Good Afternoon

Dayboro State school 2023 Excellence in Pedagogy and Equity through Differentiation

Last fortnight in the newsletter and also during our P&C meeting, I discussed with parents our Dayboro State School Explicit Improvement Agenda (EIA) for 2023 which we believe supports all of our students to be engaged and successful:  

This fortnight, we have been working hard towards our EIA. In year 4, we have seen excellence in pedagogy, using student voice with careful teaching of success criteria in writing:  

• students working in groups to analyse writing samples to see which success criteria they already have in the writing and which success criteria could be used by the student to bump up their work! How powerful when student has a voice.

Our staff have also been engaged in professional learning to address our Equity through Differentiation:

• We contracted an educator from Supporting People Experiencing Learning Differences (SPELD) to work with our teachers and teacher aides about supporting students experiencing reading and spelling difficulties. This targeted session, explaining the theory as well as modelling many practical applications of the strategies, allowed our staff to reflect and plan towards inclusion through differentiation for students.

Parent partnerships

We love building parent partnerships and these partnerships really support teachers to understand how to best support your child. It was wonderful to see the parent engagement in our recent Class Information Sessions. At the end of this term, we will offer individual parent teacher conferences to allow you to discuss the progress of your child. If you need to contact your child’s teacher prior to the information session, please consider the following ways of engaging with your child’s teacher:

• Email communication – a quick email to let the teacher know of any changes for your child or questions about their learning or to request a phone call follow up. Please be mindful that teachers are not always able to check their emails throughout the day, as they are engaged with your children.
• Making an appointment to meet – teachers are of course busy professionals and as such have meetings and work flow planned before and after school. It is helpful for them to be able to schedule the time to meet to give you their full attention. It can be stressful if parents just pop up for a morning conversation while the teacher is trying to settle their class or prepare for the day. Please contact to make a time to meet if necessary to discuss your child.

There may be times in the year when you may feel like school for you or your child is not going according to plan. At these times, I really encourage you to contact your child’s teacher as they have an understanding of how your child is going at school, at playtimes and in school-based activities and are happy to work with you to work towards solutions. Karen Ryan our DP or myself are also great to contact to discuss any problems. A reminder that we can’t assist if we don’t know there may be an issue and communications other than the face to face or emails (like FaceBook or chatting around the school yard) can be counterproductive when trying to find solutions.

Thank you for helping to look after our wonderful teachers. The teachers at Dayboro SS really want to connect with you in a mutually suitable way to ensure our students are happy, healthy and learning.

Term 2 paper copies of permission forms will cease

All parents are strongly encouraged to sign up to QParents.

QParents is a user-friendly portal accessible via app or web browser, providing parents with secure online access to information about their child’s schooling.

In Term 2 we will no longer print permission forms for excursions and incursions. This decision was made to not only made to support our sustainability efforts by saving paper and electricity but now that forms can be signed electronically via QParents it will save parents and carers time!

Simply follow the links from your email invitation sent to your email in the first few weeks The sender will be no.reply@qparents.qld.edu.au, with the subject – Nomination as a QParents account owner. Jill will send out another round of invitations this afternoon (please check your junk mail if it doesn’t come to your email address. Complete the verification process or drop in and see our staff to verify your identity and then you will have access to your child’s:

• Electronic permission notes
• Invoices - pay online via the links
• Attendance – you can advise us via the app if your child will be absent
• Report cards.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to call the office.

Would you like to help our school to partner with parents and respond to the community’s needs? Why don’t you join us for our first face to face P&C meeting this term on 13 March, 6:30pm in our Dayboro State School staff room. Being part of the school’s P&C is a wonderful way to meet other families and it also models to your children how invested you are in their school community.

On Monday night 13 March, we will be electing the roles for our P&C executive and committee. It is important that we get a full executive committee in order to continue to support the school. No previous experience is necessary….we all have fun learning together. We invite you to attend and /or nominate for a position or simply as a committee member for 2023. Position descriptions are below:

All welcome, please like the DSS P&C Facebook page for more details.  If you are interested in any of the available positions, send an email to our wonderful President, Rhiannon Fealy at: president@dayboropandc.org.au.   Alternatively, call the office and we can get Rhiannon to give you a call.

National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy NAPLAN Year 3 and 5 students this term

Our Year 3 and 5 students will participate in online NAPLAN testing from 15 March through to 27 March. This week our students have participated in some practice assessments to understand the online environment.

Please see below the information brochure for parents and carers. You can also access the NAPLAN website www.nap.edu.au/naplan. If you have any questions or concerns about these assessments, please contact your child’s class teacher, Karen Ryan and myself so that we can discuss or clarify details.

Have a great week!
Gabrielle