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Celebration of students returning to school
This week commenced the return of all students back to school. Staff have ensured the classrooms have the right conditions to create predictable, supportive and safe environments. Our Positive Behaviour for Learning Team have been supporting staff with professional development around the important practices and routines to encourage and reward our students for positive behaviour.
I have extracted a powerful statement from our PBL Mission Statement. This encapsulates what we value and believe in this space for our students here at BSS. “Bowen State School is committed to providing a safe, respectful and disciplined learning environment for students and staff, where students have opportunities to engage in quality learning experiences and acquire values supportive of their lifelong wellbeing.”
Classroom social skill lessons have been tailored around social and emotional skills to support our students “Mindfulness and Wellbeing”. Although we are all back at school there are still restrictions around large gatherings, sporting events and parades. As restrictions ease, we will communicate these changes with families. We are looking forward to soon enjoying all our events we hold close to us here at Bowen State School.
Prep transition for 2021
Last week we featured our Prep for 2021 launch in the local paper and sharing information out to the local kindies and childcare centres. If you have a prep school aged child for 2021 please like our 2021 Prep Transition Face book Page. This will include information, videos, regular catch ups and a timetable for our face to face visits later in the year. What we have learnt from research and Professional Learning that as a school is vital we form relationships and communicate with our future children and their families to ensure a smoother transition into school. Another great initiative is our playgroup, which is now up, and running again every week. Come, enjoy a free coffee this Friday, and meet our wonderful hosts. Our playgroup is run by our Head of Special Education teacher Ann Jay Sibley, Early Years Coach Karen Weekes and Teacher Aid Lara Southern. I also visit regularly. A great catch up for parents and children in our community. We meet in the library 9am-11am
ARD visit
Next Monday we welcome the second catch up with Graham Foster our Assistant Regional Director for the term. This visit will be face to face at our school and we are looking forward to sharing with Graham all the hard work teachers have been preparing for the return of our students. We will be visiting all the classrooms and talking to students about the learning. As a leadership team, we will be talking to Graham about our exit from COVID plan and where we are going with the teaching and learning. It is great to able to once again talk about our Explicit Improvement Agenda and recommence the goals around reading and maths. Graham will provide our school with feedback and the next steps for our team.
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
Christien Payne
Principal
Welcome to back to school all students of Bowen State School! It has been lovely walking around and seeing everybody catch up and reconnect with their friends after such long time. There is a certain amount of vibrancy that we all have at the beginning of the year that we have now. It’s not too late to make something of 2020 and this is the message that I will be sharing amongst our students.
Attendance
It has been a while since I have had the chance to talk about school wide attendance, but with everybody back there is no better time than now to talk about and celebrate attending school.
The decision to return to school for all Queensland students is supported by the Queensland’s Chief Health Officer and aligns with progressive easing of restrictions as part of the Government’s response to COVID-19.
It is recognised that some parents of students may still wish to keep their children home from school due to concerns about COVID-19. This is an acceptable decision and your child will not be marked as being absent, rather that they are learning from home under your supervision. I do ask that you notify the school via the office each day that this is your intention and access the learning@home website which includes details about Learning@Home TV programs. In these cases, parents and carers remain responsible for their child’s learning. This includes ensuring their child/ren stay at home and continue their learning using the materials outlined above.
If your child is unable to come to school for sickness or whatever reason, please notify the school office each day of absences as per pre-Covid times.
We are open for business and are encouraging all students back to school. This week’s attendance rate was 89.5% which is below our target of 93%. Given the current circumstances, we should take it week by week as far as reaching this goal. For the next 2 weeks, it would be great to see our attendance rate rise to 91% so keep coming to school.
We have had some outstanding attendance amongst certain classes around the school. A special shout out goes to the following classes that achieved an overall attendance rate of 96% and above.
What's Great at Bowen State... Episode Two
Jeremy Callaghan
Deputy Principal
PM
In Prep M we have been identifying 2D shapes and sorting them by shape, sides and vertices. We had lots of fun creating our own 2D shape monsters.
2M
Show me the money!
Over the next couple of weeks, our class is revising Australian money and making sure we know how much each coin and note is worth. This is very important, especially for those with older brothers or sister who might ‘cash in’ on any financial illiteracy!
We’ll be choosing the correct money to go shopping, counting collections, and making a specific amount using the least number of coins and notes……future financial analysts and accountants in the making perhaps?
3C
The students have had lots of fun re-enacting the relationship between the sun, the earth and the moon. They conducted a role play of how the earth orbits the sun, while the moon orbits the earth. We had minimal collisions, so Earth is safe... for now.
Click here to view
4 A/M
Students in our class excelled at designing a Cereal Box that children would be persuaded to buy. This example was submitted by Javan Ruttiman has some great features.
Our focus this first week back has been on neat bookwork. Mr Mitchell has taught addition, subtraction and short division with students showing clear setting out to help calculate the correct answers.
5H
Students in year 5 are pretending to be a journalist for the Larossa Bay Times. It has come to their attention that there are different points of view about how to best manage a colony of flying foxes that inhabits an area close to residential land in Larossa Bay. The students must work through the following tasks to write a feature article that presents a point of view about the appropriate management of the local flying foxes.
1W/P
These students from 1W/P recently received their Ready2Read certificates from Mr Callaghan. Congratulations. Keep up the good work
Emotions
This week I have had many conversations with students, teachers and parents regarding helping our kids with their emotions. Recognising how we are feeling then identifying how this impacts our behaviour is something we need to explicitly teach. This tool below is a great visual to support recognising emotions with coloured zones. The trick is for kids to catch themselves before they move into the red zone and use their coping strategies to bring them back into the green zone.
Monday 8th June at 6pm in the Library
All parents and carers are welcome to join, we look forward to seeing you there
Sports Update
Due to the current COVID 19 situation, Bowen State School will NOT be hosting a Whole School Sports Carnival this year.
In the event that restrictions ease, there is a possibility that Sub District, Whitsunday and North Queensland Athletics will go ahead in Term 3. We would like to give students Aged 10-12 the opportunity to attend these events IF they happen. At this point interschool sport is not allowed for the remainder of the term however, we will continue to be guided by the Queensland Government Chief Health Officer’s directives regarding Covid-19.
Nominations will be selected as follows:
Field events: Long jump, shot put and high jump nominations will be selected during HPE lessons. Top 3 students for each event will be selected and receive information regarding Bowen district trials.
Running events:
Students will have the opportunity to nominate at school during HPE lessons. A track will be measured on the oval and the races will be timed. Top 2 for 100, 200m and top 3 for 800m will be selected.
We are aware this is not ideal however, we need to follow government advice by altering our selection process and limiting group numbers.
**Unfortunately, due to the current restrictions spectators will not be permitted to attend these events**
Additional information:
-Only students who are 10 or turning 10 will be eligible (born in 2010)
-Students selected will receive more information and permission forms for District Trials to be held on July 30th 2020 provided interschool sport restrictions are lifted.
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding during these unprecedented times.
Hello Everyone,
The last 8 weeks of the COVID 19 Exclusion for students has proven to be an opportunity for myself and Chaplin Beau to get out and about delivering work packs to our student’s homes. It has been a great conduit to getting to know the parents and hearing their frustration regarding Sew Saw and Do Jo. The parents have been amazing, willing to share their frustrations and concerns around this Pandemic. They are all champions as they showed their willingness to make this isolation work.
This home visit procedure has allowed parents to get to know us and what we do at school. During the past 4 weeks we have met with parents of practically all students not attending or not participating in Virtual schooling due to the virus. This has proven to be successful as the school were able to reach out to parents and normalise some of the shared experiences discussed by the parents.
Out reaching our ATSI community allowed the school to become aware of some of the issues that face our families and students. Expressing to the parents/carers/kinship, the exceptional effort that our educators have provided to support their students during this time has been acknowledged by these families.
As school returns to normal, it is the intention of the school to continue to outreach families to encourage communication with the school around anything that may impact on their childs being or ability to regularly attend school.
This week is Reconciliation Week and the students in the school will be working on some projects that fit with the Theme this Year WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER.
This could not be more appropriate considering the Pandemic that our entire world has been impacted by.
A group of Male students have come together to form a group that will eventually be documented and produced by the students, who will then offer this to the school in the form of educating their fellow students on their cultures. The school has been fortunate to have the guiding expertise of Gareth Prior and Buddy Cassidy.
The group also has a female contingent and the girls of mixed races have diligently come together to practice and learn “Proper Culture” as it is referred to by our mobs.
Both groups are now on track to begin seriously working towards their final piece that will be presented to the school. Our Budding Producer/Deputy Principal is also taking an interest and will be following up on both the groups progress.
Thank You
