Cranbrook Newsletter - 2023 Term 3 Week 10

Principal's Message

Welcome to our last newsletter for Term 3!  

Prep in 2023

Enrolments for Prep next year are now welcome.  Children born between 1 July 2018 and 30 June 2019 are eligible to enrol.  Remember a copy of a birth certificate is essential for enrolment.  

Birth Certificates for Children Starting Prep - Parents of children born between 1 July 2018 and 30 June 2019 who are starting Prep in 2024 will need a birth certificate to enrol them in the Prep Year. The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages is encouraging parents to apply for birth certificates now to avoid the new school year rush. 

To apply for a standard or commemorative birth certificate you can: 

• Download an application form from https://www.qld.gov.au/law/births-deaths-marriages-and-divorces/birth-death-and-marriage-certificates/birth-certificates 
• Visit the Registry (Court House) in Walker Street, Townsville. 

Don’t leave it to the last minute – apply for a birth certificate now. 

Early Entry to Prep 

Children who are younger than the prescribed age for Prep may be enrolled in Prep if:
* they turn 5 years by 31st July in the year of proposed attendance; and 
* the principal is satisfied the child is ready for education in Prep, having regard to their attributes (including ability, aptitude, social and emotional competence, physical development, and level of knowledge and understanding). 

The principal may also enrol a child in Prep who is younger than the prescribed age if the child:
* has previously started education that is equivalent to Prep in another state or country; and 
* is considered ready for education in Prep, having regard to their attributes (including ability, aptitude, social and emotional competence, physical development, and level of knowledge and understanding). 

Delayed Entry 

The Preparatory (PREP) Year is now compulsory. This means parents who delay the entry of their child to school do not have the option of not completing Prep.  Every child must now complete Prep rather than starting at Year 1. 

Transition to School Resources to Support Your Child 

There are many ways a parent or carer can help their child transition from home or kindy to school. 

Take a look at the short video from the Department of Education, 'What is a Transition Statement' which is one of several videos on their website designed to assist families, early education and care services and schools to support positive transitions to Prep. 

Prep Transition Program

Our Prep Transition Program will begin on Thursday 9 November and will run each Thursday morning,    8 - 9.40am, concluding on 7 December.  

Please call our office to book your spot.

Taking 2024 Enrolments now

Enrolments for all year levels are now open.  An enrolment form can be downloaded from this newsletter or our website, and parents are welcome to pick up an enrolment pack from our front office.

Parent/Teacher Interviews

Our second round of Parent-Teacher Interviews for 2023 will be conducted on Thursday 12th October.  These will take place in the school hall from 3.30-8.00pm in 15 minute increments.  

Our online booking system is designed for simplicity and will be open to parents and guardians early next term to make bookings with their child's relevant teacher/s.

A reminder about our school access times

Albert and Bergin Road Pedestrian Gates - Gates will open from 8.00am to 8.50am and again at 2.50pm to 3.20pm. 

Alice Street Pedestrian Gates – Gates will open at 5.00am and be closed at 4.30pm. The main gate will be open in the morning and the secondary gate at the Bergin Road end of pick up zone will be open in the afternoons. 

Alice Street Internal Gate – The gate will open at 8.00am when supervision begins. Prior to this students will have access to the waiting area on Alice St with NO SUPERVISION. 

Lunches

We are increasingly having conversations with students and hearing from them, that they don't have enough food in their lunch boxes.  Please, check in with your child and see if what you're giving them is enough.  Learning and playing creates big appetites and little bodies cannot function if they are hungry.  An extra piece of fruit or an extra sandwich will do wonders!  Thanks.

QSR Parent Focus Group

Thanks so much to the four parents who willingly gave up their time to attend the Parent Focus Group.  Thanks for giving us your feedback and opinions on how you feel our school should move forward. 

Staff Update - Term 4

After 5 years at Cranbrook, we sadly say goodbye to Mrs Bianca Gordon but welcome back our lovely Miss Renee Digger to take 4B through the rest of the year.  Renee will teach Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and Mrs Shannon Morgan, our Year 4 Cohort Leader, will teach the class on Wednesdays.

Our PE teacher, Mrs Lara Woods welcomed baby John to the world this week and so Mr Chris Mayo (currently teaching 4C) will take over the PE role for Term 4.

After some well deserved weeks off, Miss Donna Bell will return to take 4C again.

Keep a Watch on our School these Holidays 

Parents and students can help take care of our school by reporting any suspicious after-hours activity to School Watch on 13 17 88.  By keeping an eye out we can work together to create a safer school community and help to reduce vandalism, theft and arson in our school.   

If you see something suspicious, please don't intervene.  Call the School Watch number and let the local police or State Government Protective Security Service deal with the matter. 

Enjoy the holidays!

Jeff Capell - Principal

Coming up....

Every Day Counts - Attendance

Regular, punctual attendance at school is expected of all students.  Students should be present at school ready to prepare for the day's learning by 8:30am.

Late Arrivals

Students arriving after 8:50am must report to the office to receive a lateslip.  If a student is late, a letter of explanation from the student's parent/guardian must be presented to the office staff on arrival.

Absence

If a student is absent and the parent/guardian has not notified the school, they will receive an automated text message by 10am that day.  

Parents will receive a text message informing them that their child is absent. If you receive one of these text messages, please contact the school to explain the reason for your child’s absence.

A working mobile number should be registered with the school, if available.

Please remember that absence is only marked for the days specified by the parents. If you ring up on a Monday informing that your child is sick and they remain away from school for the following 2 days because they are sick you need to inform us that this was the reason for their absence. You can inform us after the absence via a message directly to the teacher or by contacting our absence hotline or email.

If your child is absent, please leave a message detailing:

• Child's name
• Class
• Reason for absence
• Dates or duration of absence

Positive Behaviour for Learning

Congratulations to our Week 9 PBL snappy winner, Malachi and to our Week 10 double draw winners, Destiny and Lucinda!

Thanks for being safe, responsible and respectable students!

Recently, we began a 'Golden (or Super) Snap' initiative.  Staff have one Golden Snap to award at each duty they attend.  Students have the opportunity to earn a Golden Snap at every play break and every lunch break.  The snaps then go into the weekly, whole school draw, with the winner being given a $10 tuckshop voucher.

Congratulations to our Week 9 winner, Michael and to our Week 10 winner, Student A in Year 2.

In Week 9, our PBL lesson was about respect.  Our statement was 'I respect others' privacy and property'. 

In Week 10, we focused on responsibly with the statement 'I am resilient'.

Here are the flyers with some handy hints with what and how to chat about this at home.

When we're back to school in Term 4, we'll revisit our 10 week program again.

At the end of each term, we say thanks and reward our students for their great behaviour, with our 'Snapaganza'.  Snapaganza is a fun-filled couple of hours during the day, with activities such as drawing, soccer, dancing, origami, tech games or any other activities that teachers may wish to run.

Well done to the overwhelming majority of our students, who were able to attend today. 

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Cranbrook Learning

In English this term, our Year 4 students have been studying the First Fleet.  The assessment task associated with this, was to write a recount from a child convict's point of view.  Here are two examples from 4C.  Thanks Jaxson and Kadisha.

Yesterday, the students participated in their culminating activity for this unit.  They played simple games that children back in those years may have enjoyed, with the reward of a bit of bread if they were successful, made 'hard tack' and decided that it wasn't something they would want to eat over and over again, did charcoal drawings of First Fleet ships, pretended they were the 'wanted' convicts and even experienced what a (unfair) Court Hearing may look like.  

Thanks very much teachers, for making the morning so much fun and helping the students to cement their learning.

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5A have finished their assessment and are having some fun and experimenting with gamification of learning!  Click on the link to see what Faith created.  It's very cool....

Our next super author is Year 5 student, Corey.  Have a read of his masterpiece!

Want to be amazed?  Have a look at Year 6 student, Deakyn's 'Passion Project'.  Deakyn had already completed his assessment tasks for the term and so was looking to set himself a challenge.  Click on the link and admire Deakyn's work......and learn a skill or two in basketball!

Congratulations to these top little students who have completed 100 and for some, 150, nights of reading!

From The Arts

Eisteddfod 2023 done.  Congratulations and well done to every single one of our students who drew, created, sang, played and/or spoke their way through their pieces and this competition.

Cranbrook did extremly well and we are so proud of everyone!

Here are the placings we received:

Nightingale Chorus......2nd 

Songbird Chorus......2nd

Combined Nightingale/Songbird Chorus......2nd

String Orchestra........1st

Drama Excellence.......3rd

Harley Young.......1st (Visual Arts)

Sienna Lemphers........Highly Commended (Visual Arts)

Combined Choirs

String Orchestra

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Drama Excellence

Nightingale Chorus

In the Arts, our Year 3 students are studying Media and exploring how to use green screen backgrounds and the 'erase' function in the Stop Motion Pro App.  Exploring now will mean that they will be competent in using the app to create their own movies next term!  It's very exciting!

CONGRATULATIONS to our Arts Class of the Week for Week 9.....Miss Stolz's 1A!

This class was given the award for

• being kind and caring to one another
• being responsible in the shop for drama
• working and trying their best in assessment for music

CONGRATULATIONS to our Arts Class of the Week for Week 10.....Miss O'Reilly's Class 5C!

This class was given the award for

• working respectfully and responsibly in group work
• adding detail in line works they completed
• being safe when playing rhythm games in music with the rhythm sticks

Sports News

Les Stagg Rugby League Competition

Throughout Term 3 our 11-12 years Rugby League team has been competing in the Les Stagg Trophy. The competition is a knockout Rugby League competition with games being held on a Monday night. Cranbrook won our first game against Annandale SS 24-10. We then played Rassmussen SS in the next round of the competition winning 38-0. Our next game was against Holy CC in the quarterfinals of the competition, Cranbrook won 36-26. In the semi-final we played a tough game against the eventual Les Stagg Champions St Clare's losing 16-16 via the first try scorer tie break. Well done to all students involved throughout this competition, your effort and sportsmanship was outstanding and is to be commended. A big thank you to the many Teachers and Parents who supported the team throughout the competition.

Blackhawks U10s Challenge

On Wednesday of Week 9 fourteen Cranbrook student in grades 3, 4 and 5 competed in the Blackhawks Challenge. In our first game we played against Currajong SS where we won 36-4. Cranbrook's second game was against a tough Bowen SS with Cranbrook winning 12-8. In the final round game, we played against East Ayr SS where we won 24-4 earning a spot in the semifinals. In the Semi Final against Calvary, we won 8-8 via the first try scorer tie break sending Cranbrook into the Grand Final. In the Grand Final fourteen tired students showed up for their 5^th game of the day which was a rematch against Bowen SS. In what was a highly entertaining game of Rugby League Cranbrook walked away victorious winning 4-4 via the first try scorer tiebreak. A massive thank you to the 3 students who assisted running water throughout the day. Congratulations to all students who participated in the carnival, the future of Cranbrook Rugby League is looking bright.

......and thanks Mr Wilson for your guidance and practice sessions!

From the Resource Centre

Class Borrowing Days

Please return your child’s home reader and library books on the following days:

For students in Prep / Year 1 / Year 2 / Year 3…..you must have a library bag to protect your books.

P&C News

How about this for a beautiful and practical fundraiser?

The P&C are using your favourite recipes to collate a 'Cranbrook Family Favourites' recipe book that you can then purchase and treasure.

Please send through Dad's favourite dinner, the kids' favourite snack, your favourite leftover concoction and add the story to go with it, if you have one.

Submissions need to be made via the link below and before 8pm, Friday 14 September.  If you're having difficulties, please send your recipe to Sheena at magicminions@gmail.com text her on 0459 776 515 or you can message via Facebook Messenger.

We have actually filled our minimum quota, but we're happy to take more!  Make a spot yours! 

Coming up in October is our Movie Night!  Come and join us in the hall for a great family night out! 

Purchase your tickets via Qkr! or from the Uniform Shop or the Tuckshop.

Goodbye Mrs Gordon

Bianca moved to Townsville with husband Kyle, for his work with the ADF back in 2016.  She joined our team here at Cranbrook in 2017 and has provided us with a lot of laughs since!  The Gordon family's season in Townsville has now come to an end and they are moving south to the Brisbane area, to be closer to family and the better beaches.  Bianca and Kyle take little Townsvillians, Laikyn who is 2 and Oaklie who is 1 with them.  They are expecting another little one mid-October.  Bianca will miss us though - she'll miss her amazing colleagues at Cranbrook and the fabulous, full-time summer that is Townsville.

All the best, Mrs Gordon - we will miss you too.

R U OK?

R U OK Day 2023, was celebrated yesterday, 14 September, at Cranbrook with a staff breakfast.  

We acknowledge this day, as a day to be encouraged that we don't need to be a professional, to genuinely care and sincerely ask each other, are you ok?  

Please take a look at the R U OK website:  https://www.ruok.org.au/ for lots of great information on how we can be a listening ear and support each other.

Making Healthy Habits Fun

Queensland parents and carers will have more help at hand to get their kids eating healthier and moving more thanks to a new app launched recently by Health and Wellbeing Queensland (HWQld).  

With one in 4 Queensland children (25%) living with overweight or obesity, rates that have remained unchanged for more than a decade, new approaches to educating parents and carers, and exciting kids, about improving their health and wellbeing are needed to help families build and maintain healthy habits.  

To provide this support, Health and Wellbeing Queensland is launching Podsquad, an innovative free, play-based wellbeing program to make learning new healthy habits fun for children and families. 

Read more by clicking on the link below.

Sports Pride Fridays

Community News

Heatley Secondary College have their Disabilities Transition Information on Wednesday 1 November.  Students are invited to attend the school for the day, with parents/carers joining us afterwards for afternoon tea.

Please rsvp by 30 October to kharm48@eq.edu.au

Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of information in this issue of our newsletter at the time of publication. 

For all enquiries please contact our School Office on 4726 1222.