Everleigh State School eNewsletter

Principal's Message

Term 3 Parent-Teacher interviews

In week 8 of this term, parents/carers are invited to attend an interview with their child’s teacher to discuss learning progress. Bookings will open within the next week. Please keep an eye on SeeSaw for booking details.

Interviews will again take place in the school hall. Interview timeslots will be 10 minutes in duration. Should you require additional time, please contact your child’s teacher to book a double timeslot, or arrange an alternative time.

2024 School Opinion Survey

Thank you to the families who have completed the survey. At the beginning of this term, a survey was emailed out to all families (one survey per family) who were enrolled during Term 2 or earlier.

Everleigh State School P&C

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the very small number of parents/carers who have either taken on an executive role, or who regularly attend our monthly P&C meetings. These meetings are a great opportunity to contribute to our wonderful growing school community. While I acknowledge the challenges of working families, our P&C executives are working parents, volunteering their time to support all of our students.

Our P&C has 2 events this term. The first of these is the Father’s Day stall on 28 and 29 August. Please contact the P&C if you are able to volunteer with the sale of gifts. The 2^nd event is our now annual Colour Explosion Run. Information on fundraising and prizes has gone home. There will be ‘Slime the teacher’ again this year. I may have been convinced to support this cause. P&C will be sharing details on staff members who have volunteered to be slimed for a great cause.

Five Learning Questions for students

On a weekly basis, Mr Morley, Mrs Harker, Mrs Kemp, Ms Conway and I visit classrooms to ask the Five Learning Questions for Students (see poster below). This assists us to ensure there is clarity in what teachers are teaching, students are learning, and students being what we refer to as Assessment Literate Learners. This means students know and understand:

What they are learning and why – related to their main assessment task/s in English
How well they are doing in the learning and how they know – students have access to a Learning Wall and Bump It Up Wall to know and understand what they need to do be successful in their learning
Know what they need to do to improve in their learning – feedback from their teacher, accessing the Bump It Up Wall with exemplars of that is required to achieve levels of achievement
Know where they can go for help – their classroom Learning and Bump It Up Walls, peers or a teacher

This week, during Professional Learning Team meetings, teachers visited different classrooms to collect student responses to the Five Learning Questions. The data of how well students can answer the Five Questions is below:

Question	Yes	Sort of	No
What am I learning and why?	68%	22%	9%
How am I going?	68%	24%	8%
How do I know?	65%	16%	19%
What do I need to improve?	56%	22%	21%
Where can I go for help?	82%	9%	8%

This data assists our teachers during Planning Sessions to ensure the Learning Intention, Success Criteria and Real-World Connections are clear for our students.

Deputy Principals' Message

Switch4Schools

At Everleigh State School we are committed to developing the well-being and emotional intelligence of our students. Research tells us that emotional intelligence is more important than IQ in academic performance, and more predictive of long-term physical health than exercise. As you know, we have implemented Zones of Regulation across our school. We are exploring ways we can take it to the next level.

To this end we are trialling Switch4Schools. This is a simple program to help students to build and embed understanding of social-emotional development and tools to support them in this. Students will be encouraged to “check in” where they are asked to identify and label their feelings. They will be supported to participate in small activities that are designed to help the students learn to more effectively manage their emotions in the classroom. These small strategies are expected to create a classroom environment more conducive to learning for all.

We are really enthusiastic about the benefits the program could have for our students and look forward to seeing the results of the trial over the course of the next few weeks. For those interested in finding out more about Switch4Schools, you can find them online at switch4schools.com.au and we encourage you to explore the publicly available version of the program (from the website, select “Login” then select the “Browse without login” option or use this LINK).

Should you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN results have been issued to students who participated in the assessment earlier in the year. The way in which the results are shown are different from students previous NAPLAN submissions in 2022 as they are no longer separated into bands. Please ensure you review the front page of your results for further information around how to understand these results.

Message From The Head Of Department - Curriculum, Ms Tanya Conway

Science Week

Congratulations to Elicia Jenkins, our dedicated STEAM teacher, for her enthusiastic integration of science, technology, engineering, art, and math into engaging and dynamic units of work. Her efforts culminate in the vibrant celebration of Everleigh State School’s Science Week!

Families and carers are warmly invited to visit the Junior STEAM room during Week 6 (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) to explore the exciting projects created by our future scientists, engineers, artists, and mathematicians! More information to come from Mrs Jenkins.

Bullying No Way: National Week of Action

This year Everleigh State School is participating in the Bullying No Way: National Week of Action, on Friday, 16^th August, 2024. Students are encouraged to rock a POP of purple to show their support for Bullying No Way Day (not free dress day).

Bullying No Way Week is a commitment being made by thousands of schools and supporters across the country. It provides an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to bullying prevention. It gives us an opportunity to connect with students, staff and school communities to implement workable solutions to prevent bullying.

The new hero colour for the campaign is purple – symbolising peace, strength and empowerment to take a stand against bullying behaviour.

The theme for this year's campaign is Everyone belongs. This theme highlights the importance of creating a sense of belonging and inclusion for students. We recognise bullying often thrives in environments where individuals feel marginalised or excluded, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure that every student feels valued and respected.

“Positive school climates that value diversity and inclusion can foster a sense of belonging and provide a protective factor against negative peer relationships and reduce bullying.” (Australian Education Research Organisation 2023).

For more information about Bullying No Way Week and bullying prevention, visit the Bullying No Way website.

During the week we will be engaging students in meaningful discussions and activities aimed at promoting empathy, understanding, and respect for diversity. We encourage parents and carers to take this opportunity to have open and honest conversations with their children about the impact of bullying and what they can do if they need support. You can visit the Bullying No Way website for tips around how to have this discussion.

Book Week

Each year, across Australia, the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) brings children and books together celebrating Children’s Book Week ®. Throughout the year, the CBCA works in partnership with authors, illustrators, publishers, booksellers and other organisations in the children’s book world to bring words, images and stories into the hearts and minds of children and adults.

The Everleigh State School library will be magically transformed into a reading wonderland, with Mrs. Frizzle (Mrs Rixon) leading the way!

During Week 7, Book Fair will be open daily, before and after school.

Book Week Parade will be on Friday 23rd August at 8:45am. Students are invited to dress up to help spread the word that “Reading is Magic”.

Premier’s Reading Challenge

A SPECIAL MENTION to PREP B who are leaping ahead in their reading!

The Premier's Reading Challenge is not a competition but a way to encourage students to develop a love of reading for life. Through the challenge children and students are given an opportunity to develop their appreciation of the English language and additional languages and are encouraged to explore and enjoy a wide range of literary texts.

Children and students who complete the challenge have their efforts recognised through the receipt of a Certificate of Achievement. For a student to successfully complete the Premier's Reading Challenge they are required to read or experience the number of books indicated below:

Prep to Year 2—read or experience 20 books.
Years 3 to 4—read 20 books.
Years 5 to 9—read 15 books.

Please remember to complete and return your child’s reading log form. Classroom teacher to collect.

The Premier’s Reading Challenge concludes on Friday, August 16^th (end of Week 7), with certificates to be presented in October.

Message From The Head Of Special Education Services, Mrs Rhiannon Kemp

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2022).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

year of schooling
category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy (https://www.education.gov.au/privacy-policy).

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school.

PBL Focus Weeks 5 & 6 - Commitment - From The PBL Team

Messages From Executive Services

Attendance_information.pdf

Student Absence Procedure

If your student will be absent, parents/carers have a legal obligation to notify the school office, including advising the reason for the absence. We kindly request you let us know by 9am on the day of the absence. We have two preferred methods for advising absence:

Via the Q-Parents App – please see reception if you require information on this.
Via our dedicated Student Absence Line – (07) 2899 5160, where you can leave a message any time of the day or night. Please save this number in your phone.

Reminder: You will also need to advise YMCA if your child is booked in and will be absent.

YMCA absences should be advised before 2:15pm via email aev@ymcabrisbane.org or via text or phone call 0459 905 087.

Don’t forget to also cancel your canteen order if you have pre-ordered ahead: (07) 2899 5125

Change of contact details:

Please advise Executive Services if any of your details have changed. For example:

Address
Best contact phone number
Work details
Emergency contacts other than parents/carers

Please pop into the office to complete a change of details form, or email admin@everleighss.eq.edu.au to update your details.

Spare change of clothes reminder

With the recent cold weather, we have noticed an increase in toileting accidents. Please ensure you pack a spare change of clothes in your child’s bag just in case. Please include underwear, black shorts/skort/tracksuit pants and socks.

Lost property

Name labels make all the difference in helping us to returned lost items to the correct students. We kindly remind parents to name jackets, hats, lunch boxes, water bottles, etc. We really appreciate your assistance with this. Any item that is labelled gets returned directly to the classroom.

We also ask families to check you have your own jackets and not someone else’s. We have many families waiting for their own labelled items to be returned.

All unclaimed, unnamed items are disposed of or donated at the end of each term.

Student Council News - "Talk Like A Pirate Day"

Ahoy, Parents and Caregivers!
We are excited to announce that in Term 3, our school’s Student Council be hosting a special fundraiser event—Talk Like a Pirate Day! This swashbucklin’ event be raisin' funds to support families who be battlin’ childhood cancers.
On Friday, the 13th of September, our students will be transformin’ into pirates and settin’ sail for a fun-filled day that includes a pirate-themed movie session. It will be a day for hearty laughs, grand adventures, and most importantly, showing our support for a worthy cause.
Keep an eye out for permission forms that will be sent home closer to the date.
Yo ho ho and a heartfelt thank ye for your support!
Kind regards,
Student Council

ESS_TLAP_Day_A4.pdf

Message From Instrumental Music - Ms Kelsie McCullough

🎷 Congratulations to our Year 6 Musicians for participating in 2024 Southern Cluster Instrumental Music (SCIM) Camp. Hosted by Park Ridge SHS, our musicians worked alongside other local primary schools in an intensive 3 day workshop and concert. 🎺