June 2017

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Ponderings

Winter is finally here and what a difference the late sunrises and chilly mornings make!

Student Council 2017

Congratulations to all students who put their name forward for election to student council. Your commitment to our school is to be commended.

I look forward to the following students working well together and supporting activities and making thoughtful decisions:

Savannah Blacket (Yr 9), Millie Creagh (Yr 8), Jaye Radel (Yr 7), Logan Flynn (Yr 6), Josh Bredhauer (Yr 5) and Eve Tully (Yr 4). School Captains Bill Brand (Yr 10), Beau Campbell (Yr 6) and Ebony McDonald (Yr 6)

The following students have been elected as office bearers.

President: Savannah Blacket (Bill Brand to fill in when Savannah is away)
Secretary: Millie Creagh (Ebony McDonald to fill in when Millie is away)
Treasurer: Jaye Radel (Logan Flynn to fill in when Jaye is away)

Management Meeting:

The term 2 Management Meeting will be a teleconference on the 15th June. It will be a short meeting due to the timing. The main business of the agenda is as below.

As part of our AIP (Annual Implementation Plan attached) we are revisiting the communication documents including

1. Complaints Management Process
2. Resolutions Flow Chart
3. Enrolment agreement
4. Communication Charter

With the aim of:

1. Building a culture of wellbeing and building on our positive partnerships
2. Making change as needed to the documents to reflect the school community
3. The committee members seeking feedback from the school community for the next Management Meeting
4. Determining that when these are completed they are shared with the whole school community in a clearly determined process.

Teaching and Learning:

Within the school we have called for two committees to be formed to address

1. Updating the Behaviour Management Policy and,
2. Reviewing the Maths delivery across all year levels.

The resulting documentation will be shared with and endorsed by the Management Meeting and then to P&C for notice and acceptance.

Have a wonderful rest of the term.

Jenny

“Teach the children how to think, not what to think.”
Sidney Sugarman

From the Deputy’s Desk

NAPLAN. Thank you parents and Home Tutors for your test supervisions in the school room. Most of the test papers have been returned to the school and have been forwarded onto Brisbane to be marked. Reports will be posted early in Term 3.

Student Council Representatives have now been elected. Congratulations to the 2017 Student Representatives: Savannah Blacket (Yr 9), Millie Creagh (Yr 8), Jaye Radel (Yr 7), Logan Flynn (Yr 6), Josh Bredhauer (Yr 5) and Eve Tully (Yr 4). School Captains Bill Brand (Yr 10), Beau Campbell (Yr 6) and Ebony McDonald (Yr 6) are also on the Student Council as part of their leadership position within the school. An AGM meeting was held on Wednesday 24th May. This has been deferred until Wednesday 31st May as unfortunately a quorum was not reached.

Field events. We are looking forward to seeing as many families as possible for the Cluster Musters happening on the 6th June at Quilpie & Charleville and the 7th June at St George. Planning has commenced for Kick Start Conference 2018. My role is to plan the student activities. If you have any suggestions of possible student activities during the four days, please send me an email. New ideas are very welcome. I have already booked Royal Life Saving Society Queensland who will be with us for all four days during KickStart. All students will do a ‘Swim and Survive’ program which will include stroke correction. Other activities may include CPR Awareness, First Aid, Recreational Bronze Medallion, and Junior Lifeguarding Programs. Planning has also commenced for Western Alliance Multischool in August.

Visitors to the school. Recently we had 75 students from St Johns Primary School (Roma) come and visit our school. I would like to thank all the students who were in classes at the time, for making these students feel welcome. You were terrific ambassadors for our school!

Reports. Teachers are busy marking and grading assessments ready for end of Semester reporting. A big thank you to the families that submit work on time, as this reduces the pressure put on teachers when assessment is submitted late. Reports will be posted at the end of Week 10.

PLO Prattle

We are heading towards the end of Term 2, a busy time with NAPLAN, Cluster Musters, ICPA Conference, and Local Shows and on a personal level our daughter’s wedding. I often wonder how we fit so much into 10 weeks.

The article from Michael Grose this time is about “Pester Power”, we have all suffered this at some stage of parenthood.

5 ways to resist children’s pester power

By Michael Grose

Do you have a child who won’t take “no” for an answer?

“Mum, can you buy me a treat?”
“MUUUMMMM, can you get me some new clothes?”
“It’s not fair. You never let me have any fun.”

Sound familiar?

Kids have a way of getting under your skin when they really want something. You can refuse their request for a treat, some extra time out of bed or some new clothes, and they can keep at you until you give in.

Whining, tantrums and appeals to fairness are common tactics that kids use to break down parental resolve.

Some kids when they receive a knock back from one parent, will try the other parent out. “Okay, mum said no to an ice cream, I’ll just check to see what dad says” is the type of tactic I‘m talking about here.

Solo parents can easily become worn down by pester power as there is no one to share the burden with.

Pester power hasn’t always been a problem for parents. In the days of large families, when four or more children were common, not only was there less propensity to give kids what they wanted but siblings had their own way of dealing with rebellious or ‘prima-donna’ type behaviour.

There is no doubt that kids’ pester power is alive and well and living in Australian homes right now. In these times of smaller families the voice of one child resisting can be the only voice a parent hears.

If your kids don’t take no for answer, particularly when they want you to buy, buy, buy consider these well-tested resistance strategies:

1. Keep explanations to a minimum.

It’s worth remembering that it’s okay to say no… without always having to explain yourself. While kids should know why we don’t give/allow them something that doesn’t mean we have to give answers every single time. Most of the times kids know why we say no, but they just keep pushing the boundaries.

2. Make yourself scarce.

My wife was an expert making herself scarce physically or psychologically when my kids used to argue the point with her. She would ignore attempts to change her mind, going about her business as if they weren’t there. They soon realised that arguing was futile. So have I… except it took me a little longer!!

3. Communicate with your partner.

Teenagers are adept at putting pressure on parents to acquiesce to their demands, particularly when it comes to going out. Get into the habit of bringing your partner into the picture. “I’m not sure about that. I’ll check with your father/mother and get back to you” is a handy response.

4. Draw strength from a friend.

It helps, particularly if you are on your own, to phone a friend to check if you are being reasonable. It’s easy to doubt yourself, and your sanity, when you are on your own.

5. How can you make this happen?

Sometimes it’s best to put the onus on to kids, particularly when they pester you to buy them things. “Sure, you can have a new mobile phone. Have you got enough money to buy it now or do you have to save for it?” is the type of response I suggest for kids who just love you to be their automatic teller machine.

Don’t forget to book your accommodation for Sports Muster, the dates for Sports Muster is 17th & 18th August, as time is racing away and it will be on us before we know what is happening.

Cheers
Helen Cook
Parent Liaison Officer

Curriculum Corner

eTeach (I hope you haven’t shuddered too much reading that word!)

eTeach has started for us this year and by now, many of you will have had some experience with these units. Hopefully mostly good experiences, but I’m aware that there have also been some negative experiences.

As with starting any new curriculum, there are going to be teething problems. So far these have included:

• Discs not working
• Computers not having the appropriate software to run the programs or videos
• A lack of understanding re how the discs work and which file to use

Sam O, Bill and I have spent many hours in the last few weeks trying to problem-solve these issues and come up with solutions. I think we have been successful on most parts.

We are in the process of considering how we can put these on USB sticks instead of discs and Year 2 are going to be receiving their USB stick as a trial to see if this makes life a bit easier. I am anticipating that it will.

As with any area for improvement, we appreciate your feedback so I would like to say a very big thank you to those govies and parents who made contact either with class teachers or myself to let us know of things that were happening. Your time and patience has been appreciated beyond belief and I apologise that things didn’t run as smoothly as we all would have liked.

Should you have any other feedback you would like to provide (positive and concerns), please feel free to email them to me at zfarr21@eq.edu.au. There are going to be some things we can’t fix but if there are things we can do, I’m very happy to consider how we go about doing it.

Despite the teething problems, mainly with technology, I hope that students have found these lessons much more manageable in terms of workload and that they have engaged well with the interactive material.

Thanks
Zoe Farrer
Head of Department – Teaching and Learning

Digital Discoveries

Microsoft Office 2016 Free

Students of Charleville SDE are able to access a free copy of Microsoft Office 2016 via Education Queensland. This provided students with the latest version of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Outlook. To access your copy contact the school technicians for a copy on CD or visit:

iPad App of the Month: DJ Decibel

DJ Decibel Stadium F(x) is a multi-level game, where doing the maths lets you lift the roof at an epic, stadium-sized dance party. As DJ Decibel keeps the music thumping, you solve problems to keep the fans jumping. Rig the show with VERY LOUD speakers. Wrangle 3m-high robot dancers. Fire lasers to explode fireworks from a flying DJ pod. Do it all to max-out fan numbers as Problem-Solver-in-Chief in DJ Decibel Stadium F(x).

Get it from the App Store:

From the Technician’s Table: Setting Default Programs

On your Windows 8.1 computer you may find documents open with an app rather than a program or it may not open at all. You can set the program for a particular file type so those types of files always open with that particular program.

• Right click on the file you want to open
• Click on ‘Open with’
• Click on ‘Choose default program’
• Select the program you wish to use

Suggested List of Programs and Associated File Types

.doc and .docx – Microsoft Word
.ppt and .pptx – Microsoft PowerPoint
.xls – Microsoft Excel
.pub – Publisher
.pdf – Adobe Reader
.aup – Audacity
.mswmm – Movie Maker
.avi – Windows Media Player or Quicktime
.mov – Quicktime
.mp4, .mpeg, .wmv or .m4p – Windows Media Player
.bmp, .gif, .jpg and .jpeg – Paint.net or Picture Viewer

Year 8 Technologies Student Work

Our Year 8 students have been working through a Design and Technology unit called ‘Make it Respond’ in which they were required to investigate, design, create and evaluate a mini-golf obstacle that included an electrical circuit. Here are some of their great obstacles:

Check out the latest blog posts:

Prep – Year 3 Student Link:

Years 4 – 9 Student Link:

Year 10 Student Link:

Teaching and Learning Library

Assessment

Did you know that there are three different types of assessment? And that each type has a different purpose?

In our school… we utilise all three types of assessment:

1. Assessment FOR learning (used to INFORM teaching/planning)
   Purpose: Know where each student is and use this to make decisions about future teaching and learning opportunities.
   This type of assessment is usually a pre-test and it is used to guide future learning. For example, if the pre-test shows students already know how to do something… teachers can then spend less time on this and spend more time focussing on something students might need more time with. For example: reading tests, spelling pre-tests, numeracy pre-tests.
2. Assessment AS learning (used to MONITOR progress)
   Purpose: encourage students to monitor progress against goals.
   This type of assessment is focussed on checking in with how students are going and encouraging students to monitor their own learning. Are they meeting their goals? Do they require support or extra challenge?
3. Assessment OF learning (focus for reporting)
   Purpose: Check student achievement against the Australian Curriculum.
   This is where we collect evidence of student achievement against the Achievement Standards of the Australian Curriculum. This is also used to plan future teaching and learning experiences.

For example –Unit assessment tasks with Guide to Making Judgements.

Whilst there are three different types of assessments, sometimes assessments can show evidence for a number of different things. For example, whilst NAPLAN is used to assess where students are against minimum standards, schools use this data to follow trends and this is then used to inform teaching and learning. Similalry with Guide to Making Judgements… these can be used to focus on where students need to go next and not just for the purpose of reporting.

So, what does this mean for you as parents or Home Tutors? Well… it is important to talk with your child about the different types of assessment. For example, explaining to the student that the reading test is to think about next steps in learning for them and that it helps the teacher plan learning opportunities. Ultimately we want to encourage students to see assessments not as an opportunity to pass or fail but as an opportunity to learn.

How do you currently think of assessment tasks?
What do you think your students think of assessment tasks?
How can you change your language to focus on learning?

Thanks
Zoe Farrer
Head of Department – Teaching and Learning

Diabetes Research Study

Managing Type 1 Diabetes in Children: A Parenting Perspective

Being a parent of a child with type 1 diabetes can be extremely stressful. The University of Queensland is seeking parents of children with type 1 diabetes to take part in a research study that will explore factors that could help or hinder parents in managing their child’s diabetes. If you are a parent of a 2- to 10-year-old child with type 1 diabetes, we would love to hear from you! By sharing your experiences (confidentially) you will help us identify better ways for health care professionals to support parents and families. To complete the online survey, please go to the link below For further information about the project or to request a survey to be posted to you, please email Jade Grambower at j.grambower@uq.net.au or call Dr Amy Mitchell at the Parenting and Family Support Centre at The University of Queensland on (07) 3346 1202. Thank-you!

Charleville Cluster Muster kids trying out the new playground