Volume 1 - 2nd February 2024

From the Principal

Welcome to the first edition of the Leichhardt State School’s Newsletter for this year!

It has been an absolute pleasure to welcome our new students and their families to our school community. Our Prep students started in strong numbers with great support from their teachers and teacher aides. We have had new enrolments across all year levels, and I hope that everyone is finding their place and their friends at Leichhardt.

To our returning students and their families, welcome back! It is our privilege to continue to teach your children and help them be the best they can be.

Over the last couple of weeks, our students have had an opportunity to settle into school and classroom routines, and learn more about their teachers and their peers. This week, we started a strong focus on curriculum across all Learning Areas and are seeing how keen our kids are to engage with learning.

A new addition to our curriculum offerings in senior years is an expansion of our Instrumental Music Program to include trumpet and trombone. Mr Schilling will continue to teacher IM on Wednesdays, and the new classes will start next week.

Our enrolment numbers for 2024 are slightly higher than last year, sitting at 316 students as of yesterday. We have two classes across all cohorts and no composites. We are able to provide teacher aide support across all year levels and offer additional support to our students who need it.

This year, we were very lucky to welcome four new teachers: Mrs Costello, Ms Nieass, Miss McQueen and Mr Scott. They all have years of experience in education locally and internationally, which is very obvious in the quality of the teaching practices visible in their classrooms.

Our staff continue to be recognised nationally for their achievements. I am delighted to share with you that Ms O’Connor, Head of Department – Teaching and Learning has been recognised by an education magazine, The Educator, as a Rising Star for 2024 and her name will be published in a special report in The Educator on 16^th April. I will share the article with you once it is published. What a wonderful achievement!

From the Deputy Principal - Teaching and Learning

Awards @ Leichhardt

Reading Eggs, Mathletics and Education Perfect Awards

Monday’s Week 1 Assembly celebrated students’ amazing achievement over the summer holidays! It was wonderful to see three of our 2024 Preps, pictured below, receive awards at their first school assembly.  Well done, Preps!

Congratulations to Max (Prep A), Cass (Prep A) and Aarav (Prep B)!

Year 1 students, Hendrik and Jasper (L to R), also received Reading Eggs Awards.  Well done, students!

Isabella (Year 2) was excited to receive her award. Well done, Isabella!

It was lovely to see a number of Year 4s receiving awards.  Annabellah, Isabella and Matilda (Year 4) (pictured L to R below) all received Reading Eggs Awards.  Well done, students.

Mason (Year 4) (pictured below) received seven Reading Eggs Awards!  Well done, Mason!

Courtney (Year 4) (pictured below) was excited to receive her three Reading Eggs Awards!  Well done, Courtney!

Micah (Year 4) (pictured below) received four Reading Eggs Awards and also received the Reading Eggs Engagement Award for December!  Well done, Micah!

Well done to Sylar and Ryker (Year 4) (pictured L to R) who each received a Mathletics Award!  Well done, students!

Well done to Jumanne (Year 5) (pictured below) for his work on Education Perfect at the end of last year and over the holidays!

Week 3’s Monday Assembly will celebrate the January Reading Eggs, Mathletics and Education Perfect Awards.  We are looking forward to sharing our students’ achievements in the Week 4 newsletter.

Spotlight on Reading in Prep!

At Monday’s Week 2 Assembly, we were excited to share that the Preps are learning to read!  They are working on their phonics, starting with learning the sound for the letter ‘s’.  It was lovely to see videos of the Preps practising the sound and action for this letter.

Here are Rosie and Theo demonstrating how to produce the sound for letter ‘s’ while demonstrating the action with their hand.

The Preps are also working on building their phonemic awareness by practising identifying pictures and objects that start with the ‘s’ sound.  They are also practising blending sounds together which will be very important when they start reading words.  Some of the Preps were excited to find words in their classroom that began with the letter s!

In Week 2, the Preps learnt the sound and action for the letter ‘a’.  In the pictures below you can see the Prep students practising writing the letter ‘a’ using correct letter formation.  Great work, Preps!

In Week 3, the Preps will be learning the sound and action for the letter ‘t’.    Please practise these sounds and actions at home with your Prep students to help consolidate their learning.  Also please encourage the writing of these letters. 

If you have any questions about supporting your child with their reading and writing development, please contact your child’s classroom teacher.

NAPLAN

Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will take part in the 2024 National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) from Wednesday 13 March to Monday 25 March 2024.  The students will be assessed through four assessment tasks in the areas of writing, reading, language conventions, and numeracy.  Students will engage in practise tasks throughout the term to prepare them for the online testing environment.

A detailed NAPLAN test schedule will be provided to parents/carers of Year 3 and 5 students in early March.

The below links provide information about NAPLAN and the privacy of student information collected during the testing.

https://nap.edu.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/naplan-information-brochure-for-parents-and-carers.pdf

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) privacy notice (PDF, 129KB) 

Any questions regarding NAPLAN should be addressed to Mrs Elena Finlay, Deputy Principal – Teaching and Learning (efinl9@eq.edu.au).

Head of Department - Teaching and Learning

What a wonderful start to 2024! Students and teachers have been working hard to understand the expectations and routines of their classrooms. They begin their day with a Connect session where they are informed about their timetable for the day, participate in a PBL lesson and have an opportunity to connect with each other and their teacher. It has been fantastic to see classes working hard on their organisation of belongings and developing their understanding of setting up their book work. We continue to celebrate students learning in a number of ways this year and look forward to sharing more with you! 

Week 2 and 3 Focus of the week

Head of Special Education

Welcome back to all of our families. I hope you all had a restful and joyful Christmas holiday. My name is Jessica Rivett and I am the Head of Special Education. This is my second year in this role and I have enjoyed working alongside families to support their children’s learning journey. Most of all I have enjoyed working with students, across Prep to Year 6, in and out of their classrooms helping them to reach their potential. We offer an inclusive environment where we understand each student has different learning abilities. We create learning activities and develop individualised supports to ensure every student participates in learning activities and the curriculum. It has been wonderful to see students letting their teachers or myself know what supports they need to be successful learners at school. I look forward to our continued partnership in 2024 and hope you all have an amazing school year. 

From the Community Support Coordinator

Welcome back to term 1 2024, what a busy start to the year! We would like to give thanks to Rotary who has helped us provide toasties for those students in need, we are also fortunate that we have our fruit boxes supplied as well. The Salvation Army has also dropped in and gifted us some snacks. Mission Australia has blessed us with some school packs and Beacon Church has blessed us with boxes of stationery which we have assisted families with. We are extremely fortunate to have the support of our Community Partners and we say THANKS!

Instrumental Music Program

A reminder to parents and carers to return the expression of interest forms for students interested in joining the instrumental music program and all continuing students to return their enrolment forms please. 

Welcoming our new Teachers

We are welcoming four new teachers to Leichhardt. Below is a little bit about each of them. Please make them feel welcome in our community if you see them around.

Mrs. Costello

My name is Kate Costello and I am the Prep B teacher for 2024. I would like to extend a warm welcome to each of you and your precious little one as we embark on an exciting learning journey together this year. As your child’s teacher, I am committed to fostering a nurturing and stimulating learning environment that engages curiosity, creativity and a love for learning. This foundational year is a crucial time for development, and I am eager to work collaboratively with you in order to support your child’s social, emotional and academic growth.

The first 2 weeks of Prep have been a busy and exciting time. We have been learning about the ‘s’ and ‘a’ sounds, the numbers 1 and 2, and further developing our fine motor skills in preparation for learning to write. The children seem to be really enjoying singing a range of songs and nursery rhymes and engaging with lots of picture books. It is wonderful to see them interacting with their peers and developing friendships.

Ms. Nieass

Hello,

My name is Denise Nieass and I am teaching 4A.  I am excited to be teaching my favourite grade, Year 4!  I grew up locally and have worked in a few different Ipswich schools, but I am most excited about working here.  I am looking forward to collaboratively designing new creations and formulating Science experiments.  A few facts about me, I love the colour blue (most things I own are blue) and I love food.     

Mr Scott

Hello all,

I am Mr Scott the new Health and PE teacher for Year 3,4,5 and 6 at Leichhardt. I have recently made the move from Yorkshire in England to Brisbane. I am a massive lover of all sports rugby league, cricket but my favourite of all is most definitely soccer. Which is football but we won’t get into that one…

I previously taught PE in a High School in England for 5 years before making the move here. I am really looking forward to working with our students and parents to give them the best sporting experience at Leichhardt. I will begin this with running our first senior soccer programme in 10 years; giving the students an opportunity to compete against other local schools.

I look forward to the future of Health and Physical Education at Leichhardt.

We are safe. We are kind. We are learners.

Mr Scott

Miss McQueen

Yoway and hello,

I’m a proud Ipswich woman born and raised on Yuggera country.  I have kinship with Waka Waka mob and Ngarabal mob through my grandson.

I have been teaching for over 20 years! AND I love it. I am so excited to be at Leichhardt SS in 2024. My favourite year to teach is Year 4! I love love love maths, science and technology. I can’t wait to do lots of fun experiments and design and construct things.

Fun Facts:I used to play league and am a qualified coach. I have ridden ponies in Mongolia, a country between China and Russia.

Our New Performing Arts Teacher

Hi, my name is Clio Girvin and I am a 5/6 years teacher who is responsible for lots of the Arts education and extra curricular activities across the school. I grew up engaged in instrumental music, choir, dance and in school musicals. After high school, I continued my passion for the Arts  becoming a dance teacher for many years. Leichhardt State School has given me the great opportunity to not only continue in my joy and passion for the arts, but to grow your children’s also. 

There are going to be a lot of amazing opportunities this year for students in choir and wakakirri. Please remind your student that choir is on a Thursday at Second Play in the library. 

                                                              I look forward to seeing you throughout the year. 

From the Deadly Room

Welcome back to another exciting year of learning culture and Language. We are looking forward to many wonderful events and learning experiences and would like to extend a warm welcome to our new families.

Yagara Language

Language lessons continue this year with Uncle Henry and Aunty Larena who are introducing our new year 5 students to indigenous artefacts and body parts in Yagara language. Year 6 are embracing their knowledge and are keen to extend on it this year.

We are so grateful to have the opportunity to continue Yagara language lessons and would love to thank Uncle Henry and Aunty Larena for their commitment to sharing their culture and enriching our student’s learning.

Below is a photo of our 2024 Traditional Owners &  Yagara Language class

Deadly Dancers

Last Tuesday the Deadly Dancers performed for the Metropolitan South Regional staff meeting at Sunnybank. All students proudly represented Leichhardt State School on their second day back at school. They were honoured with a certificate and a lanyard for a deadly performance. Well done Deadly Dancers! 

Big thanks to Aunty Denise Gibson for taking us to the event and for her deadly driving skills, we had so much fun and hope to do it again.  Thank you also to Ipswich State High School for allowing us the use of their bus.

We are Looking forward to our next performance at QPAC!!!!

From the School Leaders

My name is Aybell and I am the Year 6 Media Liaison Captain. I will be writing a newsletter article each fortnight to highlight some of the great things we do here at Leichhardt State School. In the meantime, here are the names of my fellow captains for 2024:

School Captains: Christianna and Jahnarrah

School Vice-Captains: Tahlia and Robert

Cultural Captains: Kensi and Brenden

Banksia House Captains: Chase and Charles

                                                             Acacia House Captains: Tristan and Riley

                                                            Kurrajong House Captains: Breeanna and Shylah

-                                                         Music Captain: Ruby Halls

We look forward to support all students at Leichhardt State School!

From the Teachers

Year 1

1A have had fun reconnecting with their friends and building new connections.

In English, we have been learning to retell a story using important vocabulary.

This week we focused on Wombat Stew. Students retold the story to a partner and then began to write the beginning, middle and end.

In Maths, we have been exploring positional language and counting forwards and backwards from 120.

1B has settled back into school nicely and has welcomed back old friends and new friends as well.  We are revising a lot of the sounds we learnt last year as well as looking at our first English assessment of the year.  In maths, we are playing with MAB blocks to support our learning about tens and ones.  We are enjoying our sensory play in the morning which supports us reconnecting with our friends and readjusting to school life and our morning routine. 

We are very excited for an exciting year ahead and cannot wait to see our skills and knowledge develop in leaps and bounds!

Aunty Marly and Miss Emma

We hope you had a Deadly holiday with family and friends as Miss Emma and I did. Our lovely Miss Emma and her family spent Christmas in Dubai visiting friends and travelling a country that is full of sand. And I had a wonderful time with my family and friends, some sun, sand and sea.

Gardening Elective

Our Gardeners are doing a great job cleaning out the veggie patch after the holidays and getting the soil prepared for some Autumn fruit and vegetables to go in soon.

Community News

Does your child feel overly fearful, anxious, or worried in certain situations?

Many children can feel anxious, fearful, or worried in certain situations. In most situations this is a normal emotion when faced with something threatening. Everyone can feel anxious from time to time. However, some children experience anxiety more intensely or more often than others and it stops them from having fun, going to school, or getting the most out of their life.

Take Action is an evidence-based program for 7- to 12-year-olds experiencing anxiety. Each child session takes approximately 1 hour, and the program runs over 10-12 weeks (either in-person or online). The program also includes six x 1-hour sessions for parents/carers to provide additional education and support on managing children’s anxiety.

All children receive a comprehensive assessment before and after the program, and all child and parent/carer workbooks and materials to practice Take Action skills at home are provided. The project has full ethics approval from the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC: 2023/381).

To find out more information and register to complete an initial assessment over the phone, please email us at cadrp@griffith.edu.au.

From Queensland Police