15 May 2020

Newsletter Articles

PRINCIPAL’S PRIDE

I want to start with my congratulations to all of our Prep/Year 1 students, teachers and all of our support staff who have settled back into the school routine with ease. Each morning we are seeing and hearing settled learners who have not forgotten the routines and structures of their classrooms.

I absolutely commend our students and parents with how well they have adapted to the change in school drop offs and pick-ups. It was fantastic to see many brave and excited little people back at school, and equally fabulous to see our older children and regular attendees showing them the way.

Our students were very excited to have use of the playgrounds for the second half of this week! We have a Department of Education approved food grade spray sanitiser to spray the playgrounds with. It can be sprayed on and left, and does not require washing off. Doing this during the first and middle sessions of the day ensures that our students’ have access to clean, sanitised playgrounds at both breaks. Thank you to our grounds and our cleaning teams for keeping us safe and working with the changed conditions so kids can have some fun!

The year 4 students were learning how to be bucket fillers and shared examples of kind acts. They problem solved different scenarios and also shared how they have already been a bucket filler and kind to someone today. Some students completed this PBL lesson online at home while their remaining friends joined them online from school.

You will have heard announcements from Minister Grace Grace that year 2 to 6 students’ return on Monday 25 May 2020. We are extremely excited about this and will provide the necessary information to our school community as we prepare to have our total school population back. This information will be emailed to all parents next week as we plan for over 900 students to return to school.

Kind regards,

Helen McCullough
Principal

UPCOMING EVENTS

General News

SCHOOL PARKING

We are aware that pick up and drop off times can be difficult due to the size of our school. We are working closely with the Queensland Police and the Townsville City Council in relation to the current parking and pick up issues. To ensure the safety of all who access our school, please note the following:-

• Do not park in no standing zones. Please see the below map
• Please use the pedestrian crossings and encourage your child/children to use the pedestrian crossings as well
• Do not walk through the traffic at the Stop, Drop and Go area
• Staff provide supervision at Stop, Drop and Go until 3:20pm every school day. These staff are responsible for ensuring the safety of your children inside our gates.
• Please be mindful of residential properties that surround our school – please do not park across their driveways
• Do not park on traffic islands or footpaths

Queensland Police have advised that they will be doing regular patrols and issuing infringement notices.

Thank you for your support in this important issue.

Positive Behaviour Learning

Prep News

Science

In science this term we have been learning about living and non-living things. The students have explored the outside environment to look for living and non-living things. We have discussed how we can identify what a living thing is by talking about their needs. The students have chosen a living thing and have made it out of clay and plasticine. The students have enjoyed learning about all the different habitats and are excited to make their own environment for their chosen living thing.

English

In English this term we are practicing our retells. We have been listening to different books and discussing the events in order. The students have also been explaining what they like and dislike about the story. We practice our writing every day in prep and the students know their writing is successful when they include their finger spaces, full stops and capital letters.

Math

In math we have been learning about 2D shapes. We have been exploring shapes in our environment and how we can use shapes to make different objects!

Year 1 News

The year 1’s have settled in nicely to being back in class. We are very happy to be back!

In maths we have started looking at telling o’clock times on analogue and digital clocks. We have also been partitioning two digit numbers.

Year 2 News

This week we have been having lots of fun in Math whilst learning about place value. We are a creative bunch and are always looking for ways to incorporate our creative flair into our work. To cater for this, we decided to turn our trusty Base 10 Materials into monster body parts! Both our friends in-class and at home used their place value skills and imagination to create some curious creatures. We think the results are marvellous and can’t wait to utilise our talents again whilst learning about fractions next week.

Year 3 News

This week in Year 3 English we discussed and learnt that spoken procedures are informal texts and usually found in imaginative texts, whereas, written procedures are formal and found in informative texts (like recipes, instruction manuals, etc.).

We compared spoken and written procedures as well as followed a formal written procedure.

The Year 3’s learning at school completed this task using the computer labs, while those learning from home participated via collaborative sessions on the class blackboard.

Year 4 News

Year 5 News

WOW Year 5 you are awesome! What a great group of learners we have… whether we are at school or at home we continue to excel.

In English the children have been exploring Persuasive Feature Articles. The learning intention is to- create a feature article to persuade an audience to a given point of view. In the lead up to this assessment, the children have explored a similar article about the spread of Cane Toads in Australia. Whilst the text is both interesting and challenging, the children have been able to demonstrate their understanding through a comprehension task that explores its features. We have been particularly interested in how an image can be persuasive and how language features can sway our thinking.

Our Science curriculum has taken us on a journey in to space as we examine Our Place In Space. We have examined orbital paths, moons, other celestial bodies and even examined why Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Our unit aim is to write a report about the exploration of our solar system, considering what we have learned from our venture in space and how life on Earth has changed because of it. It has been great to see so many children keeping up with these lessons at home and tuning in to our Virtual Collaborate Sessions. These online lessons provide a platform for children to monitor their own learning away from the physical classroom and gives our classmates a chance to contribute to our group understanding of concepts learnt.

Year 6 News

History

We are learning to investigate the experiences of a migrant and contributions of the migrant and their group to the development of Australia.

Science

We are learning to research renewable energy sources.

Maths

We are learning to solve problems using the relationships between angles on a straight line, vertically opposite angles and angles at a point.