School Newsletter 2023, Term 3, Week 4
Acknowledgment of Country
This newsletter comes to you from Jinibara Land. In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples today. We are thankful to be able to work, learn and play on Jinibara land.
Kilcoy State School Vision & Values
Our school vision:
"We believe that all members of the Kilcoy State School community have the right to work, learn and play in a safe and inclusive environment."
Our STAR values are:
SAFETY - Taking Responsibility - Active Learning - Respect
Principal's News: Belinda Nash
Dear Parents and Carers
As we progress through Term 3, there are a number of significant events that are being coordinated and we would like to invite you to participate in this. Very shortly, parents of Year 6 students will be invited to join the Year 6 Graduation Committee. These parents, working with staff, will collaborate to ensure that our Year 6 students are graduated in style! We look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas about how we can make the Graduation memory one that is cherished.
Year 5/6 CAMP: The payment for the 5/6 Noosa North Shore Camp is now available on the QKR app. Parents can elect to pay the full amount of $325 or opt to make a series of smaller payments throughout the rest of this term. Please note that full payment needs to made by 15 September.
NAPLAN Results were sent home this week with all participating students. Information is included to assist you to understand how to interpret the results. NAPLAN now reports on students using the following proficiency standards. The NAPLAN proficiency standards include 4 proficiency levels for each assessment area at each testing year level:
- Exceeding: the student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing.
- Strong: the student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.
- Developing: the student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing.
- Needs additional support: the student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.
Each of the standards represents increasingly challenging skills and understandings as students move through the years of schooling.
Uniform expectations: Often, the impact of children not adhering to the dress code requirements is not seen in an obvious manner. We have a dress code for many reasons, including creating an environment where there is less difference to compare, in order to increase our focus on learning. We provide many opportunities for children to express themselves and their personalities, however not through uniform choice. Lately, we have been seeing an excess of children wearing makeup / jewellery / bracelets / elaborate headbands / footy caps / novelty earrings / colourful jumpers and this is not part of the existing school uniform policy, endorsed by our school P&C Association. Please ensure your children are wearing their full school uniform each day. Additional uniform requirements can be purchased through the QKr App and sent home with your child, if needed.
Students need to wear dark green shorts/pants/skirt/skort with the school polo shirt, white socks and black shoes. On Thursdays of even weeks, we have parade, and Year 1-6 students wear their white formal shirt on this day. School jumpers are available for purchase. Students can wear their Mackenzie or Somerset shirts, or district athletics shirts, on Fridays if they like. Students are not to wear their footy club shirts.
Supporting Students: Often, parents are the first to know of a potential problem their child might be having at school. To support your child, we ask that you engage with the following school process:
- Support your child to talk about what happened, before/during/after the issue.
- Ask your child which adult they asked for help from, and learn about what your child did with that help.
- Teach your child school-appropriate strategies to keep themself and others safe, physically and mentally.
If the problem persists, please contact your child's teacher to gather information and make a plan together for how you can collaborate to support your child. If this plan isn't working and there are no further options you are aware of, please contact the office to make an appointment to see Mrs Webster (Deputy Principal), or Mrs Nash (Principal).
Attendance: Our current attendance rate is 89.3% however our goal is 95%.
Students with less than 80% attendance are of particular concern for us, having already missed 1/5 of their learning this year. Letters to parents of children in this situation will be sent home shortly. We hope to make contact with parents to offer support to increase their child's attendance routines.
If your child will be absent, please make sure you call the absence line on (07) 5422 3366 to let us know why they are away so that it can be recorded accurately.
Community engagement & collaboration:
Wellbeing Wednesday - Staff are starting Wellbeing Wednesdays this term, and this includes Toast Club on Wednesday mornings for our students. We really need parent helpers from about 7.45am until 9am to help cook toast, butter/jam/vegemite/honey them and assist with the crumb clean up. Please email the office at admin@kilcoyss.eq.edu.au or let us know in person, if you are able to help. Helping out on just one morning will help us share the load and ensure that our students have this opportunity as least once a week.
The next P&C Meeting is on Wednesday 9/8/23 at 3.30pm in the Resource Centre. Please be encouraged to come and join in with this fun group of people trying to achieve goals for our school. No experience needed and no job you have to do alone. This is a team of people simply wanting to help make Kilcoy State School a better place for ALL students.
Kind regards, Mrs Nash.
Deputy Principal's News: Lisa Webster
Curriculum
Our teachers will be participating in Collaborative Assessment of Student Work (CASW), which gives teachers the opportunity to collaborate and offer pedagogical suggestions to other colleagues to improve student outcomes. The CASW sessions occur in weeks 3, 5 and 7. Mrs Karen Burton and I will be attending a Regional Curriculum Roadshow where we present a combination of evidence including student work and school data to ensure students at Kilcoy State School are accessing quality learning experiences.
As part of our Learning Walks and Talks, students are asked 5 questions:
1. What are you learning and why?
2. How can you improve your learning?
3. Where do you go for help?
4. How are you going with your learning?
5. How do you know?
The aim of asking students these questions is to find out how engaged students are in their learning and if they are taking responsibility for their learning. Teachers are setting learning goals with students. These are specific goals aligned to the assessed elements of the unit of learning. Do you know if your child is engaged in the classroom? Feel free to ask your child what their learning goal in English is.
Fire Education Visit
On Friday Year 1/2 students had a visit from the Kilcoy Fire Brigade to learn about fire safety. Students were excited to see Blazer and his friend. They had the opportunity to feel the force of the water come through the hose and they now know what to do in case of a Fire Emergency. Enjoy the photos of some of our Year 1/2 students below.
Mrs Webster - Deputy Principal.
Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL)
The PBL Team
-The Kilcoy State School PBL Team
STLaN Update
From Mrs Karen Burton
It’s all about balance.
As TV viewing and gaming increase, academic performance decreases for all school-aged students.
Screen time and digital technology use can be part of a healthy lifestyle for children when they balance these things with other important activities. Activities that involve physical and outdoor play, creative play, reading, socialising are important for your child’s development and need to be included in everyday life. Getting the right balance also includes making sure screen time doesn’t interfere with sleep.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies reports that a majority of Australian children are not getting the right balance and spending more than the recommended two-hour daily limit for screen time (watching television, on computers and playing electronic games). In fact, up to 30% of a child’s waking time is spent in front of a screen.
What are the effects of too much screen time for students?
Excessive screen time may inhibit a child's ability to observe and experience the typical everyday activities they need to engage with in order to learn about the world. Too much screen time can affect brain chemistry and mood. It can lead to obesity, sleep problems, chronic neck and back problems, depression, anxiety, delayed learning and limits students’ ability for school success.
How do you balance screen time for kids?
Setting up family rules can help you balance important everyday activities and screen time. Rules could include:
- where your child can use digital technology – for example, only in family rooms and not in bedrooms or the car
- when your child can use digital technology – for example, mealtimes are free of TV, computers and phones, or no screens in the hour before bedtime
- how your child can use digital technology – for example, to play a dance competition game or a puzzle app, but not to watch YouTube.
Being online should enhance our children’s lives, not dominate them. Just being aware of the possible impacts can help us realise when it’s time to ease back and make some changes at home to ‘Get the Right Balance’.
For your interest and information - below are links to balancing time online and strategies for managing screen time with children.
https://www.esafety.gov.au/young-people/balancing-your-time-online
P&C Association
We have extended the EKKA order due date to Wednesday 9th August! QKr! only
School Student Broadband Initiative
To boost educational opportunities and narrow the digital divide, families without home internet are encouraged to apply for the School Student Broadband Initiative (SSBI).
Access to internet at home can support children to build their digital skills and participate in a world that is more reliant on digital technology. The Australian Government is supporting the National Broadband Network (NBN) to implement the SSBI to provide free home internet for one year for up to 30,000 unconnected families across Australia with school aged students.
To be eligible for SSBI, a family must:
- Have a child living at home that is enrolled in a Queensland state school in 2023.
- Not have an active internet service at home. Having a mobile internet service does not affect eligibility.
- Be referred by a nominating organisation such as the Department of Education (the department).
- Agree their child has access to a device and has the digital skills to use the internet safely or will be supervised.
- Live in a premises that can access the NBN via a standard connection – this will be checked by NBN.
The department is pleased to support the nomination of families for the SSBI. If you would like to apply for the SSBI please contact the school via email to admin@kilcoyss.eq.edu.au, or drop in to collect an application (online or paper form) and further information about the initiative.
Applications must be submitted by 8 September 2023.
Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter. If you have any suggestions for content, please forward them to admin@kilcoyss.eq.edu.au
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