A Letter to the Community
“Thought for the Week”
SCHOOL NEWS:
No.5 21th May 2021
The Christmas Creek Athletics
Carnival – 20, 21 May
This week saw our school is
hosting the Christmas Creek Athletics carnival, on
Rathdowney State Primary School
143-155 Mount Lindesay Highway, Rathdowney 4287
Phone: (07) 5540 4333 E:[email protected]
Principal: Tina van Bennekom www.rathdowneyss.eq.edu.au
Thursday, 20 May and Fri-day, 21 May. The P&C was
catering on both days.
We thank all the helpers who helped the P&C - on both days - serve in our tuckshop and who made delicious cakes, cookies
and slices, or who donated money for the ingredients.
You’ve all supported the P&C in fine style.
The Christmas Creek Sports
had the following results for our school.
We won the Councillors’
Special Trophy for the best war cry. We came second to Darlington S.S. on aver-age number of points (di-vided by enrolment). Our
adult relay teams came second and third. Harlow
won the Thorpe Family Trophy for Good Sports-
manship. One of our Preps, Vivian won age
champion for her event and Austin Grahl (Yr 1) won
age champion for his event. Montana (Yr4) and
William (Yr6) both won first runner-up in the age champion awards for the
age champion in their respective categories.
William (Yr6) was also age champion Cross
Country.
Thank You
Our “thank you” goes to Mrs Janine Reilly who
made our grounds look a picture for the sports this week. There were lots of compliments on the state of our grounds from many people over the two days.
We thank all the helpers who helped the P&C - on both days - serve in our tuckshop and/or who made delicious cakes,
cookies and slices, or who donated money for the in-gredients. You’ve all sup-
ported the P&C in fine style.
A special “Thank You” goes to Sarah Thorpe for helping
with training our kids on Wednesdays for the
Christmas Creek sports.
And a special “Thank You” goes to Mr Kroll for train-ing the students and run-
ning the carnival. And “Thank you” goes to both Max and Colin who asked if they could help with an-ything during to two days of competition, and pro-
vided genuine help to their teachers, especially Mr
Kroll. And Nikita for help-ing Mrs H and Ms v B dur-ing the long jump event!
And last but not least a HUGE Thank you to the Rathdowney Store for
donating food containers etc for the Tuckshop.
Principal’s Report for the P&C Meeting 18. 05. 21
Staff and Students
NAPLAN is over for another year. The students did their best and what is better than
that! The numeracy test went well but the students had a bit of struggle with the spelling
test. All the students but one, finished the reading test and all of them seemed to handle
it well. The results of the NAPLAN test come back in
about August. Ms Lane is still recuperating from her surgery. No doubt she will back at work with the students in her class soon.
Ms v B continues to soldier on “with a not altogether back voice”, but the students are much better at reading now since they have to read eve-rything for themselves, includ-ing the instructions. It’s good practice for later on when they go to high school. We hope
that it won’t be long before an-other chaplain arrives to work
with the students.
Student Council
There are only a few more boxes of chocolates left at
school to sell. This term we will again start with healthy lunches on Fri-
days. There will be no healthy lunches this Friday, as we have the tuckshop for the carnival from which to buy our lunches on Thursday and Fri-
day.
School Events
Even though the Beaudesert District Sports are being held later than first thought, we’ll
still have the Christmas Creek Athletics Carnival on this
week Thursday and Friday. Our school will be doing the catering and the Christmas
Creek Athletics carnival will be held at Rathdowney State
School. After the sports, we will be well into testing for report cards at the end of June.
This term we are highlighting the second of our 3 school
rules, “Be Responsible” with the students on weekly pa-
rades. We will also be focus-ing on the HI-5 response to
teasing and bullying as part of our school’s behaviour man-agement plan for the year. The students have really taken these strategies on board and they have been used very effectively in the school playground. Every
year we focus on one of the Australian values for the year.
This year’s value to practise is
TEAMWORK and CO-OPERATION. We are en-couraging our students to keep practising the 2016,
2017, 2018 ,2019 values of KINDNESS, HONESTY,
RESPECT, TOLERANCE and INCLUSION, RESILIENCE and
POSITIVITY while adding on the 2021 values of
TEAMWORK and CO-OPERATION..
The Director -General of Edu-cation, Tony Cook has signed off on funding worth $17
400 of government grant money to improve literacy
and numeracy with our stu-dents as the Investing for
Success Grant (also called I4S money). We had submit-
ted our proposal for the spending of this grant to our Central Office for its approval and we were successful in our application. Half of the funds have arrived in our
school bank account today and the other half will come in
a second increment school later in the year. Because of
the shortfall in staffing this year, we have decided to use
the funding to purchase teacher and teacher aide
hours to support our students’ learning.
Playgroup operates on Wednesdays from 9:00am to 11:30am in the old preschool building. Sorelle Jobson, one of our dedicated parents will continue to deliver a program of developmentally appropri-ate activities for all the children in our area, aged 0-5 years. We will again have the sup-port of the Scenic Rim Re-gional Council, now visiting
the playgroup once each fort-night to provide their “Rhyme
Time” program. This year’s whole school
camp (for Prep to Year 6s) will be booked this term for term 3. Our school camps are an integral component of the cur-riculum that our school offers to its students and they con-
tribute to improvement in
each student’s learning. The Prep-Year 6 students will be staying at Brookfield in Bris-bane for the annual school camp. They will be visiting various venues around the
city and the Sunshine Coast. Parents are invited to attend the camp if they wish to ac-
company their children. As al-ways, our camps are heavily subsidised, so that cost is less likely to be a factor in students
missing out on camp. The P&C pays the bus costs and the Student Council pays for entries to all the venues the
students visit.
Staff Professional Develop-ment
Last term, Ms v B and Mrs Watson have been involved in a Full Scope School Audit by a Department of Educa-tion auditor, who mainly con-centrated on the workplace Health and Safety and Fi-
nance aspects of our opera-tions. We have been given
lots of tasks to complete. All but a few tasks have been
completed. Ms v B has done corporate
card training and small school Principal finance training.
A new Lead Principal to work with the small schools in the South-East Region has re-cently been appointed. His name is Greg Gosling. He’ll be visiting the school tomor-
row.
Student Council Fundraising
This term, the Student Council will again serve
healthy lunches on Fridays. At a Student Council meet-ing last term, the members
all decided on menu op-tions for term 2. We’ve
decided on an assortment of soups, curried sausages, fried rice, pasta bolognese,
tacos and toasties. Last week it was toasties. Next
week it will be pumpkin soup and mini hot dogs.
Year 3-6 News
Now comes the time when
we start testing the stu-dents for their report
cards. Mrs O has already started with reading levels with our senior class and we’ve started doing the
CARS test of reading com-prehension after practising the strategies every week. We’re finishing off our unit in Geography (HASS) and Mrs O still has some writ-
ing that she wants to finish with the senior class.
Mr Kroll is already getting
started on the report cards. Mr Lynagh is testing the senior class (Yr 4-6) in
Japanese.
It’s been all business last week when we hosted the Christmas Creek Athletics Carnival. Our class helped
Mr Kroll set up the grounds, and dismantle
things and put things away afterwards.
Bookclub
Please return Bookclub orders by June 8,
Thank you
Rathdowney Markets
Every 3rd Sunday of
each Month 8am – 1pm
Come along a sup-port your local com-
munity. Plenty of parking,
lots of stalls.
Pilates in Rathdowney
As part of the Council’s “Be Healthy & Active” pro-
gram, a 6 week Pilates course is being run in Rathdowney, starting in
the first week after the school holidays.
A qualified instructor will ensure the exercises are suited to all ages and
levels of ability. To keep things happening in Rathdowney, we need
people to support the activities, so please come along.
When: Tuesdays (Starting 20th April)
Time: 5.30pm – 6.30pm
Where: Rathdowney Hall
Cost: $5
Bring: Water bottle and yoga mat
(there are spare mats if you don’t have one)
Super Spellers 3-6- Nikita, Noah, Ryan, P-2- Kiara, Laurence, Austin, Colin, Dustin, Amelia, Billie, Jaxon, William, Harrison
Sight Word Smarties- Vivian, Pearl, Jack, Maisen, Noah T
Dates to Remember-May-June 2021
Monday Tuesday Wednes-day
Thursday Friday
W K 6
24
Parade
25
Breakfast
Club
26
Tuckshop Ally Hundy
Cakes: Emma
Williams
27 28
Healthy Lunches
W K 7
31
Parade
1
Breakfast
Club
2
NO Tuckshop
3 4
Healthy Lunches
W K 8
7
Parade
8
Breakfast
Club
9 Tuckshop
Ally Hundy Cakes: Kirsty
Parnell
10 11
Healthy Lunches
W K 9
14
Parade
15
Breakfast
Club
16 Tuckshop Kay Lane
Cakes: Rachel
Hardgrave
17 18
Healthy Lunches
W K 10
21
Parade
22
Breakfast
Club
23 Tuckshop
Sally Finlay Cakes:
Danielle Bass
24
25
Healthy Lunches
Rathdowney Soccer Club
Training:- Wednesday night 3.30pm at the Memorial Grounds.
Anyone is welcome to come along and train adults and children.
All players welcome from 5 years
and above.
Registration Day TBA
More information please contact: Emma Williams 0423 637 202