12 February 2025

PRINCIPAL REPORT

Hello Mooloolah Community,

The term is disappearing before our eyes, moving way too quickly. Can I thank you all for your co-operation so far this term with getting your child to school on time, it makes such a difference to their learning. I had the pleasure of meeting Rory from Prep yesterday, he told me how much he is loving school and the work that he is doing. I love getting visits from our Loolah students. Our year 6 students are working flat out on their Podcasts and our year 2 classes are investigating character traits. I am constantly blown away by how confident our Loolah kids are when talking about their work, what is expected of them, their goals and the feedback their teachers are giving them on their next steps. Out school is really humming at the moment. Our teachers have set high standards and our kids are flying.

Swim Carnival

What a great day we had at our swim carnival. A huge thank you to Mrs Muller for all her hard work in organising the carnival. We couldn’t have held such a successful carnival without the parents who volunteered in time keeping, we really appreciate and value your time. I was so proud of your kids for not only having a go, but for their sportsmanship, and their encouragement of each other. It really goes to show how lucky we are to have our own pool and the quality of the lessons provided by Mrs Muller and her team. There are not many schools across Qld where you would have so many children diving in and giving a great account of doing a 25 m fly. It really was an awesome day.

Loolah Athletes

A huge shout out to Addison Swindells, Rose Mills, Mina Johns, Lara McConnell, Zara Gannis, Maelys O'Mara, Lincoln Swindells, Samuel Mills, Zane Bayliss, Leroy Jenson, Brock Hall and Isaiah Morriss who are all off to the Glasshouse District Swim Trials on Feb 24. We wish you all the best, swim your hearts out and do the best you can!

Behaviour

Each fortnight we will be having a behaviour focus for the whole school. This fortnight, focus is around transitioning between lesson. Our leaders and Mr Gilmour gave a brilliant and entertaining skit on paraded highlighting our focus.

This year our new Student Code of Conduct is being adopted by the school. We are currently using it and making minor changes as we go to ensure it fits our community. There is a very strong focus on consistency, communication and rewarding positive behaviour.

Consistency: Every student across the school will be given two warnings in class and then an opportunity to reset, should they continue to display undesirable behaviour they will be issued a grey card and referred to the office. As a parent if your child has received a grey card, they will bring home a physical copy of the card for you to sign and return. Given things can sometimes be misplaced, a parent will be emailed a copy from the principal with a brief email inviting you to contact your child’s teacher to discuss the behaviour if you wish. This card is our communication to inform you that your child made some poor behaviour choices during the day, we ask that you discuss this behaviour with your child. Should your child get three grey cards in a two-week period then they will be dropped a behaviour level and put in reflection room for a more serious chat with myself. Should your child end up in reflection you will be sent a letter home informing you of this. A student may be put in reflection for major behaviours as well. Reflection room automatically means a drop in behaviour level.

Positive: Each week our staff issue “Caught Ya” tickets to students who they catch being Loolah Legends in our school. These tickets go into a weekly draw where students can win a tuckshop voucher. Additionally, these tickets are kept and when our bird box is filled, we have a whole school rewards day. Teachers will still give out our Gold Awards each week which will be presented on parade. On top of this each term behaviour will be reviewed and those students who have maintained excellent behaviour will move up the behaviour levels to Merit and Excellence. These certificates will be sent home at the end of each term once achieved. Students who are identified by their class teacher for going above and beyond in certain areas will also be presented with a hat badge which they will bring home for you to iron onto their hat. In all we will have 10 hat badges students can earn by being outstanding in a certain area.

We really are working hard to encourage our kids to be LOOLAH LEGENDS.

Thanks for your supporting our friendly little school in the Valley.

Scott Thompson

HEAD OF CURRICULUM REPORT

NAPLAN
A reminder that our Year 3 and 5 students will be completing NAPLAN testing between the 12^th and 24^th March.  A full schedule with test dates will be provided in our next newsletter. Any students away on the days of the testing may be required to complete catch up testing within the NAPLAN testing period.  Over the next few weeks, we will be completing some practice testing with year 3 and 5 students. The purpose of this is to familiarise students with the testing system, the digital tools available and the way the questions are presented. An online demonstration site is also available for parents and students to look at, if you wish to get an idea of what the platform and testing questions may look like.
https://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/public-demonstration-site

Parent Information Sessions
We are holding a number of parent information sessions this term, around varying topics, and encourage parents to come along if the session is relevant for you:

Online Services Consent Forms
Some parents will have received Online Services Consent Forms this week. These forms are to allow students to use carefully selected tools and resources that are managed outside of the Department of Education network. Different year levels or classes will be accessing different resources, which is why some classes will have received notes and others may not have.  If you have received one of these notes, please read it carefully, complete it and return it as soon as possible. If you have any questions, please contact us and we are happy to answer these for you.
GRIP Student Leadership Day Our newly elected student leaders are invited to attend the GRIP leadership day on 25 February. On this day, they will travel to Venue 114 at Kawana and join many student leaders from other schools to develop their leadership skills. A note for this excursion has gone out to our year 6 student leaders this week. If you can help with transport for this excursion, please indicate so on the form.

AFTER THE BELL

P&C UPDATE

This week in P&C news:

- Thanks to everyone who helped out at the Swimming Carnival Sausage Sizzle last week. We had a great day cheering our kids on whilst BBQing and made over $600 which will go towards one of our projects for the kids this year.

- Subway starts again this week and is available every Thursday. Please order via the Flexischools app. $1 from each order goes towards the P&C.

- The first P&C meeting is schedule for next Wednesday 19^th February, 6pm in the Admin Building. All new members welcome! With our AGM in March we’d love to see some new faces there to join us!

Attached is a flyer on all the wonderful things the P&C does to support our school. Please take the time to read it and let us know how you can help out.

Katrina Mills

P&C President