Barkly Highway State School - Term 3 Week 10
ATSIAP Team represent Barkly Highway and take home the win!
Principal's Welcome
Welcome to our final newsletter for term 3, 2022!
CLAW -MOUNT ISA GUIDANCE OFFICER WELLBEING
To support Queensland state schools and their students, the number of wellbeing professionals working in schools will increase by up to 464 full-time equivalents (FTE) over 3 years as part of the Queensland Government’s $100 million Student Wellbeing Package. Additional wellbeing professionals provided through this initiative will ensure every Queensland state student has access to support for their wellbeing at school.
Wellbeing professionals provided through the Student Wellbeing Package will complement and add to the support provided to students in state schools through existing support staff. New wellbeing professionals will work as part of the schools’ established student support teams to enhance the wellbeing and mental health support available to students.
From week 4, next term, the CLAW -Mount Isa Guidance Officer Wellbeing, will be based at Barkly Highway State School. This position will cover nominated schools from the Mount Isa area including Barkly Highway SS, Happy Valley SS, Townview SS, Mount Isa Central SS and School of the Air.
STAFFING – Term 4
For Term 4, Donna Freestone has accepted a Principal position at Prairie State School. Congratulations, Donna! Enjoy the challenges of your Principal journey in Prairie!
Families involved in the change, were informed last week that Kasenka McGilchrist who returned from leave in Term 2, will take over 5/6 Gold next term. Students in the class have worked in the classroom with Mrs McGilchrist during periods of Miss Freestone’s absence and this week Mrs McGilchrist has worked in the classroom for periods of time.
P&C MEETING
Our last P&C Meeting for the term was held on Tuesday evening. I take this opportunity to thank our P&C Executive and members of the P&C, who attend meetings on the second Tuesday of every month at 6:00 to work together to provide additional opportunities for our students. Look out for the details of the next family activity that is being planned for November.
Please come along and support this dedicated small group of families who work together for our school community.
Deputy's Report
PARENT STUDENT TEACHER MEETINGS
This week we are holding Parent, Student, Teacher Meetings. These meetings are a wonderful opportunity for parents to visit classrooms and view children’s learning this term. Your children can share their English, Maths and learning in other learning areas with you. If you haven’t already booked a time to meet with your child’s teacher, please contact them. Enjoy this opportunity to find out more about how your child is progressing.
ATTENDANCE – at Barkly Highway State School Every Day Counts!
This week on Monday, the attendance for ALL our students was 87.7% for the year to date. Our school target is 93% attendance for all students.
As we are nearing the end of term, our teachers are planning activities to ensure that the learning in the classrooms and playground continues until 2:30pm Friday 16 September, the last day of Term 3. In these last days of the term, classroom learning will be based on the curriculum knowledge and understanding from this term’s class work that may requires consolidation or extension.
We continue to promote the message to our students and families that “every day, every student is learning” and we expect to see every student at school enjoying the learning from 8:25 every morning until Friday 2:30pm. Thank you to everyone for supporting the school in this regard.
FIRE SAFETY EDUCATION
Recently our year 1 students participated in two Fire Safety Education presentations with our local Fire and Emergency Services Firefighters.
Take 5, get out alive
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) firefighters put out almost 2000 house fires last year. Queensland families are urged to take five minutes to check their smoke alarms and make a home fire escape plan together to make sure everyone gets out safely. Resources on the QFES Home Fire Safety website include a page for families to help parents and carers create an escape plan with their children, and there’s tips to make practising it fun. Taking a few minutes to talk about home fire safety may just save their lives.
Looking forward to everyone returning to school on Tuesday 4th October happy, healthy and ready to continue learning.
Enjoy the spring holidays.
Kind regards
Cheryl Gallagher
Year 1 HASS Excursion- Lake Moondarra
On Tuesday, 13 September our Year 1 students had a ball exploring our local Lake Moondarra to identify the natural, managed and constructed features of the area. They were lucky enough to meet with guest speaker Steve who shared his knowledge about how the lake was constructed and showed them images of it being built. They then enjoyed a sausage sizzle, play and story book down at Warrina Park. Thank you so much to Miss Hill, Miss Samios, Mrs Cremona and our special parent helpers for a fabulous day!
Science in 4 Red
In 4 Red, we have been learning about physical properties of materials and how they influence the selection of materials for particular purposes. To support this learning, we have been conducting investigations to see what happens to the physical properties when we mix different materials together. Students have been enjoying learning how to conduct a fair test, make predictions, record observations, identify patterns in results, suggest explanations for results, compare results to their predictions, and communicate their findings.
We have done several experiments, but the ones 4 Red enjoyed the most were; crazy colours, pop bag and their assessment experiment, investigating ochre. Students were proud to demonstrate their learning by writing reports to make comparisons with their predictions, communicate their findings, and make suggestions about how the different materials could be used for different purposes.
ATSIAP
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aspirations Program (ATSIAP) is a fun, yet challenging, program aimed to not only enhance students' general capabilities of critical and creative thinking, but to also support students' school attendance, academic engagement and to foster a love of and pride in their culture. This year, the competition was fierce. All of the schools did exceptionally well. However, the Barkly Highway team consisting of Dzeka Medwin, Yasmin Wyld-Hill, Xzariah Daley and Jennifer Kum-Sing, for the third year running, took out the overall win with the highest points. We won second place in the commercial task, and first place in the long term problem solving and art tasks. These students could not have represented our school any better displaying wonderful behaviour, sportsmanship and leadership. Well done team!
Library News
How quickly has this last week of the term come around! With the holidays upon us we ask that, as always, that all student borrowing is returned by the end of this week. We will resume borrowing in Term 4. Overdue notices are automatically generated and sent out to families on a regular basis throughout the year. Should your student have a lost a book over the year, we respectfully ask to financially help to recover the cost of the book. Please see the office for payment.
Our Book Club Issue #6 orders arrived and were distributed to students last week. We will have two more Book Clubs next term.
We will also have our Book Fair in late October! Keep an eye out for more information early next term!
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us with any queries you may have.
Kind Regards,
Svenja Spitzner-Lewis
School Crossing Supervisor
Tomorrow we say 'Goodbye' to our School Crossing Supervisor Pat! Pat has been monitoring our crossing on Buka street for the last 3 years. We wish Pat all the best for her new adventure and if you see her tomorrow don't forget to say goodbye.
Next term our School Crossing will not be monitored until a new School Crossing Supervisor has been allocated. Please encourage your children to be safe and sensible when crossing to and from 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
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