Barkly Highway State School - Term 1 Week 2
Principal's Welcome
Welcome to 2025
Welcome back, families, to the 2025 school year! We are thrilled to embark on another exciting year of learning and growth with your children. As we continue to build a strong community together, we look forward to the new opportunities, challenges, and successes that lie ahead. Our team is committed to creating a positive, engaging, and supportive environment for every student, and we are excited to see the progress our students will make this year. Here’s to a wonderful year of collaboration, exploration and achievement!
Equity and Excellence - Realising the potential of every student, is the long-term strategy of state schools and has guided the work of our school since its release in February 2023. During the week of student free days, teaching staff reflected upon achievement in 2024 and the school strategic priorities for 2025 (as outlined in the school strategic plan and annual implementation plan).
Our priority areas for 2025 are:
1. Investigate and implement evidence-based reading strategies to support, improve and enhance Year 3-6 English
2. Strengthen the culture of our school by fostering an environment that promotes wellbeing and learning
Our school priority areas will be revisited throughout future newsletters, as these are the core of teaching and learning in every classroom for every student.
2025 Meet and Greet – Book Drop Off
Thank you to our families who attended our meet and greet sausage sizzle on Friday 24 January morning. This event has become a tradition in our school and the feedback from parents and families, again this year, was extremely positive. The morning provides an opportunity to welcome new and existing parents and families to the school, children to chat with their new teacher and/ or classroom members, drop off all the school supplies and of course taste a delicious sausage. Thank you, Mr Grummitt and Mr Grubb, our P&C President and Vice- President who are always available to man the barbeque and Kamrynn Roberts for preparing us all for the day.
2025 ClassDojo
Dojo is a communication platform that Barkly Highway State School use to share school and classroom related information. Classroom teachers will include photos and videos to keep families informed of the learning occurring in classrooms, along with flyers advertising details of special events such as parades, school and class notices. Often the flyers related to school events are also posted on our school newsletter and/or Facebook. Use of other forms of communication such as: email, phone call, meetings, are used to have individual conversations with your teacher.
Staff have agreed for their own wellbeing and to separate home and school life, teachers will only communicate using Dojo between 7:30 and 4:30 school days. You may see uploading of posts to Dojo outside of these hours, however, staff are not interacting with families.
Have a fantastic fortnight. I look forward to sharing the important work of teaching and learning which has already commenced in our school and chatting and catching up with everyone in the weeks ahead.
Kind regards,
Fiona Kropp
K-2 Deputy News
Welcome back
Welcome to a brand-new school year. It has been so exciting walking around our Prep – Year 2 classrooms and seeing all the students back at school in their new classrooms with new teachers and friends. Everybody is settling in so beautifully and there is so much learning happening already! We are doing an amazing job of coming to school every day with our Prep – Year 2 attendance sitting at a very high 95.6% and with only 2 unexplained absences. Don’t forget to continue to keep your child’s classroom teacher and the school up to date if you know your child is going to be absent. You can do this through email, phone call, class dojo message or voicemail if calling after hours.
Kindy
Do you have a child turning 4 before the 30 June 2025. If so, they are eligible for free Kindy and will be joining us in Prep next year. Our school will work closely with the kindergartens this year to ensure our future Prep students have a successful transition to school next year. Many of our Kindergartens around town still have positions available. Please reach out to the school if you would like some more information or support with getting your child into Kindergarten. Or visit the Queensland Government Early Childhood Education and Care website for more information. https://earlychildhood.qld.gov.au/kindy
For our young children, kindy provides a lifetime of opportunities. Kindy is a place where children can explore new environments and have fun learning with friends. By participating in kindy, our young children develop a love of learning and are ready for a strong start to education. Kindy is where children explore diverse environments and cultures, with a focus on First Nations' perspectives.
Kindy is free for eligible-aged children who attend a government-approved program offering free kindy.
Families will benefit from free kindy regardless of whether they attend a sessional kindergarten or kindergarten in long day care. Kindy is 15 hours per week, 40 weeks per year and is free.
Families should speak to their local kindergarten program provider regarding the start date of their child's kindergarten program.
Kindergarten services in Queensland are funded to create inclusive and quality early learning programs for all children.
Learn more about free kindy and find your local kindy using the Free kindy finder.
Class Dojo
Don’t forget to stay active on your child’s class dojo. Our teachers put lots of effort into capturing the exciting things happening in their classrooms to share with you and they love when parents and carers interact by liking and/or commenting. It keeps them motivated to share more!
Visit by Registered Nurse for Free Prep Vision Screening
Good vision is important for a child’s educational, physical and social development. Vision screening checks for common eye conditions that may impact your child’s ability to see and therefore impact their learning and development.
A Registered Nurse will be visiting the school on Wednesday, 5 March & Thursday, 6 March 2025 to conduct vision screening for children in their prep year.
If you wish to have your prep child participate in this FREE vision screening program, please complete consent forms by Monday, 03 March.
Parents do not need to be present for screening, however if you would like to be, please contact the school to arrange this.
If you have concerns about your child’s eyes at any time, please take your child to see an eye health professional (optometrist/ophthalmologist).
For further information, please scan the below QR code to visit the Program website or contact the Primary School Nurse Health Readiness Program on 1800 687 372.
Mrs Robert's Report
Team Up
On Tuesday, our Year 5 students participated in their first PCYC Team Up lesson.
Team up aims to provide students with:
- Leadership skills around communicating and planning
- Fitness activities
- Anti-bullying strategies
- Conflict resolution strategies and scenario-based training to encourage positive decision making and cooperation
- Development of skills and attitudes to enable participants to contribute positively to their own safety and wellbeing.
The students will participate in lessons every Tuesday, for the remainder of the term.
NAPLAN
All students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in Australia do NAPLAN tests in March each year.
- NAPLAN tests students’ skills in reading, writing and maths.
- The test questions are presented in Standard Australian English dialect.
- Students read some of the questions and listen to others with headphones.
- The tests will get easier or harder, depending on how students are going in the test.
- Students in Year 3 will do the Writing test using pencil and paper. Year 3 students will answer the other test questions on the computer.
- Students in Years 5, 7 and 9 will answer all their test questions on computers.
- Teachers will help students get ready for NAPLAN tests.
- Schools will get their students’ results. The school will then give parents/carers a report showing their own child’s results.
Students do four different tests. The names of the four tests are:
- Writing
- Reading
- Conventions of Language
- Numeracy
Zoo Keepers in 1/2 Gold
1/2 Gold have had a fantastic start to the year. All students have taken on the role of zoo keepers in the class zoo which has been built collaboratively. In Maths students have used their positional language to create sign posts, and conduct surveys to collect data using pictures and tally marks. The class have also been investigating characters and the language features of imaginative texts. It has been amazing to see how all students have returned to school eager and ready to learn.
Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL)
“At Barkly Highway State School, we believe in supporting strong relationships to provide a positive, inclusive and professional approach to learning and behaviour”.
Positive Behaviour is a whole school wide approach to promote positive relationships and interactions with our students. There are seven essential features and we know that effective classroom practices that support students and teacher wellbeing, increase engagement and maximise learning time. Our whole school PBL approach is directly linked to our school values known as the Barkly Bs. Signage around the inside of school and outside on each boundary fence ensures that everybody in our school community can work together with a common understanding of our school’s expectation. Shortly all new families will receive a fridge magnet to promote the school expectations at home and remind children when preparing for the school day.
Jewellery
At Barkly Highway we want our students to wear their uniforms with pride. As stated in our Parent Handbook
‘The wearing of decorative jewellery such as necklaces, chains, bangles, bracelets, wristbands, anklets and rings are not part of the schools dress code.’
These items can be hazardous when children are moving about or playing. Acceptable items under the school`s dress code include;
- Small wristwatches
- Small plain ear studs
- Small gold or silver sleepers,
- Medical tags and school badges
- Religious or culturally significant items
Events & Flyers
MEET YOUR TEACHER
On Tuesday, week 3, we will hold our annual “Meet Your Teacher” during staff meeting time.
- P-2 session – 2:45-3:10
- 3-6 session – 3:15 – 3:45
These sessions will be held in your child's classrooms unless otherwise stated by the classroom teacher.
PARADE
There will be no Parade on Monday, 10 February.
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
