Barkly Highway State School - Term 3 Week 4
Principal's Welcome
We have welcomed the warmer weather over the last week! With this brings an increase in unnamed clothing in the lost property cabinet which is located near the uniform shop. Please check this space before the items are donated on Monday.
ARD VISIT
Yesterday, Mr Phil Sweeney, our school’s Assistant Regional Director (ARD), visited the school and was accompanied by available leadership team members to visit some of the classrooms he had not previously seen – Prep Gold, 2 Blue and Gold, 3 Blue and 4 Gold. He spoke with students and teachers about the learning and teaching occurring in their spaces and also took the opportunity to discuss the capability building of teachers and teacher-aides that occur through key school practices. He was impressed by the consistent level of student engagement, the obvious knowledge of student learning using the Learning Walls and the purpose of student created artefacts.
CAMPERS RETURN
This week we saw our Year 5 students return to school from another successful Apex school camp on Magnetic Island. The commitment from our school staff attending, Mrs Tamihana-Ratana, Mr Benson, Mrs Knight and Chappie Les, goes well above the hours of a regular school week. Events like these can only occur with the commitment of our staff and Mr Benson who has attended many of our school camps sent the following to me in an email during the camp, which encapsulates why we work hard to provide these opportunities for our students to attend:
“It amazes me, year after year, just how much these year 5 students get out of this camp. The amount of personal growth and development that we witness is incredible! So valuable!”
Thank you to families who continue to support these extra-curricular opportunities!
Enjoy week 5 and 6!
Regards,
Fiona Kropp
Deputy's Report
PARENT AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
We acknowledge the support of our wonderful families on occasions such as, our recent Prep Open Morning, our monthly Parents and Citizens Meetings and look forward to our community’s support for our future events - our Bikeathon happening for our Prep to Year 2 students on September 9 and years 3-6 on September 8, and participating in our Parent, Student, Teacher Meetings being held in the week before the holidays this term from September 12-16. Research tells us that students achieve more when schools, parents and the local community work together. Evidence of this over a period of decades, identifies the benefits of continued parent engagement throughout schooling for student learning outcomes. Parent engagement has been shown to improve students’ self-esteem, school attendance, and behaviour at school. In fact, respected educational researcher John Hattie has found that effective parent engagement accelerates a child’s learning at school. Thank you to everyone in our school community who have been a part of these activities!
CELEBRATING OUR MATHS PROFESSIONAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES – Maths Club, Maths Chats & Maths Professional Learning Community (PLC)
Our dedicated teaching staff meet voluntarily afterschool on Thursdays to discuss ways to improve our students’ learning & engagement in Mathematics. Our Maths Professional Learning Community this year has focused on building our capabilities to teach using Open-ended/Inquiry Learning activities to improve the mathematical problem-solving ability of our students.
Rebecca Samios (1 Blue Class teacher – see photos below) leads our Maths Club afternoons where she currently supports our teachers with setting up an area in their room devoted to engaging our students in Maths learning. Amelia Wood (4 Gold Class teacher) recently participated in our Maths Club and in the photos below has used an age appropriate approach pedagogical approach to engage her students in learning about fractions. She has established a cross curricular area – Maths, English, Science and HASS in her room with a convict ship’s galley. On alternate Thursday afternoons, Amelia Wood joins Rebecca to facilitate our Maths Chats group which focuses on collaboratively planning and sharing Maths Open-ended/Inquiry Learning activities. Chelsea Hill (1 Gold Class teacher) recently participated in our Maths Club and in the photos below has set up a pirate ship and is using age appropriate open-ended/inquiry based learning activities to engage her students in learning about measurement – capacity and length.
1 Blue
1 Gold
4 Gold
Our devoted teachers share their classroom practice and engage in opportunities to watch their colleagues teach Open-ended/Inquiry Learning activities in their Maths lessons. Sariah Tamihana-Ratana (5/6 Red Class teacher – see photos below) opened her classroom last term to her colleagues and invited all the teachers in our Maths PLC to observe her teaching using Open-ended/Inquiry activities, then met with the teachers who visited to hold professional conversations about teaching and learning in Mathematics. Jodie Wright (4 Red class teacher) participates in our Maths Chats group, is a member of our Maths PLC and in the photos below has used an age appropriate inquiry approach to engage her students in learning about fractions where students were involved in mathematical conversations with their peers to solve maths fraction problems with fairy bread.
5/6 Red
4 Red
Our students are fortunate to have teachers who strive to continuously improve their practice and support each other through these professional learning opportunities. I plan to share more of the effective research based practices that our teachers use to improve our students’ learning outcomes.
Kind regards,
Cheryl Gallagher
K-2 Deputy's News
Term 3 has had an exciting and busy start. We are currently planning to start our Prep Interviews this term.
Our Kindy Liaison teacher has been busy visiting Kindergartens to build positive relationships with our 2023 Prep Students. From these visits we get to learn about each student’s interests, needs and strengths so we can plan to cater for all children.
Every Wednesday in term 4, all enrolled future students are welcome to attend BHSS Pre-Prep Playgroup from 1:30-2:30 ensuring a start to school for all children and their families.
We are still taking enrolments for Prep 2023 and providing families with information for 2023 Kindergarten placements.
Kind regards,
Bec Cremona
2 Gold Class News
At the beginning of the term in 2 Gold we read Roald Dahl's famous book, George’s Marvellous Medicine. We also listened to an audiobook of the story read by a comedian. Students loved listening and developing an opinion on George’s Grandma. Over the term we have revisited procedure writing, with the challenge of creating something disgusting to feed to Grandma and writing the procedure for the recipe.
We have had lots of fun over the last 2 weeks developing our procedure writing skills with different activities like blowing bubbles and making fairy bread.
Students have had lots of creative and disgusting ideas as we have begun writing procedures for Grandma.
Prep Celebration - 100 Days of School
On Thursday Week 3, prep students celebrated 100 days of school. Students wore shirts with 100 items on them, created by families. We explored the quantity of 100, engaged in activities involving 100 items, completed craft activities, did some cooking using hundreds and thousands and even got to see what we may look like as a 100 year old! It was a wonderful day to celebrate the growth of our prep students and their achievements throughout the year.
Library News
Term 3 seems to be going very fast and in the Library, we are busy as well.
Students are enjoying their lunch time while playing games, using the computers and having fun reading and drawing.
Book Club Issue #5 has closed now and we are awaiting delivery of the orders.
A very important event reminder, that our Book Week Dress -Up Day is coming up fast! Our Parade is planned for Friday, 26 August at 8.25!
We are looking forward to some wonderful and imaginative costumes. We have seen so many fantastic creations over the years, many of them very creatively made by the student/ family. We can’t wait to see what amazing Book Characters will be on Parade this year! The Theme of Book Week changes yearly, and this year it is "Dreaming with eyes open".
The Premier’s Reading Challenge is closing on the 26 August and we hope to have lots of students completing their Reading Record Sheet by then!
P&C Association
The P&C invites you to attend our next meeting on Tuesday, 9 August from 6:00 - 7:00 in the Resource Centre. We have a great school, and the P&C want to make some upgrades, so come and be a part of it! Hope to see you there!
The P&C would also like to acknowledge the amazing volunteers we've had of late! The school disco had an amazing turnout, but without the support of the parents who helped setup and packdown, sell food, organise the food orders and general help on the night it wouldn't have been made possible, THANK YOU! The kids loved the night.
Also want to give a shout out to our uniform shop co-ordinator, Nicole Liu. She has been working a lot behind the scenes with the new dresses, sorting uniforms out, and all in between working as a teacher at school a lot more this year. Thanks Nicole, the P&C executive are very thankful for your contribution!
Lastly, look forward to some more announcements in the near future about upcoming events and fundraising opportunities! Many more exciting things happening in our school!
Events & Flyers
Want to know what's happening within the school? Check out our School Calendar to keep up to date.
https://barklyhighwayss.schoolzineplus.com/calendar/1
Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/barklyhighwaystateschool
