Barkly Highway State School - Term 2 Week 8
Principal's Welcome
This year’s release of the education strategy Equity and Excellence: Realising the potential of every student, builds on the successes of our past and leads into the future with a clear vision for a progressive, high performing education system. It links to the national commitment to equity and excellence in education outlined in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (2019) – that all children and young people are confident, creative lifelong learners active in their community.
To achieve our vision of equity and excellence, the shared focus for every Queensland state school is:
- educational achievement
- wellbeing and engagement
- culture and inclusion
Equity and Excellence is about reducing barriers for all learners to realise every student's potential and to achieve this, a Strategic Education Advisory Committee will identify and drive integrated place-based responses and address issues such as maximising the learning days of every student. It is only through working together that the potential of every student can be realised and evidence of other Queensland Government agencies aligning to the objectives and language of Equity and Excellence will become apparent.
Our school’s future school priorities and expectations, with consideration of our school context and needs, will be guided by the systems priorities outlined in Equity and Excellence.
UNDER 8s’ - PLAY - You, me and our communities
I want to take a moment to stress the importance of under 8s’ activity day. The activities chosen have been specifically chosen to provide a great opportunity for our young students to engage in fun, creative and educational activities that help build a strong foundation for their future learning. Not only do these activities help develop crucial skills such as problem-solving, communication and teamwork, but they also help foster a love of learning that can last a lifetime.
So, I encourage all parents to ensure their children are at school tomorrow morning on time to participate in our school’s under 8s’ activities and join in community initiatives on Friday afternoon at Kruttschnitt Oval between 3:00- 5:00.
Thank you for your continued support.
Kind regards,
Fiona Kropp
Deputy's Report
YEARS 3 and 5 NAPLAN NEWS
Please see attached brochure: NAPLAN individual student report. Information for parents and carers 2023 for more information about our children’s reports as we expect these to become available in term 3.
Quick Links:
- Support for parents and carers on the NAP website: nap.edu.au/naplan/for-parents-carers
New reporting for NAPLAN: FAQs for parents and carers
- Education ministers agreed 2023 was the right time to introduce this change, alongside the move to an earlier NAPLAN in March.
- These changes meet an initiative of the 2019 National School Reform Agreement.
- The new standards and proficiency levels provide simple and clear information to parents and carers about a child’s NAPLAN achievement based on a more realistic guide for where students should be achieving at the time of testing.
- They replace the previous numerical NAPLAN bands which did not, on their own, clearly indicate for parents whether students were meeting expectations in literacy and numeracy.
- The standards are set at a challenging but reasonable level expected for the child at the time of testing, based mainly on skills learnt from previous years of schooling.
- Along with other school assessment reports, NAPLAN results can be used to discuss your child’s progress with their teacher.
Will individual student reports change?
Yes. The new reporting will be reflected in the Individual Student Reports parents and carers receive after this year’s NAPLAN.
That means a student's result in each assessment area will be reported against a new measurement scale with 4 proficiency levels:
- Exceeding: The student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing.
- Strong: The student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.
- Developing: The student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing.
- Needs additional support: The student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.
As with previous ISRs, the new report continues to show each child's achievement against the national average and the range of achievement for the middle 60% of students in their year level.
NAPLAN is a valuable tool that can give useful insights into a student’s performance over time, but individual reports should be interpreted with care as they reflect the student’s performance on the day of testing.
POSITIVE BEHAVIOURS FOR LEARNING
Our school staff use the Reboot Program to support our students to self-regulate and use positive learning behaviours. Our teachers are teaching our students about how to identify whether they are ready to learn and if they aren’t, helping them to find ways to become calmer or more active learners each day.
Parents and carers, we ask for your support with encouraging our students to follow our Positive Behaviour for Learning Matrix from our Student Code of Conduct by speaking with your children about:
- Being Responsible and checking into the school office all personal electronic devices on arrival at school. Students can collect these electronic devices e.g. phones, from the office at 2:30.
- Being Responsible and eating their own lunch. We discourage sharing of food or drink items as some students may have an allergy to a food or drink. We also encourage eating healthy foods while at school. We discourage children bringing “sometimes” foods such as, lollies and drinks that can be bought, for example, in supermarkets labelled unsuitable for children to school. These ‘sometimes’ foods and drinks are best kept for eating and drinking at home.
SUPPORTING OUR STUDENTS to Learn, Achieve and Reach their Full Potential
Click on the links listed below to access a range of resources available to assist parents in supporting their child’s schooling, specifically to support appropriate behaviour, both in the home and school environment:
Parents can also seek confidential counselling, training, support and information from the following organisations:
Beyond Blue
Phone: 1300 22 4636 (24 hours, 7 days a week).
Chat online: between 3pm–12am, 7 days a week via the online chat page.
Email: get a response within 24 hours via the email form.
Visit the Beyond Blue website for more information.
Lifeline
Phone: 13 11 14 (24 hours, 7 days a week).
Chat online: between 8pm–4am, 7 days a week via the online chat page.
Visit the Lifeline website for more information.
Parentline
Phone: 1300 30 1300 (cost of a local call) 8am–10pm, 7 days a week.
Information: Tip sheets from a range of over 100 topics is available online.
Yourtown
The Yourtown Parentline Cyberbullying support training has been designed for use by all adults including parents, carers and grandparents who are:
- nervous or fearful of using the internet or new devices
- anxious about their children using the internet
- concerned cyberbullying may be impacting their child
- concerned their child may be engaging in cyberbullying behaviours
- would like to learn how to identify when cyberbullying may be impacting their family unit
- would like supportive, practical information around starting uncomfortable conversations.
The training is free and available online for completion on a range of internet enabled devices, including smart phones.
The training program is specifically designed to be a pocket ready resource which can be easily accessed via any smart phone or tablet, with easy navigation and practical, supportive information.
Please visit the Parentline website to access the online training and eResources.
Kind regards,
Cheryl Gallagher
Academic Reporting - Semester 1
Semester 1 reporting period ends at the end of this term and teachers are currently preparing written reports for parents. These will inform the student’s achievement for each learning area/subject studied in the reporting period, against the relevant achievement standard. Student effort and behaviour is also reported. Other additional information on aspects of particular learning areas or subjects, attendance, homework and comments on behaviour with a general comment section is available.
In addition to providing written reports twice a year, parents have opportunities to discuss their child’s educational performance at the school with their child’s teacher(s). We have established procedures in place for parent–teacher – student discussions in Term 1 and 3. As Academic Reports will be emailed Week 2 Term 3, to parents using the email contact on file, please ensure your contact details are accurate and current.
Year 5 Camp - Magnetic Island
Monday of week six began with a very early wake up for our year five students. Forty-five very excited students packed their bags and met Mr Benson, Miss Sodhi and Ms Wendy at 4:30 in the morning to travel to Apex Camp in Magnetic Island. The students spent the week engaging in adventurous and fun activities to build their knowledge and skills in leadership, teamwork and sustainability. It was fantastic to see so many students using the Barkly B’s of being responsible, respectful and resilient learners throughout camp. This experience was significant to many students as it was their first time away from home and support systems. They have made us all very proud by developing their communication and collaboration skills along with increasing their independence. We asked our campers to share their favourite moments of the week!
“My favourite memory of camp was abseiling because I overcame my fear of heights” – Tylah 5/6 Blue
“I used Ronny Respectful when I was in the kitchen waiting for my turn to be served food and not eating like a pig” – Toby 5/6 Red
PALS Social Skills Program
The PALS (Playing and Learning to Socialise) Social Skills Program teaches children in early education about greeting others, listening, sharing, taking turns, dealing with feelings and solving problems. The development of skills like these are essential in preparing children for the school years and beyond.
The program is conducted over 10 weeks with one session per week. It includes puppet shows, singing, discussions and a variety of play activities.
Participants are supported by a group of Year 6 role models who demonstrate appropriate skills and interact and guide the younger students.
This term a small group of Prep students have participated in the program. They have contributed extremely well and have shown much enthusiasm and growth.
Thank you to the Prep and Year 6 teachers for your support. A huge thank you to the Year 6 students for their amazing work!
Cathy Muguira
Wellbeing Guidance Officer
Engagement & Wellbeing
It is hard to believe that Term 2 is nearly at an end. There are so many events happening over the next couple of weeks. Under 8’s Day is Friday, 09 June and will be an amazing day as always. Our Athletics Days are in Week 10 and on the first Friday of Term 3, we will be celebrating NAIDOC Day.
The students are so close to another whole school celebration! As a part of the Positive Behaviour for Learning framework, students not only work towards individual positive reinforcement in the classroom and playground, but they also work towards whole school positive reinforcement as well. We know that research says that the more engaged and the bigger the sense of belonging a student has in school, the better the academic achievement. Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) is a whole-school framework that promotes positive behaviour across a school and helps schools develop safe and supportive learning environments. Schools which implement the PBL framework make sure all students are explicitly taught the expected behaviours and establish clear and consistent boundaries (Department of Education, 2023)
Kind regards,
Donna Freestone
Meet our New Guidance Officer
Hi my name is Tanya Mendes. I moved to Mount Isa 2 yrs ago from Bamaga in Far North Queensland where I also worked as a Guidance Officer for a few years.
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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