Welcome back

Welcome back to all our new and existing families to Bowen State School. Can I thank everyone for your understanding and patience through a difficult delayed start to the 2022 school year. We are excited to welcome all students back to school and are ready for the teaching and learning. I would encourage families to remain in regular contact with teachers through Class Dojo, phone calls and socially distanced safe catch ups. I have observed calm and settled rooms with evidence of lots of resourcing and planning to ensure all students have the best start to the year.  Students in the upper years are currently in the recruitment process for school leader positions of Sports Captains and Student Council. Our leaders will be formally inducted during this term. We will notify families of the time lines and format.

Please be assured that our school has been taking all appropriate precautions regarding health and hygiene and we will continue to act in accordance with the advice of Queensland Health.

If you or any members of your household develop symptoms or feel unwell, please get tested immediately and stay home and isolate. Further information including testing centres, alerts and symptoms of COVID-19, can be found via the Queensland Government https://www.covid19.qld.gov.au/ website.

Could I encourage families to utilise the frequently asked questions for families resource https://qed.qld.gov.au/covid19/frequently-asked-questions and always contact the school if you have any questions or queries around the current COVID 19 directives. Our school Facebook page, school sign, SMS and emailing are ways we are regularly communicating with our school community.

New Staff

This year we welcome many new staff to Bowen State School. We have included a profile on each within this newsletter. Our main focus is supporting a successful transition with lots of induction and training around the Bowen Way! Please join with me in welcoming our newest editions to the team.

Welcome Karen Weekes

At the end of 2021 we farewelled Mr Callaghan on his western adventure. In his absence, I would like to welcome our very own Mrs Karen Weekes into the Acting Deputy Principal role for this term. Karen brings a long career of early years expertise and is undertaking some great leadership this year around the inclusion and differentiation work at Bowen State School. The position will be advertised this term and interviews will commence shortly for the role till the end of term 2 this year with possible extension. Congratulations Mrs Weekes, we are all looking forward to having you undertake this role in our school.

Day 8

Parents may not be aware that traditionally we collate all the students within our school for our allocation of school funding on the 8th day of the school year. Due to a very unsettled and unpredictable start to the school year, the department has made some significant adjustments. It was recently announced by Education Queensland that funding for Bowen State School will be based on our November 2021 predicted numbers for this year. I would like to inform families that by now we would usually be able to finalise classes and teachers for the year. Unfortunately, as the process is being drawn out it is important that families understand that there may be some changes to classes and teachers. The expected timeline is around the 25th of February. We will notify individual year levels if this change does need to occur.

Full School Review

This year Bowen State School will be undertaking a full school review. This opportunity to look for the next steps at Bowen State School will involve the whole school community. The external reviews will be talking to staff, students, parents and community members. The dates for the review will be 10th,11th and 12th of May. I will be including information about the process and resources leading up to the event via the newsletter. We are working hard with staff this term reflecting on the key strategic work and high yield practices that are working to improve the learning outcomes this term. I have included an information flyer for families.

I'm looking forward to sharing more great stories around the teaching and learning this term. Until next fortnight, have a great couple of weeks.

Christien Payne

Principal

I believe in: Hard Work Honesty Transparency

Finally, our school term has begun. Welcome back everyone! We are excited to get to know all of our new staff, students and families. It is so fantastic to have the majority of our students back at school after such a long break and we are all very pleased to get the school year underway. All students have settled well and are learning about routines, transitions and expectations for the classroom and school. It’s vital that we keep in touch with each other about your child and her/his education. It’s even more important that our students be actively involved in talking with their parents and teachers about their learning.  

Here is a few photos of some of our hard working students during their first week back.  

Class Dojo 

Most classrooms are using Class Dojo as part of their class reward system and also as a way of communicating with parents and carers.  

The online consent forms have already been sent home with students please return the permission forms to the school office as soon as possible. 

Curriculum & Classes 

To date we have 18 classes with two composite classes- a Year 3/4 Class and a Year 5/6 Class. Right from day 1, all students are engaging with the eight areas of the National Curriculum. Class newsletters and curriculum maps which outline the work covered in Term 1, were sent home last week. We send these out each term to keep you informed of the great work that is happening in each of our classrooms.  

If you are interested in finding out more, go to the link below: 

Click here to visit the Australian Curriculum websitehttp://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ 

• English 
• Mathematics 
• Science 
• Health& Physical Education (HPE) 
• The Arts (Music, Dance, Drama, Media, Visual Arts) 
• Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) 
• Technologies, (Digital Technology & Design Technology) 
• Languages (Spanish Years 5 & 6) 

We are really looking forward to a great year of learning! 

Maxine Hillery 

Head of Department-Curriculum  

• support students feeling safe and happy at school and beyond.
• work with staff/students/families to make reasonable adjustments for students to achieve success at school.
• work with staff/families and wider external agencies to support resilient and successful children.

Danielle Upkett
Guidance Officer

Welcome back to another year of sports at Bowen State School. Due to our delayed start to the school year there are many trials happening in a short period of time.

Basketball Trials

Basketball trials have already taken place for our sub district level. We had nearly 50 students from schools in our district trial which was a massive number.

Congratulations to Charlee, Georgia, Ramsey, Billy, Riley and Deklan for making the team. They will now participate in the Whitsunday trials on Thursday 3rd March. Good luck to these six students.

Touch Trials

Touch Trials are taking place this afternoon at the Sports Complex. All the best to Lincoln, Riley, Deklan, Jacob, Lachlan, Ljay, William, Sebastian, Tobias, Ramsey, Charlee and Georgia. We will let you know how they go in the next newsletter.

We also have AFL, rugby league and netball trials coming up in the next couple of weeks. In the next newsletter we have the updates from all these trials.

Swimming Grade 3 to 6

Starting next week we have our swimming program starting for students in Grades 3, 4, 5 and 6. This will run for six weeks taking us right to the end of Term 1. The program will focus on water safety, educating students on how to stay safe around water and what to do in the case of an emergency.

We would love to have some extra help during this program so if there are any parents who are willing to assist please contact Leigh Dunn at school.

Leigh Dunn
HPE Teacher

If you have a cupboard clean out and have any items that you don’t want any more, don’t throw them out- they may be a useful prop to add to our drama cupboard. Things like ties, hats, bags, bangles, necklaces, waistcoats, jackets, scarves and belts are really useful for students to use to dress-up for performances. All donations are greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Allison Conway

Performing Arts Teacher

Prep D has had a great start to the school year. We have been learning and practising daily routines and are getting pretty good at lining up! We have made some class rules that will help us to be happy learners while we are at school. The Prep D students have been working on being amazing ‘whole body listeners’, have been practising writing their names and have shown their creative side by creating some wonderful self-portraits!

Year 2 have started the year by learning about 2D shape and 3D objects in maths. We have been busy drawing shapes and describing their properties. This week, we will explore 3D objects and count how many faces, corners, edges and curved surfaces they have.

What a great start to learning we have had. In our first two weeks, 3J have been revising strategies we can use to make adding and subtracting easier. Sometimes, students are doing addition by counting on large numbers on their fingers or making their ruler into a number line. This is useful at the start but then we need to move to mental calculations which we can do by using strategies like doubles, or making ten. We have had fun improving every day. If we know 4 + 4 = 8 then we can work out 4 + 5 = 9 in no time. Way to go 3J!

4S have been writing narratives - here's a glimpse of a story by William Payne. 

A terrifying cyclops was psychotically taunting the tough soldiers in his mammoth lair. His green eye glared at the ripped solders that where stealing his meal. Rusty chains hung from his flabby arms. He madly rolled an immense boulder in front of the door way to keep the men in. He madly threw a bloody skull in front of the petrified men as they took off down to the ship. 

English 

In 5H we have been reading the Deltora Quest novel, The Forests of Silence. Students have been enjoying the novel and been focusing on identifying positive and negative character traits.

Maths 

We have been learning about different types of data, including categorical and numerical data. Our first assessment for maths was completed this week. We will have another math assessment towards the end of the term.

Brain Breaks 

We often participate in brain breaks to break up the larger sessions. “Our brain breaks help us release energy that we’ve built up during working”, Tobin.  

6G has had a wonderful start back to the school year. We have started to look at our short story unit in English, and have already written a few entertaining stories. Students of 6G are very engaged with our HASS topic this term which is looking at Australia's road to Federation in 1901. We also did some Peer Reading with 1T. Check out our pictures below!