Welcome to Week 5 of Term 2. Next Monday, we celebrate our volunteers in our school. National Volunteer Week is Australia’s largest annual celebration.  This special event provides an opportunity to highlight the important role of volunteers in our community have.  The volunteers in our school are significant and you play an important role contributing to the lives of our students, from providing breakfast to assisting with reading practice.  Thank you to everyone one of you.  Please look further in the newsletter for details of our Volunteer’s Morning Tea Celebration.

Calliope State School Dress Code

Attached to the bottom of this newsletter is Calliope State School’s Dress Code.  Students at Calliope State School wear our student uniform with pride.  I especially notice this on Friday’s when we have assembly.

There are a few who may have forgotten some aspects of our School Dress Code.  Please take a moment to review our Dress Code.  Bike Pants can be worn with either black skorts or pleated skirt, but are not to be worn unaccompanied.  Hair that is longer than shoulder length is to be tied back and coloured hair needs to be saved for the holidays.  Below is a photo of two students, who are wearing correct school uniform with pride.  Well done Bailey and El-Jay. You are amazing. One easy fix is some of our students are wearing necklaces.  Unless these are for cultural purposes, they do not form part of our school uniform and are best left at home.  If anyone requires any assistance with purchasing a uniform, please contact the office.

What is Happening this Month in Calliope State School

Volunteers Week

National Volunteers Week will be held from 20-26 May 2024. Calliope State School has a wonderful team of volunteers in the school throughout the year. To show our appreciation to the dedication of our volunteers, we invite all our parent, family and community volunteers to a morning tea on Monday 20 May at 9.30am at the school. We look forward to seeing all our volunteers there.

 Date Claimer – Under 8s Morning

Calliope State School will be holding our annual Under 8s morning on Monday 17 June from 9.15-10.45am. Our Prep – Year 2 students will be participating and we welcome parents and younger siblings to this event. Our local Kindy friends are also welcome to attend with parents. More information will be going home soon for the Calliope students.

2B Goes Back in Time

During Semester 1, students have been investigating continuity and change in technology used in their homes. They have learnt about what changes in technology have occurred over time, and how these changes have impacted on people’s lives over the generations. As part of this unit, the year 2 cohort attended an excursion to the local Calliope Historical Village. We travelled by bus, visiting and learning about the history of Barmundoo, Rosevale Homestead, Larson’s Cottage, The Wool Shed, Wrights Cottage, Machine Creek School and the old Mt Larcom Jail.  Students will now use information gathered to develop a narrative about the past. 

Students off to visit the Machine Creek School. They used a slate board and learnt some of the school rules and expectations.  The students all agreed they are thankful for the changes to technology over the generations.

Congratulations to 4/5D who had an amazing attendance rate for Week 4. Their attendance rate was 97.91% for the week!

Also, congratulations to 7 other classes which were at or above our school attendance target of 94% for Week 4.

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

Last Wednesday, Calliope SS students competed at the Port Curtis Cross Country trials at Benaraby. The students have been training for their event of 2km and 3km run. All students put in a big effort on the day and Mrs Betts was very proud of their achievement!

Congratulations to Isabella who won the Age Champion award and Coaches award for best effort at Gladstone South Swimming Club. We are very proud of you Isabella!

Hi Families

Last night at our P&C meeting, a lot of discussion around fundraising and upcoming events. Book fair will be held next week in the library and our schools Liberian is seeking some volunteers to help Monday to Friday from 8.30am – 9am. If there are any parents who can spare ½ hr after drop off, please email communication.calliopess@gmail.com or pop into the library and put your name down.

We had some new faces at our meeting last night, and we thank you for your involvement.

We are seeking parent involvement / representation with PBL meetings. These meetings are held once a month for half an hour from 3.30pm – 4pm in the Staff Room. 

The PBL meetings are designed for parents/caregivers, teachers and leadership to collaborate on how to instil positive behaviour into learning for our students and discuss behaviour trends, what is doing well and not so well and implementing ways to improve behaviour.

Last Thursday, the road safety committee held a meeting to discuss options around providing additional car parking for parents to help reduce congestion in front of the school during drop off and pick up times. The current option that is being considered is to utilise the old rail yards across the highway and utilise the current underpass to access.

We had member for Callide, Bryson Head, Cr Goodluck and Cr McClintock as well as representatives from the School, P&C, Police, Rail Trail, Transport & Main Road (Rail Corridor) and Gladstone Regional Council.

While there is still a lot of work to do, there was good discussion around a pathway forward for the carpark and the added benefits this location would have on the broader community, in particular adding carparks to assist with events at the rodeo grounds.

It was wonderful to see many students participate in walk safely to school last Friday   as well as supporting Day for Dolly by wearing the colour blue.

Over the next couple of months, there will be more fundraising opportunities to support such as our annual pie drive, Sports Day, Bunnings sausage sizzle and hopefully something fun for the kids.

 We have been running Question Time for a couple of weeks now and your feedback and input has been valuable. We appreciate all your ideas and feedback, and in order to make your suggestions possible we will be needing your support and time to make them happen. We will need parents or community members to join the working group for fundraising, so if you are interested and want to see a disco at the school, cent sale/garage sale. Please email pandc@calliopess.eq.edu.au or direct message our Facebook page.

 Please remember, you don’t have to be a member of the P&C to volunteer.

Our objective is to continue this great work and keep kicking goals in all areas of strategic planning, fundraising, school improvements and community engagement. We would genuinely love to hear from the school community with any thoughts or ideas you have on how we can all work together to keep making progress in these areas. You can contact us on communication.calliopess@gmail.com for our Communication Officer or pandc@calliopess.eq.edu.au for our Executive team.

Warm Regards

Geoff, Jason, Angela & Lisa