Volume 15 - 16th September 2022

From The Principal

At Leichhardt State School, the end of term marks a celebration time for students and staff – a time to come together, reflect on our learning, celebrate our achievements and set goals for next term. The Term 3 Report Cards went out this week showing student achievement in learning areas studied this semester only. Students continue to achieve improved learning outcomes across all learning areas, especially in English in Senior Years. Having specialist English teachers, Mrs Finlay and Miss Ebert, in Years 5 and 6 has seen our Senior Students achieve fantastic results. 

As you are aware, our strong focus this semester has been on forming our sporting teams and participating in interschool sport competitions. On Monday, senior students and teachers voted on three different designs for the sports shirts and we now have a winning design. The shirts are being made currently and should arrive early next term. The shirts are the property of the school and will be given to students to wear on game days only. 

This week, Aunty Marly and team are working on the Gathering Place garden to complement the beautiful concrete seat we built last year. Below is a picture of a group of students utilising the new space outside E Block. Thank you to Zen Garden, Aunty Marly and Nic Curwen for their organisation of the work to ensure the garden is completed by the end of the year. 

I am very excited to inform our parents that we are introducing the Yugera language from Term 4 this year. The language will be taught in Years 5 and 6, and to a group of First Nations children who will dig deeper into the culture. Our aim in Term 4 will be to collaboratively write a language program of instruction that can be aligned to the Australian Curriculum. We are so excited about this opportunity to embed Yugera language into our teaching and learning.  

Today, the Body Mind Character Day is taking place again to reinforce the message of physical and mental health and importance of good character. I hope your child enjoys the day! 

I hope you and your family stay well, safe and strong! 

From The Head of Special Education

The Ipswich State High school now has specialised deaf and hard of hearing staff to support your students needs. For more information please read the pamphlet below. 

From The Department of Reading

READING VOLUNTEERS  

It takes a village to raise a child and in the same way, it takes a village to raise a great reader.  We are very grateful for volunteers who work with our Junior School students to provide extra opportunity to practise their sight words. 

A big ‘thank you’ to Kyna Hetherington (Carmen’s mum) who has been helping the Year 1s with their sight words!

If you would like to help out as a reading volunteer, please let your child’s class teacher know or contact Mrs Elena Finlay (HOD – Reading) on efin9@eq.edu.au.

Another big ‘thank you’ goes out to the Faith Lutheran College (FLC) High School Service Team who, from Week 1 to Week 9 next term, will travel to Leichhardt to read with our Junior School students each Wednesday as part of their service to the community project.  

Ms Kerry Bayfield and the FLC Service Team visited Leichhardt on Wednesday, Week 9, to discuss the project and the reading activities that they would practise (sight words and reading extension) with our Junior School students.  The FLC students were keen to get straight to work, as can be seen from the below images.  The Leichhardt students loved the one on one reading time and were sad to see the high school students leave and are looking forward to their return next term.

READING EGGS AWARDS 

At Monday’s Assembly we celebrated our students’ amazing August Reading Eggs achievements!

It was wonderful to see so many students receiving awards.  Below are just some of the students who received awards. Well done, students! 

The September Reading Eggs Awards will be celebrated on return to school after the holiday break.  Please remember to encourage your child to engage daily with Reading Eggs or the Reading Eggs library.

If you do not have your child’s Reading Eggs login details, please contact your child’s class teacher or email Mrs Finlay (HOD – Reading) efinl9@eq.edu.au.

SPELLING AWARDS 

At Monday’s Assembly the Term 3 ‘Spell Off’ Awards were also celebrated.  It has been great to see students use their: 

‘Hear it, Say it, Write it, Read it, Use it,’ approach to spelling this term.  I have particularly loved seeing students enjoying analysing words during spelling activities and then applying this knowledge to their general writing.  

Below are the students who were awarded ‘Spell-Off’ Champions and ‘Most Improved Speller’ for their class.   Well done, students! 

4B – Ava  (Spell-Off Champion) 

         Stella (Most Improved Speller) 

SIGHT WORDS AWARD 

Jack and Hunter (Prep B) were also very excited to receive their Sight Word Award at Monday’s Assembly.  Both students now can read the first 100 ‘Magic Word’ sight words!  This sight word goal is not usually achieved until the end of first term in Year 1!  So this is an amazing achievement for Prep students at the end of Term 3.  Well done, Hunter and Jack!

WRITING @ LEICHHARDT 

It was great to see 16 students from Leichhardt State School enter the Bremer State High, ‘Write A Story’ writing competition.

While most of the students worked on the task during free-time at the end of a lesson or during Homework Club, some students went a step further and took their work home to further develop their stories. I am very proud of the commitment and effort displayed by our students to enter their best work in the competition. Below are pictured some of the Year 5A and 6A students and a Year 4C student who entered writing in the competition.

Pictured below is another keen writer.  Nova (1A) enjoys writing and illustrating stories during playtime. Well done, Nova! 

INDIGENOUS LITERACY DAY @ LEICHHARDT 

Wednesday, Week 10, Indigenous Literacy Day was celebrated at Leichhardt State School with well-respected Indigenous author and artist, Trevor Fourmile, facilitating workshops for our students. Trevor is a Yidinji man from Cairns, North Queensland. He has a strong interest in teaching the younger generation culture through traditional dance, story-telling and writing children’s books.

The day commenced with a special Assembly in the Hall to celebrate the day. It was wonderful to have the local Elders and Ipswich City Councillors, Marnie Doyle and Andrew Fechner, join us for the Assembly and morning tea in the Deadly Room.

Our students, Angus and MJ (6B) did a wonderful job leading the Assembly and Violet (5A) spoke extremely confidently regarding the significance of Indigenous Literacy Day. Well done, students!

Students thoroughly enjoyed engaging in cultural appreciation activities of storytelling, sign language, dancing and games led by Trevor Fourmile. The funding for the event was achieved through an Ipswich Council grant. A big ‘thank you’ to Aunty Marly for all her work in organising the event.

From The Department of Teaching and Learning

TEACHING AND LEARNING 

It has been a very busy end of the school term and students are continuing to do some wonderful learning activities. Year 4 have been practicing their bookwork expectations and worked with Miss O'Connor to brainstorm what a successful student is. They had some fantastic discussions and produced some great work as you can see.

We have been lucky enough to have partnered with Loganlea State Highschool online this term and this week a teacher came to deliver the lesson to students onsite. It was a wonderful experience for all involved and we are looking forward to many more future learnings with them. Well done students on your impressive behaviour and learning! 

Our AVID lessons have continued in Years 5 and 6 with students continuing to build their confidence for their transition to high school. This week students learnt about different learning styles and did a quiz to find out their preferred learning style (Visual, kinaesthetic or auditory). The students found it very interesting to understand how they learn best, and we had some great discussions about this and how it can assist their learning both now and in the future.

Lastly, we would like to congratulate the students who earnt the bookwork expectations award. This is a new award at Leichhardt for students showing exceptional pride in their bookwork. Congratulations to the following students:

Nayah, Melicia, Angelicia, Ruby, Lilly, Ava, Bailey.

From The Head of Department - Positive Behaviour and Learning

MIND, BODY, CHARACTER DAY @ LEICHHARDT

PREP AND YEAR 1 BUBBLE BLAST

Prev

Showing images 1 - 8 of 15

Next

COLOUR RUN 

Mind, Body, Character Day was a blast ending with the colour run. 

Prev

Showing images 1 - 8 of 14

Next

From The Head of Department - Curriculum

SCIENCE WEEK 

This week we celebrated National Science Week at Leichhardt, which was themed: Glass, more than meets the eye. The students engaged in a range of glass related science experiments in and out of the classroom.                                                                                                                            Street Science performed a Science Show, the children thoroughly enjoyed it! The show included lots of explosions and experiments and the students learnt about reflection and refraction.

During break time, students used magnifying glasses to search for mini-beasts in the Steam Hub. In the Deadly Room the children created Indigenous windows with Aunty Marly and learnt about Indigenous Artists who work with glass to create different Indigenous objects.

Bremer High School came and ran activities for our Senior Students where they investigated how light is attracted to different colours and created telescopes.

In class, teachers chose activities to do with their students relating to the National Science Week theme. Students created desert pizza’s after learning about the glass used in ovens, created kaleidoscopes, learnt about the viscosity of honey and created stain glass windows.  

It was wonderful to see the students develop a love of science through all the various activities, thank you to all the teachers and students who made the week such a success!

Prev

Showing images 1 - 8 of 10

Next

From Our Teachers

PREP A

This week we have had so much fun in Prep A celebrating Science Week. The theme for this week is ‘Glass.’  We were lucky enough to get the chance to explore the STEAM HUB and search for Mini Beasts with some magnifying glasses. We found lots of ants and bugs in the gardens.

We also visited Aunty Marly in the Deadly Room and painted our very own ‘glass stained window.’ We had lots of fun painting and we were very excited to take our art home to show our families and hang them up.

For our class science activity this week, Prep A chose to make salt dough glass windows. We combined flour, salt and water to make a salt dough and shaped our ‘window.’ We then cooked the dough for 2 hours and waited for them to cool down. We then got some colourful hard boiled lollies, crushed them and placed the crushed lolly powder into the window holes of our salt dough window shapes. We placed them back into the oven for 10 minutes and watched the lolly powder melt. When they came out of the oven, the crushed lollies looked like glass.

We had a great week doing lots of science activities about Glass.

Miss Toolis and Prep A

PREP B 

Over the last few weeks in Prep B, we have made some excellent gains with our sight word knowledge. The development of sight word knowledge is an essential part of building our reading skills and abilities. Not only do we learn our sight words from Miss Simonds and Miss Amy but we learn them from our peers. Peer-to-peer learning is important in a number of ways.

1. Better understanding

As students in a peer group use the same langugae (or lingo), they are likely to understand and assimilate better from their peers. It isn't articulate acedemic discourse that is effective, but ut is the language that makes better sense to fellow students. 

2. Enriches communication and teamwork skills

Peer-to-peer learning brings with itself a practical application of communication and learning skills. 

3. Developed problem-solving skills 

As the peer-to-peer learning is all about discussing and brainstorming in order to learn, it gets you in the habit of self-learning and develops your problem-solving skills.

4. It's fun for everyone 

A special congratulations to Hunter, Jack and Kaluaka  for reaching their 100 Sight Word Goal! 

YEAR 1 

Some of the senior classes have been reading together with students in 1B with the senior students providing mentoring and support to the younger students.  This experience encouraged the reading skills of 1B but also the confidence of the senior students.  

Whilst the senior students felt nervous and unsure, 1B welcomed the seniors with open arms and much excitement.  Miss Ebert and Mrs Krings are looking forward to making this a weekly event in Term 4.  

YEAR 3 

This term year 3 students have been busy learning about new and old technology.  As part of their unit they were required to design a dessert pizza using success criteria.  To celebrate all of the hard work students have done this term, we made and sampled 6 of the top recipes.  Students then voted their favourite against the success criteria.  Our winning pizza was “the Rainbow Pizza’ designed by Mia Maher. Congratulations to Mia and all of the year 3 students for their amazing design work! 

YEAR 6 MATHS 

Year 6 finished the term with a unit on cartesian planes and have enjoyed learning about negative numbers and where they are placed on a number line. They have worked hard across a number of different topics this term but have shown great enjoyment in understanding coordinates. 

"When reading coordinates, you need to crawl before you walk". 

"Negative numbers are used in temperature and ocean water levels".

YEAR 6 ART

Year 6 students have been working hard to create a movie trailer. They are very proud of their efforts and have enjoyed working as a team to plan, film and edit their trailers. The students have incorporated a number of camera angles, movements, sounds and text when designing their movie trailer. 

STUDENT SERVICES 

On Monday afternoon, our Staff completed their First Aid and CPR Certificate by Allens Training Pty Ltd.

It was a very informative session and staff are feeling confident in treating our Students with the latest First Aid techniques.

Extra - Curricular

INDIGENOUS GAMES CARNIVAL 

A big ‘thank you’ to Mr Woody for organising an amazing Indigenous Games Day on Thursday (Week 9).  I caught up with Mr Woody during the Games and was able to ask him some questions.  He reported that the aim of Indigenous Games Day is to spread awareness of how amazing the Indigenous Games are.  Students had been learning about and playing these games all term in P.E.  He stated that Indigenous Games Day was an opportunity to celebrate this learning and have fun.  The below photos are of the Years 5 and 6 students participating in the three Indigenous Games that they took part in on Thursday. 

Students Playing Kai Wed, Kabi Kabi Buroinjin and Koolchee

Prev

Showing images 1 - 8 of 12

Next

Community Support Coordinator

Well done parents on making everyday count at school. Please let me know if there is anything we can do to help you get your child to school each and every day for their learning, as EVERYDAY COUNTS!

If you are needing some assistance with food items this organisation is open to help make things easier in this difficult time. reSTORE is a small grocery store which offers an alternative, affordable shopping experience for those experiencing financial hardship and crisis, or who are otherwise on a tight budget. reSTORE is open every Thursday from 9:00am until 2:00pm, and stocks a wide variety of fruit and vegetable, meat, pantry staples, hygiene essentials, household cleaning products and baby products. reSTORE items are typically priced at around $1 each, however there are a number of items which are free!

School Holidays

BUNDAMBA SWIM & GYM HOLIDAY PROGRAMME

The September school holidays are creeping up quickly, and with that comes some warmer Spring weather!!

We run a swimming intensives program here at Bundamba Swim and Gym Centre every school holidays, and we cannot speak highly enough of how beneficial and rewarding this program is for kids of all swimming abilities.

 Please see all the information below:

Our swimming intensives will run over two weeks:

Monday 19^thSeptember – 23^rdSeptember

Monday 26^thSeptember – 30^thSeptember

Intensive package includes:

🔵Small Class Ratios

🔵30 Minute lessons

🔵Qualified Instructors

🔵1 class each day for a whole week

🔵$45 for the week

🔵$2 coffee or tea for the parents

Limited spaces available. Book now to secure your spot https://form.jotform.com/63321421227949

T&C's apply*

More information can also be found on our social media pages – bundambaswimgym_byjust

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us on 07 3282 2801 (Teigan, LTS Coordinator)

IPSWICH CITY COUNCIL SCHOOL HOLIDAY PROGRAM 

School Watch

The School Watch program encourages everyone to look out for and report any after-hours crime in our schools.

Empty schools can become targets for unlawful entry, arson, stealing, graffiti and property damage, especially during school holiday periods. This comes at a cost to the whole community and not just the financial cost of repairs.

The School Watch program is a partnership between the Department of Education and Protective Services Group, Queensland Police Service, providing a way for members of the community to report anything they see that is suspicious, even if it seems minor.

On average, more than 700 calls are made to School Watch every year, helping to keep our schools safe.

Look, Listen, Report. Call School Watch on 13 17 88.

If you see a crime in progress, call Triple Zero (000).

Junior Touch Football