From the Principal’s Desk

With the end of the school year rapidly approaching,

there are a number of special activities taking place,

including end of Term BOB day, Awards Celebrations,

our meet and greet afternoon with 2019 teachers,

transition days, as well as break up days and report

cards going home in the final week. We look forward

to celebrating student achievement across the coming

weeks.

Our Awards Ceremony for Year Five and Six students is

to be held in the Hall on Wednesday the 12th of

December at 6.00pm. Students receiving an Academic,

Social, Cultural or Sports award will be notified by a

letter of invitation next week.

Thank you to our school community for raising $551

from our Farmer Day. Our P&C will forward this on to

Jericho State School to be used to support local

farmers’ students.

High School Transition Days

Next week, our Year 6 students enrolling at North

Mackay State High School and Pioneer State High

School will attend an orientation day designed to give

students an introduction to high school, an

understanding of the facilities available and allow them

to experience some of the subjects that will be offered.

We hope that students enjoy this experience.

Prep Transition Days

This week, we will welcome our fourth group of future

Prep students to Fitzgerald as they get to learn about

our school, participate in hands on activities, meet and

interact with other children coming to Prep and

experience a taste of life in a Prep classroom. These

sessions have been a huge hit with our future Preppies

December 4: North High Orientation Day

December 12: Awards Night

December 13 : Yr. 6 Excursion and dinner

December 14: Last day of school

School contact information

Principal: Mrs Tracey Adams

Deputy Principal: Mr Peter Robinson

Deputy Principal: Mr Tim Campbell

Business Services Manager: Mrs Dolores

Venables

Office hours

8.00 am – 4.00 pm

Telephone and facsimile numbers

Telephone: (07) 4965 6333

Facsimile: (07) 4965 6300

School email address:

principal@fitzgeraldss.eq.edu.au

School

website: www.fitzgeraldss.eq.edu.au

Student Absence Line:

49656 360

This service is available for parents

reporting their children’s absence from

school. Please clearly state their name,

class, and reason for absence. All

absences are recorded for teachers.

Fitzgerald State School 29th November 2018

ISSUE NO 19

Diary Dates

and their families and I would like to welcome them all to our wonderful Fitzgerald community. A

big thankyou also goes out to Carolyn Steginga and Jacquie Bird who have co-ordinated and run

these sessions.

Planning for weather conditions

Due to ongoing very high temperatures in Mackay this week we have taken steps to minimise

student exposure by offering students options to keep them out of the sun and heat. We are

endeavouring to ensure that all students are being kept inside the air conditioned

classrooms/library space or undercover areas for eating and play time, ensuring that all students

have plenty of access to water to ensure continued hydration and reducing time spent outside of

the classroom. Where required, we have also relocated classes into air conditioned spaces. Staff

continue to be vigilant to ensure students are not showing signs of being overheated. Please know

that should any concerns arise, we would contact parents of children as is our regular practice.

PBL

As a school, we are committed to ensuring clear and consistent behaviour management processes

and as such, we are currently undertaking a review of our school behavioural processes and

systems and will be participating in training under the Positive Behaviour for Learning program in

the coming weeks. What this will mean for parents of our school community is that we will be

seeking feedback regarding possible changes across the coming months. We will also have a

representative from our parent community on the committee involved in making the decisions as

well as a member of our P&C group.

QSR

During Week 10 of this term, we will be meeting with Assistant Regional Director, Cath Lalor to

verify our school priorities for the coming four years. Across the past 10 weeks, we have worked to

analyse school information including feedback provided by the School Review team, School

Opinion Survey results and academic data and we have met with key stakeholder groups including

all staff, our parent group and representatives of our student population to identify key school

improvement priorities. We look forward to working together to ensure school improvement

across the coming four years.

School Administration for Term 1 2019

Finally, I am able to confirm that our current administration team will remain in place for Term 1 of

the 2019 school year. I look forward to continuing to work with staff, students and members of the

school community during this time.

Congratulations to the students – as listed in this newsletter, for receiving Mackay District Sports

Person of the year Awards.

Regards

Tracey Adams, Principal

Foyer Display

Year 2A and 2B Water Conservation

This term in Year 2 we have been learning about a precious resource, water. We have studied the

water cycle with Whizzy the water droplet. Conserving our water is also very important for the

future and we discovered ways that we can look after and save our water. Our raindrops in the

foyer show you our fantastic ideas for conserving water. Watch every drop!

From the Office

Thank you to the families that have been prompt throughout the year paying their school fees. For

the families that still have outstanding accounts, can you please clear these fees at your earliest

convenience. The 2019 Student Resource Scheme and booklist has been emailed home, please

complete the Student Resource Scheme Participation Agreement form and return to the school. If

you have any concerns, please contact the school.

Library News

Students and family members of the Fitzgerald Indigenous Community are invited to participate in

our 2019 Homework Program commencing Tuesday 26th February 2019 from 3:00 – 4:00pm.

Parent and caregivers of

our Indigenous students

are invited to accompany

their children to the weekly

afternoon homework

sessions, where Fitzgerald’s

teachers and teacher aides

will be there to support students to complete their homework tasks.

More details will be posted early in 2019!

Library Closure

Our Library will be closing for borrowing for our annual library resourcing from Monday 26th

November 2018. We ask that you please return all books on

loan as soon as possible by this date. We would like to thank

you all for your support throughout this year and your

continued patronage in 2019. We have truly enjoyed getting

to know each and every child who comes and visits our library

each day.

Premier’s Reading Challenge Celebration by Sue Hamilton-Smith, Master

Teacher

MP Mrs Julieanne Gilbert visited the senior assembly to congratulate those students who

completed the 2018 Premier's Reading Challenge. The Member for Mackay spoke about the

importance of reading in life, so that we have the skills to get things done and that we find the

time to read for pleasure. She suggested that students make sure that they have something that

they'd like to read over the summer vacation. Mrs Gilbert is pictured here with a representative

from each of the Years 3 to 6 classes.

Mackay District Sports Person of the Year Awards

Congratulations to the following students for receiving Mackay District Sports Person of the year

Awards -

- Cohen Frith- AFL Award, Touch Football Award, Sports Person of the Year Award AFL, QLD

Representative Award Winner

- Declan Grady- Swimming Award, QLD Representative Award Winner

- Keira Falzon- Soccer Award

- Jesse Holmstrom- Aquathlon Award, Sports Person of the Year Award Aquathlon

- Krystal Miller- Rugby League Award, Sports Person of the Year Award Rugby League,

“Renae Kunst Shield Winner”- Most outstanding girls rugby league award

Cohen Frith – Touch Football Declan Grady - Swimming

Football

Keira Falzon – Soccer Jesse Holmstrom- Aquathlon

Krystal Miller-Wilson – Rugby League Cohen Frith-Wilson – AFL

Tuckshop News

With only two weeks left of school the tuckshop will be running stock down. We will substitute

whether possible. So at present we will not be restocking sausage rolls of orange quench drinks.

TUCKSHOP WILL BE CLOSED ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL.

P& C News

Thanks to all the families who supported our Pizza and Free Dress Day for the Farmers. We will be

donating all the money raised to Jericho State School. A massive Thank -you to the volunteers on

the day, Paul Kelleher, Whitney Waples, Trina Saunders, Julie Erezuma, Tracey Davison, Cath

Chiconi and Caitlin Kean. Without volunteers days like this aren't possible so we thank you for

your time.

Cash for Cans

You may be aware that Queensland Government is introducing a Container Refund Scheme (CRS)

to reduce the amount of beverage container litter that enters our environment by providing an

incentive for people to collect and return eligible containers for recycling in exchange for a refund

payment.

The Scheme will start on 1 November 2018. From this date any eligible beverage containers can

be returned in exchange for a 10 cent refund.

From the 1st of November you can bring your eligible containers to our secure cage at Fitzy

(down between the bottom car park and the Prep C and D classes), and donate your refund

to the P&C, where all funds raised will go directly back into school to help the current and future

children of our great school.

Our school has become a Donation Point, where bulk

containers can be collected on our premises, we

encourage community members to donate their

containers to our school. The containers are then returned

in bulk to the Anything Environmental Refund Point,

where the refund is transferred into our account.

What can you do to help:

Please encourage any family members, businesses or

friends to start collecting their containers and donate them

to Fitz. If they don’t live near our school and would rather

take their containers to a “Anything Environmental

Community Collection Bin” , they can absolutely do it that

way, all they will need to do is bag up their containers and

simply add a A4 size paper to the inside of the bag with the

words ‘donate to Fitzgerald State School’.

Start collecting your eligible containers now, and once the 1st of November is here you can start

bringing your items to school and adding them to our donation point.

Preferably, lids should be removed from

beverage containers. Removing the lids

will help with the crushing of containers at

processing facilities, and will provide the

following benefits:

Plastic tops are usually made from a

different plastic than the bottle, and

separating the plastics reduces the

level of ‘contamination’ which

means better recycling outcomes

Leaving lids on containers can cause

problems with transport and

storage

To find out more about the scheme visit their website: www.containersforchange.com.au