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:admin@rathdowneyss.eq.edu.au

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

Rathdowney SS Oval looking pretty as a

picture

Our Band, Below Our Runners

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