April 2019

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Ponderings

As we come to the end of term One, I would like to thank Parents, staff and students for their resilience in adversity, contributions to and support of our school.

Teachers new to our school have taken on new learning, processes, pedagogies, friendships and many different ways of doing things. And for some, all of this while settling into a new town. I congratulate Dave and Ainsley, Jess, Kate, Bronwyn and Katrina (Pato) on embracing the weird and wacky ways of distance education and bringing to our school a wealth of experience and positivity.

Our returning teachers and support staff have continued to excel in their work in supporting our students. Thank you too for a smooth and productive first term.

Thank you to our parents and home tutors who have participated in Kick Start Conference, Minischools, Multischool and the day to day educational experiences for our students. We have had a positive and productive term one. Your dedication is what makes a difference.

And the students…well, what effort and involvement in all things school this term! Our school leaders’ participation in the leadership conference, assemblies, Kick Start Conference and their Minischools and Multischools; our eKindy, Prep, Primary and secondary students participating in their lessons and field events; everyone giving of their best effort.

Staffing

Term two will have a couple of changes. Tam Jenyns returns from leave and will be teaching Year 3 A. Candice Hope will be replacing Racheal de Luca when she goes on leave early in term two.

Term Two

Term two will commence with four short weeks due to public holidays and Sports Muster. This flurry of activity will be disruptive to lessons, however, the opportunities at Sports Muster to bring our students together for fun, competition and socialising is another special time for our school community.

The P&C have exciting activities planned for Thursday night of Sports Muster to bring parents and home tutors together for friendly rivalry and competition and food and drink. (The Smoko Challenge will be at Speech and Awards as we change our end of year celebrations to the last week of our school year.)

I look forward to seeing as many of our students and families as possible at these activities.

Our Management meeting will be held on Wednesday 1st May. Please contact your representative if you have agenda items to be brought forward.

WA Secondary parent rep: Di Hansen
P&C President: Bec McKeering
Thargomindah/Quilpie: Anne Worsnop
Roma: Sally Campbell
Charleville: Natalie Pampling
St George/ Bollon: Vacant – Tannas Godfrey is not with the school for this term…Is this the job for you?

The agenda will include:

• revisiting the school camp cycle ( at present - Leadership/Beach, Cultural, Canberra/snow)

P&C

At the AGM on the 21st March, the following parents took on the executive and support roles to further support our students. Thank you for your ongoing commitment and support.

President: Bec McKeering
Vice Presidents:
Cunnamulla: Christie Clinch
Charleville: Cassie Ryan
Quil/Ero/Thar: Anne Worsnop
Roma: Sue Hurford
Secretary: Brie Boyle
Treasurer: Kristy Cornford

Souvenir and Uniform: Eunice Campbell
Cookbook: Kimberley Rains
WA Support Rep: Natalie Pampling
Grants Writing: Christy Bredhauer
SODEA: Bec McKeering

STOP PRESS

• Changes of dates for the Western Alliance Careers’ Camp – to Week 8 10th June to 14th June.
• Gazetted Public Holiday for the Murweh Shire on the 28th May for the Queensland Rugby League Fan Day

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday,

Jenny

From the Deputy’s Desk

Well what a busy start to 2019! It was wonderful to have the opportunity to catch up with so many of our amazing students, parents and home tutors at the Kick Start Conference in Week 2. I enjoyed a variety of PE, dance and swimming with the students throughout the week and it was helpful to put some faces to names amongst our parents and home tutors early in the term.

After KSC, the student leaders, Sue Hurford, Annabel Tully and I set off to Brisbane for the Halogen Leaders’ Conference. We had a fabulous time and the students were especially impressed with the range of guest speakers and most of all DJ Raff. We managed to jam pack the two nights and one afternoon that we had spare with a swim at Southbank, Sushi Train (including the incredible wasabi challenge), viewing the city lights on a City Cat ride, Grill’d and a trip to the cinema. A huge thank you to Sue and Annabel for your help throughout the trip.

What a whirlwind few weeks that followed… Roma, Charleville and Thargomindah Minischools and lastly, Longreach Multischool. I am happy to report that these weeks were most enjoyable and I was excited to have been able to spend a few extra days attending each event this term. I was able to assist with swimming and see the outstanding work the students are doing in their classrooms. The Minischool kitchens were a huge success with many wonderful parents and govies volunteering their time to prepare food and assist with a range of tasks throughout our Minischool weeks. Multischool was a barrel of fun and laughs with ‘Minute to Win It’ providing opportunities for the students (and teachers) to express their competitive side. Thank you to the parents for their efforts in getting their children to these events and also to our marvellous teachers and support staff for all the behind the scenes work they do. A tremendous effort goes into our field events and to see the benefits and enjoyment from the students and the teachers this term is proof enough that our school is a great school!

Amongst the madness of field events, I have had the pleasure of attending the management meeting and numerous other meetings to work collaboratively with our staff and school community to offer many great opportunities to our students. I have learnt a great deal this term and am very much looking forward to many more terrific things next term. This week, I have spent some time preparing the Club’s Timetable for next term. Please check the notices for club nomination information and rsvp as soon as possible.

I hope you take some time over the Easter break to spend with your family and rest and recoup. I am looking forward to an action packed (and no doubt very quick!) Term 2.

Cheers

Katrina Dunne
(Acting Deputy Principal)

Curriculum Corner

HODs of Teaching and Learning role and responsibilities for 2019

Hi All. My name is Leonie Herwig and I am the Primary HOD. This is my second year working as HOD at Charleville SDE. I am looking forward to continuing to build and strengthen the learning partnerships I forged with many of you during the past year. I welcome and encourage each of you to contact me with any questions, queries or concerns you have about our curriculum and I’m looking forward to catching up with each of you again at our 2019 field events.

Reading Coach

As well as being Primary HOD this year, I will also be stepping into the Reading Coach role to support Home Tutors to teach and monitor reading at home. I will also be supporting the Primary teachers to develop their skills in teaching reading and how best to work collaboratively with Home Tutors to best meet the needs of students. This is the second year this position has existed and I am excited about the opportunity to focus on improving the reading skills of our students.

My name is Mandy McDonald and I am the HOD of Teaching and Learning for secondary. This year I will be working with the CSDE secondary teachers and the other HODs/HOCs across the Western Alliance to help develop the pedagogical practices and build capability of our teachers across the three schools. Like Leonie, if you have any questions or concerns around secondary curriculum please don’t hesitate to contact me. Looking forward to getting to know you all throughout the year.

Home Tutor Help – “Teaching and Learning Drop-In Sessions”

In Term 2, we will be offering Home Tutor professional development sessions. These sessions will be based on what you would like to learn.

We strongly encourage you to attend the Year level Home Tutor sessions offered at the beginning of each term by your student’s teacher. These sessions cover the content in upcoming units of work and also additional tips and hints that will assist you in your school room.

These sessions are recorded so that if you are unable to make the live session you are able to listen to the recording later at night or on weekends when you have more free time.

If there is something you would like to know more about or something that would assist you in the classroom, please feel free to email us and we can add it to the agenda. E: lherw1@eq.edu.au and mrose118@eq.edu.au

We look forward to a busy and successful Term 2

Thanks
Leonie Herwig and Mandy McDonald
Head of Department – Teaching and Learning

Digital Discoveries

App of the Month: Quick Maths

Need to practice your times tables? Want to improve your speed for working out mental maths calculations? Then this is the app for you! This app provides you with a range of questions (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and allows you to write the answer on the screen using your finger. How fast can you go?

Apple - Download from the link below.

New Intranet

Have you discovered and requested access to our new Intranet site? The Intranet is a website that is available just for our students (and their families). It has information about events, notices and all the links you may need to be successful at CSDE.

Check it out! Go to the school’s website and click on the Intranet link or go to the link below. You can then request access (usually granted with 24 hours) and then you can get all the information you need.

One Drive for Students

What is One Drive?

OneDrive is a part of Office 365 and provides students with a place to store up to 5 terabytes of work in the cloud. Watch an Introduction to OneDrive Video here.

Accessing OneDrive

Go to Webmail (student email) at and click on the ‘waffle’ (set of 9 squares) in the top left corner and select OneDrive.

QParents

QParents is a secure online web and mobile portal that provides parents of Queensland State School students with direct online access to student information such as:

• Timetables
• Behaviour
• Invoices and payments
• Past Report cards
• Enrolment history
• Student photo
• Student details

QParents provides parents with secure online access to student information already available from the school through other communication methods, and complies with departmental policies, privacy and stringent security standards through identity management. It is important to note that schools retain control over the types of information accessible to parents through QParents.

To access QParents go to:

Tinkering with Technologies

Charleville School of Distance Education is embarking on a new project to help align our Technologies units and skills to the rest of our current curriculum. With help from ACARA the staff are developing knowledge and understandings around the Technologies Curriculum. The first step in this project was to give home tutors and staff an introduction into what the Technologies Curriculum is all about.

Home tutors and staff were introduced to the strands of Design Technologies that will be implemented in our school in the future:

They also discovered the key skills involved in the Technologies (or Design) Process:

Finally, participants were shown the development of coding and programming across the year levels.

Some home tutors were even lucky enough to experiment with some coding at KickStart.

Keep an eye out for more information about Technologies and our new project.

Student Work

Congratulations to Weston C who recently entered the ABC and Australian Geographic Wildlife Photo Competition and WON!!! Students were asked to take a photo of Australian wildlife for a chance to have their image published on the Australian Geographic website.

Weston’s photo will soon be published on the Australian Geographic website but you can check it out using the link below:

Year 7 DDT students have been learning to improve their typing skills. However, before they started they discovered the importance of sitting ergonomically. Are you sitting the right way?

Year 9 DDT students spent time at Multischool in Longreach programming Micro:bits to create their own signs, mini games and truck controls. Students used Python coding language to achieve this.

Check out the latest blog posts:

From the Technician’s Table: Need More Help?

If you are having trouble with log on details, access problems, computer or headset issues or just want some advice we are here to help you. . .

School Technician – Bill Grant: wjgra0@eq.edu.au or 07 4656 8909

For all phone and headset issues and problems with computers.

Digital Learning Facilitator – Sam Owczarek: sowcz1@eq.edu.au or 07 4656 8915

For advice or help with using programs or tools on the Learning Place (including eLearn, Student Space and Blogging).

Give us a call or send an email.

Girl Guides

Did you know that Charleville School of Distance Education has its own Girl Guide Unit? The 2nd Charleville (Lone) Guides is an official part of Girl Guides Queensland. Our weekly sessions (subject to leader availablility during field events) are run as an on-air session using Web Conferencing. The girls learn about the World of Guides, they strive for badges, help out in their community, have fun and fellowship, and meet during Field Events if possible.

World Thinking Day

At the beginning of this term, our Girl Guide unit focused on celebrating World Thinking Day, an international day recognising and remembering the founders of Scouts and Guides over 100 years ago. Members discovered the history of the movement, played games, and read stories to find out more about Lord and Lady Baden-Powell and how the wonderful organisation of Girl Guides started. Check out the Lost in Time game we played on-air with tokens made by the girls.

Ropes Badge

To finish the term, our Guides have been challenging themselves to learn knots to earn their Ropes badge. We have been learning to tie an overhand knot, a reef knot and clove hitch. The girls even tried some skipping to see how fit they are.

Email Mrs Sam O on sowcz1@eq.edu.au if you would like to join our fabulous Girl Guide unit and application forms and information will be forwarded to you.

Partners in Learning Reading Workshops

During March, Home Tutors had the opportunity to attend the ‘Partners in Learning’ reading workshops held in Roma, Charleville and Thargomindah.

This is the second year of the ‘Partners in Learning’ pilot program which focuses on upskilling Home Tutors to improve their knowledge and understanding of reading skills, as well as building confidence in monitoring and providing feedback to teachers around their students’ progress.

The Partners in learning reading workshop covered the same 4 modules as last year with a few changes due to attendee feedback. These modules were:

Module 1 – Learning to read
Module 2 – Engaging with phonics
Module 3 – Supporting readers
Module 4 - Responding to readers

This year we had twenty-one Home Tutors participate in the two day workshops.

I would like to thank each of the participants for their time, positivity and enthusiasm during these workshops. The lack of internet, power outages and tired, bored children didn’t stop each of you from consolidating your knowledge of reading or sharing your ideas with fellow Home Tutors.

So where to next? Term Two will see Primary Class Teachers working with Home Tutors to set reading goals for individual students and working to improve student reading, as partners in learning. I am currently waiting on permission to be able record these modules as webinars so Home Tutors can revisit them in their own time. I also want to encourage Home Tutors to call me if they have any questions or if they have an ideas for follow up sessions.

Leonie Herwig
Reading Coach

PLO Prattle

Term 1 has gone in the blink of an eye. It amazes me all the time how we seem to fit so much into a Term.

Kick Start Conference, Halogen Leadership Conference, Minischools, Multischool and school work. Kick Start Conference was a huge success with 58 Home Tutors and 85 Students attending. Numbers were a little down from last year but this was understandable with the drought situation. It is currently raining whilst I’m writing this article, yippee.

Minischools and Multischool have again been successful for all who attended with lots of learning and fun had by all.

I have also achieved a milestone in my life: I graduated with a Bachelor of Counselling after 3 years of study.

Big smile and relief that it’s over; my motto is that if I can do it anyone can. Go for it, you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it.

Below is another article from Michael Grose around how children try to wear us down as parents to get what they want:

“Kids of all ages are excellent at wearing down the resistance of a parent who denies permission for them to go somewhere due to lack of safety or suitability concerns. Unfortunately many kids use annoying methods such as:

• repetition (Can I go? Can I go? Can I go?);
• questioning (Why can’t I go?);
• guilt (You never let me go anywhere!);
• nagging (Can I, can I, can I go, pleeease!) and
• whining (Ahhh! Whyyy Caaan’t I gooo!)

Often we are so tired that we give just to gain some peace, which makes pester power a useful strategy as kids achieve what they want.

Our hope is that our kids are able to avoid or counter the risk as much as humanly possible. One way of assessing this is asking them to convince you that they are responsible, old enough and possess sufficient awareness to go into new situations and places.

One way to avoid this obnoxious pestering is to ask them to convince you that they are responsible enough, old (read mature) enough or aware enough to be allowed to go somewhere.

Here’s an example:

“Amelia, I’m not sure that I should allow you to take the train into the city with friends. I’m worried that it might not be safe. Convince me that you can do so safely.”

This response puts the onus back on the child or young person to think to counter your concerns. Listen carefully to their response as it will indicate whether they really have considered your concerns and are aware of the depth or range of potential difficulties.

Simplistic responses don’t cut it

If they respond with simplistic comments such as; “I’ll be okay”, “we’ll stick together” and “I won’t do anything stupid” then they are probably unaware or unprepared for contingencies that may arise.

However if they provide a response with more depth, they may demonstrate their readiness. An example for this might be “I know you are worried that we might get picked on by older kids on the train. That worries me too. We’ll make sure we pick a carriage with plenty of adults and if kids hop on that look like they’ll give us a hard time, we’ll get off at the next station.”

Minimising risk

Answers such as the above show they understand your concerns and also that they have some strategies in mind to minimise risk. As a parent we’d like to remove risk from our kids’ lives but this is unrealistic. As kids grow up their world rapidly expands taking them further away from the safe confines of home, and exposing them to new and potentially risky situations and people. Our hope is that our kids are able to avoid or counter the risk as much as humanly possible. One way of assessing this is asking them to convince you that they are responsible, old enough and possess sufficient awareness to go into new situations and places.

“Convince me!” may well be the smartest two words you’ll ever use as a parent. It may stop pester-power in its tracks and at the same time induce your child or young person to think ahead and better prepare for spreading their wings when you don’t feel they are quite ready.”

Hoping everyone is getting or got some rain and that you are able to take a rest during the holidays.

Cheers

Helen Cook
Parent Liaison Officer

From the Technician’s Table

Logging in problems?

• Families that are having problems logging in, especially for the first time, or for password change, need to do it in Webmail.
• The web address for Webmail is http://webmail.eq.edu.au/
• Sign in there and change the password when prompted.
• Once you have successfully changed the password and signed in you will be able to sign into elearn etc.
• If you are changing the password for more than one student, you will need to sign out of webmail then sign in as the next student for their password to be changed.
• Can families also make sure that they are using Internet Explorer for their web browser (or Mozilla Firefox as the next alternative).
• Edge, Chrome etc are not supported by Education Queensland at this stage.

If families are still experiencing problems logging in, or are locked out, please contact Bill Grant – Technical Officer on 0746568909

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