Coomera Rivers State School eNewsletter

Principal's news

Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

By my very simple seasonal calendar, we have about 10 days remaining of comfortable temperatures and I am expecting the cooler winter period to arrive at the end of this month. Please make sure that your children have their school jumper and sports jacket ready for when this starts. The uniform blitz is continuing and the correct jumper is required at school each day.

Next week will see the second part of NAPLAN assessments for students in Years 3 and 5. Please make sure that your children are at school, on time and ready to go with all they need.

Construction is about to start

The Gold Coast City Council is about to begin construction on the covered area in the school Kiss n Go zone. Work will commence sometime this week and part of the the footpath will be completely blocked. This will remain in place for about four builder's weeks while construction is completed. The diagram below shows the alternate entry and departure points for pedestrian access. Most of the work will be completed between 7:00am and 2:00pm and the company completing the construction will do what they can to minimise noise and disruption. General school parking and access to the OSHC will definitely be affected during this time. I completely understand that this will be inconvenient but the long term gains will outweigh this.

Please take care around this area, be patient and allow extra time for drop off and collection. And thank you sincerely to the GCCC for this addition to our school.

After school activities

A wide range of activities are conducted after school each day some of which are run by school staff. Currently we have:

Wakakirri,
Debating and public speaking,
Chess and
Two IT club afternoons.

These activities are really well attended but sometimes children are absent. There is no problem with that - so long as you know about it. So in the next fortnight, we will be starting an SMS system for absence notification to ensure that you know that your children are not at the particular after school event. This system will be very similar to the current school absence SMS system we use. To help us though, I need families to let the school know that their children will be away for the after school activity. This will save the school time and money in preparing and sending the absence SMS and you the inconvenience of receiving it.

Semester 1 reports (Wednesday 26 June)

Teachers have commenced writing report cards for children in their classes for this semester. This is a very big job. We work very much on a 'No Surprises' rule when it comes to what you will read in the progress report emailed home in Week 10. We use SeeSaw and Parent-Teacher interviews to keep families informed about their child's progress. We will also send home an email to parents to inform them that we consider their child at risk of not meeting a standard of C or higher in English or Maths. I urge all families to build a close relationship with their child's teacher and know how their child is progressing at school.

Grandparent's Day is coming (Friday 21 June)

Please keep a look out for the information about this year's Grandparents Day later in the newsletter. We usually have around 600 grandparents attend each year and registration is necessary. This is because of Queensland Blue Card regulations. Following application, Blue Cards are provided to volunteers and anyone who works with or around children after passing a comprehensive background check. Teachers undergo this check annually as part of teacher registration processes. While parents are exempt from needing blue cards, grandparents are not. While it may sound strange, the school needs to know that parents approve of the visit by grandparents. You can help us by making sure that all visiting grandparents register for the event. Click here to register for Grandparents Day. We will send home the program for the morning in the next couple of weeks.

Special recognition (Well done us!)

I am delighted to let our families know that Coomera Rivers has been:

Selected as a finalist in the Australian Education Awards again this year in another two categories. I will let you know the details once they are announced. We were finalists in two areas last year as well and came second in Australia in 'The best use of technology' section.
Recognised as an Apple Distinguished School for the second time. We are one of 10 Queensland schools (Out of 1723 public and private schools) to be recognised with this award.
Notified that two staff will be recognised as Apple Distinguished Educators. These teachers are the best of the best who utilise technology in their teaching and learning. To illustrate the significance of this achievement, consider the following numbers:
- There are over 100 000 teachers registered in Queensland alone.
- Only 2447 teachers from around the world (and 692 in the Asia Pacific region) have received this recognition and I am delighted that
- 2 of them are here at Coomera Rivers. I will let you know the details of who they are once I am able to share the information.

Have a great week

Kind regards

Vic

Vic Graham

Principal