Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you so much for your awesome support and positive feedback regarding the learning at home materials we have been providing. It is so heartening to receive positive feedback from a range of families across our school. We opened an email this week from our Regional Office letting us know they had received very positive feedback from one of our families. Our staff were over the moon! Our teachers are in daily contact with every family of our students who are learning from home and the great stories we are hearing have made getting through this difficult time more bearable. If you would like to share some feedback, please let your child’s teacher know or feel free to give us a call.

We know that many of you are wondering, “When will they actually go back to school?” and as I write, we do not know the answer to this. Our government has let us know a decision will be announced in mid-May. This does not stop us thinking about what it will be like for each of our students when they do return, and considering how best we will support their transition back to full time formal learning at school. Children like to know what they are doing and what will come next and for many of our students, the loss of their daily routine and structure related to coming to school, and the loss of connecting with friends and staff through social interactions has been difficult.  Be assured, we will work together to support all our families during this time.

Keep an eye on our Gympie Special School Facebook posts. We will endeavour to post more storytelling, good news, and photos to keep our families updated over the coming weeks. This is a great way for our students and families to stay connected. Have you seen Ardy, our school PBL mascot helping at school this week? Ardy, has been helping to take out our Wheelie bins and is now famous on the Facebook page “Bin Isolation Outing.” Well done Ardy! 

On Friday, we encouraged all of our students at home to dress up as their favourite “Super Hero” and either send their photo into their class teacher via email or add it to the post on Facebook.  

As restrictions begin to ease over the next few weeks, I will continue to provide further information as it becomes available. Stay safe! We are missing you all!

Sarah Lester

A huge thank you to all of our Gympie Special School families who have sent through messages of support, photos and videos.  It is great to see such a high level of engagement in At Home Learning and the photos and videos always make our day brighter. 

Thank you also to those families who have gone out of their way to publically highlight the hard work and dedication of our wonderful teaching staff.  It was lovely to see some well-deserved recognition come from both Education Queensland Regional Office and the ABC radio station.

At this stage students are advised to engage in At Home Learning until the 22^nd of May to slow the spread of COVID-19.  However, as government restrictions are changing daily, we are here to help out as much as we can.  We understand that as shops and other industries re-open, parents and caregivers may need to return to work. 

Please ensure that you phone the school as soon as possible if your situation changes at any point in time.

Kind Regards,

Rachael Pelling

Hello to all of our wonderful school families. I have been enjoying the photos and videos that many of you have shared with your teachers and to our Facebook page showing your delightful children participating in positive learning experiences at home. Whilst the current situation is different, what I have enjoyed is being able to spend more time with my own family with less hustle and bustle. I hope, on the most part, this is the same for you and your families.

Teachers here at school are delighting in calling you every day to check-in and offer support. The feedback from many families has been very positive and it is such a warm feeling knowing these relationships are positive for everyone involved. We are truly blessed here at Gympie Special with outstanding staff and families.

I don’t really want to talk much about curriculum as you are living and breathing the curriculum at home right now. Instead, I would like to offer some ideas around communication and every day interactions with your children in the home. Many of our student’s access communication support (AAC) using PODD, Proloquo2go on iPads and ALS boards, using any of these during everyday activities along with your talking conversations is beneficial for communication development as it adds a simplified visual support to the words spoken. Some suggestions about how you could do this in the home can be found in the images below. I hope you find them helpful.

Keep up the great work!

ANZAC DAY 2020 was very different for many of our families and staff.  For many years Gympie Special has marched to honour our Anzac’s. Sadly this year all marches were cancelled and we were all asked to stay at home. Staying home did not stop many of our students from making wreaths and standing at the end of their driveways or front yard.

Our Visual Arts of Term 1 ended sooner than expected, so we are looking forward to finishing some work. This term we are studying Drama. Hopefully many parents and carers will be able to have some fun participating in the weekly activities that are being sent home. In the past I have experienced how much our young people enjoy Drama activities and have had so much fun with them in our sessions. I am looking forward to the time when we can physically work together again.

Below is a fun art activity for when your child needs a break. If you do this activity I would love to see your end results.

Home Made Puffy Paint.

Mix one cup of flour with 3 teaspoons of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of salt. Stir in enough water to make it the consistency of pancake batter.

Divide the mix into 4 parts and put them into snack size ziplock baggies along with some food colouring. Squish it around to mix the colour evenly.

Rubber band the baggies like you would if you were icing a cake and snip off the teeniest little bit of the tip.

Paint by squeezing gently.

When you’re finished, put the painting into the microwave for 30-45 seconds and watch the paint puff up and grow.  It will completely dry once out of the microwave so you don’t have to worry about any extra mess.

This link is to an excellent art site. There are a whole range of Art activities and games as well as many resources.

It is called The Incredible Art Department and is aimed at both teachers and students.

                    https://www.incredibleart.org/

I would like to encourage you to keep any art work or photographs of your child participating in drama or art while learning remotely, it would be great to include in an exhibition towards the end of the year. 

Thank you

Chris (The Arts)

My, my – how time flies! Our focus for Design and Technologies (D&T) this semester is on food and fibre.

In Early Years and Primary, we are exploring where familiar foods come from and it is inspiring to hear that most of our students know where milk and eggs come from.  It can be a little confusing that we also get meat from cows and chickens though. There is a lot of cutting out and pasting together at this stage – the fine motor skills needed to use scissors can take lots of practice. Other benefits to students of learning to use scissors safely include building up strength in hands and fingers, learning to coordinate both hands to work together (bilateral coordination), and tracking the cutting line with their eyes.

In Junior and Senior Secondary, while several of us are also learning the fine art of using scissors safely and with precision, we also explore how technology has changed the ways that food and fibre is grown and packaged, and how it may change in the future. We ask questions like “why are round pizzas delivered in square boxes?”, and design simple solutions to familiar problems.  You will find some Design and Technology activities in your home learning packs on Friday. All activities are optional.

One of the many benefits of living in a rural community is seeing food production in action so a simple way to keep on top of D&T at this time is to bring it up in conversation – we often learn best when we don’t even know that we’re learning! If you are lucky enough to have your own chickens or ducks at home, collecting eggs is an easy math lesson. How many today? How many more/less is that than yesterday? How many eggs have we collected this week altogether? Involve your older children in unpacking the groceries and explore the different types of packaging. Take boxes of different sizes and shapes apart before putting them into the recycling bin to see how they fold together. How is a cereal box different to a tissue box? Which one is easiest to stick back together? Which one is stronger? Why is cereal put into a plastic bag AND a box? So many questions, so little time!

Hello Parents and Students.  I know that you are all very busy with your learning at home. Even though the at home learning materials do not have a particular Humanities focus, the students will be taking this subject back up again on their return to school.

We are making history! We will finish off our studies of different family structures, colonial families, and legal studies for the senior students. 

We will have to complete our assessments and then in Term 3 we will be studying Geography.

What group learning used to look like!

Early Years News

Welcome to week 2 of term 2 to all of our families. We would like to start with a big shout out to all of our families doing an amazing job with At Home Learning. It’s not easy navigating through the unexpected and sometimes unknown. We have received amazing feedback and would like our families to always remember, we are here to support you no matter how simple the request or question may be.

We look forward to having normality back and seeing our students return to school. Please say hello to our students from all of the staff as we are missing them here at school.

Oh what a difference a few weeks makes! Most of us are working hard at home supported by our amazing Mum’s and Dad’s patience and enthusiasm! It has really been a team effort from home and school, for which we are very grateful.

We also thank all of the teacher aides who are helping get your 

at Home Learning packs ready for you. They have all stepped up to the challenge and willingly offered their ideas and support. We would particularly like to thank Chrissy, Darren, Emma, Karen, Michelle and Jenny – you are amazing!

We have received great reports from our parents at home.  They have shown wonderful initiative and organisation and should be justifiably proud of their efforts. The results of which are seen in their child’s work, happy chatter over the phone and smiling faces in the pictures forwarded to us.

Finally, thank you to the admin team for their support, advice and humour.

Sincerely

Libby, Chrissie and Andrew

Thanks to all of our fantastic families who are working hard to ensure our kids continue their learning at home. It’s great to have Miss Erin back at School and we are working hard to prepare more resources to help our families with home schooling.

So far the feedback has been positive. However, if you are struggling, it is important to remember that you can pick up the phone and have a chat to any of our teaching staff. It’s also worth noting, that sometimes our kids behave differently at school than they would when working from home.

As much as possible, we are trying to keep with routine and break up the day with practical activities, rewards, art and craft. It was lovely to receive the pictures of the wreaths that were made for your ANZAC Day letter boxes. This week our celebration will be Mother’s Day.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of our hard working Mums :)

Hello from the ‘FANTASTIC 8’, JS3 Remote Learners. Nothing will stop us. Not even a virus called COVID-19 on the prowl! We’re putting on our learning outfits and hitting the learning tasks each day. It’s got to be done and we’re ready to be super-hero learners, even if that means getting pink hair to make us stronger!

We are the JS3 Superheroes Learning from Home

Our home learning students have been doing a fantastic job. I would like to send out a big cheers and thank-you to all of the parents who are going above and beyond working at home. Some parents are adding additional related activities and using lots of creative thinking to make the home learning program meaningful and enjoyable for their students. Well done everybody, we take our hats off to you all.