Governor of Queensland visit

Last Friday our school had the incredible opportunity to host his Excellency the Governor of Queensland. The Governor was welcomed to our special parade by our Mayor Andrew Wilcox and greeted warmly by all 430 students. It was fantastic to hear the Governor speak fondly of Bowen and highlighting the fact that our school was named after the first governor of Queensland.

Our students sang the school song beautifully and his Excellency mentioned this in his speech later that evening to community members. A highlight was giving a tour of our 165 year old school and viewing some of the heritage listed buildings.

This event will be remembered for many years and such a special event for us. Congratulations to all students for their respectful and responsible behaviour during the visit. Well done to our school leaders for hosting the Governor during the special afternoon.

Reviewing our impact

As we roll into the last fortnight of term 1 staff are busily collating and reviewing the impact of their teaching. Students have been working on their goals to achieve the next steps in their learning and striving hard to improve on teacher feedback. At Bowen State school we want to ensure that every student is moving forward in their learning and that no student is going backwards. Next term parents and students will have an opportunity to meet formally to discuss their child’s progress. We will be hosting parent, student and teacher interviews early in the term. This event will be hosted in the parade hall and bookings will be via the SOBS School Online Booking System. More information will go out early next term around this important check in at Bowen State School.

End of term activities

Week 9 and 10 will be extremely busy and action packed here at Bowen State. There are many key events occurring throughout the school during this time. Can I encourage parents to track our Facebook page, school sign and check in with your classroom teachers for updates. We will continue putting up the weekly timetable of activities on our school Facebook page.

Looking forward to sharing more great stories around the teaching and learning this term. Until next fortnight have a great couple of weeks.

Appropriate School Uniform

Over the past few weeks it has been noticeable that a small number of our students have started to wear incorrect school uniform. Please take the time to view below our Do’s and Don’ts for wearing school uniform.

School-wide Positive Behaviour for Learning Evaluation

Last Tuesday we were lucky enough to have our North Queensland Regional PBL Rep visit our school to survey our students and staff with the intent on evaluating the effectiveness of our Positive Behaviour for learning program. Students and staff were asked several questions like “What are our school values?” and “What rewards do you get if you are displaying correct behaviour?” Although our official results are not in yet, our initial feedback was very positive with almost every student able to articulate our PBL processes, school core values and what our weekly expected behaviours focus was. This is great news for us, as we have been working in the PBL space for the past 6 years here at Bowen SS promoting positive behaviour and developing a safe and supportive environment across the school. A special thank you goes out to our PBL team leaders Mr Gulliver and Mr Seago for their efforts in continuing the work laid out by Mrs Witts and Mrs Insch from previous years.

If you would like to know more about how PBL works in our school, please access our ‘Student Code of Conduct’ document available via our school’s website.  

Jeremy Callaghan

Deputy Principal 

School House Cross Country

Our school house cross country is taking place this Monday 22nd March between 9am and 11.30am. This is for all students from Grade 3 to 6. This event also seconds as a qualification for sub district cross country which is happening the following Monday. Parents are welcome and encouraged to attend to support the students on Monday.

Sub District Trials

This has certainly been in full swing this term with many sport having their district trials. At this stage we have to give a big congratulations to Carter S and Deklan N who have qualified for the rugby league Whitsundays team.
It was amazing to see 8 of our students try out for the AFL Football trials last week, something that is very new at Bowen State School and even more impressive was to see 4 of our students qualify for the Whitsunday team. Congratulations to Hayden F, Jake L, Billy G and Carter S.
We also have Xavier S who qualified for the North Queensland swimming team, another sensational performance.
Next term our sub district trials continue with touch footy occurring on the first day back! We will keep you updated on everyone’s progress.

Basketball Excellence Program

We have now begun our basketball excellence program and the improvement in all of the students involved so far has been amazing. They are starting to put their skills together in mini games and we will hopefully be able to get some larger scaled games happening next term!

Swimming

Swimming for Grade 1 to 4 students wraps up next week. These students have enjoyed heading down to the pool on Tuesdays and Thursdays this term. Preps, 5’s and 6’s will have their opportunity in Term 4.

Juggling Club

It has been great to see more than 60 students from Grade 3 to 6 with that number growing consistently. Juggling is great for hand eye coordination and will give students the opportunity to perform in front of an audience later in the year. Keep your eye out for these, it promises to be very entertaining!

Have a great week everyone

Leigh Dunn

HPE Teacher

Free Dress Day - Friday 26th March

On Friday the 26^th of March we will be hosting a free dress day. Students are asked to bring a gold coin donation to raise money for cold water bubblers. We appreciate your support.