31 March 2017

Principals Report

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

This will be the final whole school newsletter for Term 1. It does feel like the term has flown past, our students and teachers have certainly squeezed a lot into it. I do want to say thank you to our community for your support this term, it is always very much appreciated.

NAPLAN – Year 3 & Year 5

In May of every year, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 take part in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). NAPLAN was first introduced in 2008 and has become a routine part of the school calendar in Australia.

NAPLAN, which is a part of the National Assessment Program (NAP), is how governments, education authorities and schools can determine whether young Australians are reaching important educational goals.

NAPLAN will move online from 2017, over a three-year period. During this time, some schools conduct the test online, and some use pen and paper.

States and territories determine when their schools commence NAPLAN Online.

Moving NAPLAN online brings many new opportunities for students and teachers that are limited or not possible with paper-based tests.

As we have shared for a number of months now, Coomera Springs State School is a pilot NAPLAN online school and will be conducting our tests through an online platform. More information about this style of assessment can be found in the below linked video.

Some of the main benefits of students taking part in NAPLAN Online include:

• Better assessment – and more precise results. NAPLAN Online uses a tailored test or adaptive design, where the test automatically adapts to a student's performance and asks questions that match the student achievement level, allowing the student to demonstrate their knowledge. This provides teachers and schools with more targeted and detailed information on students’ performance on the tests. Tailored testing also provides an opportunity to broaden the scope of the assessments.
• Faster turnaround of results. Delivery of assessments online significantly reduces the time it takes to provide feedback to schools, students and parents, so teachers can respond more quickly to learning needs.
• More engaging. ACARA research into online assessment has shown that students have engaged well with electronic tests.

As technology develops, ACARA aims to further refine the delivery of the tests to best use the available technology to provide increasingly sophisticated assessments and valuable feedback to teachers, parents and education authorities.

You might ask yourself, how can I best prepare my child to complete NAPLAN in an online setting?

Ensuring students are familiar with using devices (Coomera Springs students will be using iPads only), typing on them and navigating through programs is a part of students everyday learning and a requirement of the Australian Curriculum.

You can help your child become familiar with NAPLAN Online by accessing the public demonstration site on the NAP website. The demonstration site includes useful resources for parents and schools to help students become familiar with the online test experience.

It is important that every child in Year 3 and Year 5 have their own set of headphones (regardless if they are a 1:1 iPad class or not). The Numeracy and Spelling tests require these, so please ensure your child has a working set ready for term 2 and the testing process in May.

Keep a watch on our school these holidays

With the holidays fast approaching, we need you to look out for after-hours crime in our school. If you see anything suspicious, please remember to call the School Watch number – 13 17 88.

The School Watch Program is a partnership between Education Queensland, the Queensland Police Service and the State Government Protective Security Service. It aims to reduce vandalism, theft and arson in Queensland schools. If you do see something suspicious, please don’t attempt to intervene.

Call the School Watch number and let the local police or State Government Protective Security Service deal with the matter.

Keep the number handy – 13 17 88 – and let’s work together to help create a safer school community.

Parent Teacher Interviews

This year Coomera Springs State School will be engaging in an online booking system called PTO to organise our parent teacher interviews. The process has started to set up our schools site and prepare all the appropriate details in readiness for staff and parents to access it in Term 2. A ‘How To’ email will be communicated with all parents in Week 1 of Term 2.

The window of Week 2 and 3 has been put aside to provide the interviews, if you are unable to fit in around this timeslots due to circumstance out of your control, please personally negotiate times with your child’s classroom teacher within weeks 1 or week 4.

Buddy Reading Program

Wednesday 29 March marked the exciting beginning of the UCSC Big Buddy Reading Program at Coomera Springs State School. The program kicked off at 9:00 outside the Year 5, designed to boost the reading of specific Year 5 students. With the assistance of ten high performing UCSC Year 10 students we are boosting the profile of reading and having 25 of our targeted Year 5 students participate in weekly reading sessions which challenge our student’s comprehension, improves their perception of reading and also builds a strong relationship between our school and UCSC. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting venture and partnership between two great schools and most importantly some very dedicated learners.

Farewell - Mrs Melissa Gurney Acting Deputy Principal

Well, my time at Coomera Springs SS will come to an end here on Friday. Over the last 13 weeks, I have been nothing but impressed from both teachers and students. The commitment and passion I see from everyone that works here from teachers, teacher aides, cleaners, support staff and administration, day in and day out makes this school a pretty special place to work.

I came into this school as a Deputy Principal not knowing many people and not having any experience as a primary deputy but now I will be leaving here knowing many new people and learning a lot about leadership in a primary setting. A special thank you to my year 2 and 3 teaching and student teams. You are all amazing! And of course Taylor, Gabby, Ben, Connie and all the ladies in the office, thank you for your professionalism and support.

My next chapter takes me to UCSC where I will be joining staff their as Head of Department for Junior Secondary Literacy. So you may still see me around here from time to time.

Melissa Gurney

As week 10 finishes and we move into our first school holidays for 2017, I need to publicly thank the entire Coomera Springs community. This includes our amazing students, dedicated and inspirational teachers and loving and caring parents and carers for your support over the last 3 or so terms. Mrs Martine Gill will be returning as Principal after the Easter break and I will be returning to my position as Deputy Principal.

My personal goal as Principal of Coomera Springs was to be able to hand the Principalship back to Mrs Gill, with the school in a better place by continuing to develop the skills and capacity of our great teachers and in turn create the best learning environment possible for each and every student enrolled in Coomera Springs State School.

Coomera Springs is a phenomenal school and throughout my time as Principal I have felt completely honoured, privileged and proud to lead a great school and its community into 2017.

Taylor Haley
Acting Principal

P & C News

Uniform Shop

Our new uniform shop is open for business! Our opening days are still Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 8.15am – 9am.

Frankies Tuckerbox

Please note that Frankie’s Tuckerbox will be closed on Friday being the last day of Term 1. Keep an eye out on Facebook for our new winter menu beginning when we come back Term 2.

5 Cent Challenge!

Congratulations to all our students who have participated in the 5 cent challenge over the last 3 weeks. We raised $1948.55 which is a phenomenal effort. A huge congratulations to 3B for being the overall collecting champions with $179.65 raised on their own.

As you can see below they all enjoyed their lunch yesterday after their sports carnival run supplied by the P & C

Good bye for now

Our AGM and next P&C meeting is being held on Wednesday 10th May 2017 at 6pm in the Resource Room next to the Library. At the AGM all current P&C executive positions (President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary) will be vacated and voted in for another term. If you are interested in joining our executive or want some more information on what the roles entail please don’t hesitate to contact me on coomeraspringspresident@gmail.com or alternatively by looking on the P&C’s QLD website:

Sharon Sharp
P&C President

From The PE Department

We had another successful Cross Country carnival this week. Thank you to our school community who were able to come along and cheer on our students. All students did a fantastic job running the new tracks and were able to achieve some great results, below is a list of the winners from each event-

Congratulations to Ballun house for winning the overall points House Shield for 2017.

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