From the Principal

Hello Gympie East parents, carers and community,

Welcome to the first edition of our new Newsletter format. We look forward to hearing your feedback.

I hope everyone faired well during the recent wild weather with Cyclone Alfred. We had a little bit of disruption, but not to the degree I thought it could have been. Students were still very settled and sensible, if it was too wet and windy Staff put a movie on at lunchtime to keep the kids calm and happy. 

Our students are very focussed and engaged in classrooms. Mr Walters and I have been visiting classrooms and having conversations with teachers, and they have all remarked the same thing which is very positive to hear. Parents should have received an email about Parent/Teacher Interviews between 17th – 28th March (Weeks 8 & 9) using a website called ‘SOBS’. The link is posted below. This is your opportunity to sit down with teachers who have had 7 weeks to work with your child and understand where they are academically. This meeting is a chance to discuss their strengths and also what their goals are for the future before the Term 2 reporting term begins. 

https://eq.sobs.com.au/pt3/parent.php?schoolid=70927

PBL

Our focus for this week has been ‘Be an active listener’, this is a great time to focus on this skill as we are approaching assessment time when students need to use their active listening skills to ensure they understand exactly what they need to do and also to be able to ask clarifying questions. Next week, our focus will be ‘Play safe’. We have found that our playground majors are down dramatically from this time last year. Playground major behaviours are down 68%. This is fantastic to hear and we hope that we can continue to lower the amount of major behaviours present. 

We are working towards our next PBL Rewards Day – Loud Shirt Day. Rather than parents having to purchase an expensive loud shirt, we felt that if families could send a cheap white shirt in with their child by the end of Week 9, we could then spend some time during Week 10 letting the kids decorate their shirt however they wanted. We will have a number of dyes, pens, and paints ready to let their creativity shine. We have noticed a huge amount of worms being earned each week, hopefully if we continue on this trajectory we may even be able to have Loud Shirt Day on the last day of term. 

NAPLAN

NAPLAN

NAPLAN began on Wednesday with Year 3 & 5 students completing their writing tests. All students were focussed and did a great job on their stories. I personally got to read most of the Year 3’s Writing and they did a great job. NAPLAN does not have to be a stressful time, which is something we at Gympie East reinforce with students and teachers. It is an opportunity to show their ability and have a go at demonstrating their skills in writing, reading, numeracy and language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation).