Term 2 is always a very busy and productive term. We have had lots of events already and a few more exciting things to come!

I extend a big invitation to all our families to join us for our annual Sports Day on Thursday 22^nd June from 9am. Please come along and make some noise, in your house colours, to show your support as our students participate across the day.

Last week, our Early Years and Primary classes joined with over 20,000 locations across Australia in participating in reading The Speedy Sloth, written by Rebecca Young and illustrated by Heath McKenzie. Students enjoyed listening to, and reading the story. National Simultaneous Storytime is an annual event held across Australia to celebrate Australian authors and illustrators and encourage our students to immerse themselves in the joy of reading. We are really looking forward to participating again next year!

Staff and students continue to work hard on assessment activities over the next few weeks in preparation for reporting. Report Cards will be emailed out at the end of the Term. We look forward to celebrating the gains and improvements that our students demonstrate through their learning.  

A huge thank you to our P&C for contributing over $3000 towards our new electronic sign in our Transport Zone. We have the electrician booked for the school holidays to connect the new sign so we can start using it from next term.

Our next P&C meeting is on Wednesday 14^th June from 9am to 10am in the admin building. If you are interested in joining the P&C, come along and join us!

Hi Everyone,

Athletics

It’s been great to see all of our students out training and preparing for our athletics carnival.  They have been working on their running and field events with both Coach Tim and Mr Dale.  The athletics carnival will be held on Thursday, 22^nd of June, everyone is welcome to come along and cheer for the kids.

Cross Country

A massive congratulations to Jacob, Zane and Ryan who have been selected to compete at the up-coming Wide Bay Sports Cross Country trials. It’s wonderful to see our students making it to this representative level. 

AUSTRALIAN TEAM!!

We are very pleased to announce that Georgia Nugent has been selected to represent Australia in the Special Olympics – World Games in Germany. Georgia flies to Berlin on the 11th June and will be traveling with Team Aus. She will have some time before the Games to experience cultural events and see some of the tourist sites.

Georgia will compete in Artistic Gymnastics in Beam, Bars, Vault, and Floor, in addition to this an overall medal will be awarded.

As part of her selection in the Australian Team, Georgia was invited to attend the Uniform Presentation at Government House in Brisbane.  She is pictured below with the Australian team backpack (the rest of the uniform has to remain a surprise until the Games).

This is a massive achievement and proof that hard work and dedication can pay off.  We wish Georgia all the best for the Games and look forward to hearing about her travels and competition.

Until next time.

Kind regards,

Rachael

Oral Language Program

Oral language refers to the act of speaking and listening. The main components of an oral language program include word knowledge, sentence structure, language understanding, and the ability to elaborate, organise and sequence thoughts. Thanks to a very generous $1000 donation from the Quota club, we have begun purchasing the picture books required for teachers to teach with the PLD Oral Language Program. The program is characterised by a retelling process to encourage joint and independent responses and retelling, with a strong focus on listening time and speaking time. The program is flexible in nature so that staff can share the program as a whole-class or with individual students and also to allows for engagement with AAC to support responding verbally or non-verbally (the speaking element).

Semester 2 Curriculum Planning

We are currently preparing the curriculum units and assessment tasks for the learning areas being delivered next Semester. During weeks 8 -10, teachers will meet with their sectors to discuss and create unit plans, learning experiences and learning goals for their students to engage with the content of the units. Topics are dependent on the age and sector of your students:

In English students will be exploring information texts about animals, machines, places and famous people.

In Mathematics students will engage with Numbers and place value, locations and mass.

In Science, engagement will be around forces and how objects move including pushing, pulling, and friction. Magnetic forces and electrical circuits will be covered in Secondary.

The Arts will be focused on music and dance.

During Health, students will be engaging with the RESPECT program supporting social and communication skills to develop respectful relationships. Physical Education will be focused on ball skills and games.

Geography will be about places in Australia or around the world to answer questions such as ‘What are places like? How are they the same or different? Why should we protect places? Where are these places in the world?

During design technologies students will explore engineering principles and systems to explore toys, and how they work or move. This incorporates concepts from English, Science and Mathematics units.

Professional Development

It has been exciting to accommodate many of our staff members to participate in professional development to enhance their knowledge and skills. Recently staff have attended Professional learning around language and literacy development for students, behaviour management, sensory processing, student and staff well-being, Autism and new curriculum changes. These experience ensure our staff have the current research, knowledge and skills to meet the changing needs of our school community.

Congratulations to: Harry, Charlie, Jack, Evie, Ayden, Henry, Rose, Miles, Isaac and Kruze for earning their Silver Ardy award. Just as a reminder, this means the students have received 250 smiley faces for completing work or doing the right thing. The students receive their award in parade in front of the whole school and photographs can be seen on the Gympie Special School Facebook page.

On the 9^th of May Early Years held a Mother’s Day celebration event and it was a huge success! Parents, carers and students enjoyed the activities including: bead bracelet making, decorating flowers with coloured paper, painting their hand for the petals of a beautiful flower, decorating biscuits and eating a delicious morning tea. We hope to see you all for Sports Day on Thursday 22^nd June.

This week all three Early Years classes got together for the National Simultaneous Storytime event, we listened to the Speedy Sloth book. The story linked in well with our upcoming sports day and Dale teaching the students how to take part in running races.

Today we held a party in the Early Years sector to say goodbye to Charlie, who is moving to a new area. The children enjoyed the cupcakes, popcorn and chips as well as the joint playtime.

Early Years 1 have continued to work on learning school routines and expectations. All students now know the routine to go out to play. They all get their hats on independently or help each other to do so and they go out and sit on the bench and wait for their teacher. It is great to see their independence growing each day.

Our class is full of happy little learners. We have been practicing writing our first names in our name writing book and on the interactive whiteboard to get the full arm movements to prepare them for writing. Harry is getting very good at his letter formation and Jack is so proud when he writes his letter J correctly. They have all enjoyed reading our rhyming texts each week and some of the students will act out the characters in the story which is lovely to see. Oliver really enjoyed the story “The Very Cranky Bear” and regularly took the book to read during independent reading time. All our student LOVE nursery rhyme time and they all have their favourites. Charlie’s favourite is ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ and will choose it over and over if given the chance! Evie loves our action songs and will follow the actions with enthusiasm and precision.

Reports will be sent home at the end of the term and you can see how wonderful your child is doing at school.

EY 2

In our room we’ve been practising sitting as a group and taking turns. Our interactive television provides so many opportunities for choice making and waiting for your turn while providing very engaging learning material. In science we’ve been deciding which picture depicts day or night and in maths we’ve been counting things such as teddies, dinosaurs and snakes to practise one-to-one correspondence.

Our books of the week have been lots of fun. This week we’re reading “Moo Baa La La La.” All the children in EY2 love animals and love books about them. Using the PODD, they most often choose the animal page when asked if they have something to say! During letters and sounds sessions we have our favourite activities which include playing with the wooden alphabet blocks and puzzles and some special alphabet clips on the TV. We’re practising our sounds and listening for them in words.

We’ve had a very happy time!

EY 3

I am very proud of all the students in my class and the learning they engage in every day. We are learning to read and write from left to right and where to go when we have finished the first line of words. We practice this when read the book of the week, when we cut and stick our sentences and when we write.

Everyone enthusiastically bangs out the syllables in words on the new drums bought for this activity and then have a very noisy free drum at the end of the learning session. We also step for each word and look for the space to know when a word is finished.

We have fun writing in shaving foam to work on our letter formation and pre-writing skills. This coincides with the letter of the week and the letters in their own name.

In Maths the students have been telling be what is happening now, what happened before and what will happen next. They do this using speech, symbols from the visual timetable, PODD and Proloquo2Go communication devices.

On Friday the 12^th May all of Primary invited their mums, grandmas, sisters or aunts to school for a Mother’s Day afternoon tea at school. The students worked very hard in all areas of the curriculum to prepare for this afternoon tea. In English we worked to create and colour the invitations and write on the inside of our Mother’s Day cards. In Art we worked to paint flower pots and created beautiful cards and in Science we discussed the soil and planted flowering plants. In Maths we looked at patterns and created patterned beaded bracelets. In Health we looked at healthy snacks and chose some yummy, but still a bit healthy, biscuits to serve at the afternoon tea.

It was wonderful to see all the parents enjoying time with their children and each other. We hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day with your children.

We are loving our sessions with Coach Tim which will help us prepare for Athletics Day at the end of Term.

A lot of learning has taken place in P2 classroom. We are listening, spelling, writing, thinking, working with numbers, singing, dancing, creating and socialising while being safe and respectful learners.

We recently celebrated Mother’s Day with an afternoon tea at school. The students gave their lovely handmade gifts to the happy mums.

Once a week Coach Tim is helping our students to better their athletic skills, preparing them for our Sports Carnival in Week 10.

P2 enjoyed Shared Reading time and last Friday we all dressed up in our pyjamas while listening to ‘Llamas in Pyjamas’. We even dressed Dharma the Llama in her favourite pyjamas while wearing ours.

We are looking forward to the rest of the term and we look forward to seeing some of our parents at the Sports Carnival Day.

In Week 5, we said goodbye to Mr Mark (our pre-service teacher completing his placement). We surprised him with a hand-made card and some chocolates and he surprised us with books for the students. How lucky are we?! P3 also welcomed back Miss Dana and it has been wonderful to have her back in our classroom. All of the students definitely missed her as she is such a valuable asset to our class. A couple of Friday’s ago, the Primary sector participated in a lovely experience celebrating our special people for Mother’s Day. We made afternoon tea party treats and enjoyed them in the playground whilst gifting the fantastic presents we made. Currently, we have been very busy engaging in and finishing off our assessments to demonstrate our amazing learning from the first Semester.  Coach Tim sessions have continued and the students have enjoyed practicing new skills to prepare for our Sports Carnival in week 10. We look forward to the remainder of term as we continue to develop our number knowledge, writing skills and spelling and reading through our daily PLD sessions.

This term is slipping by quite quickly it seems, I feel like it was only yesterday we did the last newsletter. It appears we have not been very snap happy taking photos these last few weeks, that may be explained by some special events we loved preparing for and working hard to get our assessments completed.

We have loved some of the books we read for our shared reading in English over the last few weeks. A clear favourite was Hugo’s Runaway Legs, don’t judge this book by the cover, though I must admit that was one of the reasons I chose it for our class of boys. I am not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t read it we suggest you do, it has a great message and much hilarity ensued as we explored it, not just because of the great images. Danny loved it so much he borrowed it for his own personal reading this week.

In mathematics we have been excitedly showing our skills with patterns, counting patterns and time. Time Bingo has become a preferred activity which has really cemented time telling to the half hour.

Art is always a much loved activity, often chosen when we have rare moments of spare time. The whiteboard table makes a canvas, which may explain why art pieces do not come home very often. We were super excited to create art pieces as gifts for our Mother’s Day afternoon tea and were super excited to bring these home for mum.

Finally in sad news, we are bidding farewell to Jacob who is moving away from Gympie.  Our class will miss him tremendously.

Miss Jo, Miss Naomi.

Wow! I can’t believe we are half way through the term already.

We have been working hard on our poetry units in English, patterning and time in Maths, investigating natural resources and how natural phenomenon affects the community in science and healthy food and healthy living choices in HPE; and we are now beginning or assessments for the semester.

Two weeks ago, the primary sector held a Mother’s Day afternoon tea. It was lovely to see everyone’s mums, grandma’s Aunties and sisters come along and share a glass of punch and a cup cake.

We had fun in HPE where P5 has visited P2, where we listened to our heartbeats with a stethoscope,  investigated changes in our body before and after exercising and beat our heartbeat rhythm on a drum.  

S2 have filled their classroom with colour as the students’ completed charts related to Healthy Food Choices as well as Healthy Habits of Teen and Tweens. It was a major task and we all learned a lot about looking after ourselves along the way.

Our visit to the Gympie Show was a fun and exciting time. Thank you, Miss Sue, for organising it for the Secondary Sector. We found the photographs we entered and they looked so professional mounted and displayed to the public. No-one from S2 won a prize, but we were so excited just to have our entries displayed. Congratulations to Mason, Evie and Mia our 3 photographic prize winners.

We also talked to the bee men about ‘gilla’ (native bees). The men were very impressed with the knowledge we have about gilla, thanks to our Gubbi Gubbi lessons inspired by Aunty Christine. We also spoke with some police personnel and some men representing the Australian military. Outside, our very brave class members patted a snake named Kevin while we were making our way to watch the pig races.

After the show we filled in our booklets cutting and pasting more pictures we took. The book made us think about things we saw, price comparisons and favourite displays. We also ate a dagwood dog. The show just isn’t the show without a dagwood dog.

We have completed all of our assessment for Semester 1. Miss Cann was very impressed with everyone’s results and is now busy preparing for moderation and report writing. That doesn’t mean our learning is over. We will continue to learn right up to the end of the semester, with a big emphasis on literacy for the next 3 weeks.

Over the past few weeks we have been reading some lovely picture books including, My Culture and Me, There’s a Big Green Frog in the Toilet and Old Macdonald had a Phone. All of S3 agree that the latter story is their favourite for the semester, because of the rhyme and rhythm of the text and funny images conveyed. S4’s favourite book was There’s a Big Green Frog in the Toilet! Each morning, we are continuing our group work for spelling and reading, where most of us spend some time working 1:1 with an adult for a short time before returning to small group or paired activities. An outcome of this session is not only improved language skills but also tolerance and respect for others as we complete learning experiences and games together. We also combine classes for Science, where we study the Earth’s resources- water, soil and rocks and identify where they are used in everyday life and what might happen to these resources in a natural event, such as a flood. Most student’s find this interesting, with their personal experiences of floods and especially when we complete experiments to illustrate the concepts being taught.

In maths, we have made analogue and digital clocks and used them to tell time to the hour, half hour and quarter to/ past the hour. Other students have been sequencing events in order or according to a daily timetable or calendar. On Tuesday each week, both classes complete a PE lesson, practising their athletic skills with Coach Tim. It is encouraging to see how enthusiastic most students are and how much improvement has been made in such a short time. The house athletics carnival will take place on Thursday of Week 10, this term.

Lastly, we would like to thank Miss Sue for organising our trip to the Gympie Show, where we saw photos we had taken at school, exhibited. It was a fun and exciting day.

Warm regards,

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

Hello to our families and carers,

This semester is shaping up to be a very busy one, especially for our students and staff as we draw closer to reporting. Now with the colder weather upon us, its has been so nice to be able to get out into the warm sun during our break times. Our students continue to enjoy the open space of the high school oval, some of our students have been leading the way with the organising of sporting activities and all of our students have enjoyed participating. It’s nice to see peers encouraging others and building bonds and friendships.

Maths

Our students are continuing their focus on number, money and time to achieve their QCIA goals. Thank you for your support with our Mother’s Day stall, this allowed our senior students to plan, present items and have really life hands on experience with money handling.

Literacy

The progression our students have made in their literacy tasks has been really amazing, especially their comprehension tasks and recalling information and their abilities to be creative with their writing when composing short stores and sentences. Our students were very excited to receive their first letter from their pen pal and are in the process of returning a letter.

Artistic exploration

Our Wednesday group have continued to explore a variety of art mediums and have now identified their preferences in how they would like to be creative. We have been storing these artworks in a portfolio which we will share with families at the end of the year.

Our Thursday group have been extremely busy creating and practising their roles in our ‘Three Billy goats gruff’ play. We still have a few more weeks of practice before students will present to the secondary cohort.

Active Citizenship

Students are continuing their focus on how to be a good citizen by following rules in the school environment and the wider community. We have also been exploring local maps and identifying where our school is and where we live.

Market Garden

Our year 12 students have been busy planting herbs and vegetables in the raised garden beds at the top of the school. They researched available vegetables and growing times, then selected the varieties they wanted to grow. The students identified equipment they would need and what they must do to get the best crop they can.

Well-being

Term 2 has been a very busy time for staff and students. 

In our Well-being program, students are exploring ways to identify describe and practice strategies that promote safe practices and protective behaviours. We are identifying the people who are important and help keep us safe in our community. During these lessons students were keen to share their knowledge on a range of community services available in Gympie including Emergency Services. Students will continue exploring the benefits of identifying protective behaviours including what is safe and unsafe. Also, we have continued exploring different emotions and how to manage them. Our focus has been on how to navigate feelings and the importance of acknowledging our emotions in order to have well-being.

Until next time, take care and stay warm, the Senior team.

Kate, Nicky, Gavin, Liz, Sue, Chrissie, Michelle and Anne-Maree.

The PBL team are currently reviewing the school rules. This is done every few years to ensure that the rules remain relevant to our school setting. There is a schedule of rules for each week of the year and a rule is taught explicitly in classrooms over the week. On parade students are asked if they know what the rule for the week is and over the week are awarded Ardy tickets when they are seen doing the right thing in the classroom and in the playground. The seniors have been helping to reinforce the school rules by making posters to display around the school environment. All students are encouraged to follow the three school expectations at all times: I am respectful, I am safe and I am a learner.

Our school recently hosted teachers from other schools to share the PBL practice in their respective schools. It was a great opportunity to showcase what we do at Gympie Special School and learn from others.

It has been a busy and eventful few weeks!

The directory of community service providers that I had been working on is now finished. Because all staff have access to it, they can help you find services and support when you need it. The directory covers:

• Children’s and youth activities
• Cultural diversity
• Disability employment services
• Disability support
• Disaster management and support
• Family and domestic violence
• General family support
• General support
• General child and youth support
• Grief and bereavement
• Health and wellbeing (including mental health
• Homelessness and accommodation support
• Indigenous support
• LGBTIQ+ and transgender support
• Parent and carer support
• Separation and divorce support
• Sexual abuse and assault
• Things to do and see in the Gympie region.

There are many people who can help you find out information or give you a bit of help when times are difficult, so please don’t hesitate to reach out when you need to.

Secondary Girls’ Group was able to meet again a couple of weeks back. After a period where we couldn’t get together because of staff absences and school events, it was nice. The girls made magnetic washi tape peg note holders to give as gifts for Mother’s Day. They also stamped their own note paper to include in their presents. As well as being fun to do, making gifts reminds us of the positive relationships that we have and helps us to learn how we can demonstrate to others that we care for them. 

Last week I got to go with the secondary classes to the Gympie Show.  It was a wonderful morning, wandering around looking at machinery alley, very large vehicles, tractor-pulling, and pig-racing. I especially enjoyed looking at the prize-winning fruit and vegetables. The kids were great to be with, and were curious about what was going on and well-mannered to everyone they met.

Speaking of the show, I spent Saturday morning manning a gate as a chaplaincy fundraiser. Scripture Union chappies fundraise to support our work in schools and, in the Gympie region, all school chappies band together to do this. So, through giving our time, the Show Society donated money to chaplaincy. Because of where the gate was, the bonus for me was watching horses come and go. Not a bad way to spend the time!

Finally, last week I planted out the school’s new sensory garden. Such gardens are wonderful because they get kids out in the sun and fresh air, where they can develop curiosity and communication skills that can help with their classroom learning. Gardens can also be great spaces to go when we’re feeling stressed and need time to calm down. I’ll let you know more about this project over the next few weeks!

My role is to support the wellbeing of staff, students, parents, and others in our school community. If you ever need to have a chat or help with something, please contact me. I’m at school on Tuesday (8.30-12.35) and Thursday (9.30-1.35), and can also be contacted via email – rsdri0@eq.edu.au.

Chappy Rachel

Students are engaging well with the technology lessons while learning about data representation.  Even though data collection and graphing can be complex, most students are able to embrace at least the basic principles. We make it fun and relevant where possible, and as we do the testing for reporting we are surprised at how much they have taken on board about the subject and how much students have progressed with their communication goals.  

Recently staff from the Primary and Early Years sectors attended the first Proloquo2Go coaching workshop run by our school’s speech therapists, Claire and Simone. It was an information sharing and practical hands-on workshop to continue to build our teacher’s skills around using Proloquo2Go to communicate in a classroom setting. There will be follow up demonstrations during daily curriculum sessions in classrooms by the communication mentor, Cassie Perry, and the speech language pathologists. Staff are also participating in sessions to upskill on Boardmaker 7. This is a programme which is used to make activities for our interactive screens and symbols for Aided Language Displays, using the same symbols that are in the PODD communication books. This enables all students to access the curriculum and to have a voice during all learning episodes.

It is very exciting to see so many students wearing their communication devices around the school giving them a voice to say anything they want, whenever they want to.

Here are some examples of students using their devices.

If you have any inquiries regarding your child’s communication or how to access a communication device for your child, please either talk to your private speech pathologist or contact NDIS for funded speech therapy. Please visit this website for more information. NDIS Application www.NDIS.gov.au or phone 1800800110.

Just a friendly reminder to please DO NOT park/stop in resident's driveways at anytime.  The Gympie Regional Council will be stepping up patrols and issuing fines to those who are illegally parked. Also, please do not turn right out of the transport zone. Thank you.