Dear school community,

Welcome back to the first term of 2022. I want to start off by thanking our wonderful school community for all your patience and understanding as we navigate our way through this pandemic. I know that we make sacrifices to ensure we look after each other’s health. Thank you to parents who keep their child at home when they are unwell and also for those parents who pick their child up when they develop symptoms at school. This is a huge inconvenience to your lifestyle and will undoubtedly have an impact on your work. We understand this and we say thank you to everybody working together to keep our school open so we can continue with our day to day teaching and learning.

The year has started of well with students quickly settling into their new classrooms and routines. A big adaptation for students has been the addition of two specialist classes. They are now attending four specialist subjects which are Visual Art, Performing Arts, Science and Technology. All credit to the specialist teachers who are making these lessons fun and engaging. All of our 24 teachers’ classrooms look amazing and they have put a lot of work into creating an optimal learning environment for our students. Each classroom has a Learning Wall, Word Wall and a Positive Climate for Learning wall, just to name a few. In doing so we are creating a learning rich school environment.

Over the past few weeks, all of our families have received login details for our Seesaw app. If you are not yet sure how to login or have any other issues with Seesaw please contact the school and we will assist you with accessing the app on your phone, iPad or Laptop. We have had excellent feedback from families who have had a direct avenue into seeing what their child is learning at school. Our aim is to connect all families to the Seesaw app by the end of term. The purpose of implementing Seesaw is to engage families in regular updates about student learning and progress. I am sure this will provide more valuable insights to what your child is learning, rather than pages and pages of documentation once a term. We have therefore shortened our students Individual Curriculum and Highly Individual Curriculum Plans to English and Mathematics and their goals will be based on the Australian Curriculum.

Please see below our schools Explicit Improvement Agenda. These two goals will drive our focus to ensure we align with state wide expectations.

Goal 1: The implementation of the Collaborative Inquiry Cycle ensures a line of sight between adult and student learning.

Goal 2: Professional Learning Teams use student data to plan effective lessons whereby impact is measured and tracked.

We have our first P&C Meeting on Friday morning at 9:00 and we invite as many families as possible to attend. Please keep in mind we need to keep big group gatherings to a minimal. The venue will depend on the number of adults.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to our families in supporting and protecting the learning time of students in adhering to the school times. I have seen a noticeable difference over the past few weeks in the efficient way students settled into their classrooms and routines. This makes a huge impact on the calmness across the school.

Have a fabulous two weeks everybody and stay safe.

Kind regards,

Dehlia

Rockhampton North Special School Newsletter

Care | Courage | Cooperation

Issue 1 · 16 Feb 2022

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