8 June 2017

Newsletter Articles

Deputy Principal’s Comments

Tips for Learning – Focus

Students will learn best when focus on one task at a time is maintained. When people experience interruptions or try to do multiple things at once, focus can be lost. This means that less information is retained and understood. During school hours it is best that students concentrate only on their school work. The following tips can help:

• If possible set aside a separate space for schooling in a quieter part of the house.
• Students should practice ‘tuning out’ general noise (such as people walking around) and disruptions.
• Avoid toggling. This is also known as multi-tasking or task-switching. They should be doing one thing at a time and staying focused on that. For example, other apps, social media, games, email, etc should be switched off.

Andrew Smith
Deputy Principal

Acting Deputy Principal's Message

In addition to another successful round of outreaches last week at Cape River and Ewan, students have also represented the school at the Young Language Ambassadors’ Conference in Townsville. Three students, Morgan (Year 5), Bethany (Year 6) and Claire (Year 8) attended the conference, and delivered a presentation about the benefits of learning a Language via distance education. In addition to furthering their experience and understanding of Language learning, these students also developed their competence in a number of the General Capabilities and Cross-Curricular Priorities of the Australian Curriculum, including Personal and Social Capability, Intercultural Understanding, and Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia. They also developed their leadership skills through presenting, networking and advocacy for Languages. My thanks to Ms Yukari Doi, and Mr Yeongmin Gwon for accompanying our students, and giving up their time to prepare them so well for the day.

It is this commitment by teachers to their students, of which the above is only one example among many, that makes our school special. This commitment to giving our best, and being our best for our students has also been highlighted by the commitment of our teachers to the collegial coaching process undertaken this term. In this process, teachers observe each other’s lessons, and have discussions centred on improving practice before and after the observation, reflecting on what was observed in the lesson. It has been wonderful for the leadership team to see teachers working collaboratively, and hearing rich, deep, evidence based conversations about pedagogy and practice that contribute to improving teaching and learning in the school.

Jade Wager
Acting Deputy Principal

Parent Liaison Officer’s Comments

Hello Everyone,

VISE CLOSURE

A special meeting of the VISE Executive resolved on Sunday May 28th that VISE will close on December 20th 2017. Over three years it has been unable to find suitably qualified volunteers to take over key positions especially that of CEO.

Full details of the meeting will be placed on the VISE web page and you will be informed when this is available.

Lesley Griffin
Parent Liaison Offer

P & C

Clermont Show Display

Thank you to the parents who helped with the setup of the school display at the Clermont Show. Our student’s school work and art display look wonderful.

P & C Raffle

Tickets in the P & C Raffle are on sale now. Prize is a $300 Visa Card and will be drawn once all tickets are sold.

Cape River Outreach

Cape River Outreach was held at the school with around 44 students attending. Students had an amazing time learning how to dance, play the ukulele and even got the chance to travel on the bus to The World Theatre and see ‘The Clown from Snowy River’ show.

Students learnt the dance, ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’. Some talented linguists even showed the group how to perform the dance using their Chinese and Japanese language skills.

Donated ukuleles in a rainbow of colours were presented to each student during our music afternoon. Luke, Miss D and Steve entertained with renditions of “I’m a believer” and showed the students some of the basics before leading them in their first song – “You are my sunshine.”

Prep

Prep students immersed themselves in COLOURS and RAINBOWS, during Cape River Outreach. They traced, cut out and collaged red, yellow, orange and brown autumn-coloured leaves to match the words in their Autumn poem – on the last day of Autumn for this year – Wednesday 31st May.

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 (and more) to create painted rainbows, and then finished them off with streamers in matching rainbow colours. Stories about rainbows and colours all formed part of their learning. We even iced pink biscuits and put coloured sprinkles on top! Lots and lots of ‘Colour Fun’ was had by all!

Year 1 Fun at Cape River Outreach

We had an amazing time at our Out Reach last week. We completed a mini unit centred around the story “The Three Little Pigs”.

One of our favourite activities was when we got to make some pretty pink pig biscuits. Yummy!

Our pretty pink pig biscuits

In Art Lessons we completed a directed drawing activity to create a pig using water colours. We certainly have some budding artists amongst us. We also made houses out of collage to show the three different materials each of the pigs used in the story.

In English, we wrote a retell about the story, “The Three Little Pigs” and a letter to the wolf persuading him to leave the pigs alone. Check out some of our awesome writing below.

In Design and Technology, we were challenged to build a house using only toothpicks and lollies as joiners. This proved very challenging. But we worked together as a team and the end results were amazing. We discovered that we made a cube and a pyramid when constructing our houses. Afterwards we wrote about what we would build our own houses out of and what we would include in them.

Students building a house using toothpicks and lollies - Great persistence!

In Maths we revised 3D shapes and loved using kinetic sand, playdough and connectors to make lots of 3D shapes. We discussed the different features of each shape and then sorted them according to their properties. We also practised telling the time, our number writing, addition and counting in 2’s and 10’s.

Year 1 students enjoying a 3D card game

On Thursday, we were lucky enough to go to the World Theatre to watch a very entertaining show called ‘The Clowns from Snowy River’. This tied in nicely with our Poetry Unit for this term. They were certainly very entertaining. We heard lots of rhyming, alliteration and repetition of verses throughout the performance. We certainly enjoyed our bus ride to the World Theatre.

Thank you for a wonderful week Year 1!

Miss Weston
Year 1 Teacher

Year 3

Students in Years 3 & 4 enjoyed performing the ‘Popcorn Dance’ with Miss Nelson & Mrs McLauchlan.

Some Year 5 students tried their hand at writing a haiku poem as part of their Languages activity at outreach. Haiku are Japanese style poems with 17 syllables altogether in three lines, with a pattern of 5, 7 and then 5 syllables. Here are 2 Haiku poems on the theme ‘Horses’:

Kym Nelson and Sharon McLauchlan
Year 3 and 4 Teachers

Year 5 and 6

The Year 5s also spent some time revising what they learnt about Space in their Science unit. They got the chance to build a solar-powered space rover and design their own planet.

Year 6: Tayla, Lana, Mitchell, Ryan and Stirling displaying their awesome artwork.

The Student Council members at Cape River Outreach got together and planned some fun exercise activities for lunch time play. Students got the chance to practice ball games and take part in obstacle course races.

A huge thank you to all of our organisers, teachers, parents, tutors, bus driver, helpers and volunteers, etc. who contributed their time and efforts towards making this outreach a great success.

Kate Ruthenberg and Sharon McLauchlan
Cape River Coordinators

Ewan Outreach

The first round of the Ewan Outreach was once more a big success and enjoyed by students, teachers and parents alike. Everyone was kept busy at the Ewan Racecourse with heaps of fun activities.

Maths, English, Art and Science lessons kept students’ minds busy during the school hours. While after school, students and parents participated in quiz and scattegories nights, and students enjoyed gymnastics and NRL in the afternoons.

The final assembly had parents and teachers entertained with wonderful singing and performances. The Prep and Year 1 students kept everyone entertained with their puppet retell of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. While the older students kept things upbeat with ‘The Popcorn Dance’ line dance.

Year 5 & 6 students found it easy to write to teachers to convince them to attend the Ewan Outreach and Mrs Price, Miss O’Brien and Mrs Purdie all enjoyed the outreach, meeting with students and parents and enjoying the activities and good food. We hope everyone enjoyed the outreach as much as we did but as you can see by the students’ faces I think everyone had lots of fun.

Mrs Colleen Purdie
Ewan Coordinator

Popcorn dance

FLIQ (Flexible Learning Initiatives Queensland)

SNAPSHOT of ACE (Emerald)

FLIQ is an educational program designed primarily for Year 7 – 12 students who are disengaged from mainstream schooling and seek an educational pathway that will lead to further education or employment. Of the 25 centres currently participating in the FLIQ program, Anglicare Central Queensland – Emerald (ACE) have a small, close-knit student body of six who are supported by 3 hardworking youth workers. This centre has been providing support, care and hope to the youth of Emerald for in excess of 14 years!

Anglicare CQ work with young people to make the best of their lives by helping them grow into the strong, confident citizens of tomorrow. Their centres stretch from the Capricorn Coast inland to Winton.

Anglicare Emerald provides youth services to 12 to 18 year olds who are: disconnecting from family, the community or support networks; disengaged from school, training or employment; or are at risk of harm and homelessness. The centre helps their youth to: have positive relationships with their families and communities; engage in education, training or employment; lead a healthy, violence free life; and to have a safe and stable place to live.

These six students are working with FLIQ to further their literacy and numeracy skills to better their employment prospects or enter into certificate programs. Some students’ confidence has grown so much during their time with Anglicare Emerald that they have successfully been re-engaged back into mainstream schooling. Outside of their classwork, the youth at Anglicare Emerald partake in programs such as Life & Living Skills and Get Connected; a program where students learn to build and keep their own computers to help with their school studies.

One of the greatest achievements that Anglicare Emerald have witnessed is watching their youth come out of their shell, build relationships with one another and grown in their self-confidence; all achievements that will help these Emerald youths grow brighter futures for themselves.

Youth space and community garden

Year 1 Capers

Wow! What a busy term we have had!

NAPLAN Inreach in Week 4

We had a fantastic time during NAPLAN Inreach. We got to bake delicious Gingerbread Men, but can you believe one of them ran away! The cheeky little monster. Every day he would leave us clues and we would have to track him around the school. He was too fast for us as we always just missed him. Eventually we caught him, hiding back in our classroom. He was having a nap in the book shelf. He told us he was worn out from all his fun adventures.

In Technology, we decided to build houses that we thought the Gingerbread Man might like to live in. Some students thought we could include some type of trap feature in the house to stop him escaping again. First, we drew a plan of our house, labelled different parts of the house and then used boxes and collage materials to create some bright and creative places to live. The Gingerbread Man was very impressed.

In Maths, we practised counting, addition & subtraction problems and partitioning. We used lots of hands on materials to help us including; playdough, number cards, puzzles and paddle-pop sticks. We are becoming very confident with our numbers.

In Literacy, we continued to focus on adjectives and wrote some amazing descriptions about the Gingerbread Man. Check out some of our writing below.

Thanks for a fun filled week.

Miss Weston & Mrs Price
Year 1 Teachers

Year 6

Wow! This Term is flying by. We have already had a busy Term with the NAPLAN Inreach and the Clermont, Hughenden, Ewan and Cape River Outreaches. Mr Purdie, Mrs Langham and the Year 6 students had a great time revising their English, Maths, Science and Art skills.

The Year 6 shirts have arrived for those students who ordered one. Students at Cape River and Ewan Outreaches were handed their shirts by the teachers while everyone else can expect their shirts to be delivered in the mail. In the photo students from the Cape River Outreach, Mr Purdie and Mrs Langham are wearing their new Year 6 shirts.

Year 6 shirts

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