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Dear Parents and Caregivers
Welcome to Week 3 of our unprecedented school term. Firstly, can I give a big vote of thanks to our school community for the overwhelming gestures of gratitude
over the past few weeks. From comments at the front gate to the emails I have received about our teachers and the emails which teachers have received themselves – it is appreciated by us all. COVID-19 gave both our school and our community a tough assignment at the beginning of this term, and the support and engagement has been inspiring and admirable. Thank you to the Dayboro community – it has reiterated the meaning of teamwork for us all this term.
Secondly, I would like to include here a reflection piece included in a recent Regional Director’s newsletter and written by an administrator in Wide Bay and is pertinent to our current situation. How will your children remember it?
“I would like to encourage all of our parents, particularly our primary parents, to take every opportunity to spend as much time with your little ones as you can. While the restrictions make normal life very difficult they also provide us with a unique opportunity to spend a great deal of quality time with our kids. Please take the time to play, to read books, to sing, to investigate the world around us, to build projects together, to fix cars or bikes, to imagine, to look at the clouds while lying on the trampoline, to create memories as a family. When your children look back on this time as adults, when COVID-19 is a record in the history books, how do you want your children to remember it?”
Please find below some important information relating to our school operations, especially from next Monday.
NEXT WEEK – How does it look for Dayboro State School ?
The Premier announced yesterday the return to full time schooling next Monday 11 May for our Prep and Year 1 students. This means that it will shift the mode of teaching from remote teaching to full time face-to- face teaching for these students.
It is recognised that some Prep – Year 1 parents may still wish to keep their children home due to concerns about COVID-19. This is an acceptable decision and children will not be marked absent, rather they are learning from home. It is important for parents of Prep and Year 1 students to advise the school office of their intentions and to contact the classroom teacher to discuss how we can continue to support learning at home.
For students in Year 2-6 , the current home-based learning will continue. If low COVID-19 transmission rates continue, students in these year levels will be able to return on Monday 25 May. Again, we should only being seeing the children of essential workers and vulnerable children attending school on the days which they cannot be supervised at home by an adult.
Thank you to our community for your continued support with this direction.
Visiting the School – Drop Off and Pick Up
- At the present time, if anyone needs to be on the school grounds there is a requirement for adults to maintain a physical distance of 1.5m at all times. Our school office is open via a window on the side of the administration block.
- Parents and carers should not gather in groups in areas in or outside the school grounds
- Our classrooms and classroom verandas are restricted environments and access is not available – please contact teachers by email or Class Dojo.
- Please drop off your children at the front gate of the school. This is preferable, however, If necessary, students can be brought to the top of the Admin steps. All students, including Prep are to attend the CSA in the mornings before school. Late students will need to attend the office to obtain a late slip.
- Please collect children from the front gate area. Prep Teachers or Aides will release the Prep students through the gates and supervise collection in the afternoons. Could I please request that everyone leave as soon as possible after children are collected.
- If it is necessary for a child to be picked up early, please come to the school office and your child will meet you there. ( A change in policy at this time)
Thank you to everyone for your support as we follow the Chief Health Officer’s restrictions in our school environment. Could I also reassure our community that we have markedly increased our cleaning and sanitisation of our school property and touch points. Extra cleaning time has been allocated and stronger approved sanitising agents are being used across the school. With additional students attending from next week, cleaning routines will be reviewed.
New Chaplain
Last week our new Chaplain, Mr Andrew Pickard commenced at our school. Andrew will be at our school on Thursdays and Fridays. Andrew is an experienced Chaplain and works the remainder of the week at Bounty Boulevard State School. We warmly welcome Andrew to our school and look forward to his support and contribution to our community.
Facebook Page
Dayboro State School now has a school operated Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DayboroSS/. Whilst the P&C have always done an amazing job liaising with the community on the school’s behalf, we have created the page so to communicate directly with our parents and the community. The Facebook page will feature as a running stream on our school website also!
We encourage all parents with a Facebook account to click on the above link to follow us, getting your information straight to your device. We look forward to sharing important information and good news stories to you via this platform.
Garry Drummond
Principal
Dear Families and Friends
Well, we are greatly looking forward to the return of our Preps and Year 1 next week. As of Monday 11th May the Prep and Year 1 classes will be returning to their usual classrooms and teachers.
The learning at home experience has been a positive, creative and playful time for many of our Prep students and I have included below a few pictures sent from Prep T parents journalling their time at home. Nature collages, going on Bear Hunts, measuring household items, and doing Maths workbooks at home are just a few of the enjoyable activties our Prep T students have been doing at home.
For the next two and a half weeks, our Yr 2 -6 students will continue to learn at home and continue to access their Virtual Classrooms. These classrooms will remain the preferred way of working for our students at home.
The “How to” is again detailed below for you all.
Three very important details to note:
- 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 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.
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 Cityand 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. There should not be children playing on equipment or waiting outside classrooms before this time. This is especially important at this current time as we are not having Assemblies and important messages are being relayed in the CSA before students go to class. All children are being marked on the roll in the CSA and then being sent to different classroom Hubs. In the afternoons they will meet their parents in their usual meeting place.
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.
Mother's Day
Wishing all our Mum's a lovely day for Mother's Day.
Thank you Mrs Ryan!
Our Vision: “To inspire students to reach their full potential in a safe, caring and educationally challenging environment.”
Dear Prep and Year 1 Parents,
Please check out the Oral Language for Early Years Activities and Phonological Awareness Activities for May Calendars (in this newsletter) for some great activities to do with your child at home. Phonological awareness is about understanding sound structures in words (not the letter name) and this skill helps your child learn to read and write.
Regards, Linda Smith
Head of Department (Curriculum)
ICAS 2020 INVITATION
Dayboro State School will be participating in the world-renowned ICAS Assessments in English, Mathematics and Science this year. ICAS is developed by UNSW Global, a wholly owned subsidiary of UNSW Sydney, with over 35 years’ experience in educational assessments. ICAS is designed to target students’ higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills.
Each assessment celebrates students’ accomplishments by providing opportunities for recognition. Every student will receive a printed certificate and an online result report. Top performers will be eligible for medals and are invited to attend special award ceremonies to have their academic excellence publicly recognised.
We encourage you to consider entering your child into ICAS this year. The assessments are suitable for students wishing to extend themselves academically and take up the personal challenge of competing in an international assessment. Your child will be presented with high quality, expert-developed questions, allowing them to apply their learning without the need for prior study or revision.
ICAS Assessments are now online, a move that reflects a sector-wide transition to computer-based assessments. This allows greater accessibility for students and faster delivery of results.
Learn more about ICAS here: unsw.global/ICAS
If you would like your child to participate in any of the subjects listed above, please visit the new online Parent Payment System to make a direct payment to UNSW Global. The Parent Payment System is a simple and secure online payment service specifically for parents to purchase ICAS Assessments.
The web link is:
Our school’s unique access code is: QSM726
Online payment closes Friday, 17 July 2020.
Parent purchases:
IMPORTANT: Please enter your child’s name accurately into the system as it will appear on their ICAS certificate.
Privacy notification
UNSW Global stores, uses and modifies the ICAS Assessments data in order to generate reports, conduct research and analysis, and improve its products and services. UNSW Global will not hold or use ICAS Assessments data that constitutes personal information for longer than 15 years. As the parent or guardian of a student who intends to sit ICAS Assessments, you consent to the school collecting the ICAS Assessments data that relates to the student, disclosing it to UNSW Global and to UNSW Global’s use of it in the manner outlined above. You also consent to the school assigning this consent to UNSW Global.
Please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Smith if you have any questions.
Good Afternoon Everyone
Its certainly been a very different Term 2 this year! While some children have needed to attend school, many more have been learning at home. While this complete change in approach has certainly thrown normal routine out the window, hats off to all the parents and teachers who have made it work! There may have been hiccups initially, however I understand with each week the virtual classrooms have improved.
Please continue to share your successes and any feedback with your child/s teachers.
As we have been notified by the Premier; Kindy, Prep, and Year 1 will be returning to school on the 11th May 2020, with the proposed return of all other grades from the 25th May 2020. Strict rules remain in place regarding social distancing between adults and the school has set out clear guidelines regarding drop off and pick up. Thank you for respecting these rules.
Mothers Day Stall - Just a reminder that we are unable to host the Mothers Day Stall this year. To all the mums out there, we hope you enjoy a special Sunday! Happy Mothers Day!
Tuckshop - Remains closed at this stage. With the staggered return of students, the P&C will be reviewing this decision over the next week or so. We would welcome any feedback regarding the Tuckshop/Uniform Shop operations.
We're hoping to hold our next P&C Meeting in late May to early June. If you would like to be involved (current member or otherwise) and are open to attending virtually, please let us know. This will help us plan when and how we make it all come together!
Please email any feedback and/or interest in the next P&C Meeting to me at president@dayboropandc.org.au
Mareeta Herricane
President
To support home-based learning during Term 2, temporary access (at no charge) to the eBooks Digital Library has been approved for all students until 20 July 2020.
All students are now registered to borrow eBooks and audiobooks from the eBooks Digital Library until 20 July 2020.
What is the eBooks Digital Library?
The eBooks Digital Library contains over 45,000 eBooks and audiobooks, including fiction and nonfiction reading material for students and is compatible on almost any device. The collection includes easy readers, comic and graphic novels, science fiction, and fantasy. It is available via web browser, or the (free) Sora or OverDrive app.
How do I access the eBooks service on a laptop or in a web browser?
1. Open Sora (works best with Chrome) or open OverDrive Classic
2. Log in with your Department username (MIS ID)
How do I access the eBooks service on a mobile device?
1. Install the free Sora or OverDrive app.
2. Search for Education Queensland (in Sora) or Queensland State Schools (in OverDrive).
3. Log in with your Department username (MIS ID)
Please contact eResource Services if you have any questions or concerns. Happy reading!
Library Events
We are delighted to invite all of our students to join the 2020 Premier’s Reading Challenge which commences on May 11th and is open until August 28th.
Reading plays an important part in students’ lives during their school years and beyond.
It allows children to actively engage their imagination and opens up a world of educational opportunities.
Last year, 168,000 students from 937 schools took part in the challenge, reading an astounding 2.31 million books. What an incredible result.
This year the Premier has invited all state and non-state school students to take on the challenge:
- Prep to Year 2 should read or experience at least 20 books,
- Years 3 and 4 should read at least 20 books, and
- Years 5 to 9 should read at least 15 books.
Experiencing books can include shared reading, listening to stories, or reading picture books. The aim for the 2020 challenge is to engage more students reading more books than ever before.
Every student who completes the challenge will receive a Certificate of Achievement signed by the Premier.
For more information about the Premier’s Reading Challenge, please visit: readingchallenge.education.qld.gov.au
Reading recording sheets are available on the Premier’s Reading Challenge website in the Downloads and Forms section and through the school’s Virtual Library for students to access.
National Simultaneous Storytime is quickly approaching – the big day is Wednesday May 27th.
During the week of National Simultaneous Storytime we will have a link available where students can watch the story “Whitney and Britney Chicken Divas” being read online. We already have some resources available in the Virual Library but keep an eye out for more activities in the coming weeks.
We are going to make a Blog available so that students can share their amazing artworks in celebration of “Whitney and Britney”.
Library and Maker Space Online
Remember to check to our Library and Maker Space virtual classroom if you are looking for something a little different to do. One of the folders we have available this week is for Mother’s Day – there are different ideas for helping to make Mum’s day super special.
Book Club
This term Scholastic, our Book Club provider, has made the decision to distribute Book Club in a completely digital format.
Issue 3 is now available on line by clicking on this link:
While browsing the brochure, if you click on the brochure a new window will open that will take you to the LOOP Payment tool to enable families to order and pay for their books.
At the moment Book Club orders can only be placed and paid for online - unfortunately we cannot accept paper order forms and cash payment at this time.
When the Book Club orders have arrived at school we will notify families that their orders are available for collection from the office.
Orders close on the 15th of May.
Thank you for you continued support,
Mrs Wilkinson and Mrs H.
Good Afternoon Parents,
A reminder to ensure your children have a hat and drink bottle each session they attend; staying sun safe and hydrated is vital all year around and we appreciate your co-operation in this. Cleanliness is of a high priority at the service and our team are working hard to ensure areas are sanitised and hand washing is occurring frequently.
If your child/ren will be absent from a session, please ensure they are marked absent on the iparent portal. This is done under the bookings tab by selecting the date/session and clicking the red x on the right. Please see one of our educators for support if you are experiencing issues making or managing your bookings. Please also ensure you are able access your iparent portal – this is where you make and amend your bookings and receive notifications, messages and newsletters from us in addition to this fortnightly segment.
Vacancies are available for both morning and afternoon sessions on selected days, and we welcome all children and families to the service. To enrol your child, please visit www.helpinghandsnetwork.com.au, selecting Dayboro as your service and following the prompts to access the iParent Portal.
If you have any issues, please contact Jenny at the service on 0459 991 697 or our customer accounts on 1300 612 462.
