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Welcome to Week Eight of Term One. Congratulations to all our Year three and five students who participated in NAPLAN this week. Thank you to Beemart for donating and providing fruit for our 2025 NAPLAN students. This gave our students a great start to the NAPLAN testing.
Last night the P&C AGM was held. With this I would like to thank our previous committee for their dedication and hard work. We would like to thank Geoff for his time as president. His leadership has been invaluable. We are excited to welcome our new president, Jodi Hallam, and look forward to working with her in the year ahead.
Geoff is staying on with us in the role of vice president, and we’re thrilled to continue working alongside him in this new capacity.
Please see below our newly voted in executive committee:
President - Jodi Hallam
Vice President - Geoff Kerr
Treasurer - Angela Kummerfeld
Secretary - Lisa Newby
With this strong leadership team in place, we’re excited to see what the year will bring!
Equity and Excellence
“Phones Away”
Students across the state have identified positive behaviour changes in response to the Phones Away for the Day policy. We at Calliope State School have had a phones away policy for many years. As this is now a state-wide policy, we are finding our students are following our processes of handing in phones each day to the office.
Parent Teacher Interviews
In 2025, Calliope State School will be offering formal interviews in Terms 1 and 3. An email with an invitation to attend a parent interview on Tuesday 1 April will be sent this week from your child’s class teacher.
This term we will be conducting interviews on Tuesday afternoon 1 April from 3.30-6.00pm. Interviews will be 10-minute timeslots. On the form emailed home. please indicate your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd preference for times. These interviews will be conducted face to face in the hall. If you would prefer a phone interview, please indicate this on the form.
If you have any questions, please contact your child’s class teacher.
Crazy Hair Day
Calliope Rota Kids are holding a Crazy Hair Day on Wednesday 26 March. It is a gold coin donation for students to wear crazy hair on this day. All money raised will go to a local charity group.
Harmony Day
This Friday, 21 March is Harmony Day. This is a day to recognise our diversity and brings together Australians of different backgrounds. Staff and students are invited to wear orange on this day to celebrate Harmony Day.
Term 1 has been full of engaging learning experiences for 5B! We have been actively implementing Kagan structures within our teams and incorporating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to support differentiation for all students, as outlined in the Calliope State School AIP.
At the start and middle of the term, students formed their own teams, created unique team names, and as a class we used AI to design their team logos. This Kagan strategy fosters collaboration, ensuring every student is actively engaged and supported by their peers.
In February, we had an exciting visit from the Bright Futures STEM Project, where students explored a variety of interactive technologies. Last week, 5B also completed their NAPLAN assessments, demonstrating their hard work and dedication.
In English, students are unleashing their creativity by crafting their own fantasy texts—an assessment they’re thoroughly enjoying as it gives them full creative control. Alongside this, we are reading Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief, sparking enthusiasm as they learn about different Greek gods.
It’s been a fantastic term so far, and we look forward to even more exciting learning opportunities ahead!
Cross Country- Monday Week 10
Just a reminder Cross Country is coming up in Week 10. Mrs Betts is holding Running Club on the back oval on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings (8:30am) in preparation for this. On the day, there will be age champion medals for 9,10,11 and 12-year old students. Students that are 10,11 or 12-year-old who place in the top five with a suitable time will get the opportunity to compete at the Port Curtis Cross Country Trials on Wednesday 7th May, 2025 (Term 2, Week 3) at Benaraby State School. For Port Curtis trials, all runners must be able to complete their distance without walking.
We are looking for volunteers to man checkpoints on the day. If you have completed the school’s mandatory training and would like to volunteer your time please email Cathy Betts (cbett49@eq.edu.au).
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Starting Times: Note times are approximate only.
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Distances for Age Groups
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Please make sure your child is wearing appropriate footwear on the day, and packs their hat and their water bottle.
Our Year 2 students, Riley and Jensen have been making a splash in the pool lately. The boys competed at the Gladstone South Novice Meet on the weekend competing against rising competitors from Central Queensland. Our boys won gold, silver, and bronze in their races. What an amazing achievement. Well done boys!
PBL Lesson this week
This week we are focusing on wearing items that keep us safe – hats and shoes. Please ensure that your child has a wide brim school hat to be able to wear when in the sun.
GEM focus this week
The focus this week is practising mindfulness by finding something that is blue, red, shiny and rough. Practising identifying these items at home when feeling angry or worried will help them be able to use this strategy at school.
End of Term Celebration – Teddy Bears’ Picnic
We are in full swing of completing Whole Class Stamp Charts. We have completed 9 charts and we need 20 charts to receive our Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Classes that have completed Whole Class Stamp Charts are: Prep B, 2B, 2C, 3C, 4A(2), 4C(2), 5/6C.
Positive Behaviour Data
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Action Type |
End of Term 1 2024 |
End of Week 7 Term 1 2025 |
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Positive Behaviour |
556 records |
562 records |
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Awards (Teacher Aide Certificate, Cool Kid Certificate, Classroom Cool Kid, Principal’s Award) |
177 awards |
127 awards |
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Good Newsletter |
89 letters |
76 letters |
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Contact Home (Positive email home, positive phone call home, e-postcard) |
42 contacts home |
43 contacts home |
TBA
QParents
QParents is a secure, online portal that is free for all Queensland state schools to use and provides parents with quick, easy access to their student information including:
- student and parent contact details
- attendance details
- report cards – all report cards (past & present) are available to view and upload
- invoices and payment history
- Online consent management
The student information displayed in QParents is surfacing information that is already recorded and managed in One School. The benefits of using QParents for schools and parents include:
- a faster, more efficient way to communicate with parents regarding student information
- a secure, convenient and automated process for parents to pay school invoices
- significant time and effort savings for both your school and parent community
- an innovative online communication tool that’s free of charge for both schools and parents to use.
How do I register for QParents?
You will be sent an email inviting you to register for QParents. You will then be able to register via the secure QParents website: qparents.qld.edu.au using the unique invitation code contained in the email. You will require each child’s unique EQ ID and you must verify your identity by providing 100 points of identification. If you cannot verify your identity online, you should contact your child’s school for assistance. The school will review your registration and approve your account. You will then be able to access the QParents app.
Please note: if you have not received the QParents invitation email, please send correspondence through to admin@calliopess.eq.edu.au with your full name, student/s full name & DOB to request your QParents invitation.
- ARTICLES FOR OUR SCHOOL NEWSLETTER: If you wish to publish a NOT FOR PROFIT COMMUNITY article in our school newsletter you can do this by sending an email to admin@calliopess@eq.edu.au with all the relevant details. This will then go through our approval process prior to publishing.
- REMINDER TO PARENTS: Reminder to parents and visitors to the school to drive carefully when accessing the front entrance of the school. Please drive slowly, abide by the speed limit, normal road rules and be mindful of your surrounds. We appreciate your attention and understanding.
- COLLECTING YOUR STUDENT EARLY FROM SCHOOL: We realise that, on occasion, students may arrive late for school, or need to leave early; it is hoped that these occasions can be kept to a minimum so that the learning of the student, the class and the routine of the school is not unduly disrupted. In the event that your child is late or leaves early, please ensure that the correct procedure is followed to sign in/out by going to the Administration building signing out on the iPad, collect a slip and present it to the classroom teacher.
These processes are in place so that the teachers and school staff are aware of the movement of students at school. This is for the protection and welfare of all staff and students. It is important to look at the impact that late arrival and early departure have on a student/s education and those around them. It is not only disruptive to learning that is occurring in the classrooms at the time of arrival and departure, it is all time that accumulates to missed opportunities for learning. A student who is arriving late or leaving early by 15 minutes twice a week will miss, in total, the equivalent of 4 days of school across the year.
- RETURNING CALLS TO THE SCHOOL: We ask parents to assist us by checking their message bank before returning calls to the school, to establish which staff member has phoned. Due to the high volume of staff within our school it is not possible for us to identify who may have called you. Please call the member on their direct number if they have provided this as this will free up the office phone lines.
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MESSAGE TO STUDENTS: As you know, schools and classrooms are very busy places!
To ensure our students are fully engaged in their learning, and our office staff are able to complete their multitude of daily required tasks, we ask that parents communicate clearly with their child at the beginning of each day where you will be picking them up from in the afternoon.
As you can imagine it is extremely difficult for our office staff to field scores of phone calls asking for messages to be passed on to children regarding pick-up information.
Should you need to contact your children throughout the day, please do this via the office. These should be emergency situations only. Messages received after 1.45pm may not be acknowledged by the class in time, so please ensure children know their pick-up arrangements.
