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Welcome to Week 4! Last week we offered parent interviews by phone. This was a wonderful opportunity for parents and teachers to share the great work happening in the classrooms and discuss any areas for further work for individual learners. If you would still like to have an interview and missed one last week, please make contact with your child’s class teacher. Last week was one of our formal feedback weeks for parents; however, you are welcome to contact the class teacher at any time throughout the year to discuss your child.
Get Active August
We look forward to participating in this year’s alternative to the Gladstone Botanic to Bridge. GET ACTIVE AUGUST is facilitated by the Gladstone Ports Corporation and
encourages the school community to get active! We started this challenge yesterday on Monday 3 August. Once completed GPC will make a donation to our school, which can be used to purchase school resources or sporting equipment.
Each class has received a pedometer from GPC to keep track of their steps. Our challenge is based on enrolment numbers and for Calliope State School, we need to walk around Australia three times – 51 000km. Each class will record their distances each week in August. I am sure we can achieve this goal!
Pink Stumps
Last Tuesday, we held our teacher versus student Pink Stumps cricket match. There were lots of participants from the student group, vastly outnumbering the teachers. Thanks to Miss Tuttle hitting a 6 and a 4, the teachers won 21-17.
Bringing in Food to School
With the restrictions currently in place, we remind families that no food is to be brought to school to share with others. This includes birthday cakes, ice blocks or lollies. Students are also regularly reminded to not share any lunchbox food with their friends. We have students with severe allergies to certain food items and this ensures that all students know to only eat the food packed for them each day by their own families. We appreciate your continued support with this.
Reading
Reading continues as our focus this term at school. Learning to read is a significant
milestone in any child’s life and one that will bring many benefits over an entire lifetime. Parents play an important role in modelling reading behaviours and supporting your child’s reading efforts.
Ways you can help your child’s reading:
Model reading – Let your child see you reading, read to yourself and read to your child – often.
Make time for reading – Make regular time for reading, even if it is only 10 minutes a day!
What happened next? – Encourage your child to retell experiences and events in sequence. You can prompt them by asking, ‘What happened next?’ Do this after reading stories with them, allow them time to retell what happened and ask questions about the characters or the plot or the setting.
Express yourself! – Encourage your child to use punctuation to influence their reading out loud. Encourage louder and softer voices, faster and slower pace,
reading with more emotion and expression. Remember to have fun!
Encourage and praise – Reading should be enjoyable for you and your child. Always encourage their attempts and praise their efforts.
Prep Enrolment 2021
Enrolment packages for Prep in 2021 are now available from the office. Student details will be required when an enrolment form is given out. Eligible students for Prep in 2021 must turn five on or before 30 June 2021.
Completed enrolment forms are to be returned to the school office. We need to sight original Birth Certificates when enrolment forms are returned. Enrolment will not be completed without the Birth Certificate. For any further enquiries, please contact the school on 4975 8333 or email admin@calliopess.eq.edu.au
Show Holiday
Next Monday, 10 August, is our local area annual Show Holiday. This is a public holiday and schools will be closed.Thank you!
Thank you to all our Calliope community for your continued support of our students, parents and staff. We appreciate your efforts in keeping everyone healthy by maintaining social distancing around the school and keeping students at home if they are unwell.
What's Happening in 5C...
This term we are investigating the properties of light and the formation of shadows. We have investigated reflection angles, and looked at how refraction affects our perception of an object's location. Students used this knowledge to attempt to ‘spear the lolly’ using different angles and explain the most successful starting position using their knowledge of properties of light.
Congratulations to 5B who had a great attendance rate for Week 3. Their attendance rate was 96% for the week! Also congratulations to the three classes which were at or above our school attendance target of 94% for Week 3.
The Positive Behaviour for Learning lesson for Week Four is: Responsible – Praise in public, follow up in private. This is an important lesson for our school as it will help clear up a misconceptions around consequences for student behaviour.
At Calliope State School we have a policy of praising in public, then following up in private. We do not shame students publicly, nor can we legally talk about other students to you when we call about an incident. This is based on legislation which all public schools are required to adhere to. So, it’s important to understand that just because you do not get told what the outcome was for other students, or if your child does not hear what consequences were given to the other student/s, that does not mean that nothing has happened. So, to help create awareness, here is an outline of our processes:
- Every behaviour incident reported to the office is investigated and dealt with;
- Every red card sent to the office – which relate to behaviour incidents – are investigated, entered into our system and the referring teacher, classroom teacher and relevant Deputy are referred into it to make them aware of both the incident and the consequences;
- Depending on each investigations merit, parents may be contacted at this stage;
- Lastly, a slip is then placed in the referring staff member’s pigeon hole to let them know of the outcome of the investigation and that it has been dealt with.
A lot of work goes into all this, but it’s work that the community does not see due to legal reasons. What people do see though, is us praising our students for the great behaviour and work, through certificates, stamps, Cool Coins and positive emails home. So please be reassured that we are following up in private.
Fantastic Fun Friday is coming up on the 14th August and the theme is Hollywood Red Carpet! Students can come in free dress as their favourite celebrity, character from a TV show or book, or their favourite story. Alternatively, they can also just wear free dress.
Calliope News on Facebook every Tuesday at 9.00am so please check it out.
Have a good week.
Thanks.
Brian Rowe
Student Welfare Teacher
RotaKids held their first meeting for Semester Two this week. With COVID restrictions
in place, our meetings and events will be slightly different to the past. For Term Three, RotaKids will be organising school based activities focusing on promoting and encouraging the positive well-being of students and staff. In Week 5 RotaKids will organise a Teacher vs P-2 Student cricket match and in Week 6 they will organise a Teacher vs 3-6 Student cricket match. There will be more activities planned in the following weeks. RotaKids will share photos of these events in the school newsletter so that parents and community members can see the fun being had.
We are holding a Pie Drive this term. Letters and order forms will be sent home very soon via email. Please be aware that it may be directed to your junk folder. We are very excited to be able to hold a Pie Drive this term and we hope that families can support it. Delicious warm pies are perfect in this cooler weather.
Orders are due back by Monday 24th of August. NO LATE ORDERS CAN BE ACCEPTED, SORRY.
Delivery Days
Prep – Year 2: Wednesday 9th of September
Year 3 – Year 6: Wednesday 16th of September
For families with children in different year levels, your delivery date will be determined by your eldest child’s year level.
Tuckshop
This term, Tuckshop will be open First and Second Breaks, Tuesday through to Friday. We are still cashless, due to COVID procedures, so make sure you place all orders on the Flexischools App.
Uniform Shop
Please continue ordering uniforms via Flexischools. Contact us via Facebook on on pandc@calliopess.eq.edu.au
Flexischools
We have found an alternative to Flexischools which is more user friendly for our families and our P&C. Throughout this term we will be transitioning to use QKR, but don’t worry, this will be a slow transition. For now, Flexischools is still in use and this is the best way to order your tuckshop and uniforms. We will keep you updated as the transition begins in the coming weeks. Watch this space!
Your P&C Team
Tenielle, Sian, Bec & Kate
