Welcome Back

Welcome back to all existing and new families to Bowen State School. Over the holidays we enrolled a significant number of new families and we welcome you to our great community. The commencement of Term 3 will be a great opportunity for new students to experience all of the special traditions at Bowen State, that make our school such a special place to learn.

Recently our Regional Director, Joseba shared his clear directive around Educational Achievement, Culture & Inclusion and Wellbeing & Engagement.

• Educational achievement, because knowing each student’s learning progression is essential to making sure they are on track for positive educational outcomes. Clear expectations for every student, accompanied by differentiated support enables them to achieve.
• Culture and inclusion, because the diversity of our staff, students and school communities is our greatest strength.
• Wellbeing and engagement, because being healthy, confident and resilient is our foundation for engaging in learning and with a focus on wellbeing for all staff and students. We create a sense of belonging and a positive environment for teaching and working.

This is a great reminder to start the term. The current focus at our school is closely aligned to the State Education vision of “Equity and Excellence” for all of our students. Recently I shared those key strategic messages from our Regional Director at the staff meeting and fortnightly data conversations with teachers. It is important that we work together as a system to ensure that all of our students reach their full potential.

Staff Changes and Acting HOSES

This term we welcome Ethan Shaw, our Pedagogy Coach of Inclusion, to the Head Of Special Education Services role. Ethan has acted in this role at his previous school and is working hard to ensure he is the champion of inclusion and is providing support for teachers, families and students. The continued priority is to ensure students are on track to access the teaching and learning during the next ten weeks of school. Ethan will be attending the Challenge Games camp and is looking forward to this new experience. If any families of a child with a disability have questions with the changeover of staff, please contact the main office number for an appointment with Ethan.

Prep Open Day

I would like to thank the entire school community and staff for your tremendous efforts in planning and ensuring our recent Saturday Open Day went smoothy for our newest families for prep next year. We saw strong attendance again this year and I must say the petting farm was a highlight. It was great to meet new students and their families, including lots of grandparents. This is an amazing tradition that we are starting, for the first steps in the path towards Prep 2024. If families know of a prep student due to commence next year, please contact the office and check out our Facebook page for all of the upcoming activities.

Christien Payne
Principal

Our attendance target is 93%  

Our whole school attendance is currently 88.14%.

Congratulations to Prep D for having the highest attendance this term!

School Opinion Survey 2023

Each year families, students (Yr 5 & 6) and school staff have the opportunity to have their say about what our school does well, and how we can improve by participating in the School Opinion Survey.

An invitation to complete the Parent/Caregiver Survey was emailed to one parent/caregiver per family last week. The invitation is sent from the Department of Education, not the school, and it will have the subject line, ‘School Opinion Survey for parents and caregivers, 2023’. Check your junk email folders if you can’t find it.

The survey is anonymous. Personal information such as email addresses are used for distribution purposes only. These are separated from person’s responses and deleted, prior to the responses being uploaded into the database. 

The School Opinion Survey collection period opens Monday, 24 July and closes Friday, 18 August. The survey can be completed as soon as the invitation is received and will take approximately 5 minutes using a computer, tablet or smart phone.

We encourage all parents to complete the survey, as the school uses this data to inform our future direction.

Karen Weekes
Deputy Principal

Head of Special Education Services (HOSES) Update
For those of you that are unaware, I (Ethan Shaw) am acting in the HOSES position while Ann-Jay is on leave. My aim is to promote, lead and value add to the inclusive culture and practices within the school community, to ensure equity and excellence for students with a disability or those requiring adjustments. Another focus is to work closely with all teachers and support staff to consistently embed a high quality of teaching (including adjustments) for students with a disability or requiring adjustments to access and engage in learning tasks. I will work closely with families, teachers and existing professional supports (e.g., speech pathologists, occupational therapists, paediatricians etc.,) in order to meet the needs of individual students. I will also be assisting students to engage with professional supports (e.g., occupational therapists) by coordinating and completing referrals (with parent/carer consent).  I strongly encourage any parents/carers wanting to meet or discuss any of the above to please contact me by email ecsha0@eq.edu.au. 

Challenge Games
A group of students, staff and parents will be travelling to Townsville next week for the 2023 Challenge Games. The purpose of the event is to promote fun, friendship and participation whilst competing in a range of sports and activities. Lots of planning has gone into ensuring that the event will be a successful and enjoyable experience for all students, and we look forward to sharing photos and a full report in the next newsletter.

In Prep this week we celebrated being at school for 100 days! We wore bright colours and sunglasses because we are 100 days brighter and smarter (our future is SO bright, we had to wear shades)!

We had such a fun day filled with craft, games, face painting, playdough, obstacle courses, biscuit making, Lego, music, and lots of balloons. We finished the day receiving smarties and glow sticks from our amazing Prep teachers, it was awesome!

1W have started a new unit in English. Over the next 5 weeks we are learning to add a new character to a story we have read. We will be interviewed about our new character choices. Amalie, Nikita, Charlotte and Marlee are holding the books we will use. 

2/3R have been learning about money and calculating change. We have been loving using our little shopping carts, writing shopping lists, gathering all our items and calculating our total and the change required.