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Responding to the school review
This term as a whole school community we have been working hard to respond to the findings of the school review and start to formulate the next steps for Bowen State School. We have been able to identify where the 18 recommendations fit under three focus areas. Curriculum, Inclusion and Data Analysis. We are writing actions for the three key areas and are close to drafting up the 4-year action plan. I am looking forward to sharing this draft back to the school and community. Early in term 4 I will be sharing the final document with the school P&C, staff and the ARD Helen McCullough.
Professional learning opportunity
Next week The Deputy Principal Karen Weekes and I will travel to Townsville to collaborate with 150 other school leaders and the annual State School Roadshow and Principal Business days. The two days will encompass opportunity to deepen our collective understanding around the current regional priorities and direction for the North Queensland Region schools. These events are an important opportunity to network with other principals and share practices in our schools. We will look forward to return and share the key messages with our staff.
Prep and High School transitions
This term we have engaged in highly successful transition sessions for our future prep students and their families. We have received lots of positive feedback so far. Last week was a highlight with the students getting the opportunity to engage in a HPE lesson with Mr Dunn. This year we have collaborated with the Bowen State Highschool leadership team to extend opportunities for the year 6 students to experience more opportunity for transitions at the high school campus. Today the year six students had an afternoon session just for our school. The students enjoyed visiting classrooms and experiencing a taste of high school. Next term there will be a range of transition activities including visits to our school from high school staff and opportunity for students to attend activities at the high school.
Looking forward to sharing more great stories around the teaching and learning this term. Until next fortnight have a great couple of weeks.
I believe in: Hard Work Honesty Transparency
Our whole school attendance currently sits at 88%
Our attendance target is 93%.
Congratulations to 3/4C for having the highest attendance with 96%.
Well done to 2W/G, 1J, PL, 3/4C & 5/6P for having 100% attendance on one day over the last two weeks.
POSITIVE BEHAVIOUR FOR LEARNING
The PBL focus for the fortnight is safe sitting and eating in the eating areas. This new poster can be seen in all areas. Congratulations to all students for the improvement in safety at eating time.
HEALTHY LUNCHBOX HEALTHY BRAIN
We recognise that preparing and packaging a nutritious lunchbox can be challenging. Finding time to shop and prepare interesting and healthy meals can be stressful. The ‘Grab ‘n Go’ shopping list below makes it easier to provide the essential foods your child needs every day.
Currently we are having more students struggling with anxiousness due to a range of reason: assessment time, changes of routines at home and school for example. This graphic is a useful resource when supporting little people with anxiousness.
Here are some tips and tricks to keep lunchboxes fresh, cheap and easy!
Keep it simple: Shop by what’s in season and on special to find vegetables, fruit and all the other goodies that are within your budget. You’ll generally be able to identify what fruit/veg is in season usually by when its cheap/on special.
Fresh is best: When cutting up fruit such as apples, pears, peaches and bananas squeeze a little bit of lemon juice to stop it from going brown. A few curious BSS students learnt all about this during science week too!
The freezer is your friend: Think bulk and batch. Where possible, freeze foods so you can whip them out during the school week. Savoury muffins, quiches, zucchini slice, falafel balls or yoghurt pouches and home-made muesli bars are some great options that freeze well!
In Science this term, Prep D have been learning about materials and their properties. We read a funny story called ‘Monsters Love Underpants’. The monsters in the story went looking for underwear with lots of different properties. They found fluffy, shiny, twangy, elastic, squeaky, woolly, jewelled, bright and itchy underwear, to name a few! We then made our own monsters with their own special underwear which we had to describe the properties of. During Science Week, we talked about the properties of the material ‘glass’ and made our own stained glass windows to display in the classroom.
Prep/1W have been busy measuring classroom objects with paddle pop sticks, unifix blocks and paperclips. We have been estimating and then measuring accurately with no gaps or overlaps. We even measured Mrs Collins one day - she was 14 paddlepop sticks long. We know how to measure something if we’ve only got one paddlepop stick or unifix
Prep/1 W have been learning about the features of places and how they can be shown on maps and models. The students are making 3D Lego models of familiar places, with Mrs Collins on Mondays.
2I have been writing information reports about animals this unit. We read texts about the animal and then we write notes using dot points. We then turn our notes into sentences about the animal. We have been looking at General Information, Appearance, Habitat, Diet and Predators. After we have written about the animal, we then draw a picture of the animal and label it. So far we have written about Nightjars, Peregrine Falcons, Crocodiles and the Corroboree Frog. We are moving onto the Northern Blossum Bat for our assessment.
