A Letter to theCommunity

“Thought for the Week”

SCHOOL NEWSNo. 15 20 May 2016

School Mobile Phone

The school’s new mobile phone is working. The number is the same (0407 754 790).

Junior School Camp, 7-9 July

All students in Years Prep-3 have been given school camp forms to complete for the junior camp. Please complete and return these forms to school at your earliest convenience.

Rathdowney State Primary School143-155 Mount Lindesay Highway, Rathdowney 4287Phone: (07) 5540 4333 Fax: (07) 5540 4300 Principal: Tina van Bennekom www.rathdownss.eq.edu.au

Our school camps are heavily subsidised to allow as many children as possible to attend. The cost for the camp will be $150 for each student and $175 for adults. This cost covers the accommodation for 2 nights and the catering for 2 ½ days. The cost for the bus is paid by the P&C and the cost of entries is paid from Student Council funds.

We highly recommend that each child come on school camp, as all the activities we do, and the venues we visit, directly relate to the work that the students are doing in class.

As usual, we would ask that any outstanding debts owed to the school be paid, before making arrangements for your children to attend this year’s camp. Should you have any concerns regarding this, or any other matters relating to camp, please contact Tina or Trish at school to discuss them. We would dearly like to see all the students participate in our school camp.

School Walkathon, 24 June

It’s hard to believe how fast the year is going! Almost half the year is gone!

Today we are sending home sponsorship forms for the school’s annual walkathon to Bigriggen. The forms are attached to this newsletter. There is no obligation for students to get sponsors for their walk, but there are great prizes to be earned if they do manage to get some sponsors.

Any money raised from the walkathon will go towards the Queensland Cancer Fund, our school’s designated charity and one that we support with a donation every year.

The walkathon is a great way for us to end the term. Parents and friends of the school are also welcome to walk along with the school or drive along as support vehicles for the event. The walk is a little over

10 kilometres. All students from Prep to Year 6 do the whole walk with a couple of checkpoints for rest and refreshments on the way. The weather is usually glorious for walking and there is a yummy sausage sizzle, fruit, drink and ice blocks waiting at Bigriggen, when all the tired and thirsty walkers arrive at lunchtime. After a bit of time for the students to play in the lovely grounds at Bigriggen, and the parents to chat, we all pack up and head home for the school holidays.

The walkathon is a lovely social event for our school, so if there are any parents who haven’t yet done this with us, we encourage you, if you have the time, to join us for the day. We often have Mums, or Dads, along pushing baby strollers and Grandmas and Grandads joining in as well.

Parent-Teacher Interviews –

Tuesday,14 June

In the second last week of this term, the school will be holding parent-teacher interviews. They will be held on Tuesday, 14 June at school from 8am to 4pm. This is a change from the date we had on the school calendar on the back of the newsletter. Please let us know if the new date doesn’t suit and we will try to accommodate you at a more suitable time to you.

For the information of those parents who are new to the school this year, we give out the student report cards on a designated Parent –Teacher Interview day which is held two times per year. We encourage parents to set aside some time on these days where possible, so that they can peruse their children’s work and talk with them about their report cards, before seeing their children’s teacher and discussing the

report cards with them. For this reason, we ask parents to please come 15 minutes prior to their interview time to sit with their children and look at their work.

Parent-Teacher Interviews for Mrs Grahl’s (Ms Lane’s) class will be held in the staff room. Interviews with Ms van Ben-nekom will be held in the school’s office.

Prep – 2 News.

This week has been a very busy week. We have been finishing our work as well as finishing our testing for report cards and par-ent teacher interviews.

In Maths the Preps have been working with teen numbers and exploring halves. The Year 1s have been experimenting with the functions of a calculator and how we can make patterns using them. The Year 2s have been working with measurement and subtraction.

In English we have been looking at characters in picture books and discussing their emotions and qualities. This week we read 'Fox'. The students really loved this book and the characters. We have also been practicing writing character retells, focusing on their emotions and qualities.

In Geography we have been looking at the globe and world maps and discussing different countries, the equator, the Tropics of Cancer and the Tropics of Capricorn, as well as the Arctic and Antarctic Circles.

In History the Preps have been exploring families and how they fit into them.

As you can see we have been busy bees in our room.

More from us next week!

Kasey, Kay and Colleen.

Principal’s Report for the P&C Meeting 17. 05.16

Staff and Students

Presently and for the rest of this term, Mrs Wieland is on sick leave and has been replaced by Mrs Todd. Mrs Todd’s job has been filled by Mrs Colleen Ben-stead, who used to be a teacher at our school. Our school is really fortunate to have a teacher agreeing to fill in as a teacher aide for two days each week while Cathy is away. Our kids are benefiting from having Colleen working with them.

We have a new enrolment in our Prep year group. Natalie started a few weeks ago and has really settled in well. We expect to have another little boy for our Prep class enrolling this week, also.

Student Council

The Mother’s Day raffle at the pub was drawn on Friday, 6 May. The raffle raised $236. The Student Council sin-cerely thanks the Rathdowney Hotel and Cathy and Wayne Wieland for all their continued support for our fun-draising efforts.

Healthy Friday lunches are being served at school on Fridays each week. All lunches are prepared by the Student Council with help from Chappy Rob and Mrs Baker. The cost is $4. The ingredients so far have been donated, so each of the lunches is providing a profit for the Student Council.

The Student Council is continuing to sell show bags, lucky dips and chocolates to any students who would like to purchase them from our left over Easter stock. We still have some 10 or so boxes of chocolates left to sell and would be grateful for anyone’s help in selling them.

School Band

In Mrs Wieland’s absence, the band continues with weekly practices under Mrs Benstead’s leadership. The band needs to practice so as to be ready for the Christmas Creek Athletics carnival in the second last week of this term. Mrs Benstead has a weekly practice with the band to get them ready to lead the march for the sports this year.

School Events

The Christmas Creek sports are being held earlier this year because national trials have been brought forward. The

Christmas Creek Athletics carnival will now be held in the second last week of term 2, on 16 and 17 June. The students have already started training for the running and athletic events with Mr Kroll.

The Christmas Creek cross country was held at Darlington State School recently. All our students ran well on the day and completed their individual races with Rathdowney students being awarded places in all 4 girls’ events on the day.

This term we are highlighting the second of our 3 school rules, “Be Responsible” with the students on weekly parades. We will also continue with the HI-5 response to teasing and bullying as part of our school’s behaviour management plan for the year. The students have really taken these strategies on board and they have been used very effectively in the school playground. We are also focusing on showing kindness to each other and all the students will be practising this as one of their goals for the year.

Our regular Wednesday playgroup ses-sions are in full swing now with a number of families using our facilities each week. Playgroup operates on

Wednesdays from 9:30 to 11:30am in the old preschool building.

Last week, students in Year 3 and 5 sat for this year’s NAPLAN tests. The NAPLAN tests were held over three days on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Students were tested on aspects of literacy and numeracy. Results of the tests will be made avail-able to parents later in the year.

Last week the school had a scheduled triennial full finance audit. It has been 3 years since our last finance audit. The preliminary results of the audit show that the school has again received the highest rating of “Effective Controls”. Many thanks go to Mrs Cullen, Mrs Schloss and Mrs Williams for keeping all our school records in such great shape.

Rehearsals are now in full swing for our triennial theatre restaurants. Currently rehearsals are held once a week on Sunday evenings in the Rathdowney Hall. In July we will be practising twice a week in order to be ready for our per-formance dates on 29, 30, 31 July and 5, 6 August. (5 performances over two consecutive weekends). The show promises to be another hilarious production showing off the talents of members of the local community (and local theatre groups) with risqué jokes,

toe-tapping songs the audience can sing along with, and a couple of the usual audience participation segments that always go down a treat. Our thanks go to Daniel Wieland for the great job he’s done on designing our advertising poster and tickets.

In the past we offered students with completed citizenship certificates, and attendance certificates, a free movie ticket. The school is now offering our students with completed certificates for citizenship and attendance a choice of prizes. That is, students can still receive movie tickets, or they may choose a show bag from those we have at school, or they will be given a voucher for 2 healthy lunches to be used on Healthy Lunch Fridays.

QBuild has been busy doing some repairs around our school. There are now new wooden seats in our quadrangle and there are some new support posts under the walkway from the school office to the school staffroom.

The itinerary for the Junior camp has been published in the school newsletter. The camp will be held on 7-

9 June. Students (and parents) from Years Prep to 3 are invited to attend and offers and forms will be sent home this week.

Parent - teacher interviews will be held in Week 9, the week after school camp. Invitations to nominate an interview time will also be sent out shortly via the school newsletter.

Staff Professional

Development

In the past three weeks, various mem-bers of staff have attended professional development sessions after school both at Beaudesert and Hillview for STEM – computer coding for kids, and for a small school teachers’ network meeting discussing teachers’ ideas for teaching in multi-age classes.

Tina attended a small school principals’ day in Beaudesert last week with people from Regional and District of-fice.

Dates To Remember! –May/June 2016Monday Tuesday Wednes-

dayThursday Friday

Wk 7

23 24DanceFever

25(h) Bec Freeman© Amanda Lahrs

26 27

Wk8

30 31DanceFever

1(h) Jemma Reid© Sarah Murphy

2 3

Wk9

6 7DanceFever

P-3 Camp

8(H) Janine Reilly© Toni SmithP-3 Camp

9P-3 Camp

10

Wk10

13 14DanceFever

Parent/Teacher Inter-views

15(H) Jemma Read© Cathy Weiland

16Christ-mas Creek SportsCarnival

17Christ-mas Creek SportsCarnival

Wk11

20 21DanceFever – Parentpresenta-tion

22(h) Amanda Peall©Ray Cobb

23 24Walka-thon

Last day of term!

FOR SALE BY TENDERTORO TIMECUTTER ZERO TURN RIDE-ON MOWER

20HP 42” cut

Well maintained and in good condition. Has had limited usage. Tenders will be accepted until 3pm Friday 10

June2016.For full details and tender process please contact

Maroon State SchoolPh 0754636144 or email admin@maroonss.eq.edu.au