Welcome to Week Six of Term 4. Last week I attended a Principal’s Roadshow on Wednesday and Thursday where the Director-General, Department of Education, Michael De’Ath, Associate Director-General ECSS, Sharon Schimming, and other staff from Central Office shared departmental messages in line with Equity and Excellence, our focus, educational achievement, wellbeing and engagement and culture and inclusion. Kay Kirkman, our Regional Director and other key staff from Regional Office shared key messages around ‘One System, One Plan’ and supports that are in place to achieve our focus.

2024 Planning

We are now well into our planning for 2024 class structures. Please continue to encourage families to contact Administration as soon as possible if they are leaving our school next year.

Any family who has a Prep student commencing in 2024 is encouraged to contact Administration now to ensure a smooth transition to school.  We are also encouraging any families who will be commencing at Calliope next year to let administration know.

Parent/Carer Specific Information for Class Placements

All parents and carers have an opportunity to provide specific information to assist the school in the placement of individual learners to classes in 2024. This is not an opportunity for parents and carers to request specific teacher[s], just as classroom teacher[s] are not able to request specific learners to be or not to be in their class. It is an opportunity for all parents and carers to provide specific information to guide our Teacher Teams to make informed decisions to ensure the full range of learners’ needs are considered.

A template is included in today’s Newsletter and is also available from Administration for those families wishing to provide such information. The deadline for the return of all forms is Monday November 13^th, 2023. These forms should placed in an envelope marked CONFIDENTIAL or emailed to admin@calliopess.eq.edu.au

Parents will understand that:

• It is not always possible to meet all requests
• Only issues that impact on the educational needs of the student will be considered
• This process is NOT about requesting a teacher
• Parent requests close Monday 13 November 2023 and it will not be possible to consider requests after this date
• There will be no change made to class lists at the end of year
• If enrolments change significantly in 2024, there may need to be minor changes. Classes will not be finalised until after Day 8 2024. This usually occurs around Week 3.

Teachers take considerable time and effort with class placements. We consider each child in determining class placements. We aim to ensure that optimum use is made of the prior knowledge that teachers, parents and others have of each child prior to class placement. Your child will find out their class, teacher and new room as part of our transition process on Wednesday 6 December 2023.

Student Code of Conduct

Each week I focus on an aspect of Calliope’s Student Code of Conduct.  This week the focus will be Critical Incidents.

Critical Incidents

It is important that all school staff have a consistent understanding of how to respond in emergencies involving student behaviour that seriously endangers the student or others.  This consistency ensures that appropriate actions are taken to ensure that both students and staff are kept safe.

 A critical incident is defined as an occurrence that is sudden, urgent, and usually unexpected, or an occasion requiring immediate action (e.g. in the community, on the road).  The aim in these situations is to bring the behaviour of the student under rapid and safe control.  It is not a time to try and to punish or discipline the student; it is a crisis management period only.

 Staff should follow the documented plan for any student involved in regular critical incidents, which should be saved and available for staff to review in OneSchool.

 For unexpected critical incidents, staff should use basic defusing techniques:

1.  Avoid escalating the problem behaviour: avoid shouting, cornering the student, moving into the student’s space, touching or grabbing the student, sudden responses, sarcasm, becoming defensive, communicating anger and frustration through body language.
   
   
2.  Maintain calmness, respect and detachment: model the behaviour you want students to adopt, stay calm and controlled, use a serious measured tone, choose your language carefully, avoid humiliating the student, be matter of fact and avoid responding emotionally.
   
   
3. Approach the student in a non-threatening manner: move slowly and deliberately toward the problem situation, speak privately to the student/s where possible, speak calmly and respectfully, minimise body language, keep a reasonable distance, establish eye level position, be brief, stay with the agenda, acknowledge cooperation, withdraw if the situation escalates.
   
   
4. Follow through: if the student starts displaying the appropriate behaviour briefly acknowledge their choice and re-direct other students’ attention towards their usual work/activity. If the student continues with the problem behaviour, then remind them of the expected school behaviour and identify corrective actions of continued unacceptable behaviour.
   
   
5. Debrief: at an appropriate time when there is low risk of re-escalation, help the student to identify the sequence of events that led to the unacceptable behaviour, pinpoint decision moments during the sequence of events, evaluate decisions made, and identify acceptable decision options for future situations.

Appropriate physical intervention may be used to ensure that Calliope State School’s duty of care to protect students and staff from foreseeable risks of injury is met.  The use of physical intervention is only considered appropriate where the immediate safety of others is threatened and the strategy is used to prevent injury.

 Physical intervention can involve coming between students, blocking a student’s path, leading a student by the hand/arm, shepherding a student by placing a hand in the centre of the upper back, removing potentially dangerous objects and, in extreme situations, using more forceful restraint.

 It is important that all staff understand:

• physical intervention cannot be used as a form of punishment;
• physical intervention must not be used when a less severe response can effectively resolve the situation and the underlying function of the behaviour.

 Physical intervention is not to be used as a response to:

• property destruction;
• school disruption;
• refusal to comply;
• verbal threats; and
• leaving a classroom or the school, unless student safety is clearly threatened.

 Any physical intervention made must:

• be reasonable in the particular circumstances;
• be in proportion to the circumstances of the incident;
• always be the minimum force needed to achieve the desired result; and
• take into account the age, stature, disability, understanding and gender of the student.

 Record keeping

Each instance involving the use of physical intervention must be formally documented.  The processes can be found at http://ppr.det.qld.gov.au/corp/hr/workplace/Pages/Health-and-Safety-Incident-Recording,-Notification-and-Management.aspx online.

Some reminders of upcoming events from the calendar include -

Week 7

Year 6 Camp

14 November – P&C Meeting

Week 8

21 November – School Captains Speeches

22 November – Leadership Speeches

24 November – Prep Open Afternoon (2-3)

24 November – Calliope Carols

Look at some of the wonderful work 5A students have been doing in 2023. 

Congratulations to 5C who had an amazing attendance rate for Week 5. Their attendance rate was 93.63% for the Week!

Remember, every day you are away is a learning day lost.

Congratulations to our Calliope SS sporting champs, who have been kicking goals in their chosen sports.

Tyson recently competed at the Coles Summer Athletics carnival in Brisbane, and came away with some pretty impressive achievements and PBs. 

80m Hurdles - 4th Place in Heat (6th Overall out of 21). New PB of 15.14Secs for Hurdles (Last PB 15.33secs the Current Club Record)

100m - 2nd Place in Heat (5th Overall out of 39). New PB of 13.82Secs for 100m (Last PB 14.76secs)

400m - 7th Place in Heat (13th Overall out of 26) 

Great Efforts Tyson!

Our two Year 5 students Charlie and Brooke have also stood out in the sport of Polocrosse. This sport involves the skills of being able to ride a fast horse and throw and catch a ball from a racket. Charlie received the Queensland Polocrosse award for Champion B Grade Junior Boy and Brooke received the Under 12 Encouragement award. Awesome work!

Hi everyone! Well, we’re officially halfway through Term 4 and things are really ramping up! If you have a grade sixer then you’re probably starting to prepare for their departure on Sunday. We were very pleased to be able to subsidise the bus costs to Seaforth and back to keep this wonderful experience affordable for families.

Did you see the photos of the Robotics teams that represented our school on Saturday at the First Lego League Gladstone Regional Competition? They looked so smart and professional in their P&C sponsored representative shirts. We are so proud of them all for what they achieved and all the hard work they put in! A big congratulations to Team DaVinci’s for taking home the Motivation Award!! And a big thank you to the coaches for all their hard work and for all of their own time they put into the FLL program this year.

As the cost of everything increases significantly, so do the costs associated with providing educational ventures for our students to compliment classroom learning and curriculum. We strive to subsidise costs for such opportunities as much as possible to keep the struggle for families to a minimum. This isn’t possible without our fundraising efforts.

Our final fundraiser for this year is our Christmas raffle. Tickets are on sale now and will be drawn at the end of Week 9. We would love your support so we can continue supporting all our wonderful students. Check out our Facebook page and the advertisement in this newsletter for all the details. If you wish to support us with some of your spare time (even only a small amount of time helps the team immensely!); please check out the dates that we have booked for pop-up stalls to sell our tickets to the wider community too. If you would like to volunteer please send us an email on the details below.

 If you have a grade fiver, hopefully you have seen the 2024 senior shirt order form?! Please ensure your orders are placed via QKR before COB Wednesday November 22^nd. This is a one time only order due to the hefty shipping costs.

Warm regards,

Heidi, Geoff, Angela and Lisa.

Parents and carers play a vital role in supporting children and young people to establish respectful relationships. Having regular conversations about what positive, healthy and equal relationships look like helps children and young people build self-respect and learn to be respectful to others. Learn more about the role parents, carers and schools play in supporting students to develop respectful relationships on the RRE hub.

• Please note all named uniforms that are in the lost property are returned to classrooms. 

We had a great response to our first information session with over 100 guests on Wednesday 30^th of August. We will be hosting an additional information session this year. This will be on Tuesday the17^th of October from 4-5pm. You do not need to attend again if you attended the first session. We will cover the same topics such as the transition process, school expectations, curriculum at Gladstone SHS, and supporting your child. It covers everything that would be discussed in an interview and more. We will also have staff remain behind to answer any questions you might have. Admin staff will also be present at the information session. You can bring the enrolment paperwork on the day, if you did not have a chance to submit your child’s enrolment pack by the end of Term 3. We will process the paperwork during the evening. 

Register for the event using this link,
https://gladstoneshs.schoolzineplus.com/event/24 . We are encouraging anyone new to GSHS to attend. 

On Thursday the 9^th of November, we will have a school tour. Where you will be able to meet some of our amazing Teachers and Heads of Departments. Our student leaders will walk you around on the tour of the school. It is one of the events that parents, carers and students really look forward to attending. You will be sent a registration link via email if you have handed in your enrolment forms before Friday the 27^th of October.  

If any of the above information changes, we will send out information via our EOI list and through our feeder primary schools.  

Orientation Days 

An important component of our transition process is the Orientation Days. On Monday 27 November and Tuesday 28 November 2023, we plan to host the incoming Year 6 students for two days of orientation activities.  This opportunity is invaluable in familiarising students with our school and easing some of their anxieties about the impending move. To be able to attend these days, we must have received the completed enrolment forms for your child along with the permission letter enclosed in the enrolment package. 

We also host additional orientation events for specific groups of students throughout Term 4 to help with their transition to High School and showcase our support networks. Information has been sent to Primary schools about these days. 

Please contact us on 4976 6111 if you wish to discuss any matter relating to the transition process.