Barkly Highway State School - Term 4 Week 8
Principal's Welcome
FINISH STRONG
At this very busy time of the term and year, we are seeing the excitement for the holidays building. Our traditional end of year activities are planned and scheduled. Please see the calendar for details.
STAFFING 2022 -WELCOME - FAREWELL
This week 2022 teachers, Eve Wall and Amelia Wood, who are transferring to Barkly Highway State School, had the opportunity to participate in a 5-day orientation, “Welcome to the North West Induction”. The program has a Centre of Learning and Wellbeing (CLaW) and school component. During the 2-days at school, they participated in activities organised to familiarise themselves with the students, classrooms and school expectations.
This year we farewell classroom teachers, Michelle Isaacs and Tanya Madden who are transferring from Mount Isa with their families for the Bundaberg area and thank them for the teaching and learning opportunities provided to students in our school. We wish you well as you establish yourselves in your new schools.
MOVING FORWARD – 2022 CLASS PREPARATION
This week, 2022-year levels were allocated to classroom teachers so that English planning could begin. Next week students will participate in transition activities in possible classroom locations. Please look out on our FaceBook or Class Dojo for the callout for support as prepare the relocation of desks. At this point, on Thursday we will be relocating classrooms.
FAREWELL
As this is our last newsletter for 2021 we say goodbye to our current year 6 students and other students leaving our school. Many of these students have attended Barkly Highway State School for all of their 7 primary school years and some are the last child of their family to attend primary school. Thank you for all the memories and good luck for your future.
Have a safe and happy holiday,
Fiona Kropp
Deputy's Report
We have much to celebrate as we end our 2021 school year, on Friday 3 December.
At this time of the year, we farewell our year 6 students as they transition to high school. I wish all students and families leaving our school community success with future learning experiences. Next Tuesday evening, we celebrate their academic achievement, attendance and listen to our Year 6 Student Leaders’ reflections on 2021 at our Year 6 Farewell.
Next Monday morning from 8:30, we are holding our Prep to Year 5 Awards Parade. We will be celebrating our students’ achievements, recognising attendance and announcing our 2022 school captains. Our School Choir will be performing on the parade with our Arts teacher, Miss Jones.
Next Monday evening from 6:00, we are holding our End of Year Concert, lead by our Arts Teacher – Miss Jones. We are looking forward to all our students’ performances.
Next week, we will also be acknowledging students who have had 90% or higher attendance for this term with an extended playtime. Research links growth in student improved learning outcomes with school attendance.
Next Wednesday, our teachers will send home our students’ semester 2 report cards. This is a time to celebrate a year of learning and progress with our students.
Along with our end of year celebrations, we wish our families, students and teachers, who are leaving the school, all the best for the future.
Thank you all for the wonderful memories created in 2021. Please enjoy a safe and happy holiday. I look forward to celebrating our students’ growth in their learning with you all in 2022.
Have a safe & happy holiday,
Cheryl Gallagher
SECOND BREAK CHANGE - 2022
Over the past 12 months, we have made changes to our lunchtime play and eating routines. The students now transition back into classrooms at the end of breaktime with minimal disruption.
We are always looking at how to improve the opportunities for the students, to make the most of the time both in and out of the classroom. Next year in term 1, we will trial another change to our routines.
Year 1-6 students in second break, often do not have food left to eat at that time. After speaking with other schools, a strategy that we are trialling is to give the opportunity to either play for the 25 minutes of the break time or stop and have a snack sometime during that time. There will still be supervision in the eating area at the break time, however, there will not be a designated 15-minute eating time. Prep students in term 1 will continue learning the routines of breaktimes in the Prep Precinct before later in the year being introduced to the other areas of the school.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you get.”
Prep Blue Fun Park
Prep Blue have been learning about moving objects that roll, spin, and bounce. With the news the Fun Park was closed, students brainstormed different places we could go to explore movement. Using the Age Appropriate Pedagogies focus of an Event-Based project, the students came up with the idea to create their own Fun Park! The class brainstormed different activities that could be prepared and students helped to make a list of items to prepare, a map of where each activity would go and signs for each station. We even had our own expert students that could explain the movement related to each activity. On Friday morning, we explored our Prep Blue Fun Park which had marble painting, soccer, bowling, water play, a juicing station, a slip and slide and even a volcano show! It was a fantastic way to consolidate our science knowledge!
Places Near and Far - 3 Gold
This semester, Grade 3 have been exploring places near and far in their Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) unit. One skill they learnt was how to read a map and its legend, comparing and contrasting human and natural features within the map. These observations were recorded in a Venn Diagram.
3 Gold practised applying this skill, looking at the similarities and differences in an African school and its neighbouring village, as well as New York city and some of its schools.
The children then made their own maps & legends, swapping their Venn diagrams with another peer group. Groups had to interpret other’s maps, comparing similarities and differences between two places of their choosing.
Some of the places 3 Gold chose to compare were:
Mount Isa and Townsville, Mount Isa and Karumba, Mount Isa and Brisbane, Mount Isa and Fiji, Mount Isa and London, Cairns and Brisbane, Los Angeles and Sydney, and, Rome and Sydney.
They had a blast and learnt a lot of the way!
2 Blue
Age Appropriate Pedagogies (AAP) in 2Blue. Last week the class participated in a variety of UNO themed mathematical tasks and games, including graphing, skip counting, addition, multiplication and sharing. This was a fun way to revise and reinforce some of the skills we have learnt this year in mathematics.
Library News
... and just like that, the end of the term and the year have arrived.
We had a very busy year and the Library and Resource Centre were busy places throughout the year.
We like to take the opportunity to thank all our Barkly families for your continued support for our Book Club, Book Fairs and Book Week Dress-up, as well as the Premier’s Reading Challenge.
We are now in our last week of school and all borrowing, including Home Readers, is overdue and needs to be returned promptly for Stocktake purposes and end of year procedures. Overdue notices are sent out via email on a regular basis. Should your student have lost a resource, we kindly ask help financially to recover the cost of replacing the book by paying at the office.
We wish all our Barkly families a safe and relaxing holiday period and are looking forward to seeing you next year. We also wish our Year 6 cohort, and families who are leaving us, all the best for your next adventure.
As always, please don’t hesitate to see us with any queries you may have.
Kind Regards,
Svenja Spitzner-Lewis
Uniform Shop
All uniform orders placed on Flexischools by 4:00 on Wednesday, 1 December will be packed and delivered to your child's classroom by Friday, 3 December. Please disregard the cut off date provided by Flexischools as you place your order. We are waiting for our shipment so may be limited in some school polo sizes until it arrives in January 2022. The uniform shop opening dates for January 2022 have been tentively set for the following dates and times.
Wed 19 Jan 9:00-11:00
Thurs 20 Jan 9:00-11:00
Fri 21 Jan 10:00-12:00
Flexischool orders placed over the holidays may be collected at these times.
NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME (NDIS)
The Department of Education recognises that NDIS supports may contribute to improving a student’s ability to access and participate in education and achieve. The NDIS funds support for eligible students through NDIS plans, which are focused on supporting children and young people in their daily living. In Queensland, these supports are not provided for educational purposes and do not include supports such as therapy or specialist health supports, which are provided by schools as reasonable educational adjustments necessary to enable students to access and participate in education.
Principals will consider written requests from parents for NDIS providers to access schools to deliver NDIS supports at school, during school time on a case-by-case basis, considering:
· The safety, wellbeing and privacy of all students,
· The impact of providing the support at school, during school time on the student’s learning
· The impact on other students and their learning
· Workplace health and safety
· The good management and running of the school
