20 September 2018

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

What evidence shows works in classrooms:

The final four strategies that significant evidence shows as effective in teaching are outlined below:

Number 4 – Microteaching:

This strategy is actually drawn from the pre-service courses for teachers. Microteaching is a strategy where persons undergoing study to become teachers have on campus clinical experience, often videotaped, and then participate in formal reflective analysis of their performance. Evidence shows that this has a strongly positive to mild effect on teacher knowledge of teaching strategies, managing effect on students and instructional behaviour. The term ‘micro-teaching’ comes from student – teachers conducting mini lessons to a small group of students and then engaging in post-discussions about these lessons.

How does that help tutors? Well, if you know some of the things to look for when employing ‘trained’ governesses, perhaps that may help.

Number 3 – Formative Evaluation:

This formative evaluation us not about how well the student is doing, but rather the power of feedback to the tutor/teacher on how well they are doing! When formative evaluation is used, there is an increased achievement for students – this is effective across student age, duration and special needs status.

Why is this effective for improving tutor/teacher effectiveness? Perhaps the willingness to seek negative evidence (i.e seeking evidence on where students are not doing well) to improve their own effects is why this approach has such a great effect on the quality of teaching that then occurs. This openness to both finding out what is not working, asking students how it could be made better for them and the willingness to try something new/different all contribute to improve student learning.

Number 2 – Piagetian Programs

Piaget was a developmental psychologist who identified or proposed the development stages a young person travels through from birth to adulthood. Evidence clearly shows that teaching and the content/skills are geared to the developmental state of the individual student. Then enhanced and sustained learning becomes common.

This was especially strong in the subject area of Mathematics and somewhat less important in Reading. The understanding of, and targeting the lesson’s content and learning strategies, to the way a student thinks and how that thinking may be constrained by the ages of development (not necessarily their chronological age) appear to be a significant factor in gaining success in learning.

Number 1 – Self reported Grades:

The number one strategy which evidence shows has great effectiveness is where students prior to achievement, estimate their own performance, typically formed from past experiences in learning. Students have a reasonably accurate understanding of their levels of achievement. In simple terms, expectations often object the outcomes rather than the students’ ability, understanding, knowledge or skill.

In this approach, the tutor/teacher needs the use of strategies to build the students expectations of themselves, allowing and building a sense of achievement and success in learning.

Mr John Clark
Principal

Deputy Principal’s Report

The end of the term has arrived. It seems like only yesterday that we started the new semester and now we only have one term until another year ends. Term 4, as always, is a busy time leading towards Mini School, Student Reports, Transition Day and finally Celebration Day.

Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 NAPLAN individual student results arrived late last week for all students that participated in one of the three NAPLAN options for Distance Education Students. These reports will be mailed out to the families this week.

As a school, our 2018 NAPLAN results showed a pleasing number of students represented in the Upper 2 Bands of achievement in the areas of Reading, Writing, Numeracy, Spelling and Grammar and Punctuation. It should be noted though, that data collected from the NAPLAN tests does have to be taken in context. While it provides some insight into areas that we are doing well, and where there is opportunity for improvement, based on total participation rates, it does not represent a total “picture” of each cohort group.

A number of our Year 6 students have just returned from a jam-packed week in Brisbane seeing the best of what the city has to offer, I am sure all who attended enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to connect with other students from different schools. Thank you to Kate Ruthenberg, who represented our school as a supervising teacher on the trip.

Mr Burke
Deputy Principal

Lesley Griffin – Parent Liaison Officer

Centrepay – How To Pay Off Your School Fees

WHAT CAN BE PAID FOR USING CENTREPAY?

Education fees and expenses.

• Deductions are made directly from your Centrelink payment to the schools bank account. This can assist the timely payment of bills.
• An alternative payment option that helps you pay your bills on time.
• Automatic deduction of nominated fees before you receive your payment.
• Centrepay is a voluntary service.
• You can cancel your deductions at any time.
• You must provide consent to authorise a Centrepay deduction.

HOW CAN CENTREPAY DEDUCTIONS BE REQUESTED?

• Online - customers can use the department’s online services at

• By phone - customers can call their usual 13 number

Contact the school’s Finance Officer, Suzanne Wright for the school’s reference number which is required for you to set up Centrepay.

Holiday Reading

Our school may be closing soon for holidays, but the eBooks Digital Library is always open! Students may like to browse our Holiday Reading collection for some great reads, including audiobooks for road trips.

For most titles, no additional software is required – just tap or click on a title to borrow it and read or listen in your browser.

Please remember: students have to login with their MIS ID (e.g. kat21).

Australia’s Drought Relief

Mini School Book Fair

Our theme for Mini school Book Fair is

So any craft items to help me decorate would be fantastic. Think aliens, rockets, spaceships.

Mrs Currin
Librarian

Language Team

Welcome!

Ni hao! (Hello!) My name is Jenny Chen.

Firstly, thank you for the very warm and generous welcome from so many of you, to myself, my husband Yang, son Alex (and Japanese Spitz – Simba), on our move to Charters Towers. I am so delighted to be a Chinese language teacher here at Charters Towers School of Distance Education.

A little about me. I was born and raised in the mainland of China – Shenyang (in the northern province of Liaoning). The Shenyang Imperial Palace is the only existing royal palace in China outside the Forbidden City in Beijing. I love music, travel, good food and my family.

I am passionate about teaching and love meeting new people to learn about their language and culture. Therefore, after I graduated from the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, in 2007, I moved to the Gold Coast, completed a Master of Teaching at Griffith University, and later did my Diploma in Early Childhood Education to enrich my teaching knowledge and experience. I have taught at primary schools on the Gold Coast for over three years prior to coming to Charters Towers. I thoroughly enjoy working with my team members and teaching language in a distance education setting and I hope to develop more programs for the students to engage in language learning.

The Shenyang Imperial Palace in winter

Mrs Chen
Language Teacher

North Queensland Achievement

We had four students attend the North Queensland Track and Field event - Charley, Charlotte, Chloe and Georgie. All the students represented the school really well and should be proud of themselves for making it to this stage. Georgie placed second in High Jump on the day and has now qualified to represent the region at the State Championships in Cairns on the 19th and 20th of October. This is only one step away from representing Queensland in the National Championships. We wish her the best of luck!

Miss O’Brien
Sport Committee

QCS – Queensland Core Skills Test

On the 4th and 5th of September some of our students sat the Queensland Core Skills Test (QCS). The QCS is a common test given statewide to Year 12 students who are eligible for an Overall Position (OP). Students not following the OP pathway may choose to sit the QCS. The QCS is made up of four papers: a Writing Task (600 words), a Short Response paper and two Multiple Choice papers. The results achieved for each of the four papers are combined into one grade, ranging from A (the highest grade) to E (the lowest). This test contributes to the calculation of OPs and Field Positions (FPs) which are used to select students for tertiary entrance.

Students who sit the test are asked to respond to a variety of stimulus materials, such as prose passages, poetry, graphs, tables, maps, mathematical and scientific data, cartoons and artistic works. The QCS does not test particular knowledge of specific Year 12 subjects, instead, it targets the Common Curriculum Elements (CCEs) which are generic skills identified in the senior curriculum. These are skills such as: interpreting the meaning of words, interpreting the meaning of tables or diagrams, comparing and contrasting, analysing and classifying. All of these skills have been developed by the student over the 12 years of schooling and are invaluable in the greater world. For more information regarding CCEs, visit:

QCS results are released to the student via their Learning Account on the 14 November.

Over Term 2 and the beginning of this term, Miss Switzer, Miss Bottrill and myself were running QCS sessions to prepare our students for the two day testing. These lessons were valuable to our students to ensure they were as forearmed and primed as possible. We wish our QCS students the best and we await your results just as eagerly as you!

Do you think you have what it takes to sit the QCS? Below are examples of the questions you would face. If you are interested in looking at past papers, please refer to:

Miss Mroz
Senior Teacher

Cape River

Cape River Outreach News

As we drove in to Wambiana on the first day, with the dust flying from the back of our van, we headed down the corrugated road towards our schoolrooms for the next three days. To my delight, a first timer for Cape River Outreach, I found an extraordinary homestead, surrounded by sweeping trees, a cute red cottage and a hospitable dining area.

At Cape River Outreach, the Preps and Mrs Price did a lot of fun things. The main highlights were learning about and investigating the different types of forces; like gravity, magnetic force and friction to name a few! We used our knowledge of force to then create our very own cars that could send messages to our friends. This took a great deal of craftsmanship and there was very fine attention to the details. The cars moved by using the forces pushing and pulling.

On Friday, we made iced biscuits of the main characters from the stories we had read. We made Kevin the Koala from ‘The Koala Who Could’ and Eric the Echidna from ‘Eric the Postie’. The best part was getting to eat our delicious creations! Of course we also did all of important things like practising our handwriting, phonics, sight words, counting and days of the week each day. Mrs Price was blown away by the have-a-go writing sentences the students created using their sound and sight word knowledge. Everyone agreed that we had the most wonderful time in Prep!

Year 1 and 2 preformed a ‘Chicken Pox’ dance that had us all in stitches. It was a very entertaining performance and had a clever ending. They also focused on the theme ‘people who help us’ and were joined by the preps on day one.

Year 3 and 4 practised, practised and practised to create an entertaining and engaging rendition of The Gruffalo. The students worked hard to learn their lines off by heart. They were brilliant, like a shining star up on stage entertaining the audience. The students designed and painted the background with the help from the artistic Year 5s.

Year 3, 4 and 5 students combined their classes to make a delicious Rocky Road. The planning was completed independently from the teachers (although we did supervise) and was such a successful learning process for both groups. Not to mention, the Rocky Road was amazing, with mini marshmallows and mm’s.

We saw the Year 5s complete an orientation course, learning how to use a compass and map out their course. They also developed poetry, reading The Highwayman for inspiration. Tom, Stella, Keely, Caitlyn and Georgie wrote an expressive poem about their experience at Cape River Outreach - Wambiana:

The Year 6 cohort had a Mexican theme Graduation lunch, kindly put on by Michelle Lyons and Emma Robinson. The food looked scrumptious and it was nice to hear laughter between their peers celebrating their last year of Primary School. Later followed speeches delivered by some emotional but grateful Year 6 students who left us with their stories on how Charters Towers School of Distance Education has made a positive difference to them.

We spent one afternoon down at the dried up river bed creating compositions of charcoal and pastel sketches. It was incredible to see the talent and the quietness that followed with everyone relaxing after a hard day of learning. Their inspiration for sketching was magnificent surroundings of tall paperbark trees. The prep to twos made bush collages by using an arranged composition from coloured paper and scouring around the surroundings looking for inspirational pieces from the bushland. The finished artwork from all year levels looked amazing.

A challenging obstacle course designed by Michael Lyons was the hit of the Outreach. It was cleverly arranged for all ages to race against each other. This included the primary, junior, secondary, parents and teachers, who were all placed into groups. The race started with Hugh using his whip as the starting bell! First up was a sack race, followed by eating a soggy jam sandwich, then carrying dried dung from one barrel to another (teachers were mortified), at this point it was very intense. After the dung section of the race, came filling a small billy of water from the lake to fill up the bigger billy. To finish the race, the final group member had to roll a barrel (yes, a huge barrel) to the finish line. There was a lot of excitement in the air. Unfortunately, the teachers were pipped at the post by Montana from secondary.

What a blast! Signing off from the Cape River Teachers.

Zackery, Harris and Ted with their cars

Ms Heath
Year 5 Teacher

Ewan Outreach

Students, teachers, parents and home tutors alike were all rounded up for the Ewan Outreach where an enjoyable time is always had – and this year was no different!

Working hard in the schoolroom, students learned all important Maths and English concepts, as well as hands-on Science activities such as periscopes, erupting volcanoes, magnetic forces and other chemical changes. Students learned about people who can help us and used their artistic ability to create wonderful artworks. While learning, coding and mapping was also a lot of fun with the help of our bee-bots (small coding robots).

Nevertheless, one of the biggest highlights is always the Ewan Concert. This year was no different with such wonderful acts to entertain us and making this the biggest concert we have had to date. We even needed an intermission! There were dance-offs, plays, jokes, poems, songs, guitar playing and ribbon twirling just to name a few! The teachers performed a poem and the mothers and governesses danced up a storm! There were great performances from all at the concert (except the fathers – who have been challenged for next year!).

The teachers hope everyone enjoyed themselves as much as we all did and travelled safely home. Thank you for a wonderful time and the great cooking!

Mrs Purdie, Mrs Gilligan, Ms Micallef and Mrs Larson
Ewan Outreach Teachers

Year 2

Year 2 had a fabulous term of fun-filled, educational Outreaches!

Year 2 focussed on the revision and consolidation of the concepts we covered in our units this term but gave them a fun twist under the theme of PEOPLE WHO HELP US!

We investigated the emergency services such as the firies, police, doctors and lifesavers; to the community helpers like shop keepers, postie, road workers and teachers; then to our ever-important families, parents, siblings and wider family members… ALL PEOPLE WHO HELP US.

The students learned about the jobs themselves, how those positions helped them, enjoyed role-play and many varied activities that enabled them to glimpse what it would be like for the people who hold those positions. They could also relate to the impact they have on the lives of the people they help. The student’s general knowledge and understanding of the importance of people and communities working together was impressive.

There were English activities requiring the students to practise their sentence writing, spelling, reading, sequencing, comprehension, brainstorming and handwriting.

Maths activities included number, operations, fast facts, place value, number lines, skip counting and working with MONEY!

Exciting art, drama, songs and poems contributed to a fabulous time had by all.

It was terrific to work with the children who attended Outreaches also knowing that Home Tutors were actively working on consolidation of unit concepts as well and the completion of the Visual arts unit. This new Year 2 unit offers a unique opportunity for our students to explore ideas about recycling of found objects and materials, with consideration as to their impact on our environment; respond to interesting bird artwork and then reinvent objects to make a sculpture of their own. Can’t wait to see the results!

Year 6

Term 3 has been a very busy term for the Year 6 cohort. As well as studying the key learning areas of English, Maths and Science, the students have also participated in the studies of Geography and Visual Arts. As part of the Visual Arts subject, the students were required to design a shelter for the school grounds. There were many unique designs produced.

Term 3 has consisted of a number of students participating in outreaches in Clermont, Hughenden, Ewan and Cape River, as well as Townsville visits. For the Year 6 students who attended these outreaches, it has been their last participation as a Primary School student.

At the Clermont Outreach in Term 3, as well as working on their English and Maths, the Year 6 students participated in a range of other activities. These ranged from making salt dough volcanoes, to producing contemporary art pieces, to constructing an earthquake proof tower out of straws. The students also spent time assisting the younger students at the outreach with the operation of Bee-bots.

In Week 9 of Term 3, a number of students from Year 6 participated in the Combined State Schools Year 6 Trip to Brisbane accompanied by Miss Ruthenberg. It sounds like the students had a wonderful trip where they not only explored Brisbane and South Queensland, but also met other Year 6 students from the Charters Towers region.

Term 4 looks to be another busy term for the Year 6 cohort with a range of activities scheduled.

Mr Purdie
Year 6 Teacher

Shadowland

Student wellbeing and academic achievement are inseparable

Too often, mental health and academic outcomes are siloed off as separate issues, or even treated as conflicting priorities. So how can school leaders and educators promote a holistic approach to learning and wellbeing?

Schools have come a long way towards being nurturing environments for learning since days gone past. No longer is it common to speak, as George Orwell once did, of the merciless rules, “irrational terrors and lunatic misunderstandings” of one’s school years.

In spite of educators’ persistent efforts though, many Australian students still struggle with mental health, bullying, and isolation, and educators often feel a tension between their duties to manage classrooms, to help students perform academically, and to look after their wellbeing.

Associate Professor Andrea Reupert is Director of Professional Psychology programs in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. She is presently writing a book – Supporting mental health and academic learning in schools – and her research suggests these issues must be addressed in tandem.

“Children spend an inordinate amount of time at school, making schools more influential on children’s development than any other social institution, besides their family,” she says.

“It’s relatively normal for young people to experience some form of mental distress. One US study found that by 21 years of age, 82.5% of 1,420 participants had met criteria for a psychiatric disorder.”

“However, we also know that only around a third of these young people receive any form of formal support. Students with mental health problems are present in every school, regardless of their socio-economic background.”

While schools and teachers cannot do everything for their students, Associate Professor Reupert emphasises that schools’ universality puts them in a unique position to address students’ mental health needs without stigmatising them.

“Schools are an ideal place to identify children who may present with mental health difficulties but also to support children more broadly,” she says.

“Schools can either promote wellbeing or, in some cases, neglect students’ health or even actively harm it through excessive learning demands, repeated academic failure or by exposing children to bullying or isolation.”

In her view, part of what makes it difficult for schools to promote wellbeing is the idea that mental health and academic achievement are conflicting priorities.

“Schools often feel that they have to decide between supporting young people’s mental health or academic learning but the two domains are inseparable,” she says.

“We know that children with greater wellbeing and lower levels of mental health problems achieve higher achievement scores, better attendance, and drop out of school less often.”

She says that “a program for problem approach” to such issues – such as separate programs for bullying, for healthy eating, for respectful relationships, for literacy and so on are not the answer, and often place unnecessary pressure on educators.

“This can be overwhelming and time consuming, and is, in the end, not very efficient. We need a unified, holistic approach for supporting children’s needs”

With this in mind, she suggests measures that can be taken by schools committed to a holistic approach:

• A comprehensive, quality curriculum that is engaging, relevant and where children are challenged but also experience success;
• Accommodations made as required to make instruction accessible to all students;
• Strong and evidence-based instructional strategies;
• Teachers caring for students and knowing something about them, but also establishing clear boundaries and guidelines for behaviour;
• Non-stigmatising strategies for identifying and supporting students who are experiencing academic, behavioural and/or social and emotional difficulties;
• Dedicated lessons on mental health issues so children learn about the signs of mental health, and what to do if they or others experience these; and
• Opportunities for children to learn various social and emotional skills – including but not limited to problem solving, conflict resolution, perseverance, how to manage stress, how to make friends, asking for help and so on. These skills help students get on with others but are also applicable for academic learning. All teachers can do this, regardless of what year level or subject area they teach.

She says it is important to provide staff with:

• Systematic staff development opportunities (including induction) to understand and effectively implement a wide range of strategies (pedagogy and curriculum and relationship building strategies);
• A collegial environment which promotes their own wellbeing; and
• Active, engaged, supportive leadership.

School systems and environment should aspire to the following:

• A physically safe environment that promotes respect for cultural diversity and inclusion;
• An environment that encourages and supports positive relationships between a range of stakeholders;
• Positive, supportive and prevention-based school systems and strategies for managing student (mis)behaviour, that aim to promote motivation and engagement rather than punish or isolate students;
• Connections are made with families and the wider community including specialist services; and
• A data-driven approach to assess student, class and school needs, identify appropriate interventions or programs at the different levels and monitor progress.

“No single institution or discipline has all the tools to understand or intervene in the course of a child’s development,” says Associate Professor Reupert. “But schools do play a major role in supporting young children’s mental health and academic learning.”

You can find further resources on dovetailing student wellbeing and academic learning here:

Andrea Reupert & Stuart Woodcock. ‘Creating engaging and motivating learning environments.’ Ed. Jeanne Allen and Simone White. Learning to teach in a new era, Cambridge University Press 2018.

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