Feedback from Parent Teacher Interviews 

Last week we held our Semester 1 Parent Teacher Interviews. We have received positive feedback from families regarding the evening and from staff around the school. Collectively we heard that the afternoon was a great opportunity to celebrate the growth of students and the next steps in their learning. It was great to catch up with new and existing families and come together as a community for a purposeful and meaningful afternoon. I thank staff for their commitment and late evening after a big day of teaching and learning.  

I encourage parents to continue regular contact and communication with their classroom teacher to ensure that students understand their next steps and feedback that can be provided to ensure students have sharp and narrow areas to focus on.  

Teacher “Walks and Talks” 

Last week our rockstar teachers embarked on their first Walks and Talks to another cohort to ask selected students, 5 questions about their learning. Teachers and staff are reading a text Clarity which is a book study around the research of best practice in pedagogy. We are learning that Walks and Talks with leaders and teachers provides us clarity of the following:  

• Determining if students know what they are learning and how to improve 
• Do students know why they are learning what they are learning? 
• Do students know what they need to do to be successful? 
• Do students have a learning goal that they are working on? Do they know this goal? 

Staff were extremely positive and excited to celebrate the learning in each class and walked through every classroom within year level cohorts. The leadership team leader and teachers then had time to reflect on what they heard and saw. At Bowen State School leaders and teachers are now regularly visiting each other’s classes and asking questions of the learners. The Buzz that is created reiterates the importance of students understanding the English learning intention, where they sit in the learning journey and celebrate what they know and the feedback they have been provided. Leader and teacher walks will continue this Term, Term 3 and 4 this year. I thank all our teachers for the respect shown to the co constructed protocols so all our staff feel safe and supported to be part of this great research-based practice.

Christien Payne
Principal

Attendance

We have really hit the ground running with Term 2. Our school attendance is currently sitting slightly down from last term at 89%. Remember every day counts and valuable teaching and learning is occurring in every classroom every day. Give your child the best chance of success as a learner by ensuring they attend school every day! Don’t forget, if your child is away, let your classroom teacher know, use the absentee line or reply to the text message you receive on your mobile.

Prep 2025

The transition from Kindy to Prep is a special journey for each child at Bowen State School we would like to support our students and families to ensure each child has a great start.

To do this we aim to know 100% of our incoming Prep students by the end of Semester One in their year before school, that’s the end of this term!

If you have a child turning 5 from 1 July 2024 – 30 June 2025 they are eligible to begin Prep in 2025. We are now taking expressions of interest for our 2025 Prep cohort of students.

Contact the school office on 4786 9555 or come in and see us and we can make a time to talk about how our school can support you and your child with the transition from Kindergarten to Prep 2024-2025.

Australian Early Development Census (AEDC)

A letter  with information regarding the AEDC will go home next week. This census will be taking place in our school during weeks 7-9.

Participation in the AEDC is voluntary, however the AEDC relies on all schools with children in their first year of full-time school participating in the collection. Parents/carers don’t need to take any action unless they choose not to include their children in the census.

To find out more about the AEDC and how it is being used to help children and families visit: www.aedc.gov.au.

PBL FOCUS

This fortnight our PBL Focus – Be a Learner

Identify a need or problem and consider ways to take action.

It is important students to know how to identify the need or problem and solve it independently so they participate in all learning tasks ensuring they meet their full potential each day at school.

In English this term, Prep D are learning about information texts. We are learning facts and information about sea animals and have had a very special visitor named ‘Scuba Steve’ come into our classroom each week to help us. ‘Scuba Steve’ brings us a photo and some information about a sea animal that he has seen on his scuba diving adventures. We are using this information to label pictures and write words and sentences about each animal using our letters and sounds.

The students have also been having fun creating some sea animal art. Prep D was also very lucky to have Oscar’s mum and dad bring in some live Coral Trout and a Cattle Dog Cod for us to learn about, look at and touch. It was so much fun, especially when the fish splashed us and we got wet!

This week 1R learnt about fact families. They had a great time learning how fact families can help them solve addition and subtraction problems, and made these houses to remind us of our fact families strategy.

This week in 4A we are exploring new concepts in Mathematics and English. We are looking at time and how to calculate elapsed time using a number line. In English, we are learning how to write paragraphs using connectives and using feedback to improve our sentence writing.

We will soon begin writing our Information Report on an Australian endangered animal and we are looking forward to creating a poster to display our writing and research.