever. Every student was so focused as they did their best to make some very difficult patterns.

Our swimming continues to be one of the highlights of our week. Miss Leonie is very happy with our arms, legs and breathing improvement in the pool. At school we watched swimming stroke improvement videos and practiced our kicking while planking on our desks. Who said you need water to improve your swimming ability?

Science is the highlight of our week. This week we made a cyclone in a bottle, then we found pictures of a cyclones taken by satellites. We chose our favourite picture and named our cyclone after ourselves. Each of us placed our cyclone onto the globe. They have to go in the ocean because cyclones fizzle our once they cross the coastline.

We are all looking forward to our pizza Friday to mark the end of a very busy first term. The Easter Holidays are almost here. How fast the time goes by. Best wishes for a safe and happy Easter break.

How quickly this first term has flown by! It has been exciting to see our students’ developing understanding of concepts they are studying and to witness the growth in their social skills and friendships. Over the past few weeks we have been making volcanoes out of sand and clay, observed how the ‘lava’ flows and the landscape changes, when they ‘erupt.’ Additionally, we have made ‘rain events’ after the eruptions to show what occurs with heavy rainfall and flooding. This week we built our landscapes out of pavlova bases, painted the features with food colouring, made muffin volcanoes to sit on the base and used condensed milk as lava flows. It was a very messy, sticky but fun activity which allowed us to again reinforce our environmental concepts. In English, our students are focusing on text structures (repetition, rhyme and sound patterns) and sound devices, such as alliteration (six silly snakes) and onomatopoeia (a word that sounds like what it refers to or describes, e.g. moo, meow ). Our students have read lots of poems, written their own poems modelled on their reading and have made a beautiful class poem. Using onomatopoetic words to provide a sensory effect and vivid imagery in terms of sight and sound, the poem created by our students, is included below.

We would like to wish all our students and their families a safe and happy Easter!

Warm regards,

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

Senior Secondary News

Welcome to our senior secondary newsletter, we would like to start by saying a big congratulations to our senior students who have been elected for leadership roles.

Thank you to our parents who were able to attend our senior jersey presentation parade. Our year 12 students were very excited to receive their year 12 jerseys.

Artistic exploration

Our students have continued to experiment with a variety of art mediums and some of our students have begun working on a small school production, “Three Billy Goats Gruff”.  This will continue across into term 2 and we will keep you posted when students will be presenting their performance.

Healthy Options

In healthy options students have been identifying the food groups that are healthy options and exploring sugar and what effects this has on their bodies.

Safe use of technology

Safe use of technology has been a continued focus, especially helping students become aware of safety when using social media and identifying how to identify safe use of sites including scams that we continue to be exposed to in our everyday lives.

Swimming

Swimming on Fridays will continue until week 10, please make sure that if your student has chosen this subject as their elective, they are remembering to bring their swimmers and towel.

P.E

Students who have chosen P.E as their elective have been exploring a variety of movement skills and team building skills in activities such as, handball, dance, football or soccer.

In the near future, our students will be accessing the high school oval again, some of our year 12 students have organised structured activities for others to participate in. We are all looking forward to accessing the open space again.

Let’s Get Physical

Students thoroughly enjoyed participating in Yoga and we had our first visit to Mellor street outdoor gym where students were able to participate in rotational activities.

Well being

Our students have continued to look at the zones of regulation and have been identifying what zones their behaviours and emotions align with and how to self-regulate, including handy tools they can use to assist each individual student with self-regulating.

Up and coming events:

Week 10- PBL rewards day, students will be watching a chosen movie and enjoying Pizza for lunch.

We hope you have a relaxing school holidays and we look forward to our students returning in Term 2 re-energized and ready for learning.

The senior secondary team

Kate, Deb, Gavin, Liz, Chrissie, Michelle and Anne-Maree.

(S1, S2, & yr 9/10 elective students)

We began the unit by establishing rules and etiquette around having permission to take a person’s photo and posting on social media. We then explored the past, present, and future of cameras and photography coming up with some fun ideas for ‘futuristic’ camera.   Over the term we’ve explored the purpose of photos and considered the basic aspects of what makes a photo interesting or appealing. The students have taken numerous photos around the school and are putting their favourites on their usb’s and making an individual Photography Portfolio.  Next term they will have the opportunity to choose one for entry into the Gympie Show.  Until next term,  happy snapping, Ms Sue.

The holidays are upon us and it’s a perfect time to model communication to your child using their AAC device. Research tells us that for a child to learn AAC, using core words is best practice as it makes up 80% of what we say. Modelling is just as important. That means you use your child’s device when talking to them so show them how to communicate. Lastly but most importantly, MODEL EVERYWHERE and at any time, not only at home but at the park, when shopping, when going for a hike or even a swim. Below are the core words we focused on this term along with some ideas of how you can use them with your child over the holidays. These are only examples to get you started, the ideas are endless. If you don’t yet have access to a communication system for your child, you can download a free core word board from the Assistive Ware Core Word Classroom website using the following link: https://www.assistiveware.com/learn-aac/quick-communication-boards

Hi again sports fans,

The annual running of our cross country will be occurring on Thursday the 20^th of April (Week 1 of Term 2).

This year we have 5 races for students to participate in, a 30m, 250m, 500m, 2km and 3km race. Students and teachers have been busy choosing the races that they want to compete in.

Students who are aged 10 and above will be eligible to go the district cross country, students aged 10-12 will compete in the 2km race and students 13 and over will complete the 3km race. Students who have preformed at a high standard will then potentially be selected to go to the district trials held later in term 2.

Below are the start times for each of the races our cross-country morning.

9:00am - 30m Soft fall

9:10am - 250m Dash (open to feedback if this is needed)

9:25am - 500m

9:40am - 2000m – to compete at district trial 2011,2012, 2013 must do total distance

10:00am - 3000m – to compete at district trials 2010-2005 must do total distance

Parents, guardian and caregivers are all invited to come and watch / cheer for your children when they are competing.

Hope to see you there.

Mr Dale