Lots of Socks Day

On Friday 19 March, our school celebrated World Down Syndrome Day and held our own Lots of Socks Day to correspond with this year’s theme created by Down Syndrome International. It was wonderful to see so many students wearing all different colours and styles of socks.  As part of the day, we asked students to bring along a gold coin donation. An amazing $328 was raised on the day and was donated to Down Syndrome Queensland.

Congratulations Elloise Wooldridge

Congratulations to one of our Year 6 school leaders, Elloise Wooldridge, who was recently selected by the Bundaberg Regional Council to take part in the ANZAC Day Civic Service.

Our Year 6 students were given the opportunity to submit a reading of choice to be considered as part of the 2021 Bundaberg ANZAC Day Civic Service. The Council would then choose one primary school student and one high school student only to be a part of the service.

A huge congratulations to Elloise on being selected to share her reading and to represent our school.

Japanese Term One 

Minnasan Konnichiwa,

What an exciting first term of Japanese we have had. This term we have focussed on greetings by learning different formal and informal greetings and the different times of the day they should be used. We have also learnt how to ask and answer questions such as “what is your name?” and “how are you?”. Numbers have been another focus, both remembering the number names and recognising the kanji number symbols.

We have started looking at many different cultural aspects of Japan including bowing etiquette, New Years Celebrations, Girls/ Dolls Festival and learning about a variety of Japanese things. For Harmony Day the whole school helped make a poster for the wall outside the office. The older students have also started to learn to recognise and read some of the 46 symbols of the Hiragana alphabet.

In Japanese we have been singing songs, viewing video clips, reading charts and posters, playing games, working in small groups, role playing and doing craft activities. Learning a language is fun!

Linderberg sensei yori.

(Ms Linderberg)

Term 2 Start Date

Term 2 commences on Monday 19 April, 2021. We look forward to welcoming everyone back to school.

Student Awards

EASTER SERVICE TIMES IN OUR PARISH

Maundy Thursday:

St. John’s: 7.00pm H.C. (Pastor Greg Graham)

Good Friday:

Faith: 8.00am H.C. (Pastor Ryan Norris)

St. John’s: 9.00am H.C. (Pastor Greg Graham)

Easter Sunday:

Faith: 8.00am H.C. (John Bowes)

Redeemer: 8.00am H.C. (Pastor Ryan Norris)

St. John’s: 9.00am H.C. (Pastor Greg Graham)

Rosedale: 10.30am H.C. (Pastor Ryan Norris)

Gracehaven: 11.00am H.C. (Pastor Greg Graham)

NAPLAN Online 2021

Federal, state and territory education ministers agreed that all schools will gradually transition from the current paper-based NAPLAN to NAPLAN Online in order to provide a better and more precise assessment that is more engaging for students.

State and territory education authorities will determine when their schools move online. The current plan is for all schools to transition to NAPLAN Online by 2022. St John’s will be participating in NAPLAN online this year.

One of the main benefits of NAPLAN Online is tailored (or adaptive) testing, in which the test presents questions of higher or lower complexity depending on a student’s performance.

Tailored (or adaptive) testing is designed to assess a wider range of student abilities and to measure student achievement more precisely.

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) assesses literacy and numeracy skills that are essential for every child to progress through school and life.

Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 participate in the annual NAPLAN tests in reading, writing, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy.

The assessment provides parents and schools with an understanding of how individual students are performing at the time of the tests. NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process – it does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance.

Parents with students in Years 3 and 5 will receive more information via email this week regarding this years NAPLAN tests. We respectfully ask that parents rearrange any appointments or events so that NAPLAN testing days are not interrupted for your child. These tests will take place between 11-13 May.

This information has been taken from the NAPLAN assessment program website. More information for parents can be found at: https://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/parent-carer-support

Re: Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

• year of schooling
• category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
• level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

• formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
• consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
• develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy (https://www.education.gov.au/privacy-policy).

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If your child is to be included in the NCCD the classroom teacher will always make you aware of the adjustments being made at school for your child.

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school to make an appointment.

Many blessings,

Jocelyn Bakker

Director of Learning and Teaching

The Google Car

Last weekend, at our Ready, Set, Prep morning, I had the great pleasure of speaking briefly to a group of who are about to embark on their child’s 13 years of schooling next year. One of the things I mentioned was how much the world is changing. The world that we know and enjoy today is not the one that our current students will graduate into in a decade or so. ‘Duh! Of course!’, I hear you say.

But it’s true isn’t it? I went through school in the 80’s and 90’s, finishing Year 12 in 1992. I can still remember one of my teachers standing in the doorway of our primary classroom smoking! I have vivid memories of teachers hitting kids with sticks across the knuckles and of the then ‘old-fashioned’ desks we had that still had holes for ink wells in them. My generation was still using classroom equipment that was designed for a very different era, my Mum and Dad’s era.

Anyway, my school days were different than my own children’s by a mile. My children have gone through school though in an interesting time of change. The old-fashioned computer lab is a thing of the past, a room full of massive boxes and huge monitors used to look and feel so modern, now it just looks like yesterday. LCD laptops are everywhere, kids are using touch screens and even cabling is now irrelevant with the ubiquitous use of Wi-Fi. I can’t remember the last time I actually plugged something into a network point. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, the cloud, smart watch – some people don’t even look at a phone for texts now, they look at their watch!

The shift is so fast, so sustained, so overwhelming. And it’s all in schools. If there is one institution that has to be at the very front of what is happening – it is schools. We are the ones responsible for emerging young people into this crazy world. Preparing them for life that we remember as their parents, would be like my teachers in the 80’s preparing me for a life of ink wells and slates. Unconscionable.

Anyway, back to my original point. I have a confession to make. I was wrong when I spoke to that group of, recently. I informed them that their child may never need to actually get a license because we are already well on the way to self-driving cars, that the Google Car has done over a million kilometers already by itself. It’s 5 million.

In 2009 Google launched the self-driving car project. By 2015 it had done a million kilometers (well a few of them had collectively), now, just a few years later, that number has jumped exponentially to 5 million kilometers. The project is now called WAYMO and is an independent company whose sole aim is to get autonomous vehicles on our roads. They exist. They are being used. It’s amazing. 5 million kilometers completed! We have to be so careful that we do not cling onto our past. We have to be so careful as parents, as educators, as a community that we are right at the front of our understanding of this stuff and that we are preparing our kids for their future in this world.

Collaboration, communication, innovation, self-direction, synthesis. These, and more, are the soft skills that our kids need now and moving forward. The iPhone is over 10 years old. It changed the world. Anytime now the Google Car is going to hit us, it will change everything once again.

Thank goodness that some things don’t change though. Good schools still need good teachers. Children still need stable and supportive families with solid foundations. Our bodies need good food and appropriate rest. We all need people in our lives both to care for us and to care for. Little kids still need play-dough and plastic scissors. Teachers need to be in supportive relationships with and need a pat on the back for all the things they do out of love for their kids.

And we all need to be loved by He whose name is Love.

Parent/Teacher Interviews

A number of parents have taken advantage of meeting with teachers for Parent/Teacher Interviews these past couple of weeks. Thank you for your willingness to maintain open communication between home and school.

Uniform reminder for Term 2

Please note the following reminders regarding uniform requirements:

• Earrings can only be gold or silver sleepers or studs.
• All black school shoes worn with the uniform must be polished and in good condition
• Hair style is to be neat and tidy and must be tied up with a navy blue/red/white hair tie/band once it touches the collar and pinned off the face at all times.
• Nail polish is not to be worn to school.

Thank you

I would like to pay tribute to the wonderful ‘collective’ group of students, parents and staff that we have at our school. It is the fabulous support which allows for an environment for our children to come to school each day with a feeling of happiness, contentment, safety and friendship. It is our people, our community – you people, this community, who provide for our children those exciting learning experiences and educational activities that inspire and enthuse.

Happy Easter

Here we are at the end of the term already and its Easter time. In our busy world, Easter has become a great holiday break for many. Those who believe in the One Saviour, Jesus Christ, they are the Ones who receive eternal life. This is because Jesus is the One who paid the price for sin and promised eternal life – not because people have lived a good life but because they trust in what Jesus has done for them. He has saved human beings because of His amazing love. This gives HOPE for the future. The fact that our sins are forgiven and dealt with, and that Jesus rose from the dead demonstrates that Jesus is stronger than sin and stronger than dying. He has won. So, this Easter pause to remember what Easter is really about and praise God that He wants you to be part of His forever family. Take some time to make room and celebrate what Jesus has done!  I’d like to wish everyone a blessed Easter. The verse, to the right says it all!

Jesus is the reason for the season.

Thank you for working in partnership with us.

Grace and Peace

Chris Mallett

PRINCIPAL