16 October 2020

Newsletter Articles

PRINCIPAL’S PRIDE

Dear Parents/Carers,

Welcome to Term 4 at The Willows State School. This term will bring extraordinary challenges as we navigate COVID restrictions and ensure our students continue to have every opportunity to succeed and enjoy their schooling experience. This term we showcase Athletics, State Education Week, Book Week, Life Education, Day for Daniel and student safety, year 5 leadership and selection for student leader positions in 2021 and our graduating year 6 students. Keep updated through our school Facebook page and newsletter as we share wonderful memories and excellence in teaching and learning.

STATE EDUCATION WEEK

It has been an extraordinary year, so it is fitting that this year's theme for State Education Week (25 - 31 October) is extraordinary education.

Week 4 this term will be an exciting week and we will be sharing extraordinary staff, students, education and fun on facebook. Posts will be scheduled throughout the days so take the time to scroll over our entries each evening and like the work of our students and staff.

BOOKWEEK

This year’s book week is during State Education Week. The theme for Book Week is Curious Creatures, - Wild Minds. This event (on Thursday the 29th of October) will look a little different this year. Our traditional staff performance will be recorded and viewed by students in their classrooms. Students will then have the opportunity to show off their costumes as they parade around the school. Check facebook as we share this fun event. When designing your creatures costume consider the many happy book creature options. Costumes should not scare or offend others. Remember to ensure costumes are sun safe and appropriate.

SCHOOL PULSE SURVEY DATA

This year instead of the School Opinion Survey (SOS) Education Qld released the School Pulse Survey. This survey collected information about the state, region and schools response to COVID. It also provided insight into how innovative our school was with teaching and learning particularly with the use of technology. Our staff reviewed the data and were very excited to see that we performed very well in many areas. Some particular highlights included the following.

• Our staff felt very confident embedding ATSI perspectives across the curriculum
• 100% of our staff agreed that they were well informed and were therefore able to carry out their role during COVID lockdown
• Our school was well informed and supported by region and our staff felt safe during COVID lockdown.
• Our staff felt that online teaching was successful and they felt confident in the use of technology.
• 100% of our staff felt confident transitioning students back to school
• Our students are happy with our school environment and see it as well maintained
• Our students acknowledge the hard work of their teachers, their high expectations and feedback
• Our students were confident with our school behaviour management processes
• Our parents believe that teachers at our school expect their child to do their best and they are always looking for ways to improve
• Our parents believe that students like being at our school and our school is well maintained
• Our parents felt they were well informed during COVID

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey. It was an affirmation of our commitment to ‘Excellence is the Standard”.

GREAT START TO TERM 4

We have had an excellent start to this term. Our lower school is back to business with students re-establishing their reading goals and engaged in new units with some amazing writing coming out of classrooms. Our upper school is continuing to develop reading comprehension with a focus on inference. They are building their ideas for writing and concentrating on text structure. Tier 2 interventions across the school are continuing to gain significant traction. Congratulations to our support staff who are providing important programs such as Younger Stronger Smarter, Girls with a Purpose, NED Groups, Brain Talk, Oral Language Programs and Before School Reading. Our new student leadership selection process in year 5 is also well under way. Every classroom is on track with very settled classrooms and excellent explicit teaching of our schoolwide focus and schoolwide expectations. We have started the term with a focus on keeping calm and controlling our emotions. We are continuing to see community confidence with lots of new enrolments for 2021. Our school reputation continues to strengthen and our numbers are growing. Thank you to our school office team and leaders for settling new families in efficiently. Thank you to the families that have advised that they will not be returning so that we can adjust our numbers accordingly and start work on 2021 staffing. I would also like to thank our P and C who continue to work tirelessly, even over these trying times, to contribute significantly to the learning resources and school upgrades at our school. They have already informed us that their fundraising ventures this year including stalls and the colour explosion did really well and their final venture – Year level Tea Towels will be coming out soon.

CELEBRATING STAFF SUCCESS

At The Willows State School, our staff are continuously developing and learning. We do this through a range of professional learning at school and through departmental opportunities that are available throughout the region and the state. As a school, professional development adds to the strength of our amazing team and provides our learners with high quality education. This year to date our staff have completed courses on mentoring beginning and early career teachers, supporting preservice teacher training, inclusive education and effective teaching and learning, student Code of Conduct.

What a great start to Term 4. We thank our students, staff and school community for their continued contributions to making ‘excellence the standard’.

Kind regards

Patricia Winter
Acting Principal

GENERAL NEWS

SWIMMING LESSONS - CANCELLED

BOOK WEEK

LEARN AN INSTRUMENT

UPCOMING EVENTS

Positive Behaviour Learning

Music News (The Pitch)

P and C News

Prep News

At the end of Term 3, the Preps were involved in lots of fun activities such as crazy hat day and the colour run. The students all enjoyed the last week of Term 3.

Term 4 Science we are currently learning all about how objects move. Last week the Preps were able to test some objects to see if they bounce, roll, spin or slide. They are looking forward to learning more about movement.

In Prep this term the students have been learning Drama. This is a new subject for the Preps this year. They have been comparing two different drama plays and have also had the opportunity to role play different community scenarios such as doctors, vets, teachers, police and fire fighters just to name a few.

At the end of Term 3, the Preps were involved in lots of fun activities such as crazy hat day and the colour run. The students all enjoyed the last week of Term 3.

Year 1 News

This term in Science, Year 1 are learning to investigate light and sound. They have been working very hard and have been having a lot of fun creating their own toy that makes sound. Students are conducting their investigation in order to answer the Inquiry Question ‘How can we design a toy that makes sound?’

LIFE EDUCATION – YEAR 1

Year 2 News

Welcome back to term 4. We are looking forward to an exciting and busy term of learning. In Science, year 2 will be planting, observing and recording how plants grow. Students will observe and discuss how different soils affect the growth of plants. They will also learn about how to conserve water and other resources. In Math, students will learn how to collect, organise and make inferences with data, transformations, 2D and 3D shapes, and decorating our classrooms with math through age appropriate pedagogies. In English, students will create a multimodal text using computers, talk to text, drawings, and handwriting. We are excited to see the year 2 students continue to grow and learn.

LIFE EDUCATION – YEAR 2

Year 3 News

Welcome back to term 4!!!

The year 3 students have been right back to learning straight away and have been showing great progress already in week 1. This week 3PRO have been having a fantastic time during maths learning about grid mapping and pathways.

Learning Intention: To match positions on maps with given information, and identify symmetry in the environment.

To be successful: Interpret simple grid maps to represent position and pathways. Thinking about:

• Writing grid references to communicate positions
• Identifying and creating an efficient (direct path/quick and easy) set of directions to solve a problem

3PRO had a fantastic time making and playing a mapping game with a partner.

Year 4 News

In Mathematics this term we are learning to define the different methods for data collection and representation, and evaluate their effectiveness. We will be constructing data displays from given or collected data.

In 4NOS and 4MIL we wrote our own questions and then surveyed the class to collect our data. They wanted to find out lots of things like favourite sports, gaming consoles, You Tubers, movies, subjects at school etc…

Below are some pictures of the stud ents c ollecting their data.

The students then constructed vertical column graphs to record their data. They needed to include a title, labelled x and y axis, key if needed and coloured columns.

As you can see below they have done an amazing job.

LIFE EDUCATION – YEAR 4

Year 5 News

Year 6 News

English

We are currently learning to argue a point of view about the effectiveness of literary and informative texts in conveying their message.

Maths

We are currently investigating and interpreting secondary data.

Community Events & Notices