Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

I would like to open this newsletter by both thanking and congratulating everyone on the calm and careful manner in which you are responding to the changes and challenges placed upon us with the coronavirus. This makes a big difference for school, particularly in a world that sometimes seems to be panicking. Well done!

I also want to take this opportunity to congratulate the school staff on their responsiveness to the changing requirements placed upon them in the past couple of weeks. There has been continual change to the way we operate and this brings added complexities to how we work. Your children have always been their first priority. I encourage families to email your teachers with a short thank you message. They truly have earned the acknowledgement.

The coronavirus and the subsequent restrictions have meant that our school calendar has nearly been emptied.  While we will always do our best to comply with the government requirements, we still want our children to enjoy the experiences at school.  While it is easy to cancel everything, we have taken a more thorough approach of considering each of the activities we do.  For instance, the national day of action against bullying and violence was cancelled but we continued with our free dress day and teachers discussed the importance of safe and respectful interaction.  Thank you to everyone who supported the event.  

During the week, the Department of Education made the decision that from the end of this week, all school trips, camps and excursions must be postponed or cancelled as a further step to implementing the advice on social distancing and reducing the risk in our schools and communities.

Unfortunately this means our Year 6 Camp to Emu Gully can no longer go ahead this term. Rather than cancel the school camp altogether, knowing this will be students final primary school camp, we attempted to postpone the camp until later in the year. Unfortunately Emu Gully is unable to provide an alternative date so we are now in the process of seeing if we can secure another camp destination at the same cost to families. If this fails, we will then reimburse families who have paid. We are doing all we can to ensure events that students talk about for years to come aren’t all taken away however, we are sure you can appreciate, our greatest concern is your children and our staff’s safety and well-being. Please stay patient while we work behind the scenes to see if we can work some magic.

It also means our Year 5 Eureka Excursion can no longer go ahead this term. Rather than have our students miss this great field trip we’ve been lucky to be able to postpone and have secured a booking in Term 4, Week 5.  New dates and information will come out closer to the date however please note that this means we are also able to extend the payment deadline to Monday 13 October 2020.

Queensland Health has also required the school dental van to close.  The hospitals aroiund Queensland require all of the gowns and masks they can access for assisting patients.

Science:     Year 5 Digital Learning this week saw 5W creating posters in their Science lessons. As part of the learning process, students were asked to design a poster to explain to others the different states of matter.  Students had the choice of which app they would choose. They also had to decide on how well their 'app of choice’ would serve them in this task.

Antonina chose to use Pic Collage to put her ideas into poster format.  Explain Everything was Paige’s app of choice and Lincoln decided Keynote would suit his needs.

       
Writing:     Well done to 3WH for the authentic writing purpose they have used this term.  It culminated with a massive day for them today.  This term they have been learning about narratives. They had an audience of Prep students and the purpose was to teach them a lesson with an engaging story. After a lot of work, they  published some amazing stories and shared them with their Prep buddies. And then they hosted a VIP book tour.  Parents and staff came out for the event to view the latest work of our authors. They collected tickled pink and green for growth feedback and parents had prompts to ask about their work. It was fantastic to have so many people appreciate and enjoy their hard work. 

        

Bullying.  No Way! day:   Congratulations to everyone for the sea of orange and activities that have flowed throughout the day as we united to take a stand against bullying.

      

Serving the needs of others:     6F has been learning about how to  develop empathy for others.  This week they discussed how residents of Magnolia Aged Care in Coomera might be feeling, being isolated from their loved ones at the moment and wrote letters to them.  The  students are highly engaged and are determined to produce their best work ever. Having an authentic purpose and audience has really tuned them in to writing.  We are very proud of the empathetic, compassionate young people they are becoming.