Barkly Highway State School - Term 1 Week 8
Principal's Welcome
Teachers at times can feel pressured to extend their school responsibilities into their out-of-school hours. As a staff, we have discussed and agreed to guidelines that align to our school expectations to maintain contact through various formats within acceptable timelines.
Proposed amendments to the Education Act
Earlier this month, proposed amendments to the Education General Provisions Act (EGPA) were introduced to the Queensland Parliament. This included the “Right to disconnect”
Right to disconnect
Clause 9.5 of the Department of Education State School Teachers Certified Agreement 2022 recognises employees are not required to respond to work-related emails, phone calls, or other communications outside of rostered duty time. This is intended to help address the issue of “digital presenteeism”.
The department will soon release the “Encouragement to disconnect from digital technologies and communications” guide. This protocol states that disconnecting outside of rostered duty time helps to “avoid ‘availability creep’, where employees feel they must be available to respond to work requests at all hours of the day.”
The department encourages teachers and school leaders to establish clear boundaries and set up out-of-office replies like “Thank you for your email. I am out of the office and will return on (insert date). I will not be accessing email during this time and will respond on my return.”
At BHSS the teachers have agreed that teachers will be available for –
- Email and Class Dojo Contact Guidelines - 7:30 – 4:30 (School days only)
Kind regards,
Fiona Kropp
K-2 Deputy News
We are coming in to the last couple of weeks of a very busy and exciting term! Learning and assessment is taking place right up until the last day of school. It is important that students keep attending every day and finish the term strong! However, if you know you are going on holidays early, please keep in contact with your child’s classroom teacher so they can prepare accordingly.
On the last day of school this term we will be finishing with an Easter celebration for our Prep – Year 2 students. Our students will be creating easter bonnets in class with their teachers. Families are invited to watch students proudly parade their creations at 8:30 in the undercovered area on Thursday 28 March. Keep an eye out on your class dojo for reminders and updates.
The theme for Under Eights Week 2024 is ‘Connecting to Culture through Play’. This is an exciting theme, as it highlights and celebrates the ability of play to break down barriers and bring children together, as well as helping them to understand more about themselves and each other.We are looking for families to volunteer in a variety of different ways. Bring down toys that are relevant to your culture, help the students complete a craft that will teach them about a different culture, perhaps even paint, sing, dance or story tell. The ways to connect to ‘culture through play’ are endless. We would love to see different cultures from within our Barkly Highway State School community represented.Our Under Eights Day celebrations will be taking place on Friday 24 May from 8:30-10:30. Please reach out if you think you might be available to help and I can assist you further.
Kind regards,
Yvette Wehlow
Mrs Roberts Report
TEAM UP - update
Over the last 2 weeks our Year 5/6 students have been covering the topics of Problem Solving, Trust & Teamwork.
The sessions have challenged the students to think, communicate and look at things in different ways. When students learn to tackle their problems on their own or in a group, they become more resilient and confident to tackle future challenges.
Teamwork teaches essential communication and social skills.
Developing trust within the group can help them build bonds, teach them to work together to meet a shared goal, and improve communication and cooperation skills.
HOD: Curriculum 3-6
In the coming weeks of term 1 it continues to be a busy period of events. In the upper school, select students in grades 5 and 6 will be participating in a mock session of government. The event facilitated by the Queensland parliamentary education team will see students engage in a first-hand experience of what it would be like to be a Queensland member of parliament for the day. They will conduct addresses and debates with some other Mount Isa schools, and be supported by the Queensland speaker of the house. This valuable program will provide extension of learning opportunities linked to current Humanities And Social Sciences content in classrooms.
Elsewhere in the school, some of our year 4, 5 and 6 students will be helping form the Barkly Highway State School newspaper. Students will help create the newspaper with the hope it can share valuable information to the whole-school body and provide a space for students to express ideas and opinions in print and digital media. The group of aspiring reporters, editors and photographers will be working hard in the coming weeks exploring newspaper texts and putting together the first issue of our newspaper, so watch this space.
Regards,
Cameron Alley
HPE with Miss Wheeler
Swimming Week
Last week students from years 3-6 participated in our Swim and Survive program at Spalshez Pool. Students engaged in a 45-minute lesson that developed their swimming and water safety knowledge facilitated by our swimming instructors. It was wonderful to see the progression of our students across the 4 days and how much fun students were having.
Swimming Carnival
On Monday afternoon we held our annual swimming carnival. It was great to see so many students participate in all of our events. A big thank you to all of the staff involved in organising and running of the event. Congratulations to KENT house on winning the Inter-house championship as well as to all our age champions.
2015 Mackenzie Smart and Mitchell Grubb
2014 Katalaya Patterson and Joseph Grubb
2013 Sasha Little and Toby Scotney
2012 Nakita Thomas and Kailan Turner
The Arts with Mrs T
We have had an amazing start to The Arts so far this year. We hit the ground running doing icebreaker activities that helped us to build relationships and get to know each other a little better.
We have established class expectations as a whole school and developed routines and systems that work for each year level.
We have had the joy of exploring the Music curriculum this term through listening, composing and performing.
Year 1-2 we are focusing and developing our knowledge of music by exploring different places. They have enjoyed listening to and singing songs about different places.
Year 3-4 students are focusing and developing knowledge of music by representing characters and actions portrayed in film, television and media. They have been developing skills in reading ostinato rhythms found in sheet music and playing the xylophone. Students have been working in small groups, each group is able to have more one-on-one time when learning an instrument.
Year 5-6 we are focusing and developing our knowledge of music by looking closely at rhythmic ostinatos. The students have been able to compose their own ostinato rhythms and perform to their peers using body percussion and claves.
Prep have been exploring the Arts curriculum as a whole.
They sing, play and explore different instruments, dance and create visual art works each session.
English in 5/6Gold
This term in English, 5/6 Gold has been learning to write the first chapter of a fantasy novel, creating a good and evil character and establishing a setting. This week we had a Fantasy Day to bring our stories to life. We created the setting for our co-constructed chapter which was called the Citadel. Students also dressed up as their good and evil characters to bring the descriptions to life. This helped the class create even more detailed language features to add into the chapters!
P&C News
Just an update from our school P&C.
As most have noticed, our wonderful Tuckshop Convenor Engela has left us this year to pursue other opportunities, so we have had to reduce our opening days to 3: Tuesday, Thursday & Friday. We still have the ever amazing Shellea in operating, with help from parents Candice, Amanda and Ciemon. Thank-you! BUT, we would LOVE to have a person willing to come on board and operate our Tuckshop 5 days a week. If you might be interested in school hours work and food, please email pandc@barklyhighwayss.eq.edu.au to enquire.
Also, we have our term fundraiser coming up on the Tuesday 26 March @ 1:45. Students have the opportunity through Flexischools (search Bombs Away Teacher Day), or Monday 25 & Tuesday 26 at Tuckshop from 8:00 - 8:15 to purchase any number of balloons. $1 a balloon, or 12 Balloons for $10, with students getting to choose which staff member they might want to wet with a water balloon. Choose a balloon per staff member, or just get 10 to throw at one, they will have the choice. The whole school will be invited to the oval to watch, and parents are most welcome to come along. Will be a lot of fun for all involved!!Lastly, and most importantly, we have our AGM on this Tuesday 6:00-6:30 in the Resource Centre on Tuesday, 19 March. All executive positions will become vacant, and nominations are available on the night.We hope we can have a great showing of support for our school through attendance and nominations on the night. See you there!
In the PCYC Room with Miss Alissa
This week in the PCYC room we have been doing some exciting re decorating within all the areas. We have brought new toys and resources which the children are really loving, and it is creating a very nice environment for the children. We also purchased some sea monkeys to have some class pets. We have also started a new project of growing our own herbs which was started when the children painted their own flowerpots and we are going to add some basil, parsley, and chives seeds to them and watch them grow. We are so excited to see how long they take to grow and even more excited to be able to add our own herbs to our cooking experiences.
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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