Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the first school newsletter of the 2020 school year. Published every 4 weeks in Week 2, 6 and 10 of each term our newsletter keeps you informed with all the happenings in the school. It shares and celebrates the learning achievements of our students. The newsletter will contain messages from the Principal, Deputy Principal, our Head of Curriculum, class articles, dates to remember, celebrations, community information and learning updates from each class.

In addition, we will have very regular posts on our ‘Gympie Special School’ Facebook page. If you have not yet ‘liked’ our Facebook page, please go onto Facebook today and join our school community page. We will be posting news, photos, celebrations, inviting you to events and keeping you regularly informed via our Facebook page. To let us know you have read a post- hit the thumbs up or send us some love!

Our new Gympie Special School website will also be launched on Monday 10^th February. This is another informative site to find out what is happening in our school. 

A warm welcome goes to our  two new students and their family who join our school community! There are also some new faces on our teaching staff and we would like to introduce Rachael Pelling, our acting Deputy Principal, Shellie Pursey, our new Head of Curriculum, and Grace Quaglio our Junior Secondary teacher. Together, these staff members bring a wealth of knowledge and experience from previous placements in Queensland state and special schools.

Successful and Engaged Learners:

Classrooms are buzzing with excitement as students settle into routines, make new friends and get to know their teachers and teacher aides. Walking through classrooms each morning it is exciting to observe students focused on their learning. Our senior students from years 7 to 12 begin swimming next week at the Gympie aquatic recreation centre. Our primary students will be swimming in term 4 this year.

Our Teachers and Teacher Aides have begun completing assessments and getting to know each student to prepare for Individual Curriculum Plan meetings. Teachers will be making contact shortly to arrange meeting times. Thanks in advance for joining with our teachers to ensure great learning for our students.

Engaged Partners:

Parent/Carer access to school classrooms: If you are visiting the school during the day, or arriving late with your child, please enter and exit through admin. As the first lesson of every day starts at 8.45am, I would encourage all students to be at school prior to this starting time. We appreciate your support in having your student at school on time.

All parents/carers are required to sign in and out. This is an Education QLD Health, Safety and Wellbeing required procedure for safety. We appreciate your support.

Parade: Parade is each Monday at 2.00pm in the performing arts room. Parents and Carers are most welcome. We look forward to you joining with us!

I am really looking forward to a fantastic 2020 and working with our terrific staff, students and families.

Warm regards,

Sarah Lester

Introducing our new HOC

Hi I am Shellie and I am your new Head of Curriculum for 2020. My job is to lead and support the teaching and learning of the Australian Curriculum within our school. This not only includes working with our wonderful staff and students, but also parents, carers and the wider school community. If you ever have any questions, comments, or would like to have a chat, please don’t hesitate to give me a call or drop by my office. I am very passionate about encouraging communication and literacy skills in all areas of student learning, and having a close relationship with families supports this focus.

I have enjoyed visiting all classrooms over the last two weeks and have delighted in participating in some extraordinary learning experiences. In senior school we practiced numeracy skills whilst playing UNO, it was so exciting because I WON! Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner! I participated in some writing and reading experiences across Early Years, Primary and Junior Secondary classrooms and I was astounded at how well the students were actively engaging in their literacy experiences. This Semester’s English and Maths units are focused on the topic of ‘Celebrations’ and classes will organise a variety of learning experiences around Celebrations. I am looking forward to getting to know you all and working with the school community. 2020 is going to be an AWESOME year!

Welcome back to another exciting year of learning at Gympie Special School.  Our office team of Cassandra and myself (Jo) are here to assist you. 

Thank you to all for the support of our Student Resource Scheme, if you have not yet returned your blue form please send it through with your student.  Payment options are available and these can be organised by contacting me or outlining the details on the form.

With the new year we need to update many of our permission and medical forms therefore we will be sending home a variety of paper work next week.  This will include a copy of the current enrolment information we have recorded.  Please look over these details carefully and correct and sign any items that require updating. 

As part of the process to reduce our environmental footprint we aim to communicate regularly by Facebook, email and other digital media such as our online newsletter. I would like to encourage all families who have email on their phone or computer to provide us with an email contact address.  

Please notify us of student absences, remember you can phone outside office hours and leave a message with the following details: 

• Student name
• Roll Class
• Reason for absence
• Expected duration of absence

From the office team, 

Jo & Cassandra

Email:  admin@gympiespecs.eq.edu.au

PH: 07 5480 2333

Welcome back to all our students and families.

Students have begun attending their specialist HASS (Humanities and Social Sciences) lessons, in what will be a full year of engaging learning about the world. In History this semester, Early Years classes are exploring families and particularly, extended families.

Primary class students will pose questions and identify the similarities and differences between families from the 1900s and those in the present day.

Junior Secondary classes will identify how today’s family structures and roles have changed and/or remained the same compared to a family from colonial times. They explore the past and present through identifying information from sources and creating questions.

Seniors who choose the elective for CCE (Community, Citizenship and the Environment), will be completing a unit of work entitled ‘Legally It Could Be You’. They will explore laws, how they affect them personally and help contribute to a stable and safe society. I look forward to working with all the students and know they will benefit from this Australian curriculum area.

Miss A.

The Arts.

We are looking forward to this term when all students will be studying Visual Arts. Early Years will be using collage and photo montage to make art on the theme of ‘Up, Down and All Around’. Their first project is to make a rock pool collage after viewing a Torres Strait

The theme for the Primary classes is ‘Tiny Worlds’. Primary students will be working on creating and building models of their own ideas about tiny worlds.

Last week, for stimulus and discussion about ‘Tiny Worlds”, we viewed the following artwork by Carl Warner. “He may be a bit mad (in a good way), but he’s also a super-talented genius. The London-based artist, photographer & director creates the most magical beautiful semi-believable fantastic landscapes out of whatever he finds at the market”. Looking closely you can see he has used dragon fruit, melons, ginger, radishes and many other fruit and vegetables. All is not as it seems!

Junior Secondary students are focussing on the issue of plastics polluting our oceans. They will be working in 3D to make an artistic response to communicate their ideas about this topic. The theme for the Senior school is Popular Culture. Senior students will be using a range of mixed media for their artistic responses.

It is a privilege to be teaching the Arts at Gympie Special School as so many of our students have talents and interests in the different arts areas. It is great to see them learning and having so much fun at the same time. I look forward to sharing photos of their developing art in our next newsletter. 

Chris A.

EY1 News

Welcome back to our families and students for an exciting year ahead. It was great to see our students happy to return to school and settle into their new routine. This semester students will be focusing on concepts of print and creating an invitation in English, growing bodies in HPE, weight and length in maths and our five senses and object properties in science. Thank you to Miss Megan for creating an amazing weighing devise that we have been using to explore what objects have been the heaviest. Our students have really enjoyed weighing objects such as farm animals, different fruits and dinosaurs.

EY1, EY2 and EY3 have introduced music into our program and gross motor to explore using our different body parts when moving to music and participating in an obstacle course. This will be reflected in the new timetable which will be provided to parents in the upcoming week.

Until next time

The EY1 team

Everyone in Early years three has hit the ground running and started the term full of enthusiasm. We were excited to see each other and hear all about the long summer holiday. The start to the year has been seamless with classroom routines and curriculum flowing smoothly and specialist classes in full swing from week one.

In our Balanced Literacy we are focusing on the four blocks of literacy-shared reading, letters and sounds, independent reading and writing. Maths is all about measuring and the language of measurement. In Science we are looking at materials and their properties and the five senses. Health and Physical Education focuses on being healthy, safe and active and how our bodies grow and change.

Once again we’ll join our other Early Years friends for music and smart moves.

We’re going to have a busy term with lots of learning and fun.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the New Year!

I’m excited for what’s ahead this year, because it’s not only a new year, it’s a new ERA – we’ve moved from the teens into the twenties!

Over the first few weeks I’ll be touching base in each classroom, to meet new students and say hi to returning students.

If you see me around, I’d love the chance to chat with you and get to know you a little.

Until next time, over and out!

Chappy Naomi 

P 2

Welcome to a new year.

We have welcomed two little learners who have transitioned from the Early Years into Primary and welcomed back two friendly faces. This past week we have worked hard to settle back into the classroom routine, use PODD to communicate what exciting things we experienced over the holidays and enjoyed exploring the wonderful library to find some exciting tales to read.

From P2, Miss Jenny and Miss Erin

Hi Everyone!

Welcome back to another exciting year!

 I am excited about the amount of books that the students are reading in the Library and the buzz that I feel when the students come in to visit.

The students are always looking for books that are of interest to them and I get to have PODD chats with them about their favourite books.

I encourage you all to read to your children as this promotes and models positive reading behaviour.

This year we will be promoting a range of books each week and we will be having some fun celebrating Book Week later in the year.

I will leave you with this thought from Frank Serefini:

‘There is no such thing as a child who hates to read,

There are only children who have not found the right book.' 

Thanking you

Janet E

JS1 news

Welcome to 2020 at Gympie Special School. This year our team is Teacher Aides Tony, Bree and Debbie, myself (Deb) as teacher along with our bubbling, boisterous, brood of students. We have started the year with a flying start. In Literacy, we have been focussing on letters of the alphabet and finding them in words, reading, flipchart writing and publishing a weekly book using our PODD to help us to create text. In addition, we are investigating invitations to events.

In maths we are investigating measurement and number. The students are demonstrating their strengths in specific subject areas and we have resumed our smart moves in the classroom, to great music, of course! In week 3, we commence swimming for 8 weeks from Tuesday 11^th February. We can’t wait to see how well our students perform in the pool. Along with our learning, our team is thoroughly enjoying getting to know your wonderful children,

More to come,

JS1 students, Tony, Bree, Debbie and Deb.  

JS3 NEWS

It’s always busy at the beginning of a new school year.  Re-establishing school and classroom routines and catching up on all the news is quite an exciting time.  Ms Sue, Ms Grace, and Mr Darren have been extremely impressed with the enthusiasm the students in JS3 have demonstrated toward their learning in Math and English.  We have also done a few fun activities like photo-shopping photos of the class.    We are looking forward to working with the families and students in our class this year and sharing our stories throughout the year. 

SS1

Our class has been doing some great work on literacy and numeracy to start the year, with a particular focus on money.  We also have new adults in our classroom this year and have been making some great choice with regards to our rules.  The focus of which has been following adult directions.  This rule will be great for our students when we head off to our volunteering elective at Victory Care Services, an image of where we will be packaging boxes is featured in our class photos.

Sport and Club Membership Vouchers

Do you know of someone who wold benefit from this?

Parents, carers or guardians can apply for a voucher valued up to $150 for their child, which can be used towards sport and active recreation membership, registration or participation fees with registered activity providers.

There is a limit of 1 voucher per child per calendar year, so each child in the family could be eligible for a voucher, if you meet the criteria.  Even if you don’t, they offer the chance to discuss your circumstances and you still may get it!

https://www.qld.gov.au/recreation/sports/funding/fairplay/apply

Good luck