Thursday's Tidings - 9 March 2023

Dear families, 

Today students celebrated achieving their second whole school Gotcha reward with a crazy sock day. Gympie Central takes pride in recognising students who demonstrate our school expectations. Staff do this by giving gotchas to individual students, each week every class has a lucky draw for those who’ve received a gotcha. One of these lucky students then is drawn on parade for a special lucky prize - it’s always a bit of fun. Along the way, teachers track the number of gotchas and for every 15 gotchas, students add a ball to our prize cylinder. Once it’s full, the whole school reward is earned. 

Individual student gotchas are also tracked and along the way students earn principal stickers, a photo on the 50 Gotcha Wall of Fame in the office, free choice of an alternative playground, an end of term sausage sizzle, a phone call home from the office and maybe even an end of semester or end of year excursion. 

Feedback focus 

Teachers have been working on providing targeted feedback to students. Classes have either started or are about to start their English assessment and by proving students the areas they need to target, it helps students succeed to their potential. 

Badge Presentation 

Tomorrow morning, our student councillors and house captains will be presented their badges at parade. This will take place during our regular parade at 9am. Following parade, there will be a morning tea for families of these student leaders. 

Gympie Central will participate in a School Review in Term 2 

Gympie Central State School will take part in a School Review from 16-18 May. Click on the link below to read more about what’s involved in a school review. 

Education ministers have agreed to move NAPLAN to Term 1, 2023—this will allow access to results earlier in the year to inform teaching and learning. NAPLAN 2023 commences next week and across the nation schools will complete the assessments between Wednesday 15 March and Monday 27 March. 

NAPLAN stands for National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy and has been in place since 2008. All students in Years 3 and 5 participate in the program and the school treats it like any other school day. In reality, it takes place over 4 x 60 minutes sessions on scheduled days. The only practice beforehand is around navigating the online assessment platform. There is no practice of the content as NAPLAN assesses the Australian Curriculum - the curriculum all State Schools follow.  

If you have questions around NAPLAN, please contact the school on admin@gympiecentralss.eq.edu.au  

Remember, we are here to help 

Like always, if there is something that you want our support with, or if your child is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s teacher for support.  If it is not a matter for the teacher, please call the front office and arrange to meet with a member of the leadership team, so we can work through things together.  It takes a village to raise a child, so let’s work together. 

Student Council Fundraisers tomorrow

Cupcakes will be for sale at first break for $2 each and ice blocks will be for sale at second break, with $1 and $2 options available.

2023 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.

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.

Qkr-instructions.pdf

Qkr-instructions _pdf 1.05 MB

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.

Crossing Supervisor