Welcome back to all our families and welcome to our new families. It has been wonderful to see our students arrive back with their smiling faces.  On Monday there were a few anxious moments as we become familiar with our new classrooms and environments.  Students have now settled well into their classrooms for 2024. 

This year our explicit improvement agenda is Connections and Engagement.  Staff commenced this journey last week when they participated in two days professional development which has them excited about shifting our culture at Calliope this year.  On Wednesday staff workshopped with Dr Matt Capp (EdD).  Matt is the Director of CAPITALISE Education and one of the world's leading inclusive learning designers, specialising in Universal Design for Learning.  He has over 23 years of experience in primary and secondary schools, as well as universities, supporting students with disability and diverse learning needs.  Matt worked extensively around knowing our students and planning our curriculum to meet all needs through applying the UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Framework.

On Thursday staff worked with Robyn from Kagan Structures.  Robyn Cragg currently serves as a Director of Kagan Australia Teacher Professional Learning. Her career in education spans over 40 years and includes being a physical education teacher, Inspector of Schools, Director of Schools and 20 years as a Principal in disadvantaged schools.  Staff workshopped on using structures in the classroom to build positive class and team cultures. Staff were able to add to their repertoire of strategies to engage students.

On Thursday are whole staff made connections with Rotary who volunteered to cook a barbecue lunch for staff.  They also joined us in the staff room to share lunch and staff were able to chat with them.  Rotary support our school in various ways throughout the year.  Thank you, Liz Cunningham, Greg Brown and Sue Beale.  Lunch was delicious.

This year our school also commences their journey in using the Resilience Project Wellbeing Program as a resource. The program is emotionally engaging, practical, and proven to have impact through evidence-based evaluations.  There will be more information on this in the weeks that follow.

School Uniform

As well as seeing the beautiful smiles of our students back at school, it was wonderful to also see all our students in complete uniform.  Some of our girls had beautiful matching blue and yellow bows in the hair.  Thank you to all parents/caregivers on making this happen.  A copy of our Student Dress Code is attached.

Calliope State School Dress Code https://calliopess.eq.edu.au/SupportAndResources/FormsAndDocuments/Documents/CSS%20Student%20Dress%20Code.pdf

New Staff

We welcome the following new staff to our school

Tracee Ward – Guidance Officer

Debbie Dingle – Instrumental Music 

Parent Information sessions will be held in Week 3 for all classes. This is a great time to find out information and routines for your child’s classroom. Please see table below for times.

Calliope State School and the Port Curtis district offers a wide opportunity for students in sport. Throughout the year, Calliope State School sporting teams compete in many interschool sporting competitions such as Netball, Rugby League, Volleyball and Soccer. Students will be notified of upcoming trials for these team sports. Students who are selected in a Calliope State School sport team must be available for training sessions during lunch times and be able to attend the interschool competitions with parental/carer supervision.

Students who are competitive in their chosen sport also have the opportunity to trial for the 10-12 years Port Curtis teams. The PC (Port Curtis) Primary School Sport involves schools in Gladstone extending south to Miriam Vale, north to Ambrose and west to the Callide area of Biloela.

In Term 1, there are PC trials for Volleyball, Netball, AFL, Basketball, Touch, Squash, Rugby League, Hockey and Soccer. Students wanting to trial, must demonstrate a high level of skill at a representative standard. The selection criteria is based on the individual skills shown during the skills session and game play at the trials. Behaviour and attitude are also taken into account.

If your child is interested in trialling for one of the sports in Term 1, please make sure they let Mrs Betts know. In some cases, there is a limit of how many students are allowed to trial from each school. For these sports Mrs Betts will hold trials at school during lunch breaks. Students must be selected by Mrs Betts and receive the PC information letter from her to trial.

Every student trialling for Port Curtis teams must hand in a student permission details booklet on the day of the trial. Without this booklet, students will not be able to participate and will be ineligible for selection.  Please see below the link to access the Representative School Sport Permission Details Booklet. This link will take you to the Cap Sport website where there is the link for the paperwork.

https://capsport.eq.edu.au/support-and-resources/forms-and-documents  

Mrs Betts (PE Teacher) and Ms Mackenzie (Principal) must sign this form before you take it to the trials. If needed you may email a completed student permission booklet to Mrs Betts (cbett49@eq.edu.au) at least three days before the trials and she will print the booklet and get it signed for you in time to take to the trials.

A very big welcome to the start of the year to all our families; new and returning! We hope everyone is feeling refreshed and recharged for what is bound to be a fabulous year ahead! We also hope all the children have settled nicely into their new classes.

If you are new to our school we genuinely welcome you to reach out to us if there is anything we can help you with, especially uniform and tuckshop related, or if you have any thoughts or ideas you wish to share with the P&C team. Be sure to check out and follow our P&C Facebook page. Our contact details are always included in our submissions in each weekly newsletter.

Please remember to update your childrens’ QKR profiles with their new classes for this year. If you’re having issues with the app, you can use the QKR browser with the same login credentials as the app.

Since this Friday is not a school day, for this week only, the Uniform shop will open Thursday 8:30-9:00am. Sales will be via QKR only, no cash or EFTPOS will be available. Normal times of Fridays 8:30-9:00am will apply from Week 2, right before school parades.

Our first meeting for the year will be Tuesday 13^th February in the Admin building at 5pm. We wish to invite everyone along and we would love to see you there. If you can’t make it but would like an opportunity to share your thoughts or ideas; please do not hesitate to reach out.

We welcome you to contact us at any time! You can email us on; communication.calliopess@gmail.com for our Communication Officer or pandc@calliopess.eq.edu.au for our Executive team.

Warm regards,

Heidi, Geoff, Angela and Lisa.