27 January 2023

Principal

Zoe Smith

Welcome to the 2023 school year!

I hope you had a fun filled holiday break. It was lovely to see the children return on Monday and hear them share their experiences from the holidays.

It is wonderful to have our families back and we remind all parents who use the pickup zones in the afternoon to have the surname of your children clearly identified on the passenger side visor of your car. We greatly appreciate your support as we try to speed up the pick-up process afterschool.

The staff and I enjoyed our Pupil Free Days last week. We are very excited about the Semester whole school focus on Expression. Over the Semester we will make opportunities to enhance our understanding of identity, creativity and wellbeing. We will finalise Semester 1 with an event which celebrates our focus on Expression. As part of the focus on Expression all classes will be starting the year getting to know each other more deeply. We know that if a child feels seen and heard by their teacher and peers, they will have a strong sense of connection and belonging which helps in achieving positive wellbeing. We will be holding a Parent Information Session to explain our Semester 1 focus on Wednesday 15 February at 5.45-6.45pm in the hall. All parents and carers are welcome to attend.

We will also soon be inviting parents and carers to become part of our 2023 Human Library. This year we would like to draw on our very kind and capable families to help support learning as aligned to our world lenses of Expression or Innovation. The teachers are very interested in tapping into the expertise of our community to support student learning. Keep an eye out for an email and Instagram (Graceville_State_School) reminder in the next few weeks with details about how you can be part of our Human Library.

You may have noticed the facilities work that happened over the school holidays. The most visible work is the refurbishment of G block (our Year 1 classrooms). The building is being gutted and re-furbished with the addition of outdoor learning spaces on the Acacia Avenue side of the building. We anticipate our Year 1 students will start Term 2 in their new building! You may also have noticed a new fence around the swimming pool. The new fence is much more practical and aesthetically pleasing than the old fence. What is not as obviously seen, is the new flooring in the swimming pool change rooms. Thanks needs to go the Swimming Club for paying for the new flooring. Additionally, we had some classrooms internally painted, new floor coverings laid in some classrooms and the new specialised toilet for students with a disability was completed. As the term continues, work will start on the Tennis Courts with new lighting, fencing and court resurfacing and in a holiday period this year D, E and F block will receive an external paint job. By the end of the year, the school will have had a significant external face lift!

This year the school will return to hosting assemblies as usual and you are very welcome to come along and take part. Our Whole School Assemblies are on Wednesday afternoons in odd weeks (1,3,5,7,9) and start at approx. 2.10pm. In even weeks, Ms Hass and Mrs McKeaten host specialized P-2 (Tuesday) and 3-6 assemblies (Wednesday) from approx. 2.10pm.

In the next few weeks teachers will host Parent Information Sessions to explain important information for their year level and class. It is a great chance to meet the teacher and get a feel for the year ahead.

Finally, I would like to thank Mrs Payne, Mrs Martin, Mrs Goldsmede, our school captains and their families for attending the Survival Day ceremony (26 January) on behalf of Graceville State School. We would like to thank the Benarrawa Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Solidarity Group for organising a local acknowledgement of Survival Day and welcoming all members of our community to attend.

Don’t forget to keep your eye on Instagram and read the newsletter each fortnight to keep up to date with messages from the school.

Have a great week,

Zoe Smith

Newsletter Articles

Deputy Principal

Lisa McKeaten

Swimming at GSS

In Term 1 all classes in Years 1-6 will be having swimming lessons with Mr Daunt, our PE teacher. Prep classes will also have swimming this year, in Term 4.

At the end of last year, we went through a process of trying to find a pool tender to provide swimming lessons for our younger students and after school swimming. There were quite a few responses from businesses that were interested but they had staff shortages so they couldn’t put in a submission. Due to this Mr Daunt, our PE teacher, has agreed to take swimming lessons with Years Prep -6.

As you would be aware this is a common theme with staff shortages in many professions, not just with swimming staff.

Mr Daunt will start swimming lessons with the Year 3-6 students next week.

With the Years 1 and 2 students, as we require additional people to assist in their program, we won’t be able to start until Week 5. These classes will have 5 weeks of swimming this term (Weeks 5-9) and 5 weeks in Term 4.

Class teachers will require a parent helper for every session. Swimming is a teacher’s non contact time so they don’t attend the lesson. Class teachers will communicate with you in regards to parent helpers.

Young Leaders Program

Each year we attend the Halogen Young Leaders Day

at the convention centre. This year it is on Monday 20th February. All 22 of our School Leaders will be asked to attend with Mrs Smith and myself. The Student Council covers the admission costs for our group each year. A letter will be going home next week in regards to permission.

Deputy Principal

Maree Hass

Welcome back everyone! We especially welcome our new students and families to the school. There are many excited preppies around the school and I would like to thank our year 6 buddies who are doing a fantastic job supporting our preppies at second break around the school.

School Sun Safety Policy

Last year was the first year of implementation of our Sun Safety Policy. Year-round sun protection is important for all young people in Queensland as research demonstrates that high ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure in childhood and adolescence significantly increases the risk of developing skin cancer.

Our school aims to educate our students about being sun safe in order to develop important, life-long, healthy habits, and acknowledges the important role adults play during and outside school hours to reinforce sun safety with children.

In implementing this policy, our school and community recognise that:

• the policy applies to all school and school-related activities and events;
• the strategies are to be implemented during the whole school day and year-round; and
• a combination of sun safe strategies is more effective than a single approach.

Parents are asked to apply sunscreen before school and all teachers will provide an opportunity for students to reapply sunscreen while at school using school provided sunscreen which is Ultra Protect Vitamin E 50+ brand.

If you do not wish for your child to use the school provided sunscreen please complete the ‘Non-consent’ form which is Appendix A of the attached policy.

Please take the time to read this policy and ask any questions at all about its contents.

Prep Vision Screening by Registered Nurse - March 20 – 22

Good vision is important for a child’s educational, physical and social development. Vision screening checks for common eye conditions that may impact your child’s ability to see and therefore impact their learning and development.

A Registered Nurse will be visiting the school on Monday 20th through to Wednesday 22nd March 2023 to conduct vision screening for children in their prep year.

If you wish to have your prep child participate in this FREE vision screening program, please complete an online consent form, which will be sent out on January 30.

Online by 17 February 2023 (a very simple process)

Should you choose to complete a paper form; please see the school office for a Hardcopy after January 30.

Participation in this free vision screening program is not compulsory. If you do not wish for your child to participate in screening, please complete the consent form and indicate that you wish to decline screening.

Parents do not need to be present for screening, however if you would like to be, please contact the school to arrange this.

If you have concerns about your child’s eyes at any time, please take your child to see an eye health professional (optometrist/ophthalmologist).

For further information, please scan the below QR code to visit the Program website or contact the Primary School Nurse Health Readiness Program on 1800 687 372.

P-2 Assemblies this term

We will be commencing our P-2 assemblies in the hall from next week. All parents are welcome to attend these assemblies starting at 2:15 each fortnight.

Prep Easter Hat parade may have to be outdoors as we usually have large numbers of parents joining us for this event, stay tuned for location of this event.

Music News

Naomi Lindh

Welcome to the new school year! I hope all of our families had an enjoyable Christmas and a relaxing holiday. It has been lovely seeing some familiar faces back in the music room this week, as well as meeting many new students!

Students in years 2 – 6 are welcome to join one of our school choirs. We have a Junior Choir for students in years 2/3 and a Senior Choir for students in years 4 – 6. The rehearsal days will be on Tuesday mornings for Senior Choir and Thursday mornings for Junior Choir this year. Due to some family commitments and long service leave days I am taking this term, the Junior Choir rehearsals will start in week 5, on Thursday 23 February. The Senior Choir rehearsals will start on Tuesday in week 3, on Tuesday 7 February. Senior and Junior Choir rehearsals will be held in the music room at 7:45am. Students in the Senior Choir please note that there will be no Senior Choir rehearsal on Tuesday 7 March (week 7) as I will be on long service leave. (I will be back at school on Thursday 9 March for the Junior Choir rehearsal.)

Please see the form below with the permission slip and further information slip for students in years 2 - 6 who are interested in joining one of our choirs.

Our instrumental teachers will soon be contacting families with lesson timetables and letting our students know when rehearsals will begin.

We hope all of our students have had an enjoyable first week at school!

Music Teacher Contact Details

Alex Chin - Instrumental Music Teacher - Strings - Email: achin4@eq.edu.au
James Kukulies - Instrumental Music Teacher - Band - Email: jkuku2@eq.edu.au
Naomi Lindh - Classroom Music Teacher/Choir Conductor - Email: nclos1@eq.edu.au

Tuckshop

WELCOME BACK TO 2023!!

So lovely to see lots of smiling, happy faces back at school ready to start a new year. It’s always lovely when we see new families joining our community and lots of preps ready to start their school journey.

Here we go again, and we need your help to get back up and running. Please sign up to volunteer through the Qkr! app using the volunteer menu OR we love it when people just pop in to say hello and give us a hand whatever time you have spare. Whether it’s 10mins or 3 hours we love the extra hands!

We understand that you may have little ones in tow and are more than happy to welcome them as “helpers” for as long as they have the patience!

But if volunteering isn’t possible for you then we are always looking for donations of items to tuckshop. Drop us a line or pop in and we can discuss this further.

FOR ALL NEW FAMILIES AT SCHOOL – YOU NEED TO DOWNLOAD QKR! FROM THE APP STORE TO ORDER. Please see the link below to see how to download and order.

Tuckshop is only open for first break (10.45-11.20) so please make sure you order enough for your child to last them the day.

Our Specials for this term are as follow:

Monday – Butter Chicken with Rice (GF, DF)
Tuesday – Chicken Burgers and GF Chicken Wraps
Wednesday – Sushi and Rice Paper Rolls

N.B. Sushi needs to be ordered by 11am Tuesday using the Sushi menu in Qkr!

Thursday – Beef Burgers

Keep an eye out for new menu items this term as we get back into the swing of it!

If you have any menu questions or concerns or would like any information on how the tuckshop runs, please pop in and have a chat with us – we’d love to see you. We look forward to catching up with familiar faces this term and making new friends!

Emma and Alex
Tuckshop Conveners 2023

P&C News

Welcome back!

Welcome back to all our wonderful GSS students and families! An especially big welcome to all our preppie and families who are new to the school in 2023. We hope you all had a wonder summer holiday break, and everyone has settled back in to school life for this term.

To kick of the new school year, the P&C would like to invite all families to a morning tea in the school hall at the end of next week. Please feel free to drop by for a cuppa and chat and meet some new friends.

P&C Roles for 2023

We are all excited to get in and start planning some wonderful events for our school community in 2023, and in addition we will have our AGM in March where the executive team is appointed for this year. If you are at all interested in becoming involve in the P&C, please reach out for some more information.

All our executive roles are re-elected each year, and we have a couple of people who will not be re-nominating for 2023. So, we will need people to come in and take over these positions. Everyone is welcome to nominate themselves or someone else into any of these roles. Please go to the following website, or reach out to the exec team for more information on what is involved with each of the President, Vice-President, Treasury and Secretary roles:

In addition, we are already putting out the call for more volunteers to help with the Spring Fair. If you have any interest in helping put together and or co-ordinating the Fair for 2023 (which is the biggest fundraising event for the year), please reach out to us.

Secondly, we have identified several potential grant opportunities that have proposal submissions due in the next 6 months. If you have any grant application experience or can help with some insight on preparing grants, we would love to hear from you!

If you can help out with any P&C events for 2023, or grant applications, or are interested in taking on a role within the P&C please get in contact with us (exec@gracevillepandc.org.au)

Next P&C meeting date

Please be advised that the next P&C meeting has been scheduled for 22nd February 2022 at 7:30pm in the 1C classroom, which is upstairs of the Admin entrance. You can also attend virtually via Zoom – details will be sent out closer to the time. Everyone is welcome.

Community Notices

TENNIS HOT SHOTS – LIMITED PLACES STILL AVAILABLE FOR TERM 1!

Limited places are still available for term 1 tennis lessons and Fixture Leagues.

ENROL ONLINE at:

PRIVATE AND SEMI-PRIVATE LESSONS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON REQUEST.

Should you have any questions please contact Tennis for Kids on info@tennisforkids.com.au or 0408 187 741.

ALL NEW CHILDREN ENROLLING IN TERM 1 WILL RECEIVE A FREE JUNIOR TENNIS RACQUET!

Tennis For Kids is a FairPlay activity provider and therefore can accept Government FairPlay Vouchers -

PARENT & CHILD TENNIS EVENT – SUNDAY 12TH March

A fun filled 2 hours of match play – Parents enter with their Child and play together as a doubles team! This event will be held at the Queensland Tennis Centre from 3-6pm on Sunday 12th March.

For further details or to enrol -