Wednesday is PHOTO Day   Thursday is SPORTS Day    Friday is REWARDS Day

What a big week we have planned this week!

School Photo Day on Wednesday. Have you ordered your child’s 2023 School Photo? Please ensure your child is dressed in school uniform on Wednesday for our whole School Photo Day.

Thursday is SPORTS DAY! Please feel very welcome to come along for all or part of Thursday to cheer for your child. We would love to see families here at school supporting the day.

This Friday we have our PBL Rewards Day. As a part of this day, in our Morning Session, we have the African Drummer once again visiting our school. Last year the students thoroughly enjoyed the drumming experience and we are excited to offer this again to our students. Early Years and Primary will be at 9am and Secondary and Senior will be at 10am. In the middle session, classes will be enjoying a relaxed movie session with food and some fun activities to celebrate the great behaviour demonstrated this year.

As we near the end of term 2, I sincerely thank all of our parents and caregivers for their support to our school and students over the past 10 weeks. This term has seen a large number of staff and students affected by illness ranging from Covid though to the Flu and Gastro. It has been very challenging, at times, to find relief staff and we have, on numerous occasions, needed to collapse classes to ensure safety and continuity of learning for our students.   These decisions, which often required some quick problem-solving, meant that students were asked to go into different classrooms with different teachers at times. The students have responded so well to these situations, and I am very proud of them.  

Our Deputy Principal, Rachael Pelling, who re-joined us this term, has accepted a position at another state school for the rest of this year. We wish Rachael all the best in her new position and thank her for the hard work and support she has provided here at Gympie Special School. We are currently working on selecting an Acting Deputy Principal for Semester 2, and an announcement will be made once the successful candidate has been notified.

We have had a number of Primary sector students and their families leave the Gympie area for work, housing or family circumstances. This has significantly reduced the number of students in some of the classrooms. Next semester, we will be reconfiguring our primary classes to establish 4 class groups rather than 5. This has resulted in some student and staff movement. Parents of students affected will have received a phone call from me and a confirmation note will be coming home this week.

I wish everyone a healthy and safe Winter break. With so much sickness across our school community at the moment, I am hoping the break provides us all with a chance to recoup, take some vitamins and bring our immune systems back to their peak. Fingers crossed!

Best wishes everyone!

Ms.  Sarah 

Dear Parents and Caregivers

It is with mixed emotions that I announce that I will be leaving Gympie Special School at the end of this term. I have accepted a position as a Deputy Principal of a larger school.

I want to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all of you for your support and collaboration over the past few years. I have been inspired by the passion, dedication, and creativity of our staff and families and am very appreciative of the growth I have experienced as a special school leader and educator during my time here.

I am looking forward to the opportunities and challenges that await me at my new school. I will stay in touch with members of the Gympie Special School community and look forward to hearing regular updates about the student’s achievements and growth.

I wish you all the best for the future.

Kind regards,

Rachael

Moving on up!

I have had the absolute pleasure of meeting with several teachers about moving students up a curriculum level after moderating their assessments. This is very exciting, as it shows growth in student language, literacy and communication skills. In many classrooms across the school, I have observed students working alongside their teachers and their peers using a variety of communication tools to support interacting and speaking. PODD book, Proloquo2Go, Picture Cue cards and Language Display boards are all tools we use at Gympie Special School and they offer our students vocabulary to use within their interactions across the day. We are very excited that our new Group PODD books are currently being printed and bound, we hope these will be available in classrooms next term!

True Relationships – Everybody Needs to Know Program

I have organised for True to attend our school for workshops with years 7 to 12 staff, students and parents in term 4. More information and consent forms will be shared closer to the end of term 3. The topics of sessions will be:

1. Personal Safety

• Keeping safe from abuse and exploitation
• Learning about safe dating, safe partying, and rules about consent.
• Sex and the law
• Where/how to seek help

1. Public and Private

• Public and private body parts, behaviours and places
• Public and private online and in using social media
• Sex and the law

1. Healthy relationships

• Learning about the different types of relationships and what types of touch are ok in each.
• Includes sexual touch and consent
• Where/how to seek help

Early Years 1 students have thoroughly enjoyed the English Unit this semester. They have enjoyed reading different rhyming texts each week and acting out their favourite nursery rhymes. They have also enjoyed the craft activities that follow each weeks nursery rhyme focus. The students have continued to practise saying and hearing all the letter sounds learnt this semester including: SATPIN and CHERMD. Next semester we will continue to learn to say and hear new letter sounds and start blending the sounds together to make words. Our class continues to enjoy music and group games with Early Years 2 and 3. In group games the students always enjoy their favourites such as ‘Duck, Duck Goose’ and ‘Doggy, Doggy Where’s Your Bone’. This term we also included ‘Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar’. One of the students hides the cookie and then we all sing together and try and guess who stole the cookie. The students always find it great fun!

We will end the term with Sports Day on Thursday the 22nd and PBL Rewards day on Friday the 23rd. Students will be having hot chips, a movie and fun activities as a reward for following the school rules all term.

Best wishes, EY1

Early Years 3 are working hard on learning their phonic letter sounds and especially enjoy using their knowledge in games and on the interactive white board. We made play doh this week which combined maths, communication, choice making, turn taking, following instructions and gross motor skills.

The students were very excited to take home their work home last week. I hope you enjoyed seeing all your child’s hard work from this semester. I am very proud of the progress everyone has made in each subject as well as in the areas of communication and personal interactions.

Best wishes, EY3

As this semester draws to a close, Kate and I reflect on the growth we have observed in the children over the two terms. We’ve had a lot of fun while learning and everyone is happy and settled. Our daily literacy routine is familiar and the children enjoy the stories and letters and sounds activities. Our interactive television provides so many opportunities to make choices during all areas of the curriculum and is so engaging for the children. The semester has been chock full of activities involving our Early Years sector and the whole school. Our children enjoy being with the other students and getting to know them, especially when the seniors assist during parade by sitting with us.

Kate and I wish you a safe and happy holiday and look forward excitedly to next term.

Lynne and Kate and Early Years 2 children.

We can’t believe that the end of term is almost upon us. We have all worked so hard this Semester, improving in learning and communication.

This week is a big week for P1. We have Sports Day on Thursday. We are busy working with Coach Tim to learn all the skills we will need for javelin, with noodle javelins, high jump, shot put, long jump and relays. Tuesday and Wednesday we will be learning our house chants in preparation for Sports Day. Friday is going to be a fabulous day, it’s our PBL Rewards day.

Have a safe and happy holiday and we look forward to seeing smiling faces after the break.

We can’t believe that it is the end of Term2, Semester one. Time does fly when you are having fun. These last few weeks we visited our favourite parts of the units done this semester and solidified many of the concepts taught. The students have done so well and Debbie and Carina are so proud of their progress!!

This week will be a busy one as we have a few exciting events taking place. These include school photos on Wednesday, the Athletics Carnival on Thursday and PBL Rewards Day on Friday. The students are well prepared for the sporting event, thank you Coach Tim!!

Have a safe and relaxing holiday!

Carina and Debbie

The last few weeks have gone by so quickly and it is already nearly school holidays and the middle of the year! In P3 we have continued with our normal routines and learning however it has been a great opportunity to revisit concepts and solidify our understandings. Some recently loved activities have been our crafts for ‘book of the week,’ a variety of PLD reading and spelling games and exploring new songs for our morning routine and movement breaks. The week is a busy one as we have multiple different events including school photos, the Athletics Carnival and PBL Rewards Day. The weekly sessions with Coach Tim have been preparing the students for the sporting events they will participate in. Have a safe and enjoyable holiday break everyone!

The second term has nearly finished, this year is going by so fast! In class we have been working hard doing assessments and getting ready for our end of term events.  We are glad that we have finished our units on time and patterns as some of our students were feeling like they had been making patterns forever. Though tying patterns into our English book of the week about aliens and underpants made some fun patterns that week. Time bingo was also a much chosen activity which has helped cement our time telling knowledge to the half hour.

In English we were glad to show our knowledge of poems and rhymes as well as show how our comprehension and reading skills are developing. Our literacy is continuing to build as we explore our phonics and build our reading skills. Being an editing detective in our dictation passage has become an activity we really enjoy, though sometimes finding the last couple of errors can be a challenge.

We are looking forward to sports day and have enjoyed practising for events with Coach Tim, everyone has improved their javelin throwing, high jump, long jump and shotput skills. We hope to see you at sports day to cheer us on.

Wow I can’t believe it is the end of the term and half way through the year. Time has flown by.

Over the semester we have looked at rhyming words within humorous poems, stories and rhymes, looked at natural resources, where they are located and how they are used, time, duration and patterning and healthy food choices. I can’t wait for all the fun and exciting things we have planned for the upcoming semester. I hope everyone has a fun, safe and if possible relaxing holiday. See everyone next term.

So much has happened over the last few weeks. We have been training for the Gympie Special School Athletics Day. Several students have been working with Mr Dale to further develop their skills in shot put and long jump.

In English our students have all increased their reading skills by decoding and comprehending during reading sessions. Our students are reading to each other and checking each other’s progress during word knowledge work. Reading to Mason is a favoured task of several students. Our book of the week is still a great stimulus for writing and rhyming with laughter thrown in.

As we wind down for the end of Term 2, I would like to thank all our students for their hard work, and look forward to next term.

Rug up, winter is upon us,

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

Once S2 completed all assessments we began really concentrating on our literacy. We have a daily routine with the PLD Literacy resources and then we extend our brains, putting this knowledge into practice using games, whiteboards and laptops. We have lots of interactive fun while learning how phonetics can help us to become better readers and writers. Though we are enjoying English, our favourite lesson is still Science. Last week Miss Cann gave us some volcanic dirt. We mixed it with water and heated it up in a frying pan. This created volcanic mud, bubbling and popping and steaming up just like we had observed on YouTube videos. However, the volcanic mud smelled strangely of gravy. Miss Cann had tricked us. It was not volcanic dirt; it was gravy mix. We couldn’t possibly waste all of that gravy so we cooked chips in the oven and shared chips and gravy for lunch. Not only is Science fun, it can be yummy as well.

During second play in the quad our ball collection is diminishing. Balls are being lost to the roof tops. Thank goodness for the clearance tables at the supermarket, as we now have a large container of balls which we can sign out using the borrowing book during quad play time. This doesn’t mean we’re going to stop playing Red Rover and other fun games. It just adds to the variety of games we can play.

The June/July holidays are so very close. This semester has flown by and when we look back at all of the work in our books and the work decorating our classroom walls, it represents hours and hours of enjoyable learning. May everyone have a well-earned rest and recovery over the break so we can return to another action-packed semester to take us to the end of the year.

What a whirlwind term this has been. We are all a little tired now and ready for a holiday! These last few weeks we have been having a lot of fun and improving our athletic skills with Coach Tim. We start off throwing our foam javelins, moving to high jump, shot put and a short relay, during our sessions. Henry really likes shot put and Marcus and Braydan has fantastic form, throwing the javelin. Jed participated in all activities last week after gradually becoming interested in what his classmates were doing. Zane is practising both long jump and shot put, whilst Tommy, Angelina and Savannah are practising long jump in the hope of representing the school.

We are culminating our science unit on natural resources by researching on the computer different types of timber and finding examples of the tree that it comes from and what building products are made from each timber material.

Wishing every family a safe, happy and healthy holiday.

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

Hello to our families and carers,

Well term two is almost complete and reports will be finalised and ready for delivery as we break for the June holidays. The Senior Secondary students have been busy working through their learning tasks and finalising activities for QCIA evidence. Here are a few of the things we have been up to.

The Healthy Options students have explored healthy choices when preparing light meals, and put their knowledge into practise making healthy chicken and salad wraps. All students helped choose the ingredients to purchase, then made their wraps selecting the fillings they identified as healthy. The Senior Secondary teachers were looking forward to tasting their work though we were shocked to discover they had eaten the lot, absolutely nothing left. Great work!

The Market Garden group have been diligently caring for their vegetables and are impressed with how well they are growing. The tomatoes will need staking before the break and a few flowers are already appearing on one or two plants with the chilli beginning to bud up as well.

All our Senior Secondary students are excited to be rehearsing for their production of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Not only have they done a terrific job of constructing the set, making costumes, allocating roles and now fine tuning their acting skills, they have written the script and completed a Power Point to accompany the performance. They will be performing the play to their fellow Gympie Special School students next Thursday afternoon. We will send photos home with your budding actors.

In our numeracy program, students are preparing to volunteer at the P&C Bunnings sausage sizzle 14 July. Gympie Special School P&C President, Juanita spent time with the students teaching them how to use the eftpos machine and explicitly stepping through the process of working at a sausage sizzle. Our Bunnings Sausage Sizzle action plan looked at what are we working towards and when the target is achieved, what it will look like. We have been working out change using play money and adding different prices together and completed a stock take. Next steps are to create a work roster identifying students’ strengths and aligning jobs accordingly. This project is very useful for preparing students for after school activities. Please return any permission slips before the holidays.

Until next time, take care and stay warm and enjoy the break.

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

As we wind up Semester 1, we get to do assessments and reporting.  It’s always a great time to see how our students have progressed in areas.  In tech we not only teach about technology and how to use it positively, we also enhance communication.  All students have made progress in ways unique and beneficial to themselves.  I’m happy to show students that there is so much more to technology then just gaming – although that too has it’s place. Enjoy the break everybody, and we’ll see you all after the holidays for a whole new technology focus…..it’s gonna be FUN!!!!

The communication team have had a busy but successful semester. We have completed a school survey to measure how well our school supports AAC users (Augmentative Alternative Communication). The results were positive with most staff feeling confident in using AAC with students. We have some work to do to ensure AAC is available in all areas of the school such as the playground, library, Gym and Clyde’s Corner.

We have hosted a Proloqu2go workshop for staff wanting to upskill for students in their class who access Proloquo2Go for communication and will continue these workshops next semester. All staff also completed a whole day PODD training workshop at the start of the year and all received a personal PODD and strap so that they can wear them at all times. Each class will soon receive a new Group PODD which will provide more accessible vocabulary, less pages making it easier to navigate.

We look forward to next semester to continue to work towards making our school AAC accessible!

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.

The last couple of weeks have been an exciting and productive time.

In the Secondary Girls’ Group, we have been cooking. Being able to prepare simple meals is a great skill to have, and we focused on learning how to make healthy snacks.

The girls made Weet-Bix balls. They combined 5 Weet-Bix, 12 medjool dates, 1 tablespoon honey, ½ cup desiccated coconut, ½ cup sultanas, and 3 tablespoons water in a food processor. They then rolled the mixture into balls. As well as being delicious, this recipe is good because the balls can be stored in the fridge for up to a week or frozen for up to 3 months. Great for a quick snack on those busy days!

The girls also made fruit and yoghurt parfaits. They put a ¼ cup of Greek yoghurt into a coffee mug (we didn’t have parfait glasses) and then drizzled it with honey. They then sprinkled on ½ a cup of berries and 1/8 cup of crushed nuts over the yoghurt. These layers were repeated to fil up the mug. You could use any fruit, but we used thawed frozen berries as they mix really well into yoghurt and are much cheaper than fresh berries. Similarly, we used crushed nuts, but you could use seeds or muesli as well. The mix of textures in this snack is wonderful, and it is very filling.

The sensory garden is coming along nicely. The Secondary Girls’ Group painted wooden spoons to use as markers in the tasting garden. Many different rocks, pebbles, coral, gravel, and shells have also been added to touching garden. I am still in the process of making signs for the garden beds, but hopefully everyone will be able to enjoy the sensory garden soon.

The students at Gympie Special School have demonstrated their Positive Behaviour for Learning this semester in having fewer behaviour incidents recorded in second term compared to term one. We are very proud of the results of their efforts and the way all students have contributed to this. There is much anticipation on Monday at parade about names being drawn from the sector boxes for a prize. The more tickets you have in the box the greater the chance of being drawn out! The seniors are making a big difference with the work they have done, promoting the weekly rule in poster form around the school. It is also encouraging to see so many students receiving silver Ardy certificates. The last Friday of term will once again be the PBL rewards day. This will take the form of a movie and yummy hot chips. The students really deserve their rewards day.

Remember,

At Gympie Special School I am a learner, I am safe and I am Respectful.

All the secondary students who did photography for art this semester not only enjoyed their learning but demonstrated some great photography skills.  We made a gallery in our school library to exhibit the photos we entered in the Gympie Show competition.  (A special congratulations to Mason and Evie who both received an award from the judges for their artistic flair!)  Each class also created a group collage to showcase some of their other favourite photos to display in our ‘gallery’.

Another highlight was taking trick photos.  These were not only fun to execute but an interesting way of exploring concepts around perspective. 

As most students will be using phones, or other devices, as a part of their daily life in their future, I hope they continue to develop their skills to produce quality photographs.  But, most importantly that they remember the conversations we’ve had around never sharing photos without consent and always using discretion if posting photographs on social media.

Happy snapping everyone,  Miss Sue.

Hi again sports fans,

Over the past few weeks, students have been working hard with both Coach Tim, Mr Dale and their classroom teachers to get ready for the upcoming athletics day which will be on Thursday of week 10 (22/0602023). The students have been practicing their running, long jump, high jump, shot put and relays to make sure that they are ready for the big day. The students have been enjoying the challenge and have shown great teamwork and support of each other along the way.

From our Sports Day, some of our students will go away to represent the school at the district trials in Term 3.

All parents, guardians and care givers are welcome to attend, so put it in your diaries and we hope to see you there.