Welcome to 2019 School Year!

Welcome back to a very wet and rainy start to the 2019 school year. We have had a wonderful start to our school year. When walking around the school and visiting classrooms over the past two weeks it has been evident that our students have a very clear understanding of our four values; being respectful, being responsible, being a learner and being safe, and the expectations from our school matrix that align with these values.  Our classrooms have been productive, with students calm and engaged in learning.  It is great to see how happy all our students are being back at school.  I would to commend our students on their behaviour over the past two weeks.  With all the wet weather, our students have done a magnificent job of staying calm during all the inside lunch and play times.  I would like to take this opportunity to welcome back families who are returning to Bowen State School and to welcome all our new students and families.  Thank you to all our parents and caregivers for your exceptional organisation in ensuring your child is at school every day and fully prepared with all the resources required for learning, we understand what a huge job this is in the lead up to the start of the school year.

Joining the Bowen State School staff this year

We would like to welcome Miss Awhina Ross (Year 5/6C) and Mr Ben Seago (Year 5B) to our teaching team this year.  We are also extremely lucky to have Mrs Emma Daley (Year 2A) returning to our teaching staff after taking maternity leave over the past few years.  Miss Kelly Gorham has taken over as our Head of Inclusion in 2019 and Mr Trevor Flaherty (Learning Engagement Teacher) has returned to our school in a new role after supporting Merinda State School in Term 4 of 2018.  As a school community, we are extremely fortunate to welcome these staff to our school.

2019 School Priorities

Our improvement agenda is set out in our endorsed 2019 – 2022 Strategic Plan. In 2019 our school improvement priorities will be documented in our Annual Implementation Plan (AIP).  The AIP will be presented and discussed at our first P&C meeting for any interested parents, caregivers or community

members. This year our priorities are:

• Quality Teaching in English and Maths – This remains a focus so we can continue to see the amazing growth and improvements achieved. As a school, we continue to have a clear focus on the teaching of reading, writing and mathematics and the pedagogical practices that we use throughout our teaching to ensure that all students achieve to the best of their ability.
• Student and Community Engagement– We will continue to prioritise work as a school community through our work with:
• Student wellbeing – providing students with support through the teaching of Social and Emotional Learning, programming (Rock and Water, lunch activities, check-in’s, breakfast club, boys group, ALIVE), our full time CEC, Rainer Power and Chaplain, Adam Goode
• Attendance – As a school we will continue to strive for 93% attendance. We want to ensure that our students are at school every day.  We will continue to promote attendance every week through our school parades, classroom tracking charts, five weekly attendance awards, yearly attendance awards and class attendance awards.
• PBL (Positive Behaviour for Learning) – Teachers will continue to teach PBL lessons weekly with a focus on the four values of our school; being respectful, responsible, safe and learners, which will continue to be shared during our Friday morning parade. Our students will continue to engage in reward activities each term and will be awarded GOTCHA’s for following the four values of the school.
• Community Engagement – The school looks to continue to build on our work in how we communicate effectively with our school community.  We will continue our strong relationship with the P & C, and look forward to seeing many new faces at our first meeting next week on Monday the 11^th of February at 6pm in the school library.
• Implementation of the Australian Curriculum – As a school we will be continuing our work of aligning our school curriculum and documents with version 8 of the Australian curriculum, to ensure a clear vision for full implementation by 2020.

Uniforms

Thank you to everyone for having our children so well prepared for the start of the school year. Children need to be correctly dressed for school every day. As a reminder:

• Formal Uniform - is expected to be worn on Friday for parades, for any whole of school event and when children leave the school for excursions. The Bowen State School Uniform is the blue BSS shirt, black shorts/shorts/skirt, closed in shoes (trainers), BSS hat
• Sports uniform – can be worn Monday – Thursday. The Bowen State School sports uniform is our Denison/Leichardt/Sinclair shirt (can be purchased from the tuckshop), black shorts/shorts/skirt, closed in shoes (trainers), BSS hat
• Instrumental uniform – for students participating in our instrumental program, the instrumental shirt is to be worn on Thursday.

Wearing our uniform shows pride in our school readably identifies our students and helps with overall safety of children at school and on the way to and from home.

I look forward to another brilliant year at Bowen State School.

Jemille Malouf

Principal