ENewsletter

From the Principal

Staffing

It's that time of year that brings a mixed bag of emotions. We farewell some staff and look forward to welcoming some new staff into our fabulous school.

Of course, a lot can happen between now and the beginning of 2023, but these are the known staffing changes as of today:

Ms Viv will be leaving us for Currimundi State School, closer to her home on the coast. She has been with us for 6 years, an instrumental teacher in moving the school leap years ahead in our reading practices and being the voice of our PBL.
Miss Blumke has accepted a transfer to Woombye State School. Miss Blumke's kind and nurturing demeanour has made her a very popular staff member with your children.
Ms Michelle is taking a Semester long service leave. We look forward to catching up with Michelle on her return next year.
Ms Bron is leaving our classroom music position, heading back to her family in Cairns. Ms Bron has loved her time in Peachester, we wish her all the best in the tropics!
Mrs Westrup is continuing her family leave next year. We send our love for a happy 2023 to her and her family! We are fortunate to have Mr Huggett continuing in the HPE role next year.
Miss Catherine Cameron is transferring into our school from far north Queensland. Miss Cameron has a wealth of curriculum and behaviour knowledge, as well as a love for sports. She will be coming in next week to spend some time in the classrooms because she is really keen to get to know the students and our fabulous community.

Class Structure 2023

As you know, class structure takes quite a lot of careful orchestration. Our indicative numbers are down, similar to every other school across the coast this year.

When we break up classes, we have to consider what units each child has been previously taught, their friendship circle and their wellbeing. For this reason, some students in our Year 3 cohort in particular (current Year 2's) will be split to allow appropriate numbers across the year levels.

If we experience a lot of enrolments before our "Magic Day 8" (the day that we receive our staffing allocation), then we will have to reconsider, but for today, this is the planned class break-up.

Prep - Year 1 with Mrs Jennings and Ms Robertson
Year 2 - Year 3 with Miss Cameron
Year 3 - Year 4 with Mr Laurence
Year 5 - Year 6 with Ms Harrison

You will receive notification of your child's teacher prior to the end of school year.

Storm Season

Dear Parents,

As the storm season approaches, we feel it timely to remind you of our Storm Procedure.

STORM PROCEDURE: In the event that a storm is due to occur around end of school time, a Storm Procedure will be put into place if necessary. Once the decision has been made to enact the Storm Procedure the following will occur:

• Parents will receive a text message to advise of the procedure being in place. (please ensure your mobile numbers are current)

ALL Students from Prep to 6 will be held in their classrooms with their teachers until the storm passes.
The office will go into lock down to manage the parent phone calls and distribute messages to students in their classrooms. PLEASE NOTE: NO STUDENT IS TO BE COLLECTED FROM THE OFFICE.
If safe to do so, parents are to sign students out from their classrooms.

PLEASE NOTE: Students are to be signed out with the class teacher BEFORE leaving.

Buses will be held back in the event that it is unsafe to take students out at the usual times.
Once safe, all students awaiting collection after the buses have left, will be held in the junior undercover area until parents arrive

Student Leader Applicants

This week our Year 5 School Captain nominees delivered their School Leadership speeches. They have been very busy preparing for this very special occasion. The students all spoke confidently and clearly, telling their peers and school staff why they deserve our votes. Mr Andrew Powell, Member for Glasshouse, attended and has left feedback for all of the candidates. He looks forward to hearing the outcome after their interviews next week.

The Year 5 candidates have participated in leadership training with Ms Harrison to assist in their preparation for a potential leadership position in 2023.

The 2023 School and House Captains will be formally announced at our Presentation Evening on Friday 2nd December. The leadership ceremony will occur early next year, where these students will receive their badges.

Pictured:

Tynisha (School Captain & Stanley House applicant); Sevennah (Coochin House applicant); Micah (School Captain & Stanley House applicant); Mr Andrew Powell MP; Sophie (School Captain & Stanley House applicant); Violet (School Captain & Stanley House applicant)

Semester 2 Report Cards

Currently our teachers are finalising students’ report cards for Semester 2. The information contained in this report will be an important summary of your child’s progress and achievement in learning areas studied during this semester.

All students in Prep to Year 6 will be issued with their Semester 2 report card on Wednesday 7th December. These reports are an important tool used by our school to communicate with you about your child’s achievement, effort and behaviour. Once issued please take the opportunity to have additional discussions with the classroom teacher if you have any concerns or queries.

A friendly reminder that this semester we will once again be issuing report cards via email. If your email address has changed, please make sure you update it with Admin.

Parade Awards

Parade Awards - 17th November

Parade Awards - 24th November

Prep News

The “mystery bird call” has become a favourite time of day in Prep. We have been listening to a bird to have a guess at which bird it could be. So far we have heard the catbird, a bell bird, the satin bower bird, a peacock, a plover and the very interesting call of a brush turkey.

For some of the birds, we have made a page about it and soon we’ll compile this into a book to bring home. We have also learnt about mud wasps – did you know that after building their nest, they paralyse insects to put into it, lay an egg on the insects and then close up the nest with more mud? The old mud wasp nest that we looked into had lots of little spider legs in it, as well as a set of wings. It was fascinating!

Year 1 News

This week in Year 1 we have spent some time working on our emotional wellbeing by focussing on gratitude. Did you know that practising gratitude in your daily life can benefit both your physical and mental health!

We watched a video clip of ‘The Gratitude Jar’ book by Kristin Wiens (available to view on YouTube at home) and discussed what we were each grateful for.

Below is a picture of our gratitude leaves which were added to our individual ‘Gratitude Trees’.

Miss Kunde and Miss Viv

Year 2/3 News

This week in 2/3 we have enjoyed presenting and listening to all of our amazing poems! We each wrote a short poem about what we can see, hear and feel in the fairy garden. We used descriptive language, onomatopoeia and alliteration to make our poems interesting and engaging for the audience. Everyone worked extremely hard to learn their poems and we all enjoyed listening to the presentations.

We are now looking forward to some Drama! We have read “When the snake bites the sun” and “Hunwick’s Egg” and have explored drama conventions, characters, settings and sounds and shared ideas about how we can work together to bring these stories to life. Our groups have started to allocate various roles and jobs to begin planning some drama presentations.

Year 3/4 News

We are very quickly reaching the end of a very busy and productive year. Students have been working so hard to complete assessments and tasks. I am so pleased with their resilience and attitudes towards this. They all deserve to be congratulated.

This week, we have begun ramping up our rehearsals for the Awards night next week. The class is sounding fantastic!

For costumes, we are keeping it very simple.

- All students need to wear a white shirt of some sort

- Dark shorts/trousers/jeans of some sort

- Any boxing attire they might have (gloves etc)

- We will provide other costume items at school

Year 5/6 News

Spider Day 2022

Last Friday was Spider Day. This was a fundraiser and all the money went to the year 6 graduation. The year 6’s had lots of fun making spiders for the students. After a lot of fun but hard work we got a spider too.

All of the year 6’s want to thank our parent helpers who shopped, helped out and donated goodies so we could make spiders as well as the rest of the school for supporting us.

Student Leader Speeches.

Well done to Sevennah, Micah, Tynisha, Sophie and Violet for your great effort and confidence in presenting your speeches today. Our whole class was very impressed with your efforts and spectacular speeches. Goodluck with the rest of the process and your interviews.

Just a reminder that we are still teaching and assessing and yet to finalise all of the assessment pieces. Being at school every day is important.

· Awards night next Friday night 2nd

· Beerwah State High School transition days next Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd.

· Year 6 Day out Monday 5th to Coolum Aqua Park

· Class party Tuesday 6th

· Swimming carnival Wednesday 7th

. Clap out and Yr 6 Graduation Thursday 8th