It is like we never left.

The second week of our school year has begun and I am happy to report that our students have settled in to their new classes with work and routines already fully established. While the new year start appears easy and as if the holidays did not happen, the smooth start to the beginning of the year is a credit to the staff here at Rochedale. Getting a school this size ready to begin each year takes a lot of hard work and a champion team of people who all deserve our thanks. I would like to thank our grounds crew who in between moving classroom furniture, kept the grounds neat and tidy and ready for our students to begin again. Our cleaning crew too, who continued their pandemic attention-to-detail work ensuring both inside and outside of the school buildings were ready to receive children. And finally, the teaching and support staff. It is often quoted in the media how great it must be to be a teacher because of all those holidays each year. Well I know, many teachers were here before pupil free days, on the weekends, during the holidays and working from home to ensure the class programs and classrooms were ready to begin anew this year. So I am extremely happy to report, the learning has begun for 2021!

And what guides this classroom learning?  Each year as a school we complete a range of planning documents that set out the programs and budgets for the year ahead. These plans are directly informed by both the school and systemic imperatives which form our Explicit Improvement Agenda. The generation of our 2021 key documents, coupled with a range of program plans, budgets and performance targets set a very clear direction for the year ahead as we strive to maximise the learning opportunities for all children. Key areas of work for this year include:

• Maintaining our focus on Reading.
• Continuing our increasing focus on Writing.
• Deliberate Differentiation to support all students achieve their best.

Key documents such as our Annual Implementation Plan and I4S budget report will be posted on our website for parent and community reference once they are completed and endorsed by our School Council.

Let’s talk

In school communities, communication is vitally important. Information to school and information from school help us to work in partnership with you to give the best possible opportunities for all students. To help facilitate this, our four Deputy Principals are each responsible for a sector of the school to provide an enhanced service delivery. By looking after a sector of the school, each Deputy Principal will be able to form a deeper, more informed understanding of your child’s needs and progress. I encourage parents to work closely with their specific Sector Deputy and make them your next point of contact if you wish to discuss issues beyond the class teacher level. The sectors for each Deputy Principal in 2021 are - Prep and Year 1, Mrs Denise Wardle; Year 2, Mrs Jessica Rigby; Years 3 and 4, Mr Tom Grimson, and Years 5 and 6, Ms Kellie Maxton. Mr Brad Legge is taking long service leave for Term 1.

Safety precautions around the pandemic

I would like to offer my sincere thanks to all parents/carers who have shown tremendous support and understanding around our social distancing guidelines and school restrictions to help keep everyone in our community safe and most importantly help prevent the spread of COVID. Our before school and after school procedures are working well, and I ask everyone to just remain a little patient, as even without the virus it can get very busy trying to deliver or collect 1000 students to and from school. I would like to remind parents to please remain on school paths in and around our carparks and not risk short cuts that may endanger you or the child who follows you. The road sense adults model, could ultimately save a child’s life.

As I have written previously, currently we are extremely lucky in Queensland, as our lives have returned to as close to normal as this pandemic allows, however, we do need to remain vigilant and cautious, Events in Western Australia over the weekend have demonstrated that the pandemic has not gone away. The precautions we still need to take to keep our community safe will affect some activities undertaken at school such as Parent Information Night next week (please see below) and ‘third party’ visitors. Parents/carers do not need to sign in if on site in the mornings or afternoons, but do need to sign in if staying to assist in the classroom or visiting at any time throughout the day. Any other person on school grounds is required to sign in. This is a requirement of Qld Health. As always - any adult or child who is showing signs of illness such as COVID-19 symptoms, or feeling unwell, must stay at home and get tested. If a child is showing signs of illness at school, the school will contact the parent or carer to collect the child.

Parent info night

Next Monday, February 8, we will be holding our school Parent information Night. Year levels will have a different time slots to allow you to get to more than one class, so please come up and meet your child’s teacher and find out general information about the year ahead, classroom routines and expectations. (This is not a time for individual progress reports – these will be held at the end of term). The times will be:

Please note that as our buildings have number limits based on COVID guidelines, only one adult per household will be allowed in each space. Please understand that additional adults or family members, including other children, will not be allowed to enter closed in spaces as this may cause our rooms to exceed capacity, increase risk and prevent other families from entering. To help with COVID contact tracing, a declaration form will be sent home to you on Thursday for you to complete and bring with you to the information sessions on Monday night. Teachers will collect these forms as you enter the buildings. If the form has not reached you on Thursday, please contact your child’s teacher before Monday night. A limited number of forms will be available on the night, however to speed up entry into the buildings it is appreciated if you can have your prefilled forms ready before you arrive. Please note you will need one form for each child/venue. I thank you in advance for your co-operation and understanding. I hope most families can take advantage of this opportunity and meet our wonderful staff.

Learner Profile: Attribute focus for the week – Principled – students respect the rights of others and take their own responsibilities seriously. Students arrive to school on time, return from breaks and get to all classes on time. To achieve this goal, students must be principled for the entire term.

Kind regards
Keith Graham
Principal

Differentiation and Inclusive Education at Rochedale State School

Firstly, a warm welcome for all new families to Rochedale State School and welcome back all existing families. 

I would like to start by sharing our belief that all students can learn given the right time, right support and right opportunities.  We value student diversity and respect individual learning differences. A whole-school (team) approach is adopted to provide quality differentiated teaching practice that is responsive to the needs of all students in the school through inclusion.

In alignment with Education Queensland Policy, we believe that all students can learn effectively within the regular classroom given the appropriate level of support and scaffolding through quality differentiation. At Rochedale State School, we provide a high level of differentiated support for all students through our Diverse Learning and Enrichment model.  This includes Team Teachers being assigned as an additional member to the year level teaching team; working collaboratively with classroom teachers to support all students in the cohort. 

How is this achieved?

Teaching requires differentiation to optimally engage and challenge all students.  Information about your child’s learning and their progress is collected continually throughout the year, informally and formally.  Our classroom teachers and team teachers work together, in response to this data or knowledge, to differentiate instruction and target teaching accordingly.  This includes formulating target groups for particular focused instruction.  Classroom teachers and team teachers also work together to purposefully plan a variety of ways to: engage all students; assist them to achieve the expected learning; and to demonstrate their knowledge.

Team teachers work with students in an individual, small group or whole class capacity.  Our goal is inclusivity of all students, not withdrawal from the classroom, to support or extend learning.  We do not have a separate learning support/learning enrichment building or special education building.  All of our student’s learning occurs alongside their peers, supported by reasonable adjustments where required, and teaching strategies tailored to meet their individual needs. 

Our Team Teachers for 2021 are:

Elizabeth Spence              Prep
Joanne Burford                 Year 1
Natasha Floyd                   Year 2
Tara Barron                       Year 3
Alison Glover                     Year 4
Ryan Trama                       Year 5
Michelle Rossiter               Year 6

We welcome Natasha Floyd, Tara Barron and Alison Glover into the role of Team Teacher for 2021. 

Jessica Rigby
Deputy (Year 2) / Head of Diverse Learning and Enrichment

Dear Parents/ caregivers,

Rochedale State School has been authorised to use the framework of the International Baccalaureate – Primary Years Program (IB-PYP) since 2010. It is through this framework that the school delivers the Australian Curriculum.

The IB-PYP is an educational philosophy and conceptually driven curriculum framework that is based upon the classroom application of international research in education. This research supports the principle that children learn best by building upon prior knowledge and understanding. As children engage in learning experiences, across the curriculum, they construct deeper and more complex meaning and understanding of the concepts involved in those experiences. The understanding of these concepts are the building blocks for their learning and understanding. This learning and understanding is the basis for learning, not just in school, but for their whole life.  

While the IB – PYP has a strong and rigorous academic perspective it values and encourages the development of the whole child – emotionally, spiritually, physically and cognitively. These combined perspectives ensure that a child engaged in an IB – PYP education is given opportunities to excel in all areas.

Through an IB – PYP education setting children are encouraged and supported to become:

• proactive global citizens;
• positive responsible local citizens;
• appreciative of the world;
• open minded;
• responsible life long learners;
• knowledgeable about the world;
• balanced;
• accepting of others – even when they don’t understand or disagree with them.

An IB – PYP is an education for the present that prepares the children for the future.

I hope you have a great week.

Best Wishes
Paul Kelly
PYP Coordinator

Dear All,

How great it has been to see students back at school after a well deserved holiday. In the mornings in the dropoff zone is where we really notice the big brothers and sisters that have moved onto High School for 2021, we hope they are all settling in well.

A special welcome to all new students, staff and families. It's a joy to have you at RSS. Within this school, you will find a friendly, embracing and caring community. 

You may have come from a school that does not have a chaplain, or you are just starting your child's school journey, so below is a brief description of a chaplains role. 

What is a Chaplain?

The main role of school chaplaincy is to support the school community. This is done in a variety of ways (below is the outline set by Education Queensland). Any program or on-going individual help for students that is facilitated by a Chaplain is with written parental consent only.

Chaplains may be involved in any of the following:

·         Social and/or emotional support — assisting students to develop knowledge, understanding and skills that support learning, positive behaviour and constructive social relationships through social skills programs.

·         Spiritual support — providing an additional dimension to the school's care, guidance and support of students with spiritual and/or religious needs. 

·         Mentoring — acting as a role model for students and assisting in the development of supportive relationships for, with, and among students. 

·         Community development — enhancing the links between the school and its community, working with school-based support staff and community-based youth organisations and networks to support students.  

·         Educational support — assisting with classroom activities (under the direction of a teacher) where involvement by the chaplain/student welfare worker provides further social, emotional or spiritual support for those students who may be at risk of disengagement. 

·         Extra-curricular activities — participating in general school activities, for example, camps, excursions, sports days or coaching team sports

If you have any questions please contact -  suem@chappy.org.au or through the school office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

Enjoy your week!

Kind Regards
Sue Murphy
Chaplain/Chappy Sue
Rochedale State School

Next meeting – AGM and General Meeting - Tuesday 23 February, 7pm – Staff Room: All are welcome.

What a week! Getting back into the swing of the school routine, with many of the Covid-19 restrictions still in place. The most impacted by this new look back to school routine has been the uniform shop, putting in some big hours over these last 2 weeks to ensure all students where well dressed for their first week. Uniform shop is now back to regular openings. The Executive and I want to take this moment to thank all the P&C staff and volunteers for their hard work and adaptability through 2020 and back to school for 2021. With a vaccine on the horizon, they can look forward to a more normal second half of the year.

We are now on the road to the AGM, scheduled for Tuesday 23 February, 7pm. The books are being audited and once complete will clear us to call the AGM. Official notices go out 14 days prior, therefore we want to generate a bit of interest in the lead up. “At each annual general meeting of the Association, members of the Association at the meeting must elect Officers of the Association.” This is the statement that usually results in most people running for the hills and not attending.

If your choice is to take on a more involved role those options are open to you. At the top the Executive Committee is comprised of the following Officers of the Association: the President, the Senior Vice-President and Junior Vice-President, the Secretary and the Treasurer. We also elect subcommittee positions, etc, so more on that later.

The following from the Constitution describes the key functions of the Association officers:

The President provides leadership and is the accountable officer of the Association. Their role is to act as a representative of the Association, encourage communication between the Association, School administration and the community and encourage participation in the Association. The President will be the Chair of meetings and conduct them in an efficient and timely fashion, being familiar with the rules, constitution and other documents governing Association operations. The President is an official member of the school council for the School.

The Vice-Presidents provide essential support for the President and possibly other members of the Executive Committee. They will Chair those meetings from which the President is absent and carry out any duties that have been delegated by the President. They should also be familiar with the rules, constitution and other documents governing Association operations.

The Secretary collates the agenda papers for each meeting, (including subcommittee reports) and assists the President in preparing an agenda for each meeting. They prepare and present minutes of the Association‘s meetings, record and deal with correspondence in/out as directed and generally organise, record and maintain information pertaining to the activities of the Association.

The Treasurer has the overall responsibility for the financial management of the Association, including all subcommittee accounts. In their role they must comply with the Accounting Manual for P&C Associations in all respects. They prepare an annual budget and Annual Operational Plan for the Association in consultation with the Association’s Executive Committee. It is the Treasurer's responsibility to keep accurate accounts of receipts and expenditure.

We would love to see you there and welcome your input and opinion on matters and issues relevant to our school and your children’s education.

P&C meetings are held on the fourth Tuesday of the month unless holidays demand a change. These meetings are held in the school’s staffroom starting at 7.00pm. Please come along. With your support I am sure we can continue to improve our school and its community. If you have any ideas, concerns or suggestions please contact me via the links below.

Regards
Greg Heath
P&C President
For any enquiries please contact us on the addresses below:
Website: https://rochedalss.eq.edu.au/Ourcommunity/PandC/Pages/PandC.aspx    
Email: pandc@rochedalss.eq.edu.au