Nirimba State Primary School Newsletter Issue 3 2022

Nirimba State Primary School Newsletter Issue 3, 2022

Dear Parents, carers and members of the community,

It has been a wonderful term at our school with many things to celebrate. It has been great visiting classrooms and seeing students settled, engaged and enjoying their learning. I am particularly proud of how our students are engaging in our Positive Behaviour for Learning approach and earning their ‘Burra Bucks’ by demonstrating positive behaviours of ‘Being Safe’, ‘Being a Learner’ and ‘Being Respectful.’ Keep up the great work students,  you are doing an awesome job!

Connecting with the community is one of our focus areas in our first year of operation as we form partnerships with local individuals and organisations. In addition to the awesome clubs and activities that are run by staff during and after school, we have also partnered with Dance Energy, Elite Tennis International, Brazilian Skills Football and Caloundra Basketball to provide extracurricular opportunities for our students. We are always on the lookout for new opportunities to partner with local individuals and organisations so please encourage them to contact me.

Our enrolment numbers are starting to rapidly grow. At the start of the year we had 160 students enrolled and we are anticipating 190 students to be enrolled at the start of next term. This means that some classes are starting to reach the class size guidelines of 25 students for P – 3 classes and 28 students for Year 4 – 6 classes. The school is working very closely with regional office to ensure appropriate levels of staffing and resourcing and any changes will be communicated to parents and carers in a timely manner.

Open, transparent and timely communication is an integral part of positive and productive relationships between the school and families. In order for your questions, queries or concerns to be actioned and addressed you need to be raising them as soon as you have formed a reasonable opinion that the issue is impacting on your child’s learning or well-being at school. We highly encourage you to give us a call, send us an email or come and see us. We are here to provide your child a great education but we are also here to help when issues arise.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a special thank you to the P&C committee and volunteers who have been so supportive this term. From a Bunnings sausage sizzle to a school disco and serving hundreds of coffees in between. Thank you! Your hard work and dedication to the students of our school is greatly appreciated.

Every four years all schools across Queensland undergo a School Review by the Department of Education’s Education Improvement Branch (EIB). These reviews play an important part in providing our school community feedback and suggestions to consider when developing long-term strategic plans. For brand new schools, such as ours, these reviews occur in the first year of operation. Our school review will occur from the 14^th to the 16^th of November and a bit closer to the time I will provide information to parents and carers on how they can contribute their feedback to the review committee.

We are now accepting enrolments for 2023. Enrolment packs can be collected from our administration office or from one of the local kindergartens. We look forward to meeting our new students and families over the next couple of months.

Enjoy the upcoming school holidays with your children and we look forward to seeing students and families returning safely for Term 3.

Yours in education,

Steven Moore

Principal

Deputy Principal - Teaching and Learning

It’s hard to believe we are almost at the end of Nirimba’s very first semester of teaching and learning! Our students are doing an amazing job demonstrating all of their learning so far. It is a very busy time within our classrooms as assessment pieces are being finalised and teachers are busy writing report cards. I would like to commend all of our students for the excellent effort they are putting into their assessment tasks – well done!

Our Prep Team are organising a Fairy Tale Day for Friday, 17^th June. All of our prep students are invited to come dressed up as their favourite fairy tale character for a morning full of Fairy Tale fun. This is a fantastic way to culminate students’ learning from their English unit of work this term. I can’t wait to see the creative costumes all of our prep families create. I’m sure it will be a morning filled with fun!

Enrolment packs for 2023 are now available from the school office and, for our 2023 Prep families, there is plenty of information in there about our transition activities. We are also partnering with our feeder kindergartens (Baringa Goodstart, Petit Early Learning & Milestones Early Learning Centers) to provide some additional transition activities for students attending these Kindies throughout Term 3 and 4 this year.

All of our Prep 2023 families are invited to attend our Under 8’s day on the 9^th August, from 1.30pm to 2.40pm with their parent or guardian. If you are considering enrolling at Nirimba, please phone the school office on 5413 7777 to pick up an enrolment pack and be added to our contact list. If you would like to attend our Under 8’s day, please phone the office on 5413 7777 to book your place.

Have a fantastic week and stay warm in this chilly weather.

Elise Maguire

Deputy Principal (Teaching and Learning)

emagu5@eq.edu.au

Deputy Principal - Engagement & Innovation

And just like that, the first ever semester at Nirimba State Primary School is about to finish. The first 6 months have been an amazing time with students engaging in all aspects of the school and parents connecting with staff and working together to give each student the best possible start to this exciting foundation year journey.

In the Year 2 to 6 space, students have been consolidating their learning over the past term by applying this knowledge to the tasks they are completing. The teachers on each class have been vigilant in ensuring all students are accessing the curriculum at their level, which has allowed each child the ability to demonstrate this learning. The variety of ways students have displayed this has been amazing.

In 2A students have been engaging in fun and exciting rotations, focusing on their term learnings. It was great to see all students interacting with each other in a positive manner. It was very special to see this in action and to hear the wonderful discussions around the room focusing on what they were learning.

In 3/4A students have been working extremely hard in all areas of the curriculum. Recently they have been finalising assessment tasks and working very hard on their persuasive texts and how the language in these texts can be used to persuade people to side with a specific point of view. It has been great to see the students using very descriptive language and high modality words.

In 4/5A the students have been working with their Prep buddy class to develop and trial different forms of transportation that will get the little gingerbread man across the river, without the help of the cunning fox. These amazing students have also created interactive learning games for their buddy class to use by using block coding. The students have completed some outstanding interactive games. The amazing amount of creativity and dedication the students are showing at all times, in all lessons is superb.

In 5/6A students have spent hours finalizing their final assessment pieces for the term. The quality of work each student has produced is great and each student needs to be very proud of what they have achieved. The excursion to Parliament house must be one of the biggest highlights for them from this term.

Whatever next semester brings will only build onto the enormous amount of work that has already been happening and I believe that every student at Nirimba State Primary School will push further next semester and strive to better themselves.

Yours Sincerely

Luke Morris

Deputy Principal (Engagement & Innovation)

lmorr82@eq.edu.au

Guidance Officer

Hello Nirimba Parents and Caregivers,

As Term 2 winds down and we edge closer to the holidays, we’re all starting to feel a little weary and ready for the Winter break. With the days getting shorter (and colder) and the nights getting longer, we may develop a case of the “winter blues”. Sometimes for our children, it can be a difficult time to regulate and understand their emotions. As adults, we can use these times as an opportunity to teach children about different emotions and help them to identify strategies to help manage strong feelings.

Understanding and Managing Emotions: Why it’s Important

Understanding and managing emotions is important for development and wellbeing during childhood and adolescence. This is good for children because it helps them learn, make friends and become independent.

Children and teenagers who can understand and manage their emotions are more likely to:

• express emotions by speaking calmly or in appropriate ways
• bounce back after feeling strong emotions like disappointment, frustration or excitement
• control impulses
• behave appropriately – that is, in ways that don’t hurt other people, things or themselves.

Calming Down from Strong Emotions: Why Children Need help

From around two years old, children start developing many new emotions. These include strong emotions like frustration, anger, embarrassment, guilt, shame and excitement. These strong emotions can sometimes be overwhelming for children.

Children often need help to calm down from these strong emotions because they:

• are still developing all their skills, including skills for managing strong emotions
• don’t always have words to talk about strong emotions, especially in the toddler and Prep years
• might react more strongly to things
• can find it hard to calm down if they’re tired or hungry, in busy places like shopping centres, or at exciting events like parties

Learning to Understand and Manage Emotions

Children develop their ability to recognise and name emotions through plenty of practice. It’s easier for children to practise through play, when they’re relaxed, or before their emotions get too intense.

Here are some ways you can help your child practise recognising and naming emotions:

• Talk about the emotions that characters in books, TV shows or movies might be experiencing. For example, ‘Look at Billy’s face. She looks sad’.
• Show your child how you recognise your emotions and help them to recognise theirs. For example, ‘When I broke that glass, I yelled really loudly. Does that happen to you when you make a mistake and feel angry?’
• Help your child work out how their body feels when they’re experiencing an emotion. For example, ‘You look nervous. Have you got butterflies in your tummy?’
• Give your child opportunities to explore emotions through play e.g. messy play, drawing or painting, puppet play, dancing and music play.

Simple Strategies to Manage Emotions

• Teach your child ways to calm down from strong emotions like counting to 10 or taking five deep breaths.
• Suggest ways to react to strong emotions – for example, clap your hands when you’re excited, ask for a hug when you’re sad, or squeeze your cushion really hard when you’re angry.

Adapted from raisingchildren.net.au - Helping children calm down: 3-8 years

Enjoy the rest of Term 2 and have a safe and relaxing holiday. Stay warm!

Take care,

Michelle

P&C

The P&C are looking for volunteers - whether you can help with an hour or a morning in tuckshop, or assist with an event such as disco or a sausage sizzle, we would love the extra help, feel free to contact the P&C by email nirimbapandc@outlook.com or pop in and see Michael at the tuckshop to let him know you would like to volunteer!

Tuckshop breakfast seems to be a hot favourite especially with the cooler mornings, hot food and coffee available every morning 7.30am to 9am - we look forward to seeing you for breakfast!

General News

School Invoices  

At this stage only 65% of school resource scheme invoices have been paid. A reminder to all parents and carers that school invoices for the stationery and iPad Student Resource Schemes (SRS) need to be paid for by the end of Term 3 unless a payment plan has been arranged with the school. If you have any questions or require a plan please contact our Business Manager, Kylie McIntosh on 5413 7777 to discuss your payment options.

Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L)

Welcome to our second newsletter update from the PB4L team. This term has been super busy with all things Positive Behaviour for Learning!  We have created signage for our students to remind them of the correct areas to be in, school expectations and also safety reminders.  These signs do feature some of our incredible Nirimba State Primary School students so keep an eye out for them throughout the school grounds very soon. 

We have also opened our Burra Bucks shop for a second time running and it was a hit. Our awesome students nearly cleared out the stock but some super savers are waiting and saving patiently for something special for what might also arrive in Week 10. This is a great opportunity for students to be rewarded for their efforts whilst also recognising that good things can come to those that wait.

Our schoolwide lessons this term have been selected based on what we may notice in and around the school as an area for some reminders and teachable moments.  For this term we focussed on:

• I am safe on the playground.
• I follow staff instructions.
• I show respect for mine, others and the school’s property.
• I clean up after myself in all areas.

Please check in with your child to see what they can tell you about Being a Learner, Being Safe and Being Respectful here at Nirimba State Primary School.

Sport Updates at Nirimba SPS

Athletics

Nirimba SPS’s first ever Athletics Carnival is coming up in Week 10 of Term 2. The students have been preparing in their HPE lessons by participating in Athletics track and field events.

The 9 – 12 year olds will start the carnival on Tuesday the 21^st of June from 9:00am to 12:00pm. On the Tuesday, the 9 – 12 year olds will compete in the 800m and one field event rotation (see below).

On Wednesday the 22^nd of June, the whole school from Prep to Year 6 will compete in Athletics events for the duration of the day (timetable below).

Please note a significant part of the carnival will take place across the road from the school at the Nirimba Sports Complex.

We hope to see as many family members as possible on both days!

Tuesday, 21^st June

Wednesday, 22^nd June

9 – 12 Years

Prep – Year 2 (Plus 8 year old Year 3 students)

District Cross Country

On Friday, 20^th May, 10 students from Nirimba SPS represented our school at The Glasshouse District Cross Country Carnival. All 10 students ran wonderfully well and achieved some fantastic individual placings. Their efforts also contributed to Nirimba finishing in a tie for 6^th overall as a school which was a fantastic achievement. A special congratulations to Finn (4/5A) who finished 3^rd in the 10 years boys and was selected in the Glasshouse Cross Country team to compete at the Sunshine Coast Regional Carnival in early June.

Regional Cross Country

On the 7^th of June, Finn (4/5A) was the first Nirimba student ever to represent our school at a Sunshine Coast Regional Sports Carnival. Finn ran for the Glasshouse District at the Regional Cross Country Trials. Finn placed 19^th for his age group. A fantastic achievement against the best 10 year old runners on the Sunshine Coast. Congratulations Finn!

Interschool Sport

This Term, 10 students from 4/5A and 5/6A are participating in the Interschool Sport Netball Competition. They will play against other schools in the Glasshouse District over a number of weeks. After the first week of the competition, the girls came away with 2 wins and 2 losses from their 4 games. This was a great achievement considering this was the first time a number of the students had ever played competitive Netball. Gabby (5/6A) kept the goals going in while playing at GS and Nesha (5/6A) put in some very energetic performances playing WA and C. The girls also looked fantastic in our new Nirimba sports uniforms. All the best for your remaining games girls!

Arts Update

Young minds are alive and thriving here in the kingdom of all things creative. I'm in awe of how the students are becoming such confident and courageous performers, as we get into our assessment this week and students demonstrate all we have been learning.

The Choir now have 35 members who are working excitedly toward three performances next term at NAIDOC week, Under 8's Day and Book Week. We have a new rock band called The Two Moons. The members are Myles (guitar), Noah (keys), Riley (drums) and Cooper (bass). They have written their own song.

Our dynamic Dance Troupe have teamed up with Miss Nicola from Dance Energy to choreograph an upbeat piece for the Dance X competition at Night Quarter in September. We are still on the lookout for any parents and carers who are crafty on the sewing machine to help us make some dazzling costumes.

Art club has kicked off with the creation of an installation for Book Week which will transform our discovery centre into an imagination wonderland in August. Our Arts leaders will be running creative activities during book week, where students can write, illustrate and act out their own stories.

Thank you to all who have donated goodies for the drama department. We are now requesting newspapers and magazines for art. Thank you kindly to Mr. Moore and Mr. O'Brien for helping us get our drama blocks built. The students love using them on the stage. 

Sustainability Club

The students have been enjoying our lunch time sustainability club, weeding and measuring our vegetables, herbs and fruit trees. They are feeling proud and excited that the plants are growing! We are in the process of getting more top soil for the garden beds and hay to help with drainage and to keep the plants warm in the cold wind. We have also been clearing away any plastics or rubbish that escape our lunch boxes and end up in the gardens around the school.  We don’t want this getting into our waterways and into the ocean.

On the Recycling front

Our 5/6 class have been participating in the Sunshine Coast Council STARS Waste Program. The students have been collecting usable data for waste volumes and material compositions to better understand the schools waste situation, refine strategies to work and develop a waste culture that is resourceful and sustainable. The 5/6 students will share their knowledge and the action plan they are creating with the rest of the school next term. A member from the Sunshine Coast Council engaged with all of the students on parade this week, introducing the new waste, recycling and compost bins that will soon be in our classrooms and around the school. We can’t wait to see these in action in the classrooms reducing the amount of waste going into landfill.

Japanese Club

みなさん、こんにちは。

This term at Nirimba the Japanese Club has focussed on manga and anime. Manga are the Japanese style cartoons, or books. Anime are the Japanese style movies or TV series that are normally based on an already popular manga.

Students have learnt how to draw their own characters. They have looked at ways to draw faces, eyes and even hairstyles. It has been great to see the skills improving and the creativity coming to the fore (even I have improved!).

Coding and Robotics Club

Nirimba’s Lunchtime Robotics club have been exploring the various sensors available for the LEGO Spike Prime robots and brainstorming the different ways they could be combined and used in competitions. Students are continuing to construct and adapt their robots to meet different purposes.

Our youngest robotics students had the opportunity to attend an immersion day held at Palmview State School with RoboCoast Australia. The day was highly engaging with students learning how to use if-else statements, a range of sensors and how to build a robot that will battle others in a sumo competition!

In week 7, our after-school Robotics Club started meeting on Thursday afternoons from 2.40pm to 3.40pm. This is an exciting opportunity for students that are attending our lunchtime Robotics Clubs in years 3-6 to continue learning and extend their skills further. Our first big challenge we’re preparing for is the RoboRave National Championships, being held at the USC Stadium on Sunday the 17 July! Our teams are preparing to compete in a variety of challenges, with the main two being a robot sumo competition and line following challenge!

If your child is interested in attending Nirimba’s Robotics Club, our club meets on Wednesday first break for years 3 and 4; Thursday first break for years 5 and 6. Students need to attend our lunchtime Robotics Club before an invitation and consent form is provided for our afterschool meet.

Discovery Centre

The Discovery Centre is looking amazing with the addition of plants in the rainforest section (non-fiction) of the library, wall fish tiles in the ocean section (fiction) and the arrival of LEGO tables. The students have been enjoying the rejuvenated space and creating LEGO masterpieces during their lunch break. 

We have exciting news for Term 3, with the arrival of the Scholastic Book Fair in week 5 and Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book Week celebrations in week 7.

Book Fair is a fundraising opportunity for our school to support the library as well as to promote reading with our students.

To celebrate our first Book Week at Nirimba State Primary School, all students are invited to dress up as their favourite book character on Friday 26 August, for our Book Week parade.

Students will also have the opportunity to participate in a variety of fun and interactive activities in the Discovery Centre during first break for the duration of our Book Week celebrations.

Susan Schultz

Teacher Aide

Discovery Centre Coordinator

Prep A - Retelling Stories

The children in Prep A have been learning how to retell familiar stories this term. We have been using many different techniques to retell stories including drawing detailed pictures of characters and settings, acting out story events, using puppets to focus on character voices, making retell booklets and even writing our own retell sentences! Here we are retelling the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff using pictures from the story and settings we created using collage materials.

Prep B - Exploring and Designing in Science

Prep B have been exploring and investigating different materials in Science. We have looked at metal, wood, plastic, fabric, cardboard and rubber and have learnt that they all look and feel very different. We decided it would be fun to explore which of these materials are waterproof. After our experiments, Prep B were given a design task to build a waterproof house for the three little pigs.  The preps needed to think about what would be the best materials to use for their houses so the three pigs stay nice and dry when it rains.

Prep C - Is it Waterproof?

Prep C love everything about Science, especially when we get to do hands on exploring and learning! This term we have been learning about materials and their properties. After discussing what we could observe about wood, paper, fabric and plastic, we made predictions on how they would react when they got wet. When then tested each material to see if our predictions were correct and found out which material was “waterproof.”

Year 1/2A - Puppets

This Term in 1/2 A we have been learning all about the wonderful world of puppets. We have viewed many different types of puppets and puppet theatres and explored the types of materials that are used to create puppets. The students absolutely loved engaging in play with our shadow puppet theatres. They have also thoroughly enjoyed designing and creating their very own paper plate puppets.

Year 2A - Wonderful World Of Worms

We have been busy investigating in Year 2 Science this term. Learners have immersed themselves into living worlds. We have completed a range of investigations to explore plant parts, examined seeds and taken on the role of growth trackers to learn about a plant’s lifecycle. One of our favourite lessons was diving into wonderful worms where we observed our wiggly earthworms and their role as ecosystem engineers. We made our own wormery’s for our science corner and released the remainder of our worms into our school sustainability garden to help create a healthy habitat for our plants. 

Year 3/4A - Problem Solving

3/4 A has been jam packed full of exciting learning activities and students collaborating to solve problems.

Within our English unit, we have been learning about persuasive text styles and writing to convince an audience on our opinions. Through varying types of modality, students were trying to convince myself, and other members of staff to have things like skateparks instead of playgrounds, free ice-cream from the tuckshop and Free Dress Fridays. Unfortunately, no one was able to persuade the Department of Education!

Within maths, students enjoyed completing chance activities and exploring the language of probability. We used our knowledge of chance to complete tasks involving dice and categorising different every day events. We have also been utilising a range of resources to engage in hands on number activities, such as playing cards, MABs, dice and gameboards.

We enjoyed exploring hot topics and expanding our awareness of issues pressing society such as the election campaign, overseas conflict, Reconciliation Week and State of Origin. We formed opinions on each topic, finding evidence to support our opinion and communicating our views to the class.

As the school year continues, we look forward to more quality learning happening in 3/4 A!!

Year 4/5A

Halfway through our foundation year, where has the time gone? I want to kick our newsletter segment off with a huge shout out to the students of 4/5A. I have been amazed by the level of independence shown by all of the students when completing their assessments this term. Well done everyone.

This term, we explored the world of traditional stories and how they are used in many cultures to teach a moral or message. Students explored a range of stories from both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Asian cultures. The creativity and application of language features has continued to develop and improve as the year continues.

In Mathematics, we explored the measurement of time and how to calculate durations of time. Additionally, we explored new strategies to solve a range of problems involving addition, subtraction and multiplication, with our year five classmates also tackling division.

The students continue to use our iPads in new and creative ways. This term, we completed the design, programming and implementation of a guessing game to play with our Prep B buddies. In Visual Arts, we used clay and plaster to create artworks to represent how landscapes have been impacted by pollution.

I look forward to next term and continuing our foundation journey at Nirimba.

Enjoy your holidays.

Mr Perrin

Year 5/6A

Wow what a busy term we have had in 5/6A! In HASS, we completed projects to consolidate our learning of Federation and the three levels of government. We went by bus to Brisbane and visited Qld Parliament House and learned more about our local, state and federal government systems.  Students participated in a role play of “the passing of a bill” and asked many questions along the way.  We then took a short walk through Brisbane’s beautiful botanical gardens and made our way to Old Government House where we immersed ourselves in some of Brisbane’s rich history. It was a truly wonderful day and it was so great to see the students of Nirimba enjoying some real-world connections to their learning. 

In English, we began our feature article unit and started to write about the issue of flying foxes. They brainstormed using their own prior knowledge, researched the topic and collaborated with each other to share their points of view.  It is great to see so many students utilising their visual learning wall to help themselves and each other. The conversations have been rich and the articles are coming along nicely. We are now in the conference phase to obtain new goals from their drafts and consequently apply their peer and teacher feedback to improve their writing. 

In Mathematics, we have explored time, number and chance.  It was great having Mr Moore join us for number fact BINGO, even though he was a very competitive participant, he did not knock out the champions Michelle and Yashmina. We look forward to a rematch in the near future and hopefully Mr Morris can join too.

Finally, we are excited to announce the design for the Year 6 senior shirts for 2022. All Year 6 students created a design, we voted to ensure we followed a democratic process and I am sure you will agree the winning design is just so smart.  Congratulations Amelie on designing the first ever Nirimba State Primary School Senior shirt and look out for order forms in the coming weeks.