14 March 2019
NEWSLETTER ARTICLES
Principal’s Report
One of the attributes we pride ourselves on is our focus around making the student the centre of the learning, and wherever possible, we accommodate individual needs into our learning plans for students. Recently I attended the bi-annual Principal’s Conference where both the Director General of Education and the Deputy Director General - State School, spoke about the need for ‘systemness’ and how this relates to each and every person, regardless of their roles in the school.
Systemness looks like collaboration
Systemness means alignment
Systemness delivers precision
From a school context, what this means for us is that we are collaborating with one another and our wider school community to deliver a quality education that meets the needs of our students. It means that we have spent time ensuring the curriculum we deliver in our primary and junior secondary school is aligned to the most recent version of the Australian Curriculum and that our senior school subjects are aligned to the new Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority subject syllabuses. We also work closely with our external providers to ensure both alignment of our Vocational Education and Training courses and our VET compliance. To maintain our continuous improvement strategy we are also using a sharp and narrow focus approach to deliver precision in specific areas for improvement, and looking for ways to ensure sustainability of this. Our commitment to curriculum alignment is ongoing and will be a key priority for the school for the next two years.
Utilising the Department’s Investing for Success allocation for 2019, we will be engaging two Heads of Curriculum to work within the primary school with a focus around curriculum alignment and how this can be differentiated for a wide range of student needs. These positions have been advertised with the intention for them to commence by Term 2. This commitment is a clear demonstration of our school’s focus on learning in the early years and the foundation this provides for students to be successful with their education pathway.
With our school operating very differently to a mainstream school, we acknowledge and value the work of our home tutors and wider school community. Our work is very much a partnership and we are always looking for ways to improve what we do, and how we do it. In the last newsletter I spoke about gathering feedback from our wider school community. We have now collected and collated the feedback provided at the Home Tutor School and will be making changes to a number of organisational procedures based on this feedback. As lifelong learning learners it is important to recognise the value of Collective Wisdom.
Mrs Mladenovic
Principal (Acting)
Deputy Principal’s Report
At the mid-point of the term, it is an opportunity to look at how our year is progressing. With a wet start to the year, there have been a range of challenges to our school community that will have effects long outlasting the term or even the school year.
With so many of our families affected by natural disaster, it is great to see that despite the challenging circumstances, our community remains in good spirits.
Even with the rocky start, our year continues to progress as we continue to review and refine our practices to ensure that we are doing the best by students that we can with the resources available to us.
As the term is in full swing, we start to look at what still lies ahead. With Home Tutor School behind us, we are now at that point where first assessments are generally due and Outreaches are not too far away.
This is an important time when the routines and patterns that are established and the first opportunity to ‘test the waters’ are realised. These early stages of the year are so important in establishing work patterns that set the scene for student success.
What success looks like varies for every student in our school. For some, it may be as simple as attending lessons. For others, it may be re-engaging in school for the first time in quite some time. For others it will be linked to academic achievement.
Regardless of what success looks like for each individual, our community should be proud of the achievements of our students.
As a school, we look forward to sharing a small part of your journey and look forward to working in partnership to help you achieve success.
Mr Smith
Deputy Principal
Lesley Griffin
Athletics Carnival Reminder
The 2019 Athletics Carnival is fast approaching. The Athletics Carnival will be held on the 4th and 5th of April here at school (Week 10, Term 1). Available below is the 2019 Nomination form and the Parent information sheet.
If you will be attending the carnival, please return completed nomination forms to Miss Hardy (dxhar10@eq.edu.au) no later than Friday 22nd of March.
In addition to this, the 2019 war cries are also available below. It is a great idea for students to ensure they are familiar with the war cries for their house as these are chanted to open the carnival after the march past and then used throughout the day by the students. These chants help to create a great sense of house spirit during all SDE carnivals. If you are unsure of which house you are in, all you need to do is contact your class teacher.
If you have any questions regarding the Athletics Carnival, please contact Miss O’Brien, Miss Macdonald or Miss Hardy. Their contact details are on the parent information sheet.
Lesley Griffin
Parent Liaison Officer
Year 2
What a great time we had getting to know our year 2 students at Home Tutor School. All students were remarkably well behaved. They got on well together and set an excellent example for the younger students. Year 2 students were excited about the jungle theme that encapsulated all of the week’s activities. The most fun was had at the swimming afternoon and during “The Beach” themed dress up parade. Students went home exhausted, but with great memories of a fun filled week of learning and catching up with their friends and teachers.
Ms Simatis and Ms Keogh
Year 2 Teachers
Year 7
The Year 7s of 2019
The year sevens have done something pretty awesome and massive this term; they started high school! The year sevens have experienced all the nerves, excitement and a little anxiety that comes along with starting secondary school, but they have each made the leap into our digital classrooms, and their teachers are excited to have them.
Our year seven class comes from just two states: Queensland and South Australia. We are 33 Queenslanders and just the one South Australian, but our class is constantly growing. We have 10 teachers supporting us in our new school year and we share the one goal: to have a great first year of high school and to try our best.
Welcome to secondary, year seven!
Miss Watherston
Year 7 Teacher
Year 8
Year 8s recreate, as collages, a range of favourite, significant, and simply very, very pretty places.
This term, as part of a unit titled (a bit aggressively!) “Where Have You Been?” Year 8 Art have been selecting a personally meaningful place and exploring ways to represent it through 2-dimensional (or flattish) mixed-media collage. They’ve taken exceptional photographs, exploring daring angles and unusual perspectives while remaining sensible and safe. They’ve also been considering ways to manipulate and arrange these images to express ideas and themes: to communicate with artistic techniques. As the collage needs to be “mixed,” they’ve also been practising some sketching and scribbling skills (and generously pointing out where their teachers need to brush up a little). To close their first project of this term, students have also completed artistic reflections – answering a range of questions to draw out their understanding of and feelings about their artwork and the unit. A large number of students reported that they greatly enjoyed taking photographs – either as something that they regularly do, as a hobby, or as something they might do more frequently from now on.
Mr Newman and Mr Jackson
Year 8 Teachers
School Psychologist
Next week we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Harmony Day, which this year has been expanded to a celebration of Harmony Week and coincides to include the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In our communities across Australia we are lucky to have such a rich diversity of cultures, with more the 7.5 million people migrating to Australia since 1945. Within our own school community we experience this rich diversity every day, with staff members tracing their cultural history from around the globe.
But why is it important that we celebrate Harmony Week?
Harmony Week encourages us to celebrate the multiculturalism that makes up the fabric of our communities. It encourages us to learn about others and their cultures, and it teaches us to be inclusive and respectful. By opening ourselves up to diversity, we also open up our world view and begin to appreciate the special differences in all of us, but also the unique qualities that we all have in common.
At Charters Towers School of Distance Education, we will be celebrating Harmony Week in a number of ways, with teachers and staff encouraged to discuss the importance of diversity with each other, and teachers being encouraged to discuss the importance of Harmony Day with their students.
At home, I ask you all to celebrate a little bit of Harmony Week, whether it’s discussing your own family heritage or learning about someone else’s, or even trying something new like making a cultural dish or learning a new phrase. Any opportunity you take to discuss diversity and the importance of inclusion is worth having.
Harmony Week is a timely reminder to celebrate and embrace diversity and all the good things that come with.
As always, please feel free to share any Harmony Week activities with me, and if you’d like to know a bit more about Harmony Week pop on to the website.
https://www.harmony.gov.au/
If you’d like to have a chat about how to celebrate Harmony Week or how to teach children to be more inclusive and respectful of others, please do not hesitate to contact me (pcrot9@eq.edu.au).
Ms Crothers
School Psychologist (provisional)
Home Tutor School – Lost Property
These are the items left at the school after Home Tutor School Week.
If they are yours, please let the school know.
