19 February 2020

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

Dear Parents and Carers,

School life is in full swing for 2020 with students settling well into classroom routines, instrumental music lessons underway and our year 3 and 5 students have even started dance curriculum units within The Arts. Despite the inclement weather parent information nights were extremely well attended with parents taking this important opportunity to understand the expectations and learning experiences their child/ren will enjoy this term. Many parents attended multiple sessions which was deeply appreciated and provided our staff with the opportunity to build essential partnerships to support your child’s long-term success. The next formal opportunity to meet with your child’s teacher is during parent teacher interviews towards the end of Term 1 however parents are encouraged to be in regular contact with class teachers through class dojo, emails or scheduled appointments.

P&C Meetings commenced this week with discussions focused on the strategic direction of the P&C for the next three years. P&C membership provides parents a wonderful opportunity to be involved in supporting school life both financially and through the provision of services to the school. Our P&C have already planned a return to school disco for this Friday which will be loads of fun for all. Please double check times for the different sectors and pricing for food and novelties available on the night. The P&C Annual General Meeting will be held on Wednesday 18th March 6.30pm in the staffroom. 2020 Executive positions will be filled at this meeting. Please see the P&C notices further on in this newsletter for more details regarding the AGM.

As an Independent Public School Kurwongbah SS also hosts a School Council whose role is to support strategic school planning. School Council members hold their position for two years with a commitment of one meeting per school term. Membership comprises the Principal and P&C President, three parent and three staff (teaching and non-teaching) representatives. Informed by feedback from the 2019 School Review the School Council developed a partnership action plan targeting the development of key sustainable partnerships across 2020 to enrich school life for students and our families during the school year with a view to embedding these partnerships long term within our school community. Attached is the guiding framework for the School Council. In 2020 we are seeking one new parent representative to join the School Council. If you are interested please complete the nomination form attached and please feel free to contact me if you would like any further information. School Council members are very excited about planning for the year ahead.

This Friday we officially induct our Student Leaders for 2020 and wish them well for the year ahead. I would like to wish all year 6 students the best for their final year at Kurwongbah SS and know they will rise as a team to the challenges and leadership during the year ahead. We will be very proud of their achievements.

With our school focus on Writing our strategies are based on the research of Dr Lynn Sharratt’s “Clarity: What matters MOST in learning, teaching and leading”. Our professional learning focus includes the use of individual student case management to target success and learning walks to identify high yield improvement strategies. We will be using the power of 5 Key Questions to ensure students have a deep knowledge of the next steps in their learning:

• What are you learning?
• How are you doing?
• How do you know?
• How can you improve?
• Where do you go for help? Lynn Sharratt 2015

Yours in education,

Leanne Odorico
Principal

Student of the Week

Top Kurwongbah Kids

Congratulations to the following students who have recently received Top Kurwongbah Kids Awards by showing our School Values:

TERM 1 WEEK 2

Top Kurwongbah Kid – Term 1 Week 2

TERM 1 WEEK 3

Top Kurwongbah Kid – Term 1 Week 3

Date Claimers

Due Dates for Payments

Everyday Counts

The importance of children attending school each and every school day cannot be stressed enough. If your child arrives late by 10 minutes each day, it equates to them missing 50 minutes each week, or 1 ½ weeks in the year.

As learning episodes build on previous learning episodes, missing any instruction makes it difficult for children to achieve the same level and sequence of learning.

To give your child the best opportunity of success with their learning, please ensure they are at school on time.

If your child is absent due to illness, please phone the absence line on 3481 4366 or SMS 0429 919 560.

Absences

State schools are required to notify parents on the same day any student is absent from school without explanation. We use the system ID Attend (an electronic roll marking system). Rolls are marked at 8:55am and 1:55pm each day. An SMS message will be sent to any parent of a student with an unexplained absence by 11am. Students who are not in their class at 8:55am will be marked absent and MUST collect a late slip from the office. Parents collecting their children early must sign them from the office before collecting from the classroom.

Absence notification process

When reporting absences, please use our SMS service (preferably) on 0429 919 560. Your other means of letting us know is via our absence line (3481 4366), by QParents or by the main phone line. Please be sure you indicate the following when reporting the absence:

• Name of child (especially if there is more than one child in your family)
• Absence reason – Please indicate if your child is sick or at an appointment etc. Indicating that your child is not coming to school, does not give a true reason for the absence
• Late Arrival – If your child will be late due to an appointment, please indicate an approximate time of arrival
• Dates of absences, if longer than 1 day

When using our absence line (3481 4366), please speak very clearly. It is a requirement of the Department of Education for all absences to be explained.

Same day notification

Our school will contact parents as soon as practicable on the day if a student is not at school and we don’t know why. If you are advised by the school that your child is away without a reason, please contact us as soon as possible by reply text to let us know where your child is. We will follow-up with parents if no response is received.

Student Leaders’ Badge Presentation

This Friday during parade our 2020 Student Leaders will be presented with their leadership badges. Our special guests will be Moreton Bay Regional Councillor Denise Simms, who is a wonderful supporter of our school. Parents of our school leaders will be invited to a small celebratory morning tea following parade.

Our Student Leaders for 2020:

2020 Specialist & Support Staff

Parent Information Evenings

Thank you to both the teachers and parents who attended the Parent Information Evenings during the last couple of weeks. An insight into what will be happening within each class was shared, along with ways we can continue to work together so your child can receive the best educational experience during their time at Kurwongbah State School.

Exemptions from School

We all love an extended holiday but if you are booking a holiday and your child will be absent from school for more than 10 days, you will need to receive permission from the Principal to take your child out of school for an extended period. These forms can be obtained from the office.

Parking

Parents, please be aware and thoughtful of dropping children at the Kiss and Go in Frenchs Road. This area is not for parking and leaving your car unattended.

Cyber Safety

Social networking sites, chat rooms, virtual worlds, and blogs are how children socialise online; it's important to help your child learn how to navigate these spaces safely. Among the pitfalls that come with online socialising are sharing too much information or posting comments, photos, or videos that can damage a reputation or hurt someone's feelings.

Applying real-world judgment can help minimise those risks.

Remind kids that online actions have consequences

• Kids should post only what they’re comfortable with others seeing.
• Remind kids that once they post it, they can't take it back.
• Tell your kids not to impersonate someone else.
• Tell Kids to Limit What They Share
• Help your kids understand what information should stay private.

Tell your kids why it's important to keep some things — about themselves, family members, and friends — to themselves. Information like their street address, phone number, and family financial information — say, bank account or credit card numbers — is private and should stay that way.

Source:

Year 6 Camp

Our year 6 student will be heading to camp at Luther Heights, Coolum on March 2nd – 4th. They will engage in team building activities, physical challenges and learn to surf. We thank the staff for their commitment in supervising the students 24 hours a day for the duration of the camp.

Proactive School Patrol Program

Moreton Bay Regional Council (MBRC) Local Laws Unit undertakes a Proactive School Patrol Program where officers complete scheduled school patrols, both in the morning and afternoon, to ensure that vehicles are parked in a safe and lawful manner. The primary aim of the program is to partner with schools across the region to ensure that students and family members/caregivers are able to safely move around the school area as part of dropping off or picking up students from the school.

The Moreton Bay Regional Council Local Law No.5 (Parking) 2011 and Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act 1999 control parking or stopping of vehicles on footpaths, bicycle paths, shared paths, dividing strips or nature strips. Council is legally required to enforce these controls and the Proactive School Patrol Program forms part of this process. Drivers are reminded that footpaths and nature strips are in place to promote pedestrian movement in a safe manner along roadsides and that drivers and residents must not stop on a bicycle path, shared path, dividing strip or nature strip. Please note that vehicles that are parked with two wheels up and two wheels down is not considered as a lawful parking practice.

Local Laws officers have fact sheets and other relevant information that is provided to drivers to assist with education surrounding safe parking in school zones. Enforcement through the issuance of Penalty Infringement Notices is carefully considered as part of each Proactive School Patrol.

Visit the link below for further guidance on parking restrictions.

For any further information, members of the School community are welcome to contact Mr Bradley Foley, Local Laws Coordinator on 3205 0555.

Volunteering And Bluecards

We greatly appreciate volunteers working within our school (classrooms, tuckshop, uniform shop, craft group etc). It is necessary for Volunteers to follow the school and EQ. This process must be adhered to within the Student Protection and Workplace Health and Safety Guidelines as part of Mandatory training. There are no exceptions to this expectation.

All volunteers must:

1. Have a valid blue card (if not a parent) and link blue card to Kurwongbah SS. You can NOT start volunteering until your bluecard has been approved.

Parents volunteering in their child’s classroom do not require a blue card.

Grandparents and other relatives / friends are required to have a valid blue card before commencing volunteering in the school. Please provide a copy of your blue card to the Office when you sign in. Blue card application forms are available from the Office or visit the link below. Please submit your blue card application form to the Office.

If you didn’t apply for your blue card via Kurwongbah School, you will also be required to link your blue card. Forms are to be submitted to the Office not to Blue Card directly.

2. Sign in at the Office & have a volunteer lanyard.

3. Read & signed off that you have read the “Mandatory All-Staff Training Program - Key Messages Guide for contractors, volunteers and visitors 2020” document.

Evacuations & Lock Downs

During Term 1 the school will be involved in emergency evacuation and lockdown drills for all staff and students. An emergency evacuation drill is signalled by an intermittent “on” an “off” bell ringing of at least 45 seconds. On hearing the evacuation signal all staff, students and school visitors should walk to the assembly area on the oval. Students then sit in class groups adjacent to corresponding letters fixed to the fence on the oval. Rolls are checked and all students, staff and visitors on site must be accounted for. It is very important that any parents/volunteers that are working in the school sign the volunteer register at administration when entering and leaving the school.

A school lockdown drill is signalled by a song which plays for at least 45 seconds. Lockdowns are used to isolate staff and students from an identified threat. These could include aggressive or violent intruder, dangerous animal, armed robbery or lightning/severe storm, chemical spill etc. During a lockdown all buildings and windows are locked and lights turned off to reduce visibility into buildings from the outside. All class teachers have discussed procedures with students so that they know what to do should an emergency arise. Drills are conducted four times a year and are a mandatory requirement within Education Queensland.

QSchools App

Have you downloaded the QSchools App for Kurwongbah State School?

It is a great way to:

• receive real-time notifications about state-wide emergency alerts as well as school push notifications and important updates
• access the latest news and events and from our school
• easily access our school’s tuckshop and uniform shop information
• view information about our school including contact details

Bruce Sullivan – Your Best You

The Kurwongbah SS P&C invites you to be 'Your best you... with the energy, attitude and resilience of a four year old almost every day!'.

About this Event

Busy? Everyone is busy! Our world has become the world of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that. ”Our modern workforce and lifestyle places many demands on our time and energy. Constant change, families and increasing expectations from ALL areas of work and life will either energise you OR drain the life out of you. So how do we focus our attention to ensure that we get what we truly want out of our profession and our life? How do we overcome the obstacles to genuine effectiveness and maximise our own individual input into our team and our families to ensure an effective relationship? We will go through an educational and entertaining journey that will help you to build resilience and rediscover how to keep yourself focused and energised to do what really counts! If you are interested in;- Recharging stressed out hard working mums and dads- Coping with change fatigue with more change to come- Maintaining motivation momentum … yours and your families!

...then this motivational evening is for you!

STEM & Enrichment Education News

Kurwongbah’s Makerspace

What’s been happening in the Makerspace?

Students have been involved in creating EV3 Riley Robots this week and adding pushers to create a Sumo Wrestling Robot. Ozobots have been very popular as well as Lego construction. This week we will be exploring Ozobots and coding on the iPads!

Makerspace Lunchtime Timetable – Term 1

Year 6 EV3 Immersion Day

Teams of selected students are travelling to Sippy Downs State School next Tuesday to attend the RoboCoast EV3 Immersion day. Here students will learn how to build a basic Riley Rover as well as program the new EV3, use its sensors and design a program for it to participate in the Mindstorms Sumo Robot Practice challenge. This immersion day is aimed at training rookie school teams up to a standard that they can compete in Sumo Robot Competitions as well as teaching students how to use and design the EV3 robots. A particular emphasis is on promoting activities for girls in STEM related programs. Have a great time students!

Plant Health - Year 6 Hermitage Science Plant Competition

Year 6 Enrichment students participating in the 2020 Research Facility Schools Hermitage Plant Science Competition will investigate the effects of different lights on plant health. They will grow sprouts, collect data on the growth rate and analyse the effects creating a scientific report with their findings.

2020 theme: Celebrate our differences and create a colourful world.

This national competition is open to all primary schools across Australia and coincides with the National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence in March. The aim of the competition is to raise awareness of bullying and to assist schools and organisations to identify and address bullying behaviours in their communities.

All you need to do is draw an A4 poster depicting the theme of ‘Celebrate our differences and create a colourful world.’ Send your entries to the library by 31 March. There are some great prizes on offer.

For more information visit -

Mathematics Enrichment

Selected students in Year 6 – 3 are engaging in Maths Enrichment classes involving problem solving and investigations focusing on their assessment criteria. Year 6 students are participating in a fun event of, ‘The Amazing Race Australia,’ using 24hr timetables, budgeting and calculation in time. Year 4 are also focusing on time and planning a day at SeaWorld using timetables and calculating time durations. Students in Year 3 and 5 will be learning about how to solve multi-step problems using various strategies and a systematic planning method applying Polya’s problem solving plan.

P&C News

February General Meeting

The first P&C meeting for 2020 will be held tonight in the school staffroom. We encourage all parents, staff and interested community members to attend these meetings and have their say. Membership forms for 2020 will be available tonight.

AGM

The annual general meeting for the P&C will be held Wednesday 18 March at 6.30pm. A new executive committee will be elected at this meeting. If you are interested in nominating for a committee position, including sub-committee positions, these will be called at the AGM.

Nomination forms for the executive committee are below.

More information about these roles is available on the P&Cs Queensland website at the link below.

2020 Membership

New membership forms are available below. We encourage all parents, staff and interested community members to become members of the P&C. Membership not only provides you with the opportunity to raise issues and concerns at meetings, it also provides insurance cover when you volunteer at the school.

Fundraising News

School Disco

Tuckshop News

Welcome to week 4! How fast are the weeks flying past! The tuckshop staff have enjoyed getting to know new faces and families. We would like to congratulate all our year 3 students in their efforts to remember to collect their lunch from the tuckshop.

Red Day Special

We are very excited about our Tuckshop Special “RED DAY’ menu on Friday the 21st February.

Our special menu deals all include a Jelly cup and popper, choice of sauce, along with the following choices available in a small and medium meal:

1. Chicken Nuggets: 3 Nugget meal deal $5.50 OR 6 Nugget meal deal for $7.50
2. Dagwood Dogs: 1 mini Dagwood dog meal deal $5.50 OR 2 mini Dagwood dogs meal deal for $7.50
3. Mini traveller pack of pies (2 pies per pack): 1 pack of pie meal deal $5.50 OR a 2 pack of pies meal deal for $7.50
4. Cocktail Franks: 4 pack meal deal $5.50 OR 8 pack meal deal for $7.50

Orders can be places via Quickcliq or over the counter up until Thursday the 20th at 2pm. Normal menu will be available to order until 8am Friday.

Smart Choice

Here at Kurwongbah School our tuckshop follows the Queensland Governments Smart choice menu. After having our 2020 menu rated, we are proud to announce that our tuckshop is compliant with the recommendations set. For more information about the guidelines please got to this link:

Cold Water

On these hot days, the tuckshop staff have been providing a cold water station for all our students, this is provided at no cost to students. We encourage all students to bring a water bottle from home to refill throughout the day. Please note we do not provide cups for students who don’t have a bottle to refill.

Preps and Ice Blocks

The tuckshop is working closely with the schools admin team to be able to provide our prep students with ice blocks. We hope to have this plan finalised soon and parents will be informed as soon as possible.

Volunteers

We are very excited to be welcoming back many of our volunteers and happy to be welcoming new members to our team.

Reminder dates for our amazing helpers:

• Friday 21st Feb: Kim Robertson, Liz Greer, Brooke Krause
• Friday 28th Feb: Liz Greer, Brooke Krause

If you are interested in information about how you can help out at the tuckshop, please email our team at: tuckshop@ksspca.qld.edu.au.

Tuckshop Hours

Sandra and Carol
Tuckshop Convenors
tuckshop@ksspca.qld.edu.au

Uniform Shop

Volunteers

If anyone could spare some time to help out in the uniform shop for an hour or so, this would be greatly appreciated. Assistance is required on a Monday and Thursday morning from 8.30-9:30am, as well as Wednesday afternoon from 2.30pm.

House Shirts

We are still waiting for delivery of our Wyalla and Aroona House Shirts. These should be here next week.

Second-hand Uniforms    

Don’t forget that you can sell your second-hand uniforms through the Uniform Shop with 50% from the sale going to the P&C, which is spent providing better facilities for your children.  We have parents waiting for second-hand uniforms.  

Hair Accessories

We have a range of hair ties, scrunchies, bows, hair clips and we now have head bands. We also have house clips and wrist bands.

Ordering Through Uniform Shop   

If you have a problem being able to get to the Uniform Shop on the days we are open there are a number of ways you can order your uniforms.   

1. You can send your order and payment (money or credit card details) with your child.   
2. You can come into the Uniform Shop during open hours and pay by cash or Eftpos.   
3. If you are unable to come into the Shop during open hours you can pay by phone order and your child’s uniforms will be delivered to your child’s class or class tray.    

We accept Cash, Eftpos and Credit Card in the shop or Credit Card by Phone Order.   

Uniform Shop Hours

Thank you
Kay Mitchell & Carol Woodhouse
uniformshop@ksspca.qld.edu.au

Containers for Change

Community Notices

Tennis Coaching

The Tennis Australia Hot Shots tennis coaching program is conducted by qualified professional coach Lorrae Thompson.

Lessons are held on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Class times 7:55 to 8:40am. Loan rackets free of charge.

For all enquiries re enrolment and fees, phone 3882 1084 or 0402 110 508.

Girl Guides

Girl Guides have been having fun in Queensland for 100 years, and we would like you to join us. Girl Guides is a program run throughout the world that promotes and encourages young girls and women to be the best that they can be.

We have units available for all girls aged from 5 to 17+ where you can have adventures challenging yourself, developing leadership skills, doing arts & crafts, enjoying the great outdoors but above all having fun with friends in a safe environment. Girl Guides is designed for and supports girls of all abilities, empowering them to be their best.

We have units all over the Moreton Bay Region just waiting to hear from you, so if you are interested or would like more information please contact Andpetrieregion@outlook.com for more details.

Redcliffe Leagues Hockey Club

Brothers North Netball

Pine Rivers Swans AFC

You are invited to the Junior Sign On Day, Saturday 8th February, 10am-2pm.

All existing and new players are welcome to come down, complete your registration and check out what the club has to offer in 2020. Suitable for boys and girls from 5 years age+.

For more information you can find us on Facebook @pineriversjuniors or contact Rob 0432 085 285, swansjuniors@outlook.com.

Surf Life Saving Queensland – South Bank Little Lifesavers Program

We have our last Little Lifesavers Program for the summer at South Bank starting on Saturday 22nd February for 5 weeks.

The Little Lifesavers Program is designed to be fun, engaging and a great way to educate children on the important aspects of water safety, whilst also increasing their skills and confidence in the water with a variety of water safety and lifesaving techniques which are vital skills.

The Great Moscow Show

The Great Moscow Circus will be showing in North Lakes, near the Westfield Shopping Centre from 27 February.

FREE Triple P Positive Parenting Program