Thursday's Tidings - 13 March 2025
TERM 1 2025 |
|
| Thursday 13 March | Year 4/5S & 6B Wizard of Oz Musical |
| Friday 14 March | Badge Presentation Ceremony 9am |
| Friday 14 March | Primary Leadership Day at Gympie East SS |
| Monday 17 - Friday 28 March | Parent Teacher Interviews |
| Wednesday 19 March | True Relationship Session Yr 3-6 |
| Tuesday 25 March | Nexus Arts Presentation |
| Wednesday 26 March | True Relationship Session Yr 3-6 |
| Thursday 27 March | Cross Country 9am-11am |
| Friday 28 March | Prep Vision Screening |
| Thursday 3 April | Celebration of Learning 2:15pm |
| Friday 4 April | Easter Bonnet Parade & Mary St Walk |
| Friday 4 April | Last day of Term 1 |
TERM 2 2025 |
|
| Monday 21 April | Easter Monday Public Holiday |
| Tuesday 22 April | First day of Term 2 |
| Friday 25 April | ANZAC Day Public Holiday |
Term 1 - Week 7
Dear families,
Tomorrow our students start their Friday afternoon engagement activities. Between art projects, drawing classes, sports and Lego clubs, all of the students will get to enjoy a Friday afternoon with peers from different year levels. Prep R will stay together as a group, but all other classes will have a mix of students from all year levels.
NAPLAN
Year 3 and Year 5 students started NAPLAN assessments yesterday. Classes will complete one assessment for four days (Yr 5s skipped today due to an excursion). Student who miss assessments will have the chance to catch up next week.
Pick of the Crop veggie garden - Thanks Wide Bay Seedlings!
Students will be replanting the school’s vegetable garden this week. Wide Bay Seedlings have donated lettuce, zucchinis, Asian greens, rhubarb and plenty of other seedlings to get our garden up and running again. Keith at Pick of the Crop does a great job supporting schools and local growers. Check out the link below that has some great ideas to incorporate fresh fruit and vegetables into our meals!
Primary Leadership Day - tomorrow
Our student leaders are heading over to Gympie East SS tomorrow to join school leaders from other local schools for a day of leadership development. Sports Captains and Student Councillors will receive their badges on parade, then head off the East for a great day.
Parent Teacher interviews
Teachers are hosting parent teacher interviews for the next fortnight. Be sure to book in and keep informed on how your child has started 2025. Teachers sent the booking forms home in the past week.
Goodstart and Alma St visits
Last week our school captains headed over to Goodstart Early Learning Centre to meet the kindy and pre-kindy group. This is a great partnership between Central and Goodstart, and has helped strengthen our connections in the community. Mrs Roberts has also visited Alma St C&K to meet parents and broaden our community partnerships.
More visits are planned for next week.
Supporting young readers by talking and listening - How does oral language contribute to reading success?
Oral language is the foundation of all literacy skills. If young children experience rich oral language by talking with and listening to adults and other children, they will have a large ‘bank’ of spoken vocabulary, words they understand when used in spoken communication (see Vocabulary).
Children will have heard and joined in word play and rhyming and be aware of the sounds of English (see Phonological awareness). They will be familiar with lots of different sentence types and understand how language can change in different situations (see Fluency). They will understand that words have meaning, and that we use language to communicate information, ideas, feelings and thoughts (see Comprehension).
What can parents and caregivers do at home to encourage oral language?
Families can support children in their oral language development by providing a variety of opportunities for children to listen and talk for different purposes.
Here are some of the best ways parents and caregivers can encourage oral language:
- Talk to your child and listen responsively. Ask and answer questions.
- Read aloud to your child at least once a day. Good books expose children to vocabulary and sentence structures that they won’t hear in everyday situations. Research has shown that reading aloud to children is a major factor in their success in learning to read at school.
- Talk with your child about the books you read aloud together. Ask your child about the characters, plot or setting; the themes and ideas raised by the book; topics they’d like to read or learn more about as a result of reading aloud.
- Play games that involve conversation and discussion. Card games, puzzles, board games, active games- just talk, listen to and converse with your children
The importance of talking to and interacting with your young child cannot be overstated.
Message from Polley’s buses
Polley’s bus drivers have experienced an increase in inappropriate behaviour on their local bus routes and would like families to be aware of their Code of Conduct for users and their bus rules. See the attachments for further information.
Book Fair
Mrs Condon is hosting Book Fair in the library until Wednesday 19 March. The Book Fair is open before school 8:15-8:40 and after school 3:00-3:45. All purchases help put funds back into our school library.
Prep vision screening- Friday 28th March
Qld Health staff will be at school on Fri 28 March to complete vision screening for our prep students. This is our only opportunity for this to take place this year so it’s really important preppies are at school on that Friday. Children require consent to participate and links have been sent out, a QR code is at the prep classroom or paper consent forms are available from the office.
Kind regards,
Glenn Cafferky
QParents
QParents has launched at Gympie Central SS!
It’s great to see that so many parents have registered for QParents already. If you have not received an invitation, please advise us immediately.
Gympie Central will be starting to use QParents as a means of gaining digital consent for excursions and camps later this term to reduce the amount of paper notes that are sent home. You will need to be registered for QParents to enable your digital consent access.
If you need assistance with the registration process, please click on the link below or contact the office on 5480 2111 for support.
QParents Registration Guide for Parents
2025 Voluntary Financial Contribution - $20 per student
Each year, the Gympie Central State School P & C Association endorse a voluntary financial contribution of $20 per student, which equates to $0.50 per week for the entire school year. This money is a vital part of Gympie Central P&C’s commitment and helps to fund reading books, classroom resources, photocopying paper and tissues. This year the payment can be made via the Qkr! app or in person at the office. Your support in paying the voluntary contribution is greatly appreciated.
Payment Options
We have a variety of payment options available here at Gympie Central. Our most preferred method of payment is the Qkr! app. Qkr! is a cashless payment app, which means you can make payments on your mobile phone, rather coming into the school. The Gympie Central P&C also use this app, so not only can you pay for camps and excursions, but you can also order school uniforms and tuckshop with the app.
Instructions on how to download and use the app are shown in the link below.
Other payment options that we provide are:
1. BPOINT - (for invoiced activities) Pay online or by phone using credit/debit card: https://www.bpoint.com.au/payments/dete or phone 1300 631 073
2. CENTREPAY - (for invoiced activities) We now offer Centrepay as a payment method for instrumental music and school camps. Use Centrepay to arrange regular deductions from your Centrelink payment. You can start, change or stop using Centrepay whenever you like. If you would like to set up a Centrepay payment, or know more information about this payment method, please contact the school office.
3. EFTPOS - We accept Mastercard, Visa and all Australian bank, building society and credit union cards.
4. CASH - Cash payments are still accepted. However, the school no longer has the ability to give out change, so only cash payments of the correct denomination will be accepted.
Student Absence Notification System
If your child is absent from school without explanation you will receive a SMS text message that morning to your mobile phone asking to explain their absence. Please reply (on the same day) with a simple SMS answer eg sick; specialist appointment. Alternatively, you can call and leave a message on the Student Absence HOTLINE - Telephone 5480 2166 to report your child’s absence.
Please contact the office by phone if you have any concerns regarding the message you have received.
Noosa Heads Surf Education Program
We’re excited to announce that Noosa Heads Surf Education Program is expanding its services into the Gympie region!
See attached package for more details on our program. Spots are filling quickly—secure your preferred session now!
