Term 2 Week 10
Principal Update
What a great semester we have had at Winton State School. I send my sincerest thanks to all families, community members and our students for your support and dedication this term and semester. We have achieved a lot and continue to make Winton SS a great place to be for staff and students. We have staff from far and wide reaching out to come to our school, this is something that not every school is fortunate to experience. There is a significant teacher shortage across the state, however we are currently fully staffed and I am confident that we are positioned well to be the same in 2025.
Term 3 is going to very busy, especially with camps and excursions. Please keep an eye on your emails, Facebook and check in with your students daily on what notes etc., they are bringing home in their school bags. It is a huge effort to coordinate school activities, and often we are bound by external providers timelines. This is most efficient if families are returning notes in a timely manner.
We have had many successes this semester and there is lots to celebrate, which we have done regularly. One challenge though is attendance. Unfortunately, about 30% of our students are present at school less than 85% of the time. Today, I am sending a letter home to families who have students with attendance of concern. This letter will outline what the current attendance rate is for semester 1. This equates to approximately 10 or more days off in the first half of the year. This is a gentle reminder of the legislative requirements of school attendance. If there is no improvement, school may be legally bound to follow processes specific to the age of the student. If we can support in improving your student's attendance, please reach out.
I would like to thank our wonderful here at Winton SS for their efforts. They all work tirelessly in their roles to ensure your students have the best education and opportunity. A lot of what we do and offer here is above the beyond the role of a teacher, and I thank all our staff for their dedication to our students and the teaching profession.
The second half of the year will see our teaching staff have a focus on curriculum planning for the new version 9 of the National Curriculum. We will be rolling this out progressively over the next 3 years, starting in 2025 with Maths and English. We will also be reviewing our Student Code of Conduct and doing some school structure planning for 2025. Our students will continue to focus on the same 3 key focuses from semester 1; uniform, phones away for the day and being on time.
We had a P & C meeting this week and I am grateful to the following people who will form the executive committee:
President - Brendan Willis
Vice President - Jodie Smith
Treasurer - Krystal Balke
Secretary - Nicole Searle
Thank you once again for a great term, and first semester. I am really proud of our school and very much looking forward to the second half of the year. I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday and look forward to being back on Monday 8th July for term 3.
Take care,
Meggin
Athletics Carnival
A big thank you to everyone for making our Athletics Carnival a truly spectacular day! It was wonderful to see so many students, teachers and parents cheering on the sidelines. A special thank you to Mr Clarke for all of his hard work and preparation to ensure the event ran smoothly. We also extend our gratitude to St Pat's for running the canteen and keeping everyone well-fed, and to all the staff who helped set up and manage the day.
Congratulations to all of our 2024 Age Champions and Patterson house for being the leading points scoring house.
Year 6 Update
ENGLISH- The Grade sixes have been working on analysing a radio transcript and creating a holiday destination advertisement this term in English. We have been working hard on these assessments and were pumped up by the victory in the origin, Go Maroons! Poor Ms Bradley has been hiding ever since. But to get back on track, In English we have all aimed for an A even as far as an A+ even though some of us get stuck our lovely teacher, Mrs Parkin, who also had her birthday on the 6th of June, is always there to show us how to work it out in multiple ways.
MATH- Grade six have completed all their maths this term. We have been learning angles, fractions, percentages, cartesian planes and integers to get further into what we’ve been learning, in fractions we have learnt how to plus and minus them, split normal numbers into thirds fifths or fourths etc, and turn them into percentages which brings us into our next subject, percentages, in percentages we learnt how to work out discounts and turn them from decimals to percentages! And to stop dragging this too far we also learnt how to count integers on a number line and how to spot certain points on a cartesian plane. We have been doing wonderful things this term and we are striving to do even better next term!
SCIENCE- In Science we have been learning how to make a light switch, and I know it sounds hard but we used mini circuits and miniature lightbulbs because I doubt, we can be fully trained electricians. But we have mostly been learning about types of electricity like kinetic, sound and etc. We’ve also learned and researched about a truly inspiring story, Williams Windmill, a story and legend to some about a boy in 2002 creating a windmill out of junk yard scraps to create a free energy source for his people, we think it’s a truly creative and brave story as many people thought he was crazy until he built it with his bare hands and used a bike even! That’s a wrap on what we’ve done in science this term!
HASS- Grade sixes have been learning about Australia’s global connections. For example, we researched the many different countries and how we are connected to them through things like trade, aid, tourism and political connections. We found out lot about China, Japan and India because that’s what countries we seemed to have the most to do with in trade, aid and where Australian’s have visited the most on holidays.
Written by Graycen Grant
Denise & Bruce Morcombe Visit
Thank you to Denise and Bruce Morcombe for visiting Winton! Our students learnt some valuable strategies to keep them safe. Thanks to St Pat's for coming over and all the families who attended. Thanks also to Shai, Brit and Chloe for our morning tea! What a great morning for us to enjoy together as we near the end of term.
QSS Touch football State Championships
A number of boys from the Central West region travelled to Rockhampton to compete at the 10-12 years QSS Touch Football State Championships. Ash McClymont (Longreach), James Walker (Longreach), Connor Richardson (Blackall), Archie Geiger (Windorah), Callem Bambling (Aramac) and Jett Searle (Winton) all represented the North West team at this carnival. The boys travelled up on Tuesday 4th June, to have a training day on Wednesday (having had no form of training together prior to this), then had four big days, playing a number of touch football games. The NW team faced some tough competition, playing against boys all across Queensland. The boys should be very proud of their efforts! Well done team
Interschool Rugby League
In week 9 Mr Clarke took some of our senior students over to Ilfracombe for a game of interschool rugby league. Winton State School and Barcaldine State School teamed up to take on the Longreach Brolgas.
The Under 18 Girls won fairly convincingly.
Numbers may have been low for the Under 18 Boys, but their effort was not. The boys fought hard, but unfortunately lost to the Brolgas.
Upcoming Calendar Dates
Friday 21st June- Last Day of Term 2
Monday 8th July- First Day of Term 3
28th July to 3rd August- Leadership Camp
25th August to 30th August- 5/6 Camp