25 May 2017

Newsletter Articles

Deputy Principal’s Comments

My name is Jade Wager, and I am currently acting in Cameron Burke’s role until he returns from leave. I look forward to working with our school community over the next three weeks in this capacity.

As you would no doubt be aware, this term is a busy one, with outreaches and sporting carnivals galore. Our most recent outreaches, Hughenden and Clermont, were a tremendous success, thanks to the parents, teachers and students and their collaborative efforts and commitment to hard work and success! I am sure that the upcoming outreaches at Cape River and Ewan will be similarly successful. I would like to thank all involved for their efforts to provide these opportunities for our students to gain valuable opportunities for learning and working with their peers.

Jade Wager
Acting Deputy Principal

Year 5

Chloe’s Space article

Corbett’s school logo recreation

Charters Towers Primary Interschool Cross Country Carnival

This year’s Primary Interschool Cross Country Carnival was hosted by Columba Catholic College. Our school was proudly represented by Bethany Smith, Tom Ramsay, Sally Broad and Lochie Appleton.

The 9 - 10 Year division ran a 2km course while the 11 - 12 Year old’s ran a 3km course.

Our students all ran very well and all placed in the front bunch of runners. A fantastic effort.

Big congratulations go out Bethany and Sally for making the Charters Towers team. Bethany competed in the 12 Year girl’s division and placed 5th, while Sally also came 5th in the 10 Year girls race. Bethany and Sally will be competing in Townsville on the 23rd May at Bicentennial Park as part of the Charters Towers Cross Country Team. We wish them well in their race and if this week’s race is anything to go by, we know they will do a fantastic job.

Thank you to all our parents for making the effort to come in for the Cross Country Carnival.

Cindy Milanovic
Head of Curriculum

Bethany and Sally – 2017 Charters Towers Cross Country Reps.

Year 8 Art

This term the Year 8 Art students are creating a series of art works focusing on a variety of art techniques. Their first task was to explore the Fibre Art technique of ‘wrapping’. Students needed to select appropriate materials while considering colour, theme, texture and visual appeal. As we continue this unit students will test their art ability through weekly tasks such as Etching, Cray Pas Stain Glass, Photo Montage and three dimensional String Art.

Zac’s Fibre Art

Here are some other samples of student’s Fibre Art creations:

Miss Stacey Johnson
Year 8 Art Teacher

eKindy Inreach

We were pleased to welcome 12 families to the eKindy Activity days during the CTSDE NAPLAN inreach. These days provide valuable opportunities for children to further develop their sense of belonging to their ‘community’ and to interact with their peers and teachers.

Tent

Both the indoor and outdoor environments were intentionally set up to encourage children to connect with one another in a variety of ways, and to explore a range of equipment and materials. This included opportunities for different types of play; such as cooperative (block play, home corner, outdoor kitchen), investigative (light box, dinosaur & fairy small worlds), imaginative (dress ups, babies, box construction), sensory (sand, water, playdough), quiet (puzzles, drawing, painting, printing) and active play (obstacle course, music and movement). One of the most rewarding aspects of the Activity days was observing children explore equipment in unexpected ways to follow their interests and extend learning and understandings.

The development of children’s oral language is one of the primary focuses for the kindergarten year as it provides the foundation for success in learning in all other areas. At group times, the children listened to their teachers and peers for a variety of purposes, such as stories, instructions, discussions, explanations, games and musical experiences. ‘Learning to listen’ is an important part of becoming a competent communicator and takes both time and practise to develop. These group experiences are also important to help children develop skills of ‘self-regulation’; the ability to control their behaviour, focus and attention which are vital skills for school readiness.

Please note: The 2018 eKindy Waiting List is now open.

Megan Duigan, Kerry Denman, & Emma Flanagan
(eKindy Teachers)

Hughenden Outreach

Week Five of this term was the first Hughenden Outreach, and so some of our teachers and students headed to Hughenden to work at the Diggers Entertainment Centre for a few days. Below is a snippet of the wonderful activities that the students were involved in during the time spent with their teachers.

Early Years (P-2)

Students immersed themselves in COLOURS and RAINBOWS, during the outreach. They traced, cut out and collaged red, yellow, orange and brown autumn-coloured leaves to match the words in their Autumn poem. Blending the primary colours of red, blue and yellow paint, to make new secondary colours proved a fun way to learn about the Colour Wheel. They used all these colours to create painted rainbow pictures, and then used bodkins to sew around the picture edge with rainbow-coloured wool. Stories about rainbows and colours, and doing rainbow writing, all formed part of their learning.

Prep & Year 2 Autumn Colour Collage

Middle years (4-6)

Years 4, 5 and 6 worked together to revise and extend the concepts of time, fractions and understanding number sentences by doing “hands on” activities and games for these Mathematical concepts. During English we practiced identifying and using language features to make our writing more engaging as well as performing a readers’ theatre script on stage for the other outreach students and parents.

Secondary Students (7-12)

Student numbers for the secondary students were small at Hughenden this time, meaning that students were able to get some valuable one-on-one time with their teacher to perfect current assessments task. Students worked on range of subjects with varying engaging activities. These included; creating a radioisotope superhero as part of the Year 9 Science assessment, planning a story graph for what will be a cliff-hanging narrative for Literacy, and analysing texts in preparation for upcoming assessments in English.

It wasn’t all hard work

The final session of the day and the afternoon activity allowed all students to join together for some fun Art, Science and Sport activities. Day one allowed students to show off their artistic abilities when tie-dying calico bags whilst creating a mosaic treasure box. Following the art activities students participated in a Footy skills session with travelling coach Nelson, before taking home a new ball each. Day two allowed students to get their hands slimy while making and enjoying the mysterious properties of Ooze in many different colours. Following the slimy clean up, students showcased there roping abilities lead by instructor Clancy Middleton where every student was successful demonstrating their roping abilities.

It was a great outreach, and lots of fun was had by all!

Leean Shephard, Sharon McLauchlan and Kathy Macdonald
Hughenden Outreach

Roping afternoon with Clancy Middleton

Students showcasing their mosaic and tie-dying creations

Junior Secondary News

Earlier this term we drew the winner of our Junior Secondary raffle. Students earned tickets to be in the draw through their attendance and engagement during Term One. Tickets were awarded when students submitted send in sheets and assessment tasks on time. One day late – no ticket! They were also given tickets for attending and participating in Collaborate lessons. Our winner was Mysti, a Year 8 student. Congratulations Mysti!

This term Junior Secondary students are working towards earning a Gold, Silver or Bronze Certificate. We are likening this to being an athlete in training for the Commonwealth Games. It is hard work being an athlete, with training sessions, trying to beat his/her personal best and striving to always improve. This is very similar to a student who has to work hard to master new skills and knowledge in order to achieve and improve. Just as an athlete advances by listening to and acting on the advice of the coach, so too a student learns and improves academically by listening to and heeding teacher feedback.

This is the criteria that a student needs to meet to be awarded a Gold Certificate:

• Submitting assessment tasks and send in sheets by the due date
• Trying their hardest in assessment tasks and send in sheets
• Acting on feedback and advice given on their drafts when completing their final assessment pieces
• Being an active participant in Collaborate lessons
• Completing ‘home tutor’ lessons.

We have asked our Junior Secondary students, “Can you go the distance?” We hope every single one of our students will earn a Certificate for Term Two.

Barb Stower
Junior Secondary Head of Department

Left to right: Barb Stower, Kathy Macdonald and
Christine Ohlson drawing the winning ticket.

Pets on Parade in the Year 2 Classroom at Inreach!

In May, the Year 2 Annual Pets Galore Inreach was well attended. Those who were able to break their busy schedules to join us had a terrific time! Our classroom displayed hanging pictures of pets doing amazing feats and the student’s artwork decorated our walls.

Our Year 2 PET Inreach Classroom 2017

Follow our pictures to see our guest speaker, Vet Caralyn:

The Year 2 students spoke in detail of their own animals at home and their needs and shelters.

Our animal classroom visitors were Pixie, Dahla, Lady, Drax, Dana and the chickens! A huge thank you to their human-Mums who brought their pets to visit our classroom and shared with us their knowledge and expertise in becoming a responsible, caring and devoted pet owner.

Our reading, writing, Maths, Science and Art were all PET related and assisted to engage our students in their learning.

There were smiles all round as the students impressed their teachers with their efforts and Miss Micallef & I glowed with pride at our student’s behaviour and the quality of the work completed.

TOP JOB YEAR 2!

Lyn Simatis and Chantel Micallef
Year 2 Teachers

Vocational Education and Training (VET) Workshop

During Week 4 of Term 2, students travelled from near and far to participate in the CTSDE Vocational Education and Training (VET) Workshop. The focus of this workshop was for students to gain practical, hands-on experience in the agricultural, business and information technology industries.

The Certificate II in Agriculture students spent four days working at Red Bluff Station learning and participating in practical activities such as ear tagging, branding, cleaning troughs, loading and unloading livestock, checking water and feed, learning about nutritional requirements for cattle and using tools to complete projects such as welding gates. Students attended the weekly sale at the Dalrymple Saleyards, where students were given insight into the operations of the saleyards and were set a competition to guess weights of cattle by Queensland Rural’s Shaun Flannagan. Nathan Morgan from the Department of Agriculture’s Tropical Weeds Research Centre presented students with various methods for treating common local weeds, as well as workplace health and safety precautions for handling dangerous chemicals.

The Business and IT students underwent an intensive three-day workshop focusing on activities such as identifying and removing computer hardware, installing software, workplace health and safety, writing business documents, creating Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, dealing with customer complaints and customer service.

The VET workshop was a great opportunity for students to learn new practical skills, meet their classmates and teachers in person, and develop new friendships. In the future, we hope to introduce new courses to the workshop such as Certificate III in Agriculture and Certificate II in Visual Art.

Sarah Jenkins
Head of Department – Senior School

Year 4 NAPLAN Inreach

During the NAPLAN Inreach week students in Year 4 got to revise concepts learnt this term in fun and engaging ways. In English students were split into groups and got creative by writing a folktale that will later be turned into a book. In Maths students participated in lots of hands on games to consolidate their learning from this term.

During the week Georgie celebrated turning 9 by sharing a delicious cake with some of her classmates. The students also created Mother’s Day gifts and finished the week off with a challenge to create the tallest marshmallow and spaghetti tower.

The Year 4 teachers enjoyed getting to know all students who were able to come a little better.

Sharon McLauchlan and Tiarna O’Brien
Year 4 Teachers

Clermont Outreach

The first Clermont Outreach for the year was a blast at the Clermont Showgrounds last week. For some of our Clermont teaching team it was their very first time at an outreach, and for the 9 Prep students it was their very first Outreach. What a great experience for all!!

It was an action packed three days at the Clermont Showgrounds for our Term 2 outreach with all our classes extremely busy with their teachers during class time. After school activities were very popular with the students having the opportunity to participate in Rock and Roll Dancing and Ball Games on Tuesday afternoon and Art activities for the Clermont Show on Wednesday afternoon. The Prep/Year 1 students used watercolours and mosaic to create amazing pictures, the Year 2, 3 & 4’s made colourful dreamcatchers, while the Year 5, 6 & 7’s completed texta drawings, focusing on blending. Each morning at outreach the teachers ran physical exercises and games to have us all warmed up and ready for our day.

Thank you to our Student Council Members Dempsie, Reese, Logan and Izzy for organising ball games during Wednesday lunchtime for the students, you did a fantastic job.

A special thanks to the parents and home tutors for the lovely lunches and the scrumptious Italian dinner we enjoyed on the Tuesday evening.

Di Luxton
Outreach Teacher Coordinator

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