Welcome back to all families,

Welcome back to the 2023 School Year. We had a lovely start to the term with all of our staff and students returning from the summer holidays. A special welcome to our new Prep students and their families, as well as the families of new enrolled students. We all hope you have had a strong and successful start and have been welcomed by our community. Our routines started on day one. How we start the year is how we want to continue.

We invite all families to our first P&C Meeting on Friday, 3 February at 9:00. We will be meeting in the Meeting Room.

Classes

This year, based on the predicted enrolments, we had established seventeen classes. In addition, our school provides four Specialist Classes: Visual Art, Performing Arts, Science and Technology. All student access all of the Specialists classes for an hour every week. We were also able to school purchase a Speech Therapist, Madison Guthrie, and an Occupational Therapist, Susan Johnstone, for one day a week for the year. We are very excited to have these two Allied Health Professionals onboard. Their biggest role will be to build the capability of staff to ensure all students are able to access learning.

VET Pathways

From this year onwards we are able to provide four Vet subjects to Year 11 and 12 students. Our Senior Secondary staff worked tirelessly to ensure we comply with the requirements to continue to be a Registered Training Organisation, which enables our school to tailor and deliver these four Cert 1 VET Subjects. We welcome Sharon Detky as a new teacher to our school. Sharon has many years of experience in the VET space and will add value to our Senior Secondary program. Troy Perkins will continue in his role as Guidance Officer for three days a week.

Project Based Learning

Our teaching staff attended a three-day workshop facilitated by Project Based Learning (PBL) Works before school started. PBL Works is a non-profit American Institute that believe that all students - no matter where they live or what their background - should have access to quality Project Based Learning to deepen their learning and achieve success in life. We believe that Project Based Learning (PBL) is transformative for all kids. Through PBL, students engage in learning that is deep, long-lasting, and relevant to the challenges of their lives and the world they will inherit. Research confirms this. Our teachers learnt how to design and facilitate quality Project Based Learning in order to implement great projects with all students. We are all very excited to share the amazing work of our staff and students during 2023 and in the years to come.

Strategic Plan

Each year, all Queensland State Schools develop an Annual Implementation Plan (AIP) and an Explicit Improvement Agenda (EIA) informed by the key actions within the school’s School Strategic Plan (SSP), developed from the key improvement strategies and commendations following a School Review. Our school undertook a School Review last year which provided suggestions for our future direction. Our school community identified two pillars of improvement:

Building Practice Excellence
Building Communities

Over the course of last year all staff participated in a CoDesign process, developing our 2023-2026 School Strategic Plan’s key actions, strategies and measures of success. Once drafted, this Plan will be shared with the school community. The four elements of this plan include Teaching, Curriculum, Environment and Pathways.

Key Priorities for 2023

Our key priorities for this year are to establish a clear structure in the English Block and develop staff capability to teach Reading through evidenced based research identified in the framework of the ‘Simple View of Reading’. We will continue on our journey to ensure that all students are able to transfer their learning through creating opportunities in the designing elements of Project Based Learning. We are a Positive Behaviour for Learning school and this year we focus on ensuring that all staff are familiar with, and implement Universal Tier 1 strategies in their classrooms. In order to create positive partnership we endeavour to further explore communication avenues with families.

Book, Equipment and Stationery

Thank you to our P&C for funding all of our students resources this year. I am sure this support to our community is highly appreciated especially after we may have spent a bit more than planned during the summer holidays period 😊.

Newsletter, Social Media, QParents

Please ensure you read our regular newsletters and follow our school on Facebook. Emily is doing such an amazing job of keeping our families up to date with various events and information. QParents is launching at RNSS very soon! Invitations to register will be sent home in the coming days.

Once registered, parents will have their children’s student information at their fingertips. Please contact Administration if you require any support for logging on the QParents App as it requires the provision of some specific information as part of the Privacy requirements.

More information about QParents can be found: https://alt-qed.qed.qld.gov.au/.../department-apps/qparents

Contacting Staff Class

Teachers are always your first port of call if you need anything clarified, have specific questions or wish to discuss any concerns. All teachers are very approachable and are available to meet with you on request. We encourage all parents and carers to arrange a time to meet face to face with class teachers as they are often involved in meetings and appointments prior to and after school and may not be immediately available to meet. Our staff will endeavour to communicate regularly with families through the Seesaw app. Our staff list is available on our schools website.

Parade

Due to the construction work than is taking place we are running our Parade events in the library at the following times:

2:00 - 2:20pm the High School students

2:30 - 2:50pm the Primary School students

As always, an open invitation is extended to all parents, carers, relatives of our learners and friends of the school. This is a great opportunity for our school community to get together and celebrate all the great work that is happening in our school.

Construction Work Update

Over the Christmas holidays, the builders have made excellent progress. Half of the concrete slab was down and there are rock blocks up to support the frame of half of the building. They are working on pouring the other half over the next few days, to begin the framework for that half of the building. We appreciate your ongoing support through the changes that happen while the buildings are being constructed.

I am looking forward to another year of great partnerships being established at Rockhampton North Special School.

Kind regards,

Dehlia

Awards

Student of the Week & School Values Awards