Welcome Back

Welcome back to all our families to an exciting and new term. As I shared on parade, this will be our final quarter to drive the explicit teaching and learning each and every day here at Bowen State. We want to ensure all students are moving forward in their learning and finish the year strong. Our fortnightly data conversations with teachers will be focussed on students knowing their next steps in English and Maths and that the right feedback is provided and is timely and specific. Our recent parent teacher interviews offered a wonderful platform to share the strategies for our learners so all parents are aware of the next steps. Thank you to all the families who supported this powerful afternoon of collaboration.

I mentioned on last Fridays parade our school wide strategic focus in 2024 will align to 'Equity and Excellence' and the three key areas of Educational Achievement, Wellbeing and Engagement and Culture and Inclusion. Starting strong and on track for success will be the platform to ensure our students can reach their full potential. Transitions for the remainder of this year will be a focus ensuring our students are supported with their transition to the year level above and the work of next year. Our inclusion team is working hard to support classroom teachers with individual needs and opportunities for students to become familiar with their new settings.  Prep transitions for 2024 have entered an exciting stage with kindy visits, interviews and step-up day. If families have not completed enrolment forms, please hand these to the office.

Professional Learning

This week I have been fortunate to learn alongside 30 other principals selected across the state to attend the 2024 Courageous principals’ course in Brisbane. I am looking forward to the leadership skills and knowledge that will support my role here at Bowen State School. The weekend of learning will be very targeted towards my own individual next steps and will truly benefit the work I do each and every day.

Next week, Deputy Principal Karen Weekes and I will be attending the Principal’s Roadshow in Townsville for 2 days. We are looking forward to hearing the messages from the Director General Michael De’ Ath and Deputy Director Sharon Schimming. Over the two days we will also hear from a range of leaders and find out the North Queensland’s key messages for the collective work in 2024.

Kind regards,

Christien Payne
Principal

'In English this Term, Prep D are learning to add a new event and change the ending of a story. To be able to do this, we have to identify the characters in stories and describe them. We also have to identify the Beginning, Middle and End events of a story. Students are doing a great job drawing their characters and events, labelling their pictures and then writing about them! '

1W have been very busy in class since returning from holidays. Our reading groups are a very busy learning time. We have read the following books this week: String Food, In the Park and Thud!Crash!.

This week, 3A students have been exploring fractions of shapes and collections .  They have enjoyed participating in meaningful and respectful number talks about fractions, explaining why the fraction is smaller when the denominator is  larger and why fractions must be based on sharing equal parts. Discussion about where we see the use of fractions in everyday life has been interesting. Some ideas discussed included how pizzas are cut up,  chocolate bars, cooking of cakes,  the fuel tank in the car, bags of small packets of chips and fractions of time.  Students have explored fractions using worksheets, counters and collections of stickers, blocks, shapes and buttons. In maths groups,  we included https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/build-a-fraction/latest/build-a-fraction_en.html a game on matching fractions on the computer. Conquering the spelling of fraction vocabulary has encouraged students to  practise using the syllables rule, every syllable will have a vowel in it. Students find denominator, numerator and vinculum are easier to spell when they sound out syllables.