Issue 3 Friday 1 March 2024

Principal Mark Winrow

With more than half of the first term completed, I can proudly declare that I feel a permanent part of the Carbrook community, thanks to the warm and friendly greetings and conversations I have had daily. I can also proudly declare that your children are being educated and shaped by a team of dedicated, wise and compassionate staff who truly care for your kids as their own. They have high expectations for every child’s success and cherish every opportunity to work in partnership with you.

School Values

Each family should have received a note decorated with an important toolbox. The letter asks families to share with us the tools they hope our children will leave Carbrook with. Skills which will be integral to our children being successful citizens who contribute meaningfully to our community. The information shared will be considered with the tools identified by our staff and children to create a set of values for our community which can be explicitly developed in each child and promoted through our community. Thank you to those families who have returned these notes. I strongly encourage all families to have their say so the values truly reflect our community as a whole.

2024 School Priorities

While success for every child remains our core business, we also use our qualitative and quantitative data to develop a set of whole school priorities to become our sharp and narrow focus for the year ahead. We have identified 3 priorities for 2024 which will keep a narrow focus for specific improvement:

• Quality Curriculum – quality assure the delivery of the Australian Curriculum (AC) by building staff capability and confidence to engage all learners and lift the percentage of student receiving A-C in English and community satisfaction with our teaching and learning.
• Community Culture – Maximise learning days for all learners through evidence-based teaching, Positive Behaviour for Learning practices and attendance monitoring to enhance community culture.
• Inclusive Intervention – ensure access to the AC for all learners by building the capability of staff to inclusively differentiate teaching, learning and assessment.

I look forward to reporting on our progress towards these priorities through the year and celebrating our success.

Communication

A key part of our community culture is respectful communication. We pride ourselves on having open and honest communication with families to foster a productive partnership, designed to ensure success for your children. We encourage communication between home and school which supports a harmonious relationship. We always have your child’s best interest at heart. Parents are reminded it is not appropriate to communicate directly with other students. If you have concerns about a student’s behaviour, please direct these concerns to the school.

Long Service Leave

I will be absent from the school for Weeks 9 & 10 of this term and Week 1 of Term 2. This long service leave was planned well before my appointment to the school. I will be taking the leave to travel home to the United Kingdom with my father. Mrs Kerry-Ann Reese will be Acting Principal in my absence. A process is in place for selecting a replacement for Mrs Reese.

Mrs Reese will be replaced by a number of staff during my leave to develop the leadership density of our school. Mrs Reese will be replaced by Mrs Walls in Week 9, Miss Pattison in Week 10 and Ms Witt in Week 1 of Term 2. These teachers will be suitably replaced in their classrooms.

We also have a process currently in place to select a suitable Acting Head of Department – Curriculum to replace Mrs Liz Cook who has accepted a Deputy Principal position at another school. Mrs Cook will be sorely missed as her wisdom and skills added value to our school. We wish her luck in her new position and are confident we can find a replacement with similar knowledge and skills.

Parent Volunteers

We are delighted to welcome parent volunteers into our school. Already this week we have had an army of 15 parents volunteer to cover reading books for our year 1 and 2 classrooms for home reading. I sincerely thank those parents for their time and effort. We have also had other parents volunteer to help in classrooms.

If you would like to volunteer in your child’s class, please contact the office for a copy of our Induction Booklet to read and sign. Once this has been signed we can connect you with the teacher to arrange a mutually suitable time.

Our parents are always welcome to be part of our team.

Working Bee

Yesterday morning a wonderful group of parents came along to assist us with covering books for our Prep – Year 2 Home Reading Program. These books will provide our children with great opportunities to grow their vocabulary and their comprehension of texts being read to them. We will provide some questions for families to discuss before, during and after reading.

All helpers worked so diligently and together they covered a whopping 200 books! We also had some young helpers that assisted with rubbish collection and testing the books out.

Thank you again for giving up your morning for this great cause.

Deputy Principal Kerry-Ann Reese

Parent Teacher Interviews

At Carbrook State School we take pride in providing parents with as much information as we can about your child’s learning journey. In Term 1, this includes Curriculum Newsletters, Parent Teacher Information Session, weekly/fortnightly class communication and Parent Teacher Interviews. In Week 9, Parent Teacher Interviews will be offered to parents on Wednesday 20 March from 3:15pm – 6:00pm. Parents will have the opportunity to book in a time to meet with the teacher during this time. In the coming weeks, please look out for an email from your class teacher with information on how to book an interview.

Regular school attendance

Parents and caregivers must send children to school every school day under Queensland law unless there is an acceptable reason such as:

• illness
• doing work experience
• competing in school sporting events.

If your child is going to be absent from school, you must let the school know why the absence has occurred within two school days of their return. If possible, it is best to advise the school beforehand.

Avoid keeping your child away from school for reasons such as:

• birthdays
• shopping
• visiting family and friends
• if they sleep in
• looking after other children
• minor check ups or care, such as hair cuts.

Routine medical or other health appointments should be made either before or after school or during the school holidays.

Establishing good routines around school can assist with regular school attendance. These include:

• have a set time to go to bed
• have a set time to get out of bed
• have uniform and school bag ready the night before
• have a set time for starting and finishing breakfast
• set a time for daily homework activities
• speak about school positively
• send your child to school every school day including their birthday and the last day of term from Prep.

QParents

iHUB

Year 5 Social Skills

Personal and Social capability is one of the general capabilities of the Australian Curriculum. It provides a foundation for students to understand themselves and others, and navigate their relationships, lives, work and learning. The Personal and Social capability learning continuum is organised into 4 elements:

In this first term of the year, our Year 5 students are focussed on the social management element of the learning continuum. In particular, they are engaging in a range of activities and games to foster the sub-elements of communication and collaboration.

The students are:

• learning to negotiate and communicate effectively with others through verbal and non-verbal means;
• learning to cooperate in groups and constructively contribute to ways of working and playing through participation in group activities.

We have been excited to observe positive attitudes, fair play and the ability to self-reflect from all of our wonderful students.

Cross Country

Year 2

Heart of Carbrook Day

Year 2 had a wonderful time as they celebrated our annual Heart of Carbrook day. The students all looked amazing in their sea of red. We spent the day doing some team building activities, macaroni bracelet making with our positive words, and creating a kindness bug headband. The students (and adults) all had a lot of fun and I hope that they were able to tell you all about it when they got home.

As a part of our Heart of Carbrook celebration, we were treated to a theatre performance called ‘Thoughts Have Feelings Too!’. This performance demonstrated the importance of kind words and actions between friends. It was very entertaining and the students loved it. Year 2 was lucky enough to get a photo with the performers on the day!

Easter Hat Parade Prep, Year 1 and Year 2

Our junior school classes are very excited to announce that they are holding an Easter Hat Parade and Concert on Wednesday 27 March.  The event is for students in Prep to Year 2 only.   Students will be making their hats during class time in the week leading up to our event and will wear them proudly for the parade.   Students are also learning some songs to reinforce their learning throughout the term and each year level will perform these songs during our Easter Hat Parade and Concert.   If you have a student in Prep, Year 1 or Year 2, please come along on Wednesday 27 March at 2pm in the hall to help us celebrate.

Library News

This fortnight Carbrook State School was involved in a competition run by QLD School Library Association.

PREP – Year 2 students were encouraged to enter a drawing or painting to showcase their favourite book. Students in Year 3 to 6 were able to unleash their imagination with an artwork inspired by the theme - ‘Our Heart, Our Stories’. 

Thank you to the Year 6 Student Council for hosting this competition and thank you to all students who created an art piece to enter. Only one entry per category was able to be submitted from our creative Carbrook Kids.

Congratulations to Lara, Year 2 and Amara, Year 5. Their art pieces have been entered into the QLD State Library Associations State wide competition and they have also received a thank you prize from Carbrook’s School library. We wish you both the best of luck with your entries.

Lionel and Me is a 2023 shortlisted book about how friendship and love grew between two dogs, Lionel and Maverick.

A special mention also made to Waverley in Prep and Miles in Year 4 for their entries.

For ‘Heart of Carbrook’ day this year, students worked together to write an acrostic poem to showcase what they love about Carbrook State School. Acrostic poetry is when a verse is made using the initial letters of a word or a line of words. Together the students of Carbrook State School made an acrostic poem from the words ‘HEART OF CARBROOK’. Here is the final product of their brilliance.

BookClub

For all our avid Carbrook Kid readers, our first  Scholastic Book Club of the year is on its way home. 

This issue, families can get even more savings with 165 books available for $10 or less  Books starting at just $3.  Why not purchase a book for the kids to read as they munch on their Easter eggs!!!

Could we please ask that all LOOP orders be finalised by 13/03/24.

 Don’t forget to check out this great feature in the Scholastic catalogue:

Books Plus 

Scanning the QR code in the catalogue will access additional content for the book including greater insight into the story, characters and creators.  This is definitely worth checking out.

The ARTS

Creative Dance