Thursday's Tidings - 22 August 2024

Dear families,

It’s great to be back here at Central after a fortnight on the Southside. I enjoyed the experience at South and saw some great practices, but the students and staff at Central make me proud every day. This school is a great place to work! 

The school had a great first prep transition with a big group of pre-preps joining the P/1R class yesterday morning. Some didn’t want to leave! A big thank you to Mrs Roberts, Mrs Mills and Mrs Bennett for giving them a super first experience of school. 

Our 1/2D class are learning about local places in HASS and on Monday visited the duck ponds. They loved it! Thanks Ms Davis :) 

Book Week Parade - Friday 23 August

Get your costumes ready! Book Week parade is tomorrow - Friday 23rd August at 9am. All families are welcome to come along and join the fun. This year’s theme is Reading is Magic. 

School Photos - Wednesday 28 August

School photos are next Wednesday 28th August. Order online at www.leadingimage.com.au using the school code of UF4MKPYK.

Gympie Central’s Got Talent is BACK! 

After 2 years of asking, the students have got their wish and it’s time to shine! Entries close tomorrow, Friday 23rd August. Heats are at first break on Wednesday 28/8 and 4/9, and the final will be Tuesday 10 September (to avoid swimming). 

Reminder - Student Free Day - Friday 30 August

School will not be open this day.

Year 6 parents - have you enrolled in high school? 

If no, please contact the high school your child will attend and commence the enrolment process. Gympie Central can assist with this process- please contact us. 

Next week is National and DoE Speech Pathology Week

Speech Pathology Week helps to raise awareness for the 1million + people in Australia that require support to communicate and the important role that Speech-Language Pathologists play in helping individuals to communicate. Communication is an essential human right. It fosters meaning and understanding of the goings on around us, and strengthens a person’s relationships in all aspects of life. Without communication there cannot be relationships, participation, learning, or progress.  

The theme for 2024 is Communicate Your Way. Communicate Your Way aims to teach people that communication involves much more than just speaking. Communication is multimodal and includes sign language, communication devices (digital), body gestures, facial language, communication books, speech (spoken), keyword sign, written communication, and more.  You cannot always see a communication disability but as educators we actively identify and support students with communication disabilities not only to communicate but also to access learning to facilitate social, emotional, and academic development to promote progress and success now and into the future.    

Please join me this Speech Pathology Week in celebrating and recognising the amazing work all Speech Language Pathologists do. And help us raise awareness for the 1million + Australians that require support to communicate; a skill I’m sure all of us take for granted.  

Every Day Counts 

Research shows that in Queensland, higher student attendance is associated, on average, with higher student achievement. Students who regularly miss school are being put at a disadvantage to their peers and this is a gap that can be difficult to bridge. The infographic below shows the cumulative result of missing days over a year and then the whole of schooling.  

Teacher Aide Appreciation Week 2-6 September 

Our school wouldn’t be the great school it is without the amazing teacher aides we have here. They support our students and teachers every day and without them, our students would not be as successful as they are. Thank you Mrs Condon, Mrs Wilcox, Mrs Mills, Mrs Bennett and Miss Hay. 

Reading focus at Central 

This year the school is continuing to focus on the realignment of our approach to reading. The passage below provides information on how children learn to read: 

Learning to read is a process that needs step-by-step teaching and plenty of practise at school and at home. Unlike walking or talking, reading is not a skill that we learn naturally — everyone needs to be taught how to read. 
Reading requires two very important skills: 

• decoding (reading) the words on the page 

• making meaning from the words, sentences and paragraphs that are read 

For children to learn how to decode words, they need to understand how sounds and letters link together. They are taught that: 

• words can be broken up into sounds (the word ‘cat’ is made up of 3 sounds: c-a-t) and that sounds can be blended to form words (the sounds c-a-t blended, forms the word ‘cat’) 

• the sounds in words can be represented by letters or groups of letters. 

As children develop their understanding of letter-sound correspondences and apply this knowledge to reading words and texts, they learn more complex English spellings. 

• The same sound can be represented by different letters; the words ‘play’, ‘rain’ and ‘stage’ all contain the sound /ay/ but the spelling is different in each one. 

• The same letter can represent different sounds; the letter ‘c’ can represent a ‘k’ sound as in ‘cat’, or an ‘s’ sound as in ‘race’. 

• Small parts of words can have a meaning all their own; in the word ‘walked’, the ‘-ed’ tells us that the walk has already happened — it marks past tense. 

• Children practise their word reading skills by reading decodable texts that contain only the letter-sound correspondences children have been taught. 

• As children develop their decoding skills and their reading becomes more automatic, they will move from reading simple decodable texts to authentic texts. Authentic texts are any texts that are read for enjoyment or learning and that support word reading, language development and engagement. 

Children develop their language skills through the language they hear and read. In the early stages of reading instruction while children are developing their decoding skills, it is very important that they are read to often, so they hear lots of new words and learn about new things that they may not yet be able to read about themselves. 

Parents play an important role in helping children learn to read by both: 

• listening to your child read aloud to practise decoding words 

• reading aloud to your child to build their understanding of language and literacy. 

Have a great Friday and weekend!

Kind regards,
Glenn Cafferky

P&C News

Furniture giveaways

Gympie Central has some furniture that is no longer in use and would like to offer it to our Central families. We have 4 filing cabinets and 3 large tables to giveaway. This will be a first in, first served process. Please contact the office to schedule a time for collection.

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.

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.