Welcome Back

Firstly, I'd like to thank staff and students for a smooth start to term 2. We welcome new families to Bowen State and I am grateful for a wonderful leadership team supporting our school during my absence in week 1. My family and I enjoyed visiting the Gold Coast, Byron Bay and stayed close to the beautiful Tweed Hinterland (Bundjalung Country). Surfing was a highlight and watching pods of wild dolphins in the surf was so cool. It is great to be home and back to work. I truly appreciate how lucky we are living in Bowen, such a peaceful and convenient place to live, work and play.

ANZAC Spirit

Thank you to the Bowen State School Staff for the considered planning and running of the Bowen State School memorial service last Friday. It was amazing to see the number of students at the dawn service and large number of families and children at the morning march. A proud moment for our school and community. Our students were extremely respectful and looked amazing in the sea of blue uniforms. Well done all!

Incoming Staff

Congratulations to Therese Smalley who won the acting position as the Head of Curriculum here at Bowen State. We welcome back Therese to our school. Families and staff have great connections with her previous work here in various roles over the last 17 years. Therese is looking forward to bringing new skills learnt in her recent role and supporting the students our school.

Effective Teaching and Learning

This term we continue to drive our school’s explicit agenda around differentiation for all learners in English. Moderation of student learning will be a focus with regular opportunities for teachers to discuss strategies for the next steps for their learners and reflect on their impact regularly. We know clarity of the Australian Curriculum and high yield teaching practices will create a rich learning experience for all.

Christien Payne
Principal

It has been a busy return to school with some new families and staff joining us. It has been exciting to see students engaged in their learning. It will be an action packed term with all of the events planned.

We have started the term with 89% whole school attendance.  With some weeks being four days it is extremely important for your child to come to school as each day the learning builds on what has been learnt the day before.  

ATTENDANCE CELEBRATION

Congratulations to these students who achieved 100% attendance for Term 1.

Prep- Montgomery, Layla, Troy, Samuel, Lillian, James, Maliana, Jack, Harriet, Orlando,  Fletcher, Flynn, Isla, Harlow, Harlee, Linkin and Frankie

Year 1- Tate, Carter, Hayley, Brock, Winta, Darcy, Matthew, Samuel, Sophia, Nash, Toby, Ngoc Lam, Zai, Ayla and Thomas

Year 2- Kayden, Nate, Lachlan, Kloe, Cecil, Peni, Ian, Indy, Scarlett, Darcy, Kayden, Jake, Harrison, Charles, Lacey,  Ava, Harry, Emily, Giovanni, Kai and Lincoln

Year 3- Kydenn, Bohdan, Logan, Lincoln, Billy, Cruden, Riley, Emily, Emily, William, Jesse, Piper, Leilani, Dylan, Glen, Sierra, Jessica and Charlotte

Year 4- Lilly, Heidi, Javarne, Phoenix, Mia, Tilly, Nathaniel, Kaylee, Lochlan, Veneice, Tannah, Violet, Raiden, Alexa, Chace, Jacob, Miley, Mathew, Sarah, Willow, EJ, Liam, Thomas, Lacey, Lilah and Archer

Year 5- Ashton, Seleena, Kilani, Isaac, Declan, Toby, Roman, Xena, Lakeisha, Brooke, Evie, Sarsha and Dennis

Year 6- Zhian, Ruben, Bryce, Jadon, Sean, Sebastian, Bo Wen, Sefton, Braxton, Aaliyah and Tobias

WINTER UNIFORM

School jumpers are available from our uniform shop. If you purchase a jumper or track pants from another company please adhere to our standards:-

ALL black coloured tracksuit prants or girls can also wear ALL black coloured tights with black school shorts, skirt or skort over the top. (Wearing only tights is not acceptable).

ALL royal blue jumper (no logo) / pull over or zip at the front (no hoodies).

Track pants or jumpers emblazoned with offensive advertising, cult images, drug and alcohol advertising, or other inappropriate slogans are unacceptable for school wear

Karen Weekes
Deputy Principal

The students in 2M have been working hard on writing a narrative for their English assessment.

We have also been learning about ANZAC Day and honouring those who fought and died for our country. Ella and Kyro were our class representatives for our school ANZAC parade on Monday. Jake brought in photos of his grandmother’s house that was decorated to honour ANZAC Day. Noah also brought in photos to honour his great grandfather who was a member of the 209^th RAF squadron.  

This term, 3A are learning to write a narrative, based on the theme of friendship.  They use a learning intention to guide their writing and help evaluative the set success criteria. Our focus for the start of this unit has been to use sizzling starts. The first two sentences aim to capture the readers full attention.  This sample of writing a cross section of the work using different formats.

Since our previous update, 5/6H have gotten straight back into the swing of things at BSS. The class thoroughly enjoyed a Touch Footy training session with Katie, a Mackay based rep before the Easter holidays. The cross-country training paid off for several 5/6H students in particular, who are off to District trials this Friday - all the best!

Since the holidays, we've hit the ground runnning, delving into new unit content in Math, Science and English. If there's a plus side to the barrage of ads we're exposed to - it's that your 5/6H students can now tell you the tricks of the advertising trade that we’re learning about in English. We'll be continuing our multiplication focus and starting angles, 3D shape and negative numbers shortly in Math.

Check out some of the Visual Art animal scultpures that the students have created -  AMAZING! There's some serious talent in this class. Our Year 6 students who spoke and participated in the ANZAC parade on Monday also did a wonderful job.

 

This term in Technology we will be undertaking our Media Arts unit. Prep to Year 4 will learn about different media artworks and explore their differences and similarities and understand where and why media artworks are made. The students will make and share artwork through sound and text technologies using PowerPoint and other applications.

This term Mrs Coughran will be teaching Year 3 and 4 Technologies on a Monday and Tuesday, whilst Mrs Radcliffe will continue to teach Prep-Year 2 Thursday. We are looking forward to the fun and learning that will unfold this term. The students have already started exploring the functions on PowerPoint and other art applications.

This week Years 3 and 4 created an ANZAC sunset soldier inspired artwork piece. There were many steps involved in this process, as they created their background artwork on 3D paint. The had to save and upload pictures, add border textbox and change font and size. The students wrote a letter to the ANZAC’s.

Welcome to Term 2!

We hope you had an amazing holidays and are ready for a great term of positive behaviour.

Before I discuss our new behaviour focus, I would like to highlight some of the other reward celebrations that were held at the end of last term.

Preps enjoyed an obstacle course, Year 5 enjoyed some Just Dance and outdoor games, and Year 3 enjoyed a nice relaxing movie.

Welcome back to Term 2. In alignment with our Education Department’s environmental policies, BSS is now trialling a paper free distribution of Class Curriculum Maps and Class Newsletters this term. These documents will be uploaded on your child’s Class Dojo on Friday 28^th April 2023. Please see your class teacher if you don’t have access to Dojo and would like a paper copy.

 

We have lots happening at BSS throughout Term 2.

Parent Teacher Interviews - Information has been sent out regarding Parent Teacher Interviews happening next week, Tuesday 2^nd May and Wednesday, 3^rd May.

Year 6 Camp is in Week 4. The camp has been collaboratively planned around curriculum. Students will be creating a multimodal advertisement and explain how to persuade the viewer to choose this as a holiday destination as part of their Unit 2 English assessment task for Term 2.  I hope all students are continuing to make good behaviour choices so they can participate in this valuable learning opportunity.

Book Fair – Lots of wonderful books will be available to purchase throughout Week 7, 29^th May-2^nd June.

Athletics Carnival – Field events will be held on Monday 19^th June, the Senior Athletics Carnival will be on Wednesday 21^st June and the Junior Carnival will be on Thursday 22^nd June.

V9 Australian Curriculum – Throughout term 2 teachers will begin professional development around the updated Version 9.0 Australian Curriculum. The updated Curriculum is going to be more manageable for teachers and clearly identifies the essential content our children should be learning.

Jessica Boucher
Acting Head of Curriculum

A number of students have been spending their playtime in the library at first lunch. They have enjoyed playing chess, building LEGO, quiet reading, drawing or colouring in or playing quiet games on the carpet.

There has been plenty of exciting things to do at ECDP to start off Term 2!

We have been working towards building social awareness, taking turns, developing our play skills and expanding our play repertoire.

Social Skills form an integral part of what we do at ECDP.

They are a critical element to helping students succeed socially, emotionally, personally, and even academically.

Social Skills are what we use every day to interact and communicate with others. They include verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression and body language. They are the skills and behaviours that help kids join in conversations, collaborate with peers, develop lasting friendships, self-advocate when they need help, and so much more.

As adults, the biggest impact we can have to help kids learn social skills at any age, is to teach them!