Volume 4 - 16 March 2024

From the Principal

As we slowly approach the end of term, our students are working hard on completing assessments and demonstrating their learning across the Learning Areas, whilst continuing their involvement with extra-curricular activities. Over the last two weeks, the passion for Rugby League has dominated the space through daily training sessions and celebration of our successes at the Gala Day. Our team did really well thanks to the commitment of their coaches, Ms McQueen and Mr Woodford, and the great support from their parents, carers and family members. We are grateful to The Ipswich State High School for organising this opportunity for us.

We wished the best of luck to our students in Years 3 and 5 as they are completing NAPLAN testing this week. Mrs Finlay’s efforts with the administration of the testing has been impressive, with great student and parent engagement.  Thank you also to Ms Carolin for support with the efficient setting up  for testing each day.   Thanks to our P&C, our students enjoyed a beautiful breakfast each morning to ensure they felt ready to perform. Thank you  everyone for their help.

Community engagement is very important to our school. We look forward to organising a Parent Information Afternoon in Week 10 and meeting with our parents to share our progress so far, our plans for the future and seek feedback on our key priorities, as outlined in the Annual Implementation Plan. More information will be sent via an email to our school community.

We continue to invest in infrastructure improvements at Leichhardt State School. Our latest investment in ceiling fans in the Hall will provide great relief from the heat and make our environment for learning and meeting much more enjoyable.

Our new fans in the hall

From the Deputy Principal

Attendance Celebration @ Leichhardt!

100 Days of Prep Celebration!

Each day the Preps learn new things and continue to develop their relationship with their teachers and fellow peers.  Attendance every school day is essential in Prep and to acknowledge the importance of this, we will be celebrating ‘100 Days of Prep’ at a special Prep badging parade (Paw Parade) on Monday 15 July, 2024 in the Hall.

If your Prep has missed days at school due to illness, please let Ms Ferguson (Student Reception Office) know so that your child can still be on track for receiving their ‘100 Days of Prep’ Paw badge!

Weekly Attendance at Leichhardt

Each week we celebrate class attendance with the Lion Awards.  For the past six consecutive weeks, 4A has won the Senior Lion!  Below are Briar and Skylar (4A) with the Senior Lion award.  This week their class average attendance was 89.17%.  Well done, 4A!

The Junior Lion award was taken out, yet again, by 3B.  This is the fifth consecutive week that this class has won the award.  Here is Lilith (3B) collecting the Junior Lion award for 3B.  Their winning class average attendance percentage was 86%.  Well done, 3B!

Reading @ Leichhardt

By the end of Week 6, the Preps will have met the following letters:  s a t i m n.  They can read and write two and three letter words consisting of these letters.  At the Week 6 Assembly, Kallie, Charlie and James (pictured left to right below) impressed the audience with their blending, reading and writing skills.  Well done, Preps!

By the end of Week 8, the Preps will have met the following letters:  s a t i m n o p.  At Monday’s Week 8 Assembly, I shared videos of Summer (Prep A, pictured below) demonstrating literacy skills with these letters.  Well done, Summer!

Please remember that 10 minutes of daily practise of reading and writing at home is important to consolidate reading and writing skills.  Reading Eggs (Prep to Year 4) and Education Perfect (Years 3 to 6), are wonderful online resources to support reading and writing development.  Please contact your child’s teachers if you have any questions regarding your child’s reading and writing progress or access to these online resources.

Prep Buddy Program

Each Monday from 12:50pm to 1:30pm, the Year 6 Buddies visit STEAM to play with the Preps.  Preps look forward to their Year 6 Buddies visiting.  If you have not signed up your Prep student for the Prep Buddy program and wish to, please let your child’s Prep teacher know.

Students4Students Program

Last Wednesday, the Faith Lutheran College students re-commenced their visits to Leichhardt.  This year the high school students will be reading with the Preps.  The Preps were very excited to read with their high school buddies and are looking forward to their visit again this Wednesday.  If you have not completed a permission form for the Students4Students program, please contact your child’s Prep teacher.

Faith Lutheran High School students and Prep students playing after shared reading activities on Wednesday afternoon.

Online Awards Celebration @ Leichhardt

Week 8 Assembly saw many students receiving online awards.    Here are just some photos of students receiving awards.

Sylar (4A) with four Mathletics awards!  Well done, Sylar!

Micah (4A) with his Map 10 Reading Eggs award.  Only two to go and Micah will have completed all the Reading Eggs maps.  Well done, Micah!

Shaunak (5B) won the February EP award for completing 21 hours worth of lessons over the month of February!  That is amazing!  Excellent work, Shaunak!

Teacher Engagement Award for February for Reading Eggs goes to Mrs Krings (1B).  Year 1B students completed an amazing total of 105 Reading Eggs lessons in February!  Well done, Mrs Krings!  Well done, 1B!

If you would like your child to work on the online resources (Reading Eggs, Mathletics and EP) at home and you do not have their login details, please contact your child’s teacher.

NAPLAN@Leichhardt

A big ‘thank you’ to Jen, Brett and Leichhardt P&C for providing extra food this morning to ensure that all Year 3 and 5 students were well and truly fed and fuelled for their first NAPLAN assessment – the writing task.  Students were most appreciative of the extra toast and milk.  Thank you, Team Leichhardt!

Head of Department - Teaching and Learning

Teaching and Learning 

It is a busy time of the term with many assessments taking place. We continue to keep our days as routine as possible with clear classroom expectations. When visiting classrooms, it has been wonderful to see students applying their bookwork expectations to assist their learning and organisation. Students continue to work hard to persevere through their assessment tasks, apply their knowledge from the term and be open to feedback from their teachers. Applying. Keep up the great effort.

I would also like to congratulate Riley and Christianna from Year 6 for proudly representing Leichhardt at their first Children’s Council meeting this week. They confidently participated and engaged in activities with other council members which was wonderful to see.

Congratulations to our weekly PBL certificate winners. Your hard work to achieve the weekly focus is a credit to your efforts, well done. This week our focus for PBL is identifying Zones of Regulation and using strategies to help regulate emotions. We suggest supporting your child’s understanding by having conversations, asking about each zone and the strategies that can be used to regulate or alert in the zones.

Head of Special Education

External providers can offer a valuable service in supporting individual students. Collaboration between the provider and school can result in more effective support for the student. As part of the external provider’s process of assessing need and supporting students, schools may be requested to provide information regarding a student’s current presentation, progress, functioning and support needs. Given that the information involved is often of a sensitive nature and can rely on specific administration protocols, Leichhardt State School adopts a best practice approach when responding to requests received from external providers. A Consent to Share will also be required to be signed before the school can speak to any external providers.

The Requests for Information and Assessments for External Providers form can be located on the school website or paper copies can be found at the main office.

From the Community Support Coordinator

Attendance Matters

Parents don’t forget if your child is away to ring the absentee line or reply to the absentee text sent to you in the morning. Not long now to the holidays!

The Garden Club

The Garden Club has been working hard in the garden and we have started planting our seedlings. We have been weeding, mulching, watering, planting! We have been busy! We have planted corn, zucchinis, herbs, spring onions, watermelons and snow peas. Hopefully we can keep them alive!

From the School Captains

Our School Captains interviewed each other about our school and what they like. Below are their interviews.

From the Music Captain

In our instrumental classes with Mr Schilling we are learning how to hold our instruments properly. We are starting to learn notes C, D and E and practice our scales. Some of us are learning how to play 'Hot Cross Buns'.

In Wakakirri we are starting to learn our dance to the theme 'Belonging'. We are all having fun and enjoying it. 

In Choir we are learning how to sing 'Flowers' by Mylie Cyrus, 'Abide with Me' by Audrey Assid and fine tuning our National Anthem. We are looking forward to performing these in front of you all soon.

Friendly reminder that Wakakirri rehearsal is on a Wednesday in sessions two and three at STEAM, and choir is on a Thursday second play at STEAM. 

From the Deadly Room

'Kindy Kids' Visit with Aunty Marly

The Kindy Kids enjoyed their visit to 'Big School' with Aunty Marly on Monday.  They enjoyed exploring in the forest, painting the trees and learning about nature. We love our visits from the 'Kindy Kids', just look at those adorable smiles!

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Year 1 in the Deadly Room

Aunty Marly is enjoying having our Year 1 students come down to the Deadly Room to learn about Indigenous culture and craft. Students are enjoying dancing to a variety of songs and creating craft after they read an Indigenous story.

Rugby League Gala Day

Ipswich State High Rugby League Gala day  

Last Thursday our Rugby League team took part in a rugby league Gala Day at Ipswich State high School. The team consisted of both boys and girls from grade 5 and 6. For more than half our team this was their very first games of rugby league.  Throughout the day we took on teams from Brassall SS, Durack SS, Woodlinks SS and Kalbar SS. From out 5 games we managed to have 2 wins and a draw. Mrs McQueeen and myself were extremely proud of the commitment and dedication all 15 of our players showed throughout the entire day. We even had a surprise visit from Mrs Bogicevic, who came and cheered on our team for their final 2 games of the day. We now have our eyes set on the next gala day, which will hopefully be sometime in term 2.

From the Teachers

Year 1

Mrs Krings decided to take 1B’s learning outside one morning where the students practiced writing their spelling words using chalk in the amphitheatre section of the OLA.  The students practiced the s blends and then enjoyed playing with sounds by changing one sound in a word to make a whole new word.  We also played with adding s to words to explore plurals and more than one. 

Year 2

We’re super excited to share with you the fantastic day our Year 2 students had at Queens Park!

First off, they all got to ride on a bus, and for many, it was their first ever bus trip! Picture their excited faces as they embarked on this new adventure. And not just that, for lots of them, it was their first school excursion too!

The trip was all about learning. In their HASS lessons, they've been looking at features of places and important places in Ipswich, and Queens Park is a big one. In Science, they're learning about the water cycle and how we use water. At the park, they saw all these things in real life – the natural areas, places looked after by people, and water being used.

Our curious Year 2s got to ask some experts about how the park uses water. They asked amazing questions like "Where do you store all the water?" and "What happens to the rain here?" It was a great chance to see what they learn in class happening in the real world.

Here's a fun fact: Queens Park is the oldest park in Queensland! The students explored a lot there. They learned about waterways, how to care for the environment, different animal life cycles, and the history of the park at the Education Centre. They also took a tour of the Nature Centre, seeing lots of animals, and had fun playing on the playground.

We want to say a huge THANK YOU to all the parent volunteers. You made the day extra special and smooth-running. It's fantastic to see such great involvement in your children’s education.

The staff at Queens Park were really impressed with our Year 2s. They noticed how kind and polite the kids were and how eager they were to learn. It’s great to see our students showing their school values out in the community. All students should be really proud!

It was a day full of learning, exploring, and fun. Thanks for being part of this journey with us!

Mr Saran and Miss J

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Year 5 Maths

Year 5 Maths have been studying maps and learning about grid coordinates, scale, and direction. They have enjoyed looking at a number of different maps and imagining they are the pilot having to navigate from one destination to another. Keep up the great learning, Year 5!

Year 5 English

At the Week 5 Assembly, Amelia (5A) shared what the Year 5s are working on in English this term.  She spoke about how they have to create a spooky setting, introduce a vulnerable character and build suspense.  They have been analysing some spooky, but light-hearted, picture books to develop their writing technique.  Amelia gave up a ‘thumbs up’ to this English Unit of work.

Year 6 English

This term for English, the Year 6s are writing an adaptation of a story.  The story they are adapting is ‘The Little Refugee’ by Anh Do.  The writing task requires them to maintain the author’s style and context while adding a prequel, sequel or another event within the storyline.  Below is Robbie’s (6A) English draft addressing this task.

Year 6B Hass

6B has been working tirelessly to make and sell their ‘mock’ market day products in Humanities and Social Studies (HASS). The assessment involved students brainstorming and making products to sell with fake money to year four students. The products students created included stress balls, catapults, paper craft and jewellery. 6B students were very successful in making and selling their products and made a considerable ‘mock’ profit. We are so very proud of the entrepreneurs in the making!

Electives

We have seen so much growth in our students from electives. The hightlight this fortnight was the Rugby League Team representing our School in the Gala Day at Ipswich State High School. The team showcased our school expectations brilliantly and came away with two wins and a draw!!

Reading with the Kindy Kids

Friday Week 5 was too wet for the Reading with the Kindy Kid Elective students to visit the kindy across the road.  Instead, they visited the Year 3 classroom and enjoyed some shared reading time with the Year 3 students.  Excellent work, students!

Japanese

The Japanese students are learning numbers and how to write them!

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Gardening

The fun begins with the veggies being planted! This season we are growing Watermelon, cucumber, peas and corn just to name a few. We have some exciting news to share regarding next term Gardening Elective opportunities, so watch this space!!

P&C News

Community News

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