It has been wonderful to see all of our students settle back into school this term. The start of a new year, with new teaching staff and new classmates, can be a big change for many of our students and they have done a fantastic job. We had several new students transition into Gympie Special from local Primary and High schools and we warmly welcome them and their families into our school community.

We also welcomed 10 new Preps to our school! That is a huge number of new, very young, students learning how to do school and they have been amazing! I am so proud of how well our preps have settled into Gympie Special School, and how fantastic the staff supporting them have been. Our Prep parents play a vital role in their student’s education and their transition into formal schooling.  I would like to thank our Prep parents for the wonderful way they have supported their children over the past weeks to settle happily into school.

I would like to send a big welcome to the following new staff:

Miss Jami, Miss Andy and Miss Karen all new classroom teachers in our Secondary Sector.   

Dominic Power, our new Guidance officer, who has replaced Suzanne Weedon. Mr Dom is here at school every Thursday and Friday.

Cornelia Dighton, our new Social Worker who is here every second Friday.

Megan Harris, our new Speech Language Pathologist who is here every Tuesday.

It has been wonderful to have new staff join our staff- each new staff member brings fresh approaches, ideas and enthusiasm to our school. Welcome to them all!

Please make sure you are following us on Facebook: each week we put many photographs of students working and engaging in their learning, and announce school events via our Facebook page.  Stay as up to date as possible by keeping an eye out for our posts. Tag your family and friends and remember, we welcome positive messages and encouragement on our Facebook posts.

A great deal of information has been sent home over the past few weeks and at times it can be a little overwhelming to know what and when and who to return it to. Please feel free to contact our office on P: 5480233 if you need any help completing forms or providing information. We are here to help you.

It has been a very busy, wonderful first few weeks back at Gympie Special School.  It has been amazing to see our new preppies learn ‘how to do school’ and see our returning students settle back so quickly to engage in their learning.

It is a passion of mine to have more community presence and would like to invite students and families to join us in this year’s Anzac Day March in Mary Street, Gympie. Please keep an eye out for notes with more information to come.

I would like to publicly thank the ‘Railway Hotel’ for kindly offering to donate all of their bottle and can recycling funds to the school via ‘Containers for Change’. These community offerings really make a difference and will assist saving for a new school bus to provide community access opportunities for our students.

Moving forward, we are beginning the process to have a Gympie Special School student council to allow our students a voice in school decisions and activities. Our students will each vote a classroom representative and the first School council meeting will take place in term 2.

Dear Parents, Carers and the School Community,

I am thrilled to reach out to you through our latest Curriculum Newsletter to share the wonderful start we have experienced this school year. The introduction of the Version 9 Australian curriculum across all subjects has been a resounding success, and it is heartening to see our staff and students embracing the new learning opportunities with such enthusiasm and dedication.

The curriculum's successful implementation is a testament to the hard work and preparation of our teaching staff. They have gone above and beyond to ensure that the transition into new grades and classrooms has been seamless for our students. Their commitment to creating a supportive and engaging learning environment has been evident from day one.

During my visits to classrooms, I have been greeted with scenes of joy and engagement. It has been absolutely fantastic to witness the smiles, laughter, and deep involvement of students in their learning activities. The authentic and enticing experiences that our curriculum offers have sparked a love for learning in our students, and it is a privilege to observe this firsthand.

Our Secondary and Senior Sectors have been making a splash with their swimming activities this term, a fun and important part of our Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum. Meanwhile, our Early Years students have been enjoying horse riding, an experience that not only brings joy but also contributes to their physical development and confidence.

The positive atmosphere and the vibrant learning that is taking place across our school are truly inspiring. It fills me with great anticipation to see how our students will continue to grow and engage with the curriculum in the weeks and months to come.

We are committed to providing a rich and diverse learning experience for all our students, and we believe that the strong start to the school year sets the stage for continued success and achievement. I look forward to sharing more updates with you as the year progresses and to celebrating the accomplishments of our students together.

Warm regards

Kate Cloete

Jace: Jace has been settling in to our classroom routines and really enjoyed our counting videos, movement and playdough activities.

Jake: Jake received student of the week in week 4 for being brave at horse riding. He overcame his worries about horses and went for a ride on Spiller.

Rose: Rose has settled in to our classroom routines well and enjoys our morning routines. She enjoys our English and Maths videos and has really enjoyed going horse riding.

Marky: Marky enjoys our phonics and letter songs as well as drawing on our interactive screen to practice his writing.

Isabelle: Isabelle has been settling in to our classroom routines and enjoys our morning routines. She enjoys our letter and number songs as well as our movement activities.

EY1 and EY3 were also very lucky to have a visit from Miss Kate during our PE session in week 5. Miss Kate danced and went marching along with the students. Miss Kate had a lot of fun and the students loved having her visit for PE.

Hi everyone,

Prep students and staff thoroughly enjoyed our first visit to Riding for the Disabled in Week 3. All students did amazingly well not having done horse riding before. They were very brave getting on the horses and enjoyed their ride and found confidence along the trail. All students followed the school rules during our excursion both on the bus and at RDA. They were all Safe, Respectful, Learners.  

During the first few weeks of school, students have been learning school routines and expectations. They have all settled in exceptionally well in such a short time. Students do their jobs in the morning upon arriving at school. This includes putting their lunchbox, drink bottle and communication book in the relevant baskets and putting their bag on the bag rack. They each do a morning sign-in and maths activity before starting the morning session on the interactive whiteboard. Students are learning to sit during the morning session, wait and take turns. They are each starting to understand our visual daily schedule and will often point and comment on what they will be doing for the day.

What we have learnt about our students so far:

Mac – loves horse riding, catching the school bus, playing with toys and cuddles. He also likes Might Pups on the interactive whiteboard and will get this as a reward for completing his work.

Ivy – loves dressing up and playing characters, drawing and craft. She also loves horse riding and catching the bus.

Makya – loves toy cars and trains. He also loves horse riding and catching the bus. He is learning to complete his work first, then choosing a toy to play with as a reward.

Millie – loves exploring the classroom environment and using the interactive whiteboard to write/draw and Number Balls video. She loves horse riding and although was hesitant the first time was super excited to ride the second time.

Sophia – loves singing Baby Shark with staff. She enjoys playdough and painting – particularly with her hands. She was a bit hesitant to ride a horse the first time at horse riding but the second week she did much better.

Thank you

Early Years Team

Cassie, Kelsey, Leanne

Welcome back to the new 2024 school year. We have had an exciting first few weeks back. EY3 is having fun as they get used to the class and school routine and the returning children are setting a lovely example for the new students’ how to do school. After the long summer holiday all of us had to get used to having a more structured routine again and students have done a great job of learning how to transition within the classroom, to the playground

EY3 has attended parade each week and did very well being part of the whole school group. We were extremely proud of them. We have already had several student of the week certificates handed out for great work and participation.

RDA has commenced for the year and we have enjoyed meeting all the horses and  learning how to ride

Ey3 is 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 the repeated phrases within the books and remembering to shout it out at the correct time during  reading sessions. In maths we are looking at counting, connecting number and quantity and collecting simple data such as favourite food and animals to display on a graph.

EY4 have settled into their new class and are following school rules and class routines. Students are enjoying going horse riding and follow the bus rules to stay safe. We are enjoying listening to book of the week and students have been making art, writing and verbal connections to the Aboriginal stories. In maths we made play doh this used counting, following instructions, turn taking and lots of communication as well as great fun and lots of mess.

Congratulations to Oliver for his 2 student of the week certificates for settling in and engaging in new routines and using his personal AAC device at school.

Congratulations to Isaiah for his student of the week certificate for starting to use pointing, single words and AAC to communicate with his communication partner.

Congratulations to Jade for her student of the week certificate for successful toileting at school.

Please follow Gympie Special School’s Facebook page as photos and information about what we do in class is regularly added.

Hello there from P1,

We are off to a flying start this year, can you believe we are half way through Term 1 already In English we have enjoyed our exploration of books so far, and a firm favourite was Hugo’s runaway Legs, which has a really great point to make about being more active, plus had the added bonus of a pair of bare legs riding the bus alone. We are already making connections between stories and our own lives with one student really excited about a hat in ‘Shoes from Grandpa”. I think he would love to have a crocodile on his own head. We are also building our oral language skills with our questions about the books and sorting cards that we love to target with beanbags to describe things.

In Maths we are exploring numbers in many various ways and really looking to consolidate our knowledge of all the ways to represent different amounts of things. Pegging spines on Dragons, legs on caterpillars and gluing strands of wool to represent the correct numbers of hair a follically challenged friend is allotted, has been the source of much amusement.  Our speckled frog puppets are also very much enjoyed when we jump them in to the pond or use them to eat delicious grubs.

Our HPE sessions have focused on team work and turn taking, as well as following the rules and respecting each other. The students of P1 have had a great time during our HPE lessons.

We are all settling in to our routines well and building new friendships.

That’s all from the P1 teaching team.

Until next time.

Welcome to all our students to a new year of learning in P2. We can’t believe it is already Week 5, almost half way through the term!

In English we have been listening to various texts during our Shared Reading lessons. We are learning to make deductions, looking at and discuss different characters, asking and answering questions related to the story we read. We have revised our phonic sounds and are hard at work building words and reading simple texts.

During our Maths sessions we are having fun working with numbers. We have lots of activities done on the carpet as a class and then giving our best when doing desk work with our teachers. We have started with the 2^nd part of the unit, Statistics. We are sorting objects into groups according to specific criteria and learning to represent the result on a graph.

The students are also enjoying the hands-on activities with the specialist teachers during Tech, Dancing, HASS and Science.

Lots of social interaction is happening during Morning Circle, group activities and play time. The students understand and are trying their best to always apply our school’s PBL rules.

Carina, Andrea and Jodi

P3 has had an awesome start to our school year. We love learning. We know our routines and how to do school.

In English we have been retelling stories and sequencing pictures from the books we read. This week we have been reading Possum Magic by Mem Fox. Did you know that Grandma Poss and Hush did a lap of Australia trying to make Hush visible again, apparently the secret is eating vegemite sandwiches, pavlova and lamingtons!

In Maths we are asking questions and recording data. In P3 our favourite fruit are apples. We have been counting to 20 and matching numerals, pictures and words. Lots of great work happening in here.

Hello to our P4 parents and carers,

What a fantastic start to Term 1, 2024! We've been diving into literacy with some wonderful texts, including 'Shoes from Grandpa.' Our students had a blast dressing up Darren, our teacher aide, in sequence as the story unfolded. Dressing up has even become a fun activity for students during wet days, as the images show.

During maths, we have been fine tuning our numbers to 20 using a range of resources including giant number beads. Arley even asks for number mats during free time as they have become one of his favourite tasks.

Maddie has demonstrated her amazing skill when playing ‘Uno’ and usually beats us all. We are shaping up to a great year. We are fortunate to have Darren working as our P4 teacher aide and Andrea drops in a couple of times a week to work with us also.

More news to come,

Mia, Rose, Chris, Arley, Daniel, Maddie, Darren, Andrea, and Deb.

Hi everyone, my name is Jami, I am new to Gympie Special School and am absolutely loving it so far. The S1 class has had a positive start to 2024. We have welcomed some of our new year 7’s to Secondary and all class members have transitioned well into a new year.

In English, we have been investigating short stories, looking at characters, setting and plot. Our class’s favourite book thus far was “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” sung by The Topp Twins. Students wrote and illustrated their own verses to this well-known tune and sang their hearts out to the audio. Some of the creative and personalised verses they imagined include “We’ll be eating chips and gravy when she comes”, “She’ll be going to Sephora when she comes”, “He’ll be skidding around Gympie when he comes” and “He’ll be driving an orange monster truck when he comes”.

Students are growing their independence in Maths, working on numbers and patterns. They are expanding their toolbox of strategies, using concrete materials, number lines and drawings to represent their number knowledge and solve problems. We are focusing on a number of the day where students are representing their counting with physical activity such as jumps, star jumps, high 5’s, spins, and claps. One student even challenged himself and did 16 push ups for the number 16.

Some other highlights of the past weeks include swimming at the pool where S1 has been making a splash and kicking goals. Students have been extremely responsible, checking everybody’s seatbelts are on when travelling on the bus. Another special day included Valentine’s Day, students wrote some lovely cards to their family members and created some special flower craft pieces to gift to some of the people they love.

Kind Regards,

Miss Jami, Eli , Azalia-Hart, Ryan, Mason, Thomas and Locklan.

S2 are well into the swing of high school. We are being responsible for our belongings and treating others like the young men and women that we are becoming. Much of our learning has been around behavioural expectations and we are now exploring what that means to us and how we regulate ourselves.

We are exploring occasions when we may need to use self-control within the classroom and at various parts of the school. For each of these, we are formulating strategies that may help us to regulate our behaviours and keep focused on learning.

Everyone is enjoying swimming with Miss Leonie and Coach Tim at the Aquatic Centre. Already we can see improvements in water confidence and swimming abilities. The students love their specialist lessons each Tuesday and are always eager to tell me what new dance they learned with Miss Nicky this week.

There are still some parents that have not confirmed a time for their ICP meeting. I will be contacting these parents again this week to ensure we set a definite date. ICP meetings are an important part of your child’s education and a legal document. I hope to have all ICP meetings competed this week. Thank you to those parents who have already had their meeting with me. It was so nice to put faces to names and hear what is important to you and your family in regards to your child’s educational future.

Half was through Term 1, how the time is flying.

Welcome to a new year of learning with your child! Also, welcome to Riley and Tyler and their families, who joined our school community this year.

 In English, we have been using imaginative texts to explore characteristics and features, such as: characters, plots and settings; beginnings and endings. We have also been exploring the connection between words and images in stories and connecting these with our own experiences. As a class, we use comprehension strategies to understand and discuss texts listened to and viewed or read independently. We answer such questions as, “What is the story about?” and “Where does the story take place?” Our class really enjoyed the texts, “Bernard was a Bikie” and “Do Your Ears hand Low?”

Currently, in maths we are participating in number and patterning activities by counting and grouping everyday objects and making simple addition and subtraction calculations and playing number bingo. We’re becoming skilled at creating our own patterns using coloured match sticks, shapes, stamps and feathers. As you can see we are already, very involved learners!

Kind regards,

Miss Libby, Miss Jas, Laila, Tyler, Jacob, Jaxson, Rosie and Riley

Hi everyone, my name is Andy and I am new to Gympie Special School. I was so very lucky to be placed in S4 as the classroom teacher as I have discovered the students to be hard working, kind and considerate.  I have had a hoot in this class so far and expect the rest of the year to be the same!  The class has settled in nicely and we’re getting into our groove.   Our swimming has gone off smoothly, check out the photos.  For English we’ve been working on retelling stories both in written and oral format.  After shared story time we have group discussions and then complete scaffolded templates both together and independently.  Students also have been listening to and watching examples of retells, and then they have been taking turns at retelling familiar stories to the whole class.  Public speaking is often a daunting for thing for many people, including children and young adults. I have been blown away with how well everyone in S4 have been progressing.  Some of the students like the limelight of talking in front of an audience, while others prefer not to be there, but it’s great to see them taking risks and being brave trying something that puts them out of their comfort zone.  For maths we are exploring and practicing number knowledge and skills.  Most days the class has been splitting up into groups and taking turns in maths through games.  Games are a great way to learn - often a bit of friendly competition is a really good motivator, and just like the saying goes “Play is our brain’s favourite way of learning”.   Thanks, Andy

Welcome to Term 1 of a new year.  S5 have settled in so well and are off to a flying start. We have been exploring characters in text and writing interesting stories.  We have been reading and our love of books is evident in our growing collection of stories in our room.

Our maths skills are growing and some of us are looking at numbers up to 100.  We have looked at breaking numbers into 10’s and 1’s. and are growing in our skill at addition and subtraction. 

Fridays has been our most exciting day as we go swimming.  We have loved all the skills we are acquiring and are enjoying all the games we play in the pool. 

Until next time

Miss Karen, Miss Michelle, Charlie, Declan, Jed, Peter, Tommy and Tyson

Welcome to the first newsletter of the year! We cannot believe it is week 5 already! The students have settled into their routines so well and each day show us what great learners they are. We have a lot of great activities planned for this year.

Literacy

Students have been immersed in communication, using PODD to respond to questions and requests. Each week we focus on a new book and using that book, students compose sentences to recall information. Modelled reading has also been a key focus, allowing students to independently navigate through readers with the support to assist reading using pictures to make meaning. Students have also been increasing their knowledge on different types of informative writing. So far we have discussed information reports, recipes and magazine and newspaper articles.

Numeracy

Our focus has been on numbers in the environment and what these numbers mean to us, including, number plates, numbers on a microwave, speed signs, lift number, key card numbers, just to mention a few. Students have also been busy creating presentations to demonstrate their understanding. Students have been learning time and one of our favourite games to play together is Day of the Week Snap.

Crafting success

Students who have chosen this subject as an elective have been concentrating on organising a school event- Mother’s Day Stall. We have been understanding and learning the process of how to purchase items as well as creating Mother’s Day advertising and rosters for the school to attend. Our stall will be happening in Term 2, Thursday 9^th May.

Students have also elected to hold another stall at the Duck Pond markets, date to be advised. This means a lot of brain storming of what we can create to sell at a market. Last week students prepared some of the school’s garden beds to grow succulents to create teacup succulent gardens. We are all very excited of things to come.

Adulthood

After attending Compass and Endeavour on a Tuesday, students are learning how to conduct themselves out in the community. This has included, students understanding the induction processes in the work place, how we present ourselves, including the style of communication we need to be a successful employee/volunteer.

Compass and Endeavour

The students have started their work sampling programs at Compass and Endeavour. The students are participating in a variety of programs such as cooking, art, woodwork and VR Digital Technology. They have really enjoyed themselves so far and look forward to swapping programs in term 2 to gain awareness of what the other centre offers for post school options.

Travel

The students have been learning about different types of travel and looking at creating a travel goal for the future. Students created posters to highlight the behaviour rules to follow when catching transport. We created a chart to highlight all of the types of transport we have all accessed in our lives. Next week we are catching the local bus service from school and going downtown to the park. We are all very excited for this trip!

Drama News

Drama has been a huge success over the past month in Seniors! From analysing performances to creating skits for our PBL rule of the week, the students have taken on new roles and learnt new vocabulary very quickly in the dramatic world. Our favourite drama game so far is Bus Stop which always has everyone in fits of laughter. We have analysed famous skits including The Lion King, Matilda and Beauty in the Beast where the students have needed to think deeply about character development, dramatic tension, costumes, acting skills and messages that are portrayed throughout the performances. We look forward to taking on a variety of different roles throughout the term as well as rehearsing scripts and building our confidence to continue performing on parade. At this stage, the students would love to do an end of year performance of Lilo and Stitch or Shrek which is very exciting!

Sport News

In HPE, the students have been working on catching and throwing skills as well as agility and moving their bodies in different ways for a variety of purposes. Whilst it’s still quite hot and wet, we have been utilising the gym space which has been great. Some new group games have included Rob the Nest, Cut the Cake, Captain Ball and Heads Down, Heads Up. These games have given the students an opportunity to learn new rules and socially interact through active participation, fairness and compromise. We have also been learning and practicing new stretches during our warm ups and drills for performing fundamental movement skills. The students have identified sports that they are interested in trying and learning so we will try to incorporate these into our weekly Sport lesson!

Stop-Go Animation.

Our Stop-Go Animation students have been very busy designing back drops for their short movies, and exploring ways to move a variety of classroom items across the screen.  Glue sticks have had a starring role in action movies, plastic insects have appeared in plague proportions and there has also been a guest appearance by a playdoh man who was the ability to change shape to escape danger. It is great to see the students enjoying their work and having fun while learning and attempting new challenges.

This semester in Digital Technology students get to learn how to ‘code’.  They are writing basic sequences of instructions to program into a Blu-Bot floor robot to complete a challenge.  As students become more proficient in the skills of basic coding, they get to interact with a program called Scratch Junior.  ‘Scratch Junior’ was developed from a collaboration between MIT Media Lab, Tufts University, and Playful Invention Company, and it is now maintained by the Scratch Foundation.  The app is a free download for Tablet or PC that you and your children may enjoy at home as well.  Students get to program their own simple interactive stories, games, and animations.  ‘Scratch Junior’ is a pre-curser to the very popular free programming language called ‘Scratch’ which is used to teach coding in in primary and secondary schools around the world.

Andrew Stokes – Digital Technology Specialist Teacher

Students have been elevating their dance skills to the next level! We have been diving into the world of movement and expression, exploring body bases, parts, and zones used in dance. We have also been exploring basic technical and creative abilities by trying out dances from Arnhem Land, Ireland, India (Bollywood), and Africa. We have been using space, time, and relationships in dance. Most importantly, we have been embracing the joy of movement and fun!

Early Years Students have been looking at their family, who is in their family.  We have been discussing the responsibilities of family members.  We have also been looking at different celebrations, learning how they are celebrated through watching YouTube videos and stories. 

Primary Students and Secondary Students have been identifying significant people and events in their lives.  We have been watching YouTube videos and stories, to see how significant events are celebrated or commemorated.  Students have also explored changes in family structures, and the roles of family members.

Moving into the new year, all of our staff underwent Team-Teach training focusing on Crisis behaviour intervention. Our staff shared great feedback sharing appreciation of new knowledge to keep themselves and our students safe using positive behaviour approaches.

Our PBL committee met for the first time for 2024 in week 3. After analysing behaviour data and completing a solution planner, the team focused on implementing strategies to assist with this year’s whole school goal to reduce behaviour incidents in the classroom. Discussion led to ideas around PBL rewards day on Thursday Week 10, with ‘Pizza and Movie’ afternoon winning the vote.

The committee also finalised the review of our school behaviour matrix and you can see the final product below. Our classroom staff have been busy modelling expected behaviours from our new matrix.

We are looking forward to our next meeting in week 6, where we will discuss the incorporation of our student council in order to give our students a voice in behaviour/rewards decision making.

Lastly, I would like to congratulate Trista Smith for being appointed the new PBL Team Leader for 2024. Trista has already found her feet and has made some positive changes in processes and communication around the school.

My Chappy year has started well.  The Secondary Girls’ group commenced again on Tuesday, with four girls participating. 

On Thursdays during second break, I spend time with the Early Years students.  Over the last couple of weeks, we have made pictures by tearing up newspaper and gluing it onto paper. 

The most exciting event, however, has been the start of a school choir.  We have had three rehearsals so far, with an average of about 21 Secondary and Senior students attending.  It’s not a traditional choir, but rather games and activities that promote singing and participation.  Our ‘big’ song we are currently working on is, ‘ Give me a home among the gum trees’.  Hopefully we will be able to share this song with the school community soon.  – Chappy Rachel