Deputy's News
Dear Families and Friends
It has been a delight to welcome our Prep and Year 1 students back to our school. They have returned with enthusiasm, good health and a readiness to embrace the routines of school life once again. I would like to thank our parents also for their resilience and adaptability to the constantly changing situation we find ourselves in. We are very fortunate to be part of such a supportive community. Please be assured our staff will continue to nurture and support your children at this crucial time in their lives as they adapt to the change in routine once again.
To celebrate their return, I have included some photos of Year 1 artworks and paintings they have created since their return. They are full of colour and represent their favourite things in life- home, family and nature. They are a celebration of their wonderment about the world around them.
Year 1 Paintings
For our students in Years 2-6, still learning at home this week, we would like to say ”Good Job!” We can clearly see that our children and parents are trying their best to embrace Online Learning and the successful, close to 100% attendance of students, in their Virtual Classrooms every day is a testament again to our supportive parents and community. Our teachers have worked very hard to make Online Learning for our students engaging, informative and worthwhile. It is a very time consuming task for many teachers who are also supervising students in classrooms at the same time. To help us, we ask parents to please be mindful of the amount and timing of emails and correspondence to teachers. Teachers are more than happy to answer emails, phone calls, Dojo messages during work hours but we need to be mindful that evenings and weekends are times teachers need to spend with their own families and loved ones as well as prepare for the next week of learning.
Three important things to remember for students in Yr. 2-6 learning at home.
- Please log in to the child’s Virtual Classroom before 11am, at the latest, each day. You do not need to notify the office or class teacher if you are logging into the Virtual Classroom. We can see who and exactly when students are logged in every day.
- If your student is not accessing their Virtual Classroom ie. Using the learning@home website, Mathletics or Spelling City or using paper copies of workbooks etc. then you will need to ring the office, email the teacher or Admin. or send a message to Q Parents every day. They will not be marked as absent. They will be marked as- In attendance- Learning at home. But we need to know they are home being supervised every day.
- If your child is sick and will not be doing any work from home then you also need to ring the Absence line and let us know the reason.
Accessing Virtual Classrooms
Virtual Classrooms are hosted by Education Queensland through The Learning Place. Classroom teachers have full control over the contents of each virtual classroom and students are able to collaborate and communicate with their teacher, and one another, through this site.
To find their virtual classroom students can Google “The Learning Place” or go directly to The Learning Place website. The preferred browsers for access are Fire Fox, Google Chrome, Edge or Safari. Do not use Internet Explorer.
Click the link on the right hand side of the page for eLearn (Blackboard) – see below. Students working from home will then be prompted to type in their MIS username and password. This information was recently sent home in an envelope with all students in P-3. You should have kept it safe and you will need to find it as this is your only way for logging in. Teachers do not keep copies of these passwords.
Students in Years 4 – 6 regularly use their own credentials to log-in to the computers at school and should be able to recall their own username and password.
Once eLearn (Blackboard) opens, a list of courses (or virtual classrooms) will appear on the right hand side of the screen. Select the course required from the list e.g. 5M Virtual Classroom.
You are then ready to access the resources and communicate with the teacher of that class.
** Please make sure when using external links, that students are adequately supervised.
If you have trouble accessing the Learning Place there could be intermittent connection issues. If this is the case try again later. You can still go to the learning@home website to access resources. This is not the same as accessing the Virtual Classroom though and will not log your attendance online.
*The Education Queensland Website- Curriculum- learning@home.
https://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/learning-at-home
The link has also been sent to all parents via text.
*Once in this site there are several important tabs to visit. See headings below:
Well Being of Students- how a typical day should be spent learning at home.
English- organised in year levels and click on learning activities
Mathematics- organised in year levels and click on learning activities.
Learning Resources- STEM, HASS and the Arts- organised in curriculum areas with links to support children’s learning.
There is no username or password required to access these online materials and they will be updated every 2 weeks.
These resources are provided by Education Queensland and give the appropriate and recommended lessons/ worksheets for children to work from at home.
Students will also be able to access their usual online learning programs- Spelling City and Mathletics using their own usernames and passwords as per usual.
For Sunshine Online there is a generic username and password.
Username : dayboross
Password: sunshine
Please remember that all children are expected to wait in the CSA before School between 8:15am until the bell goes at 8:40am. The children are supervised during this time. Prep and Yr 1 children will start classes at 8:40am. They will leave the CSA first at 8:35am, They will be collected by their teachers and taken to their classrooms. All other students in Yrs 2-6 will be let go from the CSA as per usual and walk straight to classrooms.
In the afternoons, Preps and Year 1’s will be released at 2:50pm and Yr 1 students can go home as per usual and Preps can be collected by parents in the garden area outside of the Prep rooms. All other children will line up for buses, childcare and OSHC as per usual. The rest of the school will be released at 3pm and go home as they usually would.
Some ideas for coping at home:
- Set realistic schoolwork hours- we have sent home recommended times for different areas.
- Include physical activity at a few stages in the day.
- Make sure you set aside time for snacks and lunch break times.
- Have a reading time. Read a book, outside, in a comfy space, on their own or with an adult.
- Plan a creative activity such as drawing, playdough time or playing with Lego.
- Allow time to socialise with friends via apps, phone calls or even computer games
- Set up with friends to eat lunch and chat together
- Plan some daily chores for them
- Work on a larger project-eg. plant a herb garden.
Next week our Preps will be celebrating Under 8’s week on Friday 29th May. Due to current restrictions, the day will be for our Prep children only and will be celebrated in the Prep rooms. The Prep teachers have sent out a note about this special day, "Our Prep Pyjama Picnic Play Day!"
Thank you Mrs Ryan!
Our Vision: “To inspire students to reach their full potential in a safe, caring and educationally challenging environment.”