Welcome to Term 2!

Despite all that is currently going on with the COVID-19 pandemic, I hope that you got to spend some time with your loved ones over the Easter break.

As we start the new term, it is a very different approach to schooling as we traditionally know it. The current arrangements are to be in effect at this stage until 22 May. As soon as there is more information on this, we will let you know.

The most important thing in all of this is looking after the wellbeing of yourselves and your families. Think about what can be achieved with your family during this period and DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOUR FAMILY. You are not expected to replicate a 9am-3pm school day by any means. If your child only achieves 1 hour of work in a day, that’s fine.

Who can attend school?

It is important to remember that a key principle with the current schooling arrangements is to maximise the opportunities to provide social distancing to help promote the safety of all in our community. We ask that families respect and follow this and only send your children to school if they meet the categories of:

• Children of essential workers on days when they are not able to be supervised at home and no other arrangements can be made. Essential worker means any worker who must continue to attend their workplace for essential business during this time.
• Vulnerable children include children identified by the school or who:
  • are currently receiving services from Child Safety, including children who are subject to a child protection order
  • are subject to a youth justice order.
• Children in designated Indigenous communities.

Where a student is learning at home, the parent or carer is responsible for the student’s safety and wellbeing at home or elsewhere.

You would have received by email and from your child’s teacher our Frequently Asked Questions document and this outlines lots of different scenarios and solutions to questions to questions you may have. If you aren’t sure with your situation, give the school a call and we can talk through it.

I again extend my sincere thanks to all of our school staff and families for the way that you have embraced this new form of learning. We know that there will be some issues along the way (unfortunately as we saw on Monday with the STATEWIDE outage of our learning platform- beyond our school’s control), but as a school and community, by working together we can address these as they arise.

Email addresses

As emails will be a primary means of communication, please ensure that your email address is up to date and this has been shared with the school. Advise class teachers and the office of any changes.

Roll marking

To ensure that we stay connected to our students and can get a picture of how they are traveling, we will implement a new mode of recording daily attendance.

It is an Education Queensland requirement that we know the engagement 'status' of each student each day; essentially whether each student is accessing their education or not. Our focus from the information that we gather, will be about well-being as well as engagement.

We know many of you are having your children learn@home, but we MUST still be told daily for accountability reasons.

Given that we are required to have the status of each student logged on our system by 11am, we will trial the use of our SMS messaging system to gather the required information.

Essentially, we will message our parents/caregivers as early as possible each morning, by 8:15am at the latest, asking about the intention of your child for that day. Our feedback has been that some of our parents head to work extremely early and may be unable to pick up a text at 8:15am. We will accept responses from the time that the message is sent. 

Each morning you will receive the following daily text message which asks to you provide a response to the following:

Please identify the following with your child’s attendance today by 9:30am. Only 1 response per family is needed.

YOU ONLY NEED TO RESPOND WITH A NUMBER unless you answer with 4.

• Student Learning at School
• Student Learning From Home
• Illness/Medical Appointments
• Other- please state reason

Even if your child is attending school, you must respond as this is a default text.

Summary of Process

Text message will go out to parents/caregivers early in the morning, by 8:15am at the latest.

Response required as soon as possible but before 9:30am:

• Student Learning at School
• Student Learning From Home
• Illness/Medical Appointments
• Other- please state reason

An example reply would be:

1

Our staff will match up your details to your child.

If you receive more than one message, please respond only to one each day.

I again thank our parents and caregivers for their support with this change of practice. I recognise that it does add another responsibility for you, however at this point, it is the most effective method whilst ensuring daily accountability is met.

Students attending school

For families who require their children (meeting the categories for attendance) to attend school, we will email out weekly asking for your child’s details and days of attendance. Please ensure that you respond to this by 2pm on Friday afternoons so we can plan for supervision in the following week.

It is important to understand that our school looks very different with the required WHS practices in place, some of these include:

• Entry to the school grounds is for STAFF AND STUDENTS ONLY- Adults please DO NOT enter the school grounds unless directed by a member of staff.
• There are classroom restrictions with the number of people we can have in rooms. Hence we must know who is coming, so we can make spaces and supervising staff available.
• Physical distancing is in place in both the classrooms and general school for students and staff.
• ALL playgrounds and shared play equipment are closed and not being used.
• Water bubblers have been turned off- please ensure they have a water bottle every day, they are able to fill them up as needed still at school. 

Questions, concerns and feedback

Just like you, please understand our staff are working very hard to support all families through this new process. WE are learning as well! Our staff are currently working to support the families learning@home and at school whilst also developing new learning experiences for the weeks ahead, so please remember to be patient with them - they will aim to respond with 24 hours. 

We've heard you!

Over the last 2 days we have LISTENED to your feedback! Our teachers are now busily working to simplify our learning@home materials so they are ready for next week. When complete we will send more information about this. 

If you have any questions, concerns or feedback, please contact your child’s teacher. This is the FIRST time something like this has been done on the mass scale but as a school, we will keep refining the process to make this as simple as we can, to support our students and your family.

Feeling overwhelmed with it all?

No need to stress or worry, as there are many alternatives that can happen in place of online learning. Alternative learning could be:

* Mathletics    *reading    *board/card games  *cooking- reading and following a recipe    *having children do daily writing about what they have done or give them a topic. *helping in the garden whilst learning about the plants and insects   ETC ETC

These alternatives are all valuable learning experiences. If your child participates in any of these in place of online learning, please let their teacher know. You might like to send a photo of it and the teacher can view what they have done and still provide feedback.  

I thank you all for your support during this time and wish good health to you all.

Regards

Mark Wright

Principal

Weekly Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL)

Welcome back to Term 2 everyone. Even though things are a little haphazard with the school arrangements at present, there is always time to promote good behaviour and the Positive Behaviour for Learning lesson for this week is Respectful: Following Teacher Instructions Straight Away. Often teacher instructions involve an element of safety, which is why it is important that each student follow teacher instructions straight away. Other reasons why students should follow teacher instructions immediately include:

• It helps maximise learning time;
• It helps avoid disruption to lessons;
• It helps students maintain positive relationships with their peers; and,
• It helps set them up for positive rewards like stamps and Cool Coins.

By doing all of the above things we can set our kids up for success both at school and in the outside world when they transition into the workforce.

Please take a few minutes to go over this with your child/children. For those learning from home, you can find the weekly PBL lesson in your Wellbeing folder on the EdStudio. Also, please check out Calliope News on Facebook.

Thanks.

Brian Rowe

Student Welfare Teacher