‘CULTURE OF INCLUSION’ Inclusion at Blackall State School means removing barriers for staff, students, parents and the wider community, while working collaboratively to ensure that every student is succeeding whilst feeling

calm, safe, supported and valued.

Teaching Literacy Skills at Home 1. Teaching reading will only help. Reading to your children from an early age helps develop their literacy skills on all levels. Grab a book and enjoy a story! 2. Teaching literacy isn’t different than teaching other skills. Parents are their child’s first teachers and as such children will pick up skills that their parents model. Enjoy the journey of teaching literacy skills to your children and your children will enjoy literacy as well. 3. Talk to your kids (a lot). Studies have shown that exposing your child to a variety of words helps in her development of literacy skills. Talk, and sing, to your baby/child about everything. Talk about their eyes, nose, ears, mouth, fingers, family, about what she does (yawn, stretch burp…). Talk to them even if they don’t understand. Reading is a language activity, and if you want to learn language, you need to hear it so that you can eventually speak it. 4. Read to your kids. Reading a book or story to a child is a great, easy way to advance literacy skills. Research shows benefits for kids as young as 9-months-old, and is effective even earlier than that. Reading to kids exposes them to richer vocabulary than they usually hear from the adults who speak to them, and can have positive impacts on their language, intelligence, and later literacy achievement.

5. Have them tell you a “story.”

Have your child retell an experience or make up a story. Write it down and read it to them pointing to the words as you read them. Children will start to recognize words with lots of re-reading 6. Teach phonemic awareness. Young children don’t hear the sounds within words. Thus, they hear “dog,” but not the “duh”-“aw”- “guh.” To become readers, they have to learn to hear these sounds (or phonemes). Play language games with your child. For instance, say a word, perhaps her name, and then change it by one phoneme: Jen-Pen, Jen-Hen, Jen-Men. Or, just break a word apart: chair… ch-ch-ch-air. 7. Teach phonics (letter names and their sounds). You can’t sound out words or write them without knowing the letter sounds. Kindergartens and schools teach the letters and

sounds, and parents can teach them, too. 8. Listen to your child read. When your child starts bringing books home from school, have them read to you. If it doesn’t sound good (mistakes, choppy reading), have him/her read it again. Or read it to them, and then have them try to read it themselves. Studies show that this kind of repeated oral reading makes students better readers. 9. Promote writing. Literacy involves reading and writing. Having books and magazines available for your child is a good idea, but it’s also helpful to have pencils, crayons, markers, and paper. Encourage your child to write. One way to do this is to write notes or short letters to him/her. It won’t be long before he/she is trying to write back to you. 10. Ask questions. When your child reads, get her to retell the story or information. If it’s a story, ask who it was about and what happened. If it’s an informational text, have your child explain what it was about and how it worked, or what its parts were. Reading involves not just sounding out words, but thinking about and remembering ideas and events. Improving reading comprehension skills early will prepare children for subsequent success in more difficult texts. 11. Make reading a regular activity in your home. Make reading a part of your daily life, and kids will learn to love it. It will encourage them to be a lifelong reader. Set aside some time when everyone turns off the TV and the internet and does nothing but read. Make it fun, too. . The point is to make reading a regular enjoyable part of your family routine. Happy reading!

Have a safe and happy break!

Karen

Principal’s Piece

Blackall State School & Community

Newsletter

Term 3, Week 10

17th Sept Free Dress—Super

Hero!

Last day of Term 3

2022 Student Lead-

ers Announced at

Parade—8:45am

Tuesday

5th Oct

Term 4 begins

5th—8th

Oct

Year 10 CQ Uni

Pathways Camp

Friday

8th Oct

Prep 2022

Interviews

Tuesday

12th Oct

P&C Meeting

4pm

Date Claimers

Attendance Phone No:

0457 385 047

P&C Meeting

TUESDAY

12th October

4pm School Library

All Welcome!

TuckShop Day Is Wednesday

$5 Special each week

ALWAYS CHOOSE KIND!

Rule of the Week:

WEEK 10: Use respectful language to all

staff, students and visitors.

Random Act of Kindness:

Week 10: Tell your family why you love

them.

LUNCH PASSES

Due to concerns regarding Lunch Passes and the supervision of students during this time we will hold a consultation meeting with interested parents at the next

P&C Meeting Tuesday 12th October—4pm) to discuss this issue.

Our issues are all related to Workplace Health and Safety standards and include:

• Students being supervised at this time

• Students having lunch at place of residence stated on the lunch pass

• Duty of Care for teachers

• Safety of students

• Behaviour during this time Some possible solutions could include:

• Parents signing students in and out each lunch time

PSR PHASE 4 REVIEW RESULTS

Congratulations to our fabulous team for the amazing

findings by the Senior Review Team during our Final

Review last Week. Successes include a huge culture

shift for our entire school community, positive staff

morale, collaboration and collegiality between staff

members, improvement in A-E Data, use of modera-

tion processes, Learning Walls and Learning Goals

for all students, whole school approach to differentia-

tion, whole school planning and systematic curriculum

delivery. Our team has worked hard to achieve this

success and we look forward to continuing to improve

outcomes for all students through our ‘Culture of In-

clusion’. It was lovely to receive a phone call from our

Regional Director congratulating us on this achieve-

ment. Well done Team! Thank you!

ATTENDANCE Party Term 3—Teddy Bear’s Picnic!

P/1/2 and Year 3/4 won 3 weeks attendance each—Well Done!