Welcome back to our Prep and Yr. 1 students

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome back our Prep and Year 1 students to their first week of formal learning. Children within classrooms were actively engaged and enjoying the attention from their teachers which was great to see.  Can I thank staff for their hard work and preparation for the arrival of the preps and Year 1s. This enabled a smoother transition back into school. Thank you to parents for your patience and support with the drop off and collection plan. In a fortnight, we will be joined by the Year 2-6 students. Teachers have been working hard on planning the curriculum and learning for the following last four weeks of this term. We will continue to inform our families along the way through this process.

Reporting for Semester One

Teaching and learning has been very different in 2020, but all schools are still required to provide a modified academic report to parents for Semester 1, 2020. Here at Bowen State School, most year levels completed all of Term 1 units of work and teachers are now identifying the curriculum that needs to be covered during the remainder of Term 2, when all students have returned to school. The work from both terms will be used to allocate the mark for the semester.   All year levels will be reporting on a minimum of English, Maths, Science or Hass, The Arts, and HPE. Report cards will also contain a comment about participation in learning at home.  Thanks to all of those families who have submitted student work for teachers to look at. Due to COVID-19 interruptions, report cards will be emailed to all parents Week 3, Term 3.

Parent/Teacher Interviews

Teachers have been contacting families by phone over the last two weeks to discuss student achievement, instead of our usual face-to-face interviews.   Contact your child’s teacher if you still have any concerns about your child’s learning.

 Learning at Home-Week 5

Next week is the last week of students in years 2-6, learning at home. There will be no more paper packs distributed for Week 5; instead, we are suggesting that you take this final week to complete all unfinished lessons and keep communicating with your child’s class teacher via Dojo or Seesaw. You can also still access any of the online units of work and the educational programs televised on the ABC and channels 7,9 and 10. You may return any completed work to your child’s teacher; just make sure you have it clearly labelled with their name and class.

Return to school Hygiene practices

As we move towards all students returning to school, it is important to notify our community of the hygiene practices that we are enacting to ensure the protection of our children. These practices include:

1. Regular handwashing and hand sanitising, particularly before and after eating, and after going to the toilet.

2. Increased cleaning of school classrooms, particularly high frequency touch points Including water fountains or bubblers.

3. Regular cleaning of play equipment and materials.

 Welcome to our office staff

I would like to welcome Erica Newberry to the acting role of BM in our office for the remainder of this term. Erica comes with a wealth of experience in this space and has been warmly received by staff at our school. Lauren Aitken will also be joining the admin office team for two days a week. Welcome aboard ladies and looking forward to your future in our school.

Looking forward to sharing more great stories happening in our school over the next fortnight. Until then have a wonderful couple of weeks.

I believe in:

Hard Work

Honesty

Transparency 

New Technological Element Added to our Newsletter

A positive for our school coming out of this Covid-19 period is all of the technological skills our staff have had to learn and integrate into their everyday teaching in order for your children to continue their learning at home. Our teachers have come a long way in this area over a short period of time and many of us will be looking at continuing to use these newly learnt skills when school returns back to normal.

This week I would like to introduce a new element of technology to our fortnightly school newsletter called ‘What Makes Bowen State Great…’ The intent of this newly added news bulletin is for you to get an inside look at what’s been happening at our school for the past 2 weeks and hopefully provide you with a couple of giggles along the way. Each edition will feature various Year 6 students as the presenters capturing snippets of learning and fun from across the entire school. Check our first episode below or look out for it to be posted up onto Facebook. Don’t be shy to give it a like too.

What's Great at Bowen State... Episode One

Thank you to everybody who has viewed and shared our staff Tik Tok dance to ‘blinding lights’ on Facebook last week. It was great as a staff to come together (distancing of course) and do something fun that distracts from everything that is going on around as at this present time. We all had a blast making the clip and hope that you and your children enjoyed it too. If you haven’t seen the short video, be sure to check it out on our school Facebook site.

Jeremy Callaghan

Deputy Principal

Checking in – what are your coping strategies to deal with stress?  We’ve been asking students at school and this is what they have shared:

• Screaming into my pillow
• Cast netting
• Walking on the beach
• Playing with my dog
• Cuddles from my family
• Wrestling my dad
• Trampolining
• Skateboarding
• Fishing
• Drawing
• Singing
• Dancing

How are you building these activities into your day?  It’s important to plan for wellbeing and positive mental health.  Write list out and put it on the fridge.

Photos of the week are sent in from one of our senior students.  Dakota below displaying some her of wellbeing activities.  Thanks Dakota.  Send photos into dupke3@eq.edu.au.