Term 2 Week 2 Newsletter 24 April 2024
Principal's Messages
Welcome to Term 2! Hope you had a restful break from the routines of school life. Our feet hit the ground running on Monday morning and they will not stop running till the end of Week 10!
What will Term 2 bring apart from the annual inter-house athletics carnivals, Under 8’s Day, report cards, Biloela Show Holiday, ANZAC Day? There are 3 short weeks along with professional learning, P&C and Project club fundraising, and so on. Of course, our most important activity for the term is TEACHING AND LEARNING!
Our priorities this year are:-
- Enhancing educational achievement in Literacy through high quality instruction
- Enhancing wellbeing and engagement through high quality partnerships and social emotional learning program.
I am very excited to announce and welcome Linda Tighe to our school. Linda joins our school team as a social worker, alternating fortnights between onsite and telehealth. This is a wonderful support to our students and school community. I know Linda will embrace her new role and support our students and school community in achieving our mission statement of nurturing the whole child.
All classes should have received an email with their student’s class overview for the term. Class newsletters come out in week 1 and week 5. Please see your teacher if you have any questions about the learning in your child’s room.
Over the coming weeks we have quite a few classes off on excursions to support their learning. Thank you to our staff for looking for ways to enhance and engage our students in their learning.
In Term 2, all students in years 4-6 will be asked to take part in the Queensland Engagement and Wellbeing (QEW) Survey.
We know that wellbeing and engagement are important parts of your child’s life at school. The QEW Survey is designed to measure how students view their wellbeing and engagement across different topics. The information we get from the survey helps us better understand and support our students. More information, including FAQs, can be found on the Education website: https://qed.qld.gov.au/publications/reports/statistics/schooling/students/queensland-engagement-wellbeing-survey
Have an awesome week everyone!
Fiona
School Mission Statement/Capable Learner
Our school mission statement forms the basis of all decisions made by the school. Our first question in all we do is always “what impact does this have on our students?”
Attendance
Every day counts! Our attendance school target is 94% and we are currently at 90.5%. one of the factors that helps student success both academically and socially is regular attendance at school. Thank you for working with us to give your child the best possible start.
SEL News
This term we are running a number of focus groups in SEL, along with some whole class programs. It is an exciting term ahead with a number of guest speakers who will be coming to talk with our students. We feel very fortunate to have such a supportive community who are wanting to support these programs and our students.
What do I do if my child isn’t in a focus group this term?
Take a moment to unpack with them that groups are put together by looking at numerous factors that they may not be aware of or can’t always see. Often there are considerations that people are unaware of and this can be hard to explain to our students. There is a great story below that is worth reading to help share and unpack with your child on fairness😊
It is not always about everyone getting the same thing and rather about getting what students need.
https://www.hol.edu/uploads/essays/Fair-Isnt-Always-Equal-59821ca0e2e81.pdf
Parent information sessions ‘Friendships’ – Thursday 23rd May
Friendships are vital in our wellbeing and sense of belonging. In fact, the research suggests that a sense of belonging has a significant impact on our mental health, even outweighing diet and exercise. Come along to our next SEL Parent information session to support your child through the ups and downs of friendship. It can be really hard seeing a child go through a tricky friendship and it can cause anxiety and stress. Come along to learn ways to support your child to work through tricky friendships.
Choose a time that works best for you: 9-10:30am at TSS or 6-7:30pm at Biloela Hotel
Bring some friends along and register your interest at 49900333 or comment on the FB post.
HOC News
Week 2
TSS – READING WORKSHOPS - DATE CLAIMERS
Session 1: Wednesday 24th April – 11:30am – Oral Language and Early Literacy
Session 2: Wednesday 22nd May – 9am - Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
Session 3: Wednesday 19th June – 2pm - Alphabet and Phonics
How children learn to read.
Learning to read is a process that needs step-by-step teaching and plenty of practise at school and at home. Unlike walking or talking, reading is not a skill that we learn naturally — everyone needs to be taught how to read.
Reading requires two very important skills:
- decoding (reading) the words on the page
- making meaning from the words, sentences and paragraphs that are read.
For children to learn how to decode words, they need to understand how sounds and letters link together. They are taught that:
- words can be broken up into sounds (the word ‘cat’ is made up of 3 sounds: c-a-t) and that sounds can be blended to form words (the sounds c-a-t blended, forms the word ‘cat’)
- the sounds in words can be represented by letters or groups of letters.
- As children develop their understanding of letter-sound correspondences and apply this knowledge to reading words and texts, they learn more complex English spellings.
- The same sound can be represented by different letters; the words ‘play’, ‘rain’ and ‘stage’ all contain the sound /ay/ but the spelling is different in each one.
- The same letter can represent different sounds; the letter ‘c’ can represent a ‘k’ sound as in ‘cat’, or an ‘s’ sound as in ‘race’.
- Small parts of words can have a meaning all their own; in the word ‘walked’, the ‘-ed’ tells us that the walk has already happened — it marks past tense.
- Children practise their word reading skills by reading decodable texts that contain only the letter-sound correspondences children have been taught.
- As children develop their decoding skills and their reading becomes more automatic, they will move from reading simple decodable texts to authentic texts. Authentic texts are any texts that are read for enjoyment or learning and that support word reading, language development and engagement.
Children develop their language skills through the language they hear and read. In the early stages of reading instruction while children are developing their decoding skills, it is very important that they are read to often, so they hear lots of new words and learn about new things that they may not yet be able to read about themselves.
Parents play an important role in helping children learn to read by both:
- listening to your child read aloud to practise decoding words
- reading aloud to your child to build their understanding of language and literacy.
Sport's News
Congratulations to Lachie on being selected in the PC Soccer team. We wish him all the best as he heads to the Capricornia trials in May.
Just a quick reminder that our Athletics Carnival will be held on June 6 and 7.
Project Club News
Project Club will be holding a Meal Deal on Wednesday 1st May 2024. Orders close on Tuesday 30th April 2024 at 8pm.
Thank you for supporting our Fun Run, we have raised over $3000.00 for our school. This will be used to purchase toys and equipment for our cubby houses. Prize orders have been submitted and they should arrive by the end of next week.
P&C News
Term 2 Date Claimers
Community News
