21 August 2020

Newsletter Articles

PRINCIPAL’S PRIDE

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Community Members,

Welcome to Week 6! It is hard to believe that we are halfway through Term 3!

I am continuously proud of our school and the quality of education our children are receiving at The Willows is sensational! Over the past 6 weeks I have seen a significant improvement across student learning with reading and writing being the focus for all of our team across the Learning Areas of the Australian Curriculum. I have enjoyed visiting classrooms and conferencing with a number of students about their current units. Students of The Willows have a fantastic team of teachers and staff who feel equally proud to have the amazing support of our school community.

I would also like to congratulate the staff of our school for the extensive extra-curricular offerings that we are providing at The Willows. As part of our weekly program students at our school are able to access a range of offerings that can only happen with the dedication of our entire school staff.

This week, Mr Menzies and 5 representatives, Dash McKlaren, Caleb Le Bas, Seth Robinson, Ross Cavanagh and Marshall Neeb of the Robotics Club went to Townsville Grammar School to participate in a Lego Robotics Competition. The team did an amazing job after 5 weeks of our club operating and came home with 1st Place! Our students were exceptionally proud of their efforts and our school was commended for the exceptional level of skill in coding, robotics and group work! Way to go Willows! The prize for this accomplishment was a set of robotics which will now enable us to offer further places in this initiative at The Willows.

Each Friday, our Years 5 and 6 students have been participating in inter-class Options Programs. Our teachers and students are enjoying the program and it is so good to see students active, healthy and out on our ovals enjoying friendly competition and learning new skills and games. The Options Program for our Years 5 and 6 students will now form part of school life allowing all students to access sporting opportunities at our school. Well done to our Year 5 and 6 Teachers and our House Captains for your organisation and leadership each Friday.

Mr Madeley and Ms Deuble have organised Sports Development Officers to provide a range of fun games as part of our lunchtime options at our school. This is very popular with our students! This initiative is part of our Sporting Schools Grant initiative and we thank Townsville Cricket, Townsville Rugby Union, Queensland Rugby League and Townsville Australian Football League for bringing games to our students throughout their play time.

Tuesday Tunes is a new initiative for our school Rock Band. The Rock Band have been practicing individually and as a group more recently and they sound fantastic! It was time for them to perform to an audience and our students had a great time listening to the band play throughout lunch time on Tuesday. You may hear lots of children with admiration and aspiration to join the rock band when they are older – the band is full of stars! Thank you for bringing a great vibe and great songs to our school and congratulations to all musicians and Mr Schimke!

2021 ENROLMENTS – Our school is now taking enrolments for the 2021 school year, please get your enrolment forms in early. Should you know of friends or family looking to join our great school, please inform them that they are welcome to contact the school for an enrolment package.

As we continue to move through Term 3, we are being briefed continuously on the necessary health and safety measures during the Covid19 Health Pandemic. There are guidelines in place and our school planning must adhere to these. Being a school of over 930 students, a number of our school planned activities for upcoming events will look very differently and we thank our parents/carers and community for their ongoing support, understanding and co-operation. Together, we keep our students, staff and community safe.

DATE CLAIMER: Student Free Day – Friday, 4 September (Week 8)
The SFD usually scheduled for Monday of Week 3, Term 4 has been moved by the Department of Education from 2020 onwards to the Friday of Week 8, Term 3. This year the date is 04/09/2020.

Kind regards
Helen McCullough
Principal

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 3:30pm 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.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Positive Behaviour Learning

Well Being

Narelle Thomas
Guidance Officer

Music News (The Pitch)

P and C News

Prep News

Prep Newsletter!

English

In English, students are finalising their four line rhymes. They are enjoying editing their work and adding in describing words to make their rhyme more interesting. The next step is for the students to present their rhyme to the class.

Math

In math, students have been learning about collecting data. Students have been asking their own yes/no questions and then going on to gather their data. We have been learning how to then read and make inferences from the data that has been collected.

Year 1 News

Dear Parents/Carers,

This term in Year 1 Science we have been learning to describe objects and events that we encounter in our everyday lives, sharing observations and describing the changes in our local environment in relation to the day and night sky and landscape. The students in 1B MOU had the opportunity to represent their day sky and landscape in the form of a diorama where they chose to represent a beach, city, rainforest or farm. They thoroughly enjoyed using boxes, collage materials, mobilo, coloured paper or lego to create their small world.

From there, they were given the opportunity to describe their sky and landscape and the changes that they would expect to occur when it changed to night. Using their senses, our little scientists described the landscape, sky and weather changes by observing what it looks like, what they can hear and what they can feel. Throughout the unit, the students have also been learning about and exploring the difference between natural, managed and constructed features of our local environment and have shown a lot of interest in identifying these different landscapes throughout our school.

Year 2 News

In Year 2, we are finalising our first English unit for the Term. In this unit, we have learnt to create, rehearse and present a multimodal procedure. Before we created our individual procedures, we combined our thinking and created our own Class Marvellous Medicine! Our class's Marvellous Medicine multimodal procedures were created at an A Standard and included a procedural text structure (title, ingredients, equipment, method and supporting images) and language features (expanded noun groups, various action verbs to give commands and topic specific vocabulary). Even though we described our ingredients using disgusting expanded noun groups we decided to use the delicious alternatives when creating the medicine ourselves. We followed the steps in our method and celebrated our hard work by gobbling up the final result. We had lots of fun throughout this unit and can't wait to begin our next one!

Year 3 News

This term Year 3 have been learning about Australia and its neighbouring countries. This week, 3PRI have been exploring characteristics of places like New Zealand and Fiji. We have learnt about their similarities and differences with Australia, and how these influence the way people live. We have also been learning about maps, and how to locate different places on a map. Students loved finding where we live on our map of Australia. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about and comparing different schools in these neighbouring countries.

Year 4 News

Year 4 – Measurement

This term in year 4, students have been learning to measure the length, area, mass and capacity of items. They have been using formal and informal units of measurements to measure. In this activity, students enjoyed measuring the capacity of items using formal units of measurement.

Year 5 News

In Science, year 5 have been learning to plan, predict and conduct a fair investigation to explain everyday phenomena associated with the transfer of light, to describe how scientific developments have affected people’s lives and help us solve problems and to describe ways to improve the fairness of their investigation and communicate ideas and findings.

This week 5DIB have been helping Astounding Viktor transfer light through a maze.

We started with drawing a ray diagram of the maze before we recreated it using a shoebox.

Then we used mirrors to help us transfer the light from doorway 1 to doorway 2.

Our next challenge is to conduct a fair test to change the appearance of the light as it exits doorway 2.

Year 6 News

English

In English, Year 6 are starting their next unit, which is a panel discussion. They are working hard to analyse and evaluate the style of an individual author. The students have created a character profile on the various characters in the book and they look amazing!

Hass

In HASS, students are looking at the diversity of places by representing, interpreting and describing data and information about the characteristics of places. We looked at several images of places all over the world and looked at the similarities and differences between other countries and Australia. Well done Year 6!

Community Events & Notices