Dear Parents and carers,

We were so excited and happy to have all of our year levels return to school on Monday. We really missed seeing and interacting with our students face to face. It has been lovely this week to move around the school and see the majority of our students here, reengaging in school-based learning. Working through the restrictions imposed on us all through the Covid -19 situation has reiterated for many of us the importance of social connection – I was extremely happy to be able to visit classrooms and play areas this week to engage with more of our students.  

I acknowledge the amazing job our families have done supporting their children with their at home learning. Your commitment, have–a–go attitude, resilience and support during this unprecedented time has been fantastic. THANK YOU!

 As we settle back into routines and a sense of normality at school, we hope you now take some time to get back into your own routines and find a new balance as we negotiate the next steps of Covid-19.

Teachers have planned very carefully for the learning over the 5 weeks left of this term to enable sequential, targeted teaching and learning to continue with a clear focus on assessment and reporting for Semester One. Reporting will look different this semester and the timelines have been extended due to the circumstances. Semester One reports will be sent home at the end of week 3, next term providing staff and students with as much time as possible to settle back into school and resume routines and complete teaching , learning and assessment.

Just a reminder that our school day is 8.30am to 2.30pm. The arrivals gate is open from 8.15am every day for student drop off. Teachers are moving students from Clyde’s Corner at 8.30am into their classrooms for learning. It would be great to have all of our students here ready to learn from that time. We appreciate that at times, students may have an appointment or therapy prior to school. If your child is arriving at school after 8.45am, they will need to enter the school through the main gate and sign in through Administration, as the bottom gate will be unmanned from 8.45am. Thank you to all of our families for their support in this matter.

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

A huge welcome back to all of our students.  It’s wonderful to see everyone happy to be back learning in the classroom (students and teachers!).  Well done to all of the parents and carers for taking on the task of assisting your child in their learning for the past 5 weeks.

Please note that if your child unwell, it is essential that you keep them at home.  In accordance with Queensland Health Directions, if any child is showing signs of illness, parent or carers will be contacted and asked to collect them immediately from the school.

We are continuing our cleaning regime throughout the day to ensure the safety of students and staff.  This includes toilets, hand rails, door knobs and other common areas. 

As you know, our classroom teachers returned to face-to-face teaching this week and therefore cannot perform the dual role of preparing at home learning and delivering face-to-face teaching. However some of our students may not be able to return to school just yet.  Education Queensland has a number of great resources available for students to access. Below is a link to reading@home TV.

Catch up on reading@home TV!

Episodes 1 to 4 are now available on the Queensland Department of Education’s YouTube channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgjv5epyrnQBG8Q9DOyrTlnJ6XiM-9jr7

Episodes 1 to 7 are available now on Nine Now.

Kind Regards,

Rachael Pelling

Hello to our wonderful Gympie Special Community

As a newbie to Gympie Special School I must say how pleased and immensely proud I have been to be part of such an openhearted, resilient and compassionate community. A massive shout out for all of your support and persistence during this challenging time. It is great to have most students back at school providing a sense or normality and routine for us all.

Over the coming weeks teachers will continue teaching and learning from term 1 and at home learning content, with the goal of assessing  student achievement later in the term. In light of the disrupted face-to-face learning, Individual Curriculum Plans may need slight adjustments to match these different learning needs. A letter will go out to families later in the term to inform you of any changes made.

I am very excited to lead planning with teachers for next semester’s learning. The context for learning for our English, Mathematics and Science units will be about animals specifically pets and their growth, changes and needs. I can foresee lots of fun, interactive and hands on experiences for our classrooms. Wherever practical and possible our families and community members are welcomed to participate, so if you know of, or have anything to contribute, please let your teachers or the leadership team know!

Our school focuses on encouraging and supporting communication for all of our students. One way we facilitate communication across our school is t0 use visuals to assist understanding and provide the ability to give and receive a message. Communication for all!

Kindest Regards

Shellie

HASS

Welcome back to everyone. We missed all the students and the great work that they do.

Early Years students are continuing to learn about different types of families.

The Primary classes are continuing to look at families from the past and compare them to today’s diverse family types.

Junior Secondary are mapping the routes that the early Australian explorers took.

Senior Secondary students who are doing Community and Citizenship studies are about to start a research project looking at the laws of Australia.  Great to see how keen students are to be back at school and learning!   

JS3s map of the Burke & Wills expedition  

Marina

Hi Everyone.

It’s so great to finally all be back at school together with our class mates. We are settling into our routines with lots of reminders and positive reinforcement! It’s lovely to see how much we have all grown and some of us have even changed our hair styles. Best of all we are renewing our friendships and learning to make appropriate choices.

We continue to do our English first thing in the morning, with maths, science and our other lessons at other times during the day. We also try to complete a sensory activity and individually read with every student every day.

Andrew, Libby and Chrissy

Welcome back 

We are all glad to see everyone back at school happy and healthy.

This week we welcomed a new student into our class. We hope that she had a good first week at Gympie Special School.

Primary 2 has been busy cleaning out the raised garden beds ready to plant the “measure me” garden. We are all excited to watch the vegetables grow and measure the progress each week.

Erin and Jenny

Welcome Back Everyone

It was so wonderful to welcome all of our students back to school after the Covid 19 break. All of our learners were keen to apply their skills to new tasks and have been quick to settle back into the school routine. 

Chappy Naomi offered her skills on the drums and we made some beautiful music together this Thursday afternoon. Here are the photos of our jam session with chappy.

Jan, Eveline and Karen

Well what a change! We finally made it ‘back to school.’ First of all, a huge thank you to all our families that pushed through learning at home with their children. You are amazing, adventurous and inventive. I enjoyed speaking with our families each day to learn more about you all and how you were working with your children.

We are very fortunate to have a new student in JS1, already we learned that he likes to dance and has a great sense of humour.  

It is lovely to see the students in class again as we have missed their smiling faces. Their daily input into our lessons makes me realise how much we rely on them in the classroom to enjoy our work place.

This week we watched an online story called, “Here comes the garbage barge.” Not sure why, but one student got the giggles, it seemed to set off a couple of more students. We may have to watch it again. I have missed this so much over the last few weeks. Happy days.

Keep staying safe,

Tony, Bree, Debbie and Deb. 

JS2 are all back on track, learning and playing with our friends. We would like to welcome a new student to our classroom. He has settled in very well and reported that he is enjoying being at Gympie Special School.

While we were doing learning at home, Miss Anne-Maree arranged a number of new maths and literacy games. Everyone is exploring our maths and English concepts using these great new games. When learning is fun it makes it so much more enjoyable. Thank you Miss Anne-Maree for all your hard work and commitment.

Cann, Jodie and Anne-Maree

It is exciting to be back at school!   We have been busy revising our Math, English and Science – it’s almost like we never left. 

Grace, Sue and Darren are highly impressed by all the work the students completed whilst remote learning and really appreciate the family support through this time.  We’ve been lucky to have had some upgrades to our classroom whilst we were away. 

Our new whiteboard, Velcro display boards, desks, and lunch table has made our room a better teaching and learning space.  We are all looking forward to being able to access and communicate using our emails.

Grace, Sue and Darren

It's our first week back and our senior students have been working very hard setting up the new worm farm and planting carrot seeds in the garden beds that were set up for us last term. The students have been observing  rain fall and using the observations to predict whether the plants need more watering. 

We are looking forward to observing the growth rates of our plants.

Trista, Thelma and Debbie

This week has seen all classes completing their Visual Arts projects, as most of us are now back at school. I feel very proud of the Junior Secondary classes who worked hard as a team helping each other to install their individual fishes into the diorama display. While we were arranging and hanging up the sea creatures we discussed what our project had been about.

The Junior Secondary students have made an art sculpture in the form of a diorama to make people aware of the problem and issues of plastic pollutions in the oceans.  Marine plastic pollution has impacted at least 267 species worldwide, including 86% of all sea turtle species, 44% of all seabird species and 43% of all marine mammal species. The impacts include fatalities as a result of ingestion, starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning, and entanglement.

What is something we can do? Recycling and reuse of plastic products, and support for research and innovation to develop new products to replace single-use plastics are also necessary to prevent and reduce plastic pollution.

Making the plastic junk filled sea creatures gave the students a very relatable experience of what it might be like to swallow junk and have it sit in your stomach.

Diorama showing sea creatures with stomachs filled with plastics. Students also made seaweed and coral for the seabed.

JS3 happy with their completion of the diorama in the background. They have responsibly cleaned up and looking forward to starting our Drama Unit next week

Early years this week looked at shadows and shadow puppets. We are beginning to understand how shadows are made.  The students made hand shadows on the whiteboard wall and also watched some shadow puppet performances. 

The following are photos of our puppet theatre showing a scene from the ‘Tiddalick the Frog’ performance. Early Years students will be using this theatre to perform their own stories with their own hand made puppets.

Primary students had one last look and play with their wonderful fantasy world model. Once again I am so impressed with how our students contribute when working collaboratively to make and design their artworks.

Chris