Newsletter - 16/08/2024

Principal News

Eisteddfod

As many of you would have seen via Facebook, many congratulations are in order for our vocal and instrumental students and staff who have all excelled at the recent Mackay Eisteddfod. Fitzgerald finished up winning every vocal section they entered, were announced as the champion choral school and teacher Mrs Linda Miller was recognised as the champion choral conductor.

Our Instrumental students also came away with first place for the Senior String Ensemble the Senior Concert Band and the Recorder Ensemble with the Junior Concert Band and Beginner String Ensemble placing second. Added to this, our Junior Concert Band was awarded with the Most Enjoyable Performance in a Primary Instrumental section.

Congratulations to Mrs Miller, Mrs Williams, Mrs Mora and Ms Holdsworth and thank you for all that you do to prepare our students for these events. Thank you also to all of our parents who support our young musicians and choristers in ensuring that they are at rehearsals and practicing at home.

School Opinion Survey

Our School Opinion Survey closes today. Thank you to all of the parents who have completed this for 2024. If you are yet to do this, I would encourage you to respond to the email sent. We appreciate the time taken by parents to complete this survey as we value this feedback to the school to look at the next steps forward.

Parent Teacher Interviews

Parent Teacher Interviews will occur on Monday the 9^th of September between 3:15pm and 6pm and will occur in the school hall for every year level. In the coming weeks, parents will receive an email with the link to access the Parent / Teacher Interview booking site. Interview slots will be 10 minutes long and if you require a more extended time with a teacher following these interviews, this will have to be done in consultation with your child’s teacher.

Illness

There are some particularly nasty viruses and illnesses going around currently with many children becoming sick with Influenza A, vomiting and general colds. While we do encourage children to be at school every day, if your child is sick, we ask you not to send them to school and many of these illnesses are easily transferrable to others.

Please, keep your child at home if they have any of the following:

• fever (temp over 37.5°C)
• stomach ache with vomiting
• stomach ache with diarrhoea (3 or more times in 24 hours)
• cough with fever
• body sores or rash with fever
• sore eyes with pus or thick mucus
• sore throat with fever
• green mucus coming from nose
• no appetite, are tired, pale, cranky, or not feeling well

Below, we have included the Time out Advice around child illness for your information.

Book Week

Next Friday (23^rd August) is our annual Book Week celebration and parade. We welcome all students to come dressed in a costume for a favourite character from a book. The theme of Book week is Reading is Magic. The parade commences at 9:00am and as is the case with our school parades, parents are welcome to attend the event.

Attendance

I thought that I would look at attendance from a different perspective this fortnight with a breakdown of attendance across each year level over the span of this year. Our school target is 95% attendance. We are aware that at this time of year, attendance does decline due to illness, but it would be really great to have children attending school every day when well. 

Tracey Adams
Principal

Head of Department/Curriculum

Reading Through the Australian Curriculum – Why it is important to read to your children at home?

Why use shared book reading?

Shared reading describes the interaction that occurs between an adult and a child when reading or looking at a book. Although one of the most obvious and engaging features of storybooks is their illustrations, they also provide children with access to a world of sights, sounds, and words that may be quite different from what they experience in their homes, communities, and schools.

Reading aloud with your child builds language development so that by the time children have mastered letter-sound correspondences and can read increasingly complex texts themselves, they will have the language skills to understand what they read. Having strong oral language skills sets the foundations for children to build strong literacy skills.

Reading authentic texts aloud to your child allows them to continue to hear stories, information and written language they may not yet be able to read themselves.

What does shared reading look like?

An important aspect of shared reading is the conversation that occurs between the adult and child during the reading. Pausing while reading and taking the time to discuss details in the story can support your child’s oral language development. The conversation might focus on the storyline, such as characters or where the story takes place; it may focus on similar experiences the child has had to those that happened in the book; it may focus on specific words; aspects of print; or concepts that are new to the child. When you read aloud to your child, they hear and learn lots of new and sophisticated words and sentences they may not hear or use in everyday talk.

What books should be used for shared reading?

In the early years of reading instruction, children engage with different books for different purposes. They need to read decodable texts to develop their word reading skills and they need to read and hear authentic texts to develop strong oral language skills. Authentic texts include picture books, storybooks, information texts and any reading material the child enjoys.

When children are first learning to read, the books they will read independently are designed to improve their ability to decode (decodable texts). For most children, the language used in these books will be far simpler than the language they already understand and use.

Virtually all children’s books are appropriate for shared reading, but the best books will have rich, detailed pictures, and are interesting to the child. Remember, the purpose of shared reading is to stimulate rich talk between the adult and child, not for the child to be able to read the text themselves.

To support implementation of the updated curriculum, the Department of Education in collaboration with P&Cs Queensland provided an online reading session for parents and carers to support reading at home.  If you would like to learn more please click on the link below.

   Link: Twilight Reading Session for Parents and Carers 

Terri Robson 
Head of Department/Curriculum

From the HOSES

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) this is currently being collated for 2024. 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 (2019). Parents will receive a letter and information in the next few weeks if your child has been included in this Data Collection.

Children who may be identified in this data, may not necessarily have a recognized disability, but are included because they require some level of support to access all areas of schooling. This could be due to one or more of the following reasons:

• they have a permanent disability of ASD; Intellectual Disability; Vision Impairment; Deaf/Hard of Hearing; or Physical Disability.
• they have academic difficulties requiring them to need support to access the curriculum.
• they have communication difficulties and are on an Individual Speech Program
• they have a medical diagnosis that effects their functioning at school e.g. Epilepsy, Anaphylaxis, Diabetes, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD, Anxiety etc

Carolyn Berck
Head of Special Education

Finance & Front Office

Music

Instrumental Program 2025

Mackay Eisteddfod

My New Gallery

My New Gallery

Linda Miller
Music Teacher/Instrumental Music Coordinator

Upcoming Events

From the Guidance Officer

Fitzgerald State School acknowledges the Bullying No Way: National week of action, 12 to 16 August 2024.

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.

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 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.

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

Alexia Wotherspoon 
Guidance Officer 

P&C News

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