Volume 4- 18th March 2022
From the Principal
The last couple of weeks, we have been able to return to ‘COVID-normal’ operations, a change that has been welcomed by our school community. I am always impressed by the resilience our students even when they find themselves in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Thank you, parents, for working with us to support your child’s education.
On Monday, 21 March 2022, the Leaders’ Investiture will be taking place in the Hall. Leaders’ Investiture is a celebration of our student leaders’ leadership skills, and a ceremony where we formally invest our student leaders with honours of student leadership. Parents of Student Leaders will be joining us for the special assembly, followed by a morning tea in the Library. Judging by the positive energy and innovative ideas the students have already shared with me, I am sure that we will have a very successful year.
The following Monday, 28 March 2022, we will acknowledge Harmony Day in a special assembly taking place at 8:50am. Harmony Day is an opportunity for us to celebrate the many cultures of the staff and students at our school. We encourage you to help your child dress in a cultural costume or wear a symbol of your culture on this day. Thank you for your support with this.
As you are aware, Mrs Finlay’s passion for our students’ learning is always visible and welcome in our school. With her support, a number of our students will be presenting a Weather Report on the River 94.9 Radio station. Weather Report is scheduled for 8:30am each day this week and we hope you can tune in and hear our skilled future journalists in action.
As always, plenty to celebrate at our great school. Thank you for your support.
Curriculum News
Mid-Semester Reporting
Due to our delayed start to the school year and the recent impact from the floods, we have decided to cancel Mid-Semester Reports in Term 1. This decision has been made to maximise the amount of learning time before students’ complete assessments in the final week of Term 1, to ensure the students have every chance of succeeding in what has been a heavily impacted term.
In the final week of Term 1, teachers will contact the parents/carers of every student to provide a brief overview of how your child has performed in their learning and behaviour for the new school year.
If you wish to discuss this further please contact Trevor Flaherty our Head of Department – Curriculum
Reading @ Leichhardt
Spelling@Leichhardt
The Term 1 ‘Spell-Off’ is nearly here! I hope everyone is practising their ‘Spell-Off’ spelling list words. The Preps now have learnt seven letters and are using these to spell lots of words!
Last week I caught up with Noah (Prep B) and Logan (Prep A) who amazed me with their spelling skills! They have only been at school for five weeks and they are already spelling like experts!
Noah spelt the word ‘as’ and Logan spelt the word ‘it’. Both students sounded out their words and then carefully spelt them. An important part of spelling is to make sure that all the sounds in the word are identified and then letters attached to the sounds. Well done, boys! Well done, Prep A and B teaching staff!
At Assembly on Monday, the L.S.S. School Captains flexed their spelling prowess! Nayah (6A) confidently spelt the word ‘nutrients’ and MJ (6B) carefully spelt the five syllable word ‘irreversible’. Both words come from topics they are studying in the Curriculum. Well done, Captains!
If you do not have a copy of the ‘Spell-Off’ words, please contact your child’s teacher.
Library Activities @ Leichhardt
Students celebrated belated ‘Fairy Tale Day’ activities and ‘Thesaurus Day’ or ‘Banish Boring Words Day’ activities in the library last week.
At Second Play on Wednesday, students created ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ craft and enjoyed having a story read to them by Ms Sarah. Thank you, Ms Sarah!
Later that day, the Library Elective students engaged in creating a display to help students banish the following ‘boring’ words from their writing: ‘happy’, ‘sad’ and ‘said’.
Students also had the opportunity to interview Ms Ebert, one of Leichhardt’s Senior School English teachers, to find out why it is important to use interesting words in our writing. Ms Ebert holds a Bachelor Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing as well as a teaching degree and enjoys writing in her free time.
Reading@Leichhardt
The February Reading Eggs awards were celebrated at Assembly on Monday. As well as receiving Reading Eggs certificates, students also received Reading Eggs wristbands! Here are just some of the recipients of the Reading Eggs awards.
If you do not have your child’s Reading Eggs login details, please contact your child’s teacher.
Teaching and Learning
This week many classes have been taking their learning outside and using our beautiful spaces around the school. It has been fantastic to see the students following expectations, working together and enjoying the sunshine all while doing their best learning!
Our senior students have continued to develop essential skills in organisation by understanding how they can be organised with their bookwork. This includes writing the date and learning objective for the lesson as well as using a ruler to rule a margin. The students will continue to build these skills throughout the year as they use this as a base to dive deeper into their learning. We look forward to sharing more of their hard work and wonderful learning throughout the year.
Community Support Coordinator
Community Support Catch-Up
Attendance Matters!
Well, what a term we have had, starting the year with yet another COVID-19 concern, followed by a concerning weather event.
As we learn to navigate life with COVID and return to a full school program, it is crucial to remind ourselves about the importance of attendance and being at school, on time, every day.
One of my goals as the Community Support Cooridnator, is to help all families achieve a minimum attendance rate of 85% and above.
Even having one day off per fortnight, adds up and can have an affect on your child’s schooling.
If you need assistance with managing your child’s attendance, please contact me through the school office or by email at ncurw1@eq.edu.au .
The Good Foundation – Jamie’s Ministry of Food
I recently put out an expression of interest for our families to participate in a ‘Back to Basics’ cooking program through Jamie’s Ministry of Food Ipswich.
The program runs for 5 weeks and empowers our community members, through education about how to cook healthy and nutritious meals, resulting in them buying and consuming more vegetables and cooking budget friendly meals, rather than being dependant on expensive, processed takeaway options.
Check out some of the meals our families have been cooking.
Learning @ Leichhardt
Prep
This year we have been working hard on learning our letter sounds and as we have been learning each new sound we have practised the correct formation with different arts and crafts. We have also been learning how to blend these sounds into words, these words are part of our spelling list for the term. You will find some of these words hanging up outside our room so please spent some time with your child before school practising spelling these words ready for the spelling challenge.
3A have been busy learning about Place Value. Here are two of our students playing the trading game
3A visited 5A to conduct a survey for their HASS assessment about their families origin of bith.
This term the Year 5s and 6s have been working on their creative writing. The Year 5 students’ writing task has been to write a ‘slightly’ spooky story, describing characters and setting and building suspense in their writing. The Year 6 students’ writing task has been to write a humorous story to entertain an audience. The students are very proud of their writing achievements this term and are excited to create a compilation of their year level’s work. Here are some examples of the Year 5’s final pieces. We look forward to sharing the Year 6’s work in the final newsletter for the term.
HASS
Year 5
The year 5 students have been working hard to build their knowledge of the gold rush. They are developing their research skills to understand how and why life changed during the gold rush.
"It is really interesting to learn about the people that came before us".
"Their life was so different to ours - transport, money and their living environment".
Year 6
Year 6 students are researching about the problems of pre-Federation Australia. They are learning how to find sources, use the information to complete activities and further develop their knowledge as well as acknowledge the sources they have used.
In visual Arts this term we have been learning about the elements of art. We have focused on colours including warm and cool too. This week we have looked at line work and how everything around us is made up with lines. 2A had fun outdoors playing ‘ find the line.’ The aim was to run or walk to a line that was called out by the teacher. This game was fun and educational, helping support students identify different types of lines. See If you can recognise any of the lines in the image.
Library News
Good morning teachers and students,
Yesterday in the Library, the Library Elective group students were writing encouraging letters to families who were affected by the recent floods.
Until the end of the term, if other students would like to write letters to encourage families in this difficult time, there will be writing paper in the library.
There are also colouring ins if students would prefer to colour to show they care.
A special mail box has also been provided to post the letters once completed.
Thank you to Ms C for providing the writing paper and mail box to enable our students to show our care and concern for families doing it tough.
Please see the photos below of the students and staff making a difference to our wonderful community through this activity.
There are sample letters on display in the library, if students are unsure of what to write.
Thank you to Ms Ferguson and Ms Sarah for leading the Library Elective student group in this inspiring activity yesterday!
News from Student Services
Student Services…We Care!
In Student Services we have been very busy working at keeping our students safe and well!
Please remember, if your children are unwell in any way, keep them at home to rest and recover.
Students showing any signs of illness will be sent home and if showing symptoms of COVID-19 will be given a RAT test to be completed at home. Students may return to school when they have a negative test result and are symptom free.
Lost Property!
If you have lost something, please come down to Student Services and check out the big red tub, where you will find lost property.
If you recognise any of these items please come to Student Services to collect them.
Preloved School Uniforms!
If your children have grown out of their school uniforms, it would be greatly appreciated if you would please consider donating them to Student Services. Student’s often require a change of clothes while at school and our supplies are getting low.
Health and Wellbeing!
Water is one of the most important parts of a healthy diet.
Up to 60% of the human body is made up of water.
The cells in our bodies depend on water to function normally and also to get rid of waste products.
The daily recommendation is that children drink the number of cups of water equal to their age, e.g. an eight-year-old child should drink 8 cups of water. This does not include other drinks such as milk and juice.
At school, to help our students stay healthy and hydrated, we now have 2 sets of bubblers that dispense cold, filtered water. These are located under E Block and D Block. They even have special taps for easier filling of drink bottles.
Swimming @ Leichhhardt
Term 1 - Swimming Overview
This term, Years 1 & 2 will be demonstrating aquatic skills and recognised strokes in swimming sequences that incorporate the elements of movement in freestyle and backstroke.
This term, Years 3 & 4 will be performing swimming stroke sequences with coordinated arm, leg and breathing movements to demonstrate recognised swimming strokes in freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke.
This term, Years 5 & 6 will be performing various styles of swimming such as freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and survival backstroke. Students will also perform a stride entry to keep their heads above water, then tread water efficiently.
Students have also demonstrated
- safely entering the pool
- waiting for our turn
- using the board to stay afloat
- using the board to guide our arms for freestyle
- rocket arms for backstroke
School Photos
School Photos will be held on Friday 22nd April 2022.
If you do not recieve an order form for your child/ren by Friday 25th March, please contact the Office on 3813 3222.
Sibling photo forms can be collected from the Main Administration Office.
Mission Australia Play and Learn
I am happy to say that face-to-face playgroups are back in the school hall from this Thursday 17th March.
This is what we will be learning for the remaining 3 weeks of the term.
Week/Date | Focus/Book | Craft | Games/ Activities |
Week 8 - 17th March | Starfish/Hooray for Fish | Glitter Starfish | Sorting shapes |
Week 9 - 24th March | Whales/Hello Narwhal | Paper plate whales | Obstacle course |
Week 10 – 31st March | Easter/Easter Bilby | Egg baskets & rabbit head bands | Egg & spoon race |
Please contact Channon Schiemer from Mission Australia to find out more information on Facebook messenger or call her on 0475 798 198.
Community News
