Principal's Report 

Celebrations of Learning

Guyra Show

Congratulations to our Guyra Show Committee for their incredible commitment and hard work in organising the 2019 Guyra Show. Our students at Guyra Central School had the opportunity to  engage in a range of learning opportunities during the show; competitions, events and activities and we really do appreciate the wonderful partnership that our school has with the Guyra Show Committee. Many of our staff were also involved in the success of the Guyra Show, please accept our thanks for your contribution.  A special mention to Mr Scott Miller and Mrs Gwyn Pearson for their commitment to the learning outcomes of our students. Many of our students competed in events and competitions throughout the show achieving some fantastic results, congratulations to Year 11 student Colleen Pearson who has been named 2019 Junior Miss Show Girl.

Wendell Sailor visit to Guyra Central School

On Friday 22nd February 2019, after school, Wendell Sailor attended the school to conduct a Rugby League training afternoon with our students. I have heard across the weekend of the generosity of 'The Dell' during his visit to Guyra and we would like to extend our appreciation to both Wendell Sailor and to Richard Post for organising this unique opportunity for our school.

In a move that has grown from a parent suggestion to the school,  we now have 4 Creative Arts Captains and 2 Technology Captains.  Congratulations to our Secondary Department Creative Arts Captains; Colleen Pearson and Melissa Hawthorne and our Primary Department Creative Arts Captains Jason Mowbray and Rebecca Evans. Our newly elected leaders are already engaging in several projects around the school, our Secondary Captains have been coordinating the designs to adorn the sides of our new bus (soon to arrive at the school) and our Primary Captains have been working together to gather art works for the Student Art Gallery that runs off the foyer of the school. 

I would like to further my acknowledgement and  congratulate Rave Brazier and Cooper Reeves who are our Primary Departments Technology Captains for 2019.

Scheduled Family Meetings

During week 5, we have commenced as promised, meetings with our Guyra Central School students  families. Thank you to Miss Eunice Blair and to Mrs Monique Reed for working with Mr Tim Lloyd and myself to organise these meetings. Our families will be encouraged, during the meetings, to let us know what they would like to see happening at the school, what they believe is working and what we need to work harder at.  It is a platform for families to use to meet up with both the Principal and Deputy Principal and influence decision-making within the school. We would like to see the whole family attend these meetings including Grandparents if they wish to come along and participate in these meetings. Mrs Monique Reed or Miss Eunice Blair will be contacting your family shortly to make an appointment with each family and your children will be bringing home an information package prior to your scheduled meeting.

Excellence in School 360 Reflection Tool -  Customer Service

At the end 2018 we asked our community to participate in a 360 Reflection Tool. I provided each of our Executive staff members with a copy of the results from this survey during our Executive Planning Day in week 4. They have now taken this information to their staff for further discussion before we compose a list of recommendations based on the information we were provided from the 360 Reflection Tool.

2019 Partnerships for Learning Morning Tea

Invitations are now being circulated for our 2019 Partnerships for Learning Morning Tea, we have included a copy of the invitation in this edition of our Newsletter. This morning tea is a celebration of existing partnerships within the school and an opportunity to discuss and grow further partnership opportunities. Please contact the school office on 67790844 if you can make it to our morning tea or return the attached list of proposed opportunities if you wish to partner with the school during 2019 and/or beyond. We are hoping to produce a Partnership Timeline based on the information that is gathered during the following few weeks, as with any partnership we believe that it is important to ensure that partners feel that their needs and outcomes are being met. If we have time to discuss and organise each opportunity in advance, we believe that we will have a chance to maximise outcomes for both partners.

2019 Year Advisers 

This year at Guyra Central School our Year Advisers are;

Year 7 - Miss Wendy Wilson

Year 8 - Ms Kirsty Malby

Year 9 - Miss Clea Townsend

Year 10 -Mr Scott Miller

Year 11 - Mrs Vicki Layland

Year 12 - Mr Terry Curran

STEM Initiative

We are in our third week of our STEAM initiative. Thank you to Andrew Murray, Head Teacher, Future Focused Learning and Teaching for providing the following snapshot.

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics)

What is STEAM?

STEAM is an approach to learning and development that integrates the areas of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. Rather than teaching the five disciplines as separate and discrete subjects STEAM offers an integrated approach where students are challenged to draw connections between their learning and the real-world. 

Guyra Central school has incorporated the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) into STEAM, which combined the Arts, as art is a critical component to innovation, incorporating artistic and design-related skills and thinking processes to student-learning STEM.

Students will engage in STEAM weekly for 2 hours in one of the four hands-on projects.

Project 1 - ‘Make-a-store’, students work in small groups to develop a small business from the ground up. They will market and sell products they have designed and created themselves. Products may include, jewellery, simple toys, key rings or musical instruments. Students design, create and market their product, develop a brand and make calculations to ensure their products make a profit.

Project 2 - Eco-house, students will work in small groups to design and create an energy efficient house (or eco-house). When creating their eco-house, students will be taking a scientific approach to reducing the environmental impact of housing and save the cost of energy use. In this project, students will be examining how energy is used in the home and will work towards designing a more energy-efficient house.

Project 3 – CO2 powered Dragster, are little cars that students design, build, test, modify and race that impersonate a real-life AA Fuellers. The cars are small and made of balsa wood and will travel down a 20m track powered by 8-gram CO2 gas bulb which propels them. Micro switches are used to start and stop a timer, so cars can be timed when racing.

Project 4 – Chicken growth trial, in this project students will be working with day-old-chicks, taking a scientific and hands-on approach to raising chickens to maturity. Students will be looking at how to care for the chickens at their different stages of development, monitoring their growth and comparing the growth rates between layer and broiler chickens. Students will also examine the products created from the chicken industry, designing and marketing their own chicken products for sale.