Mothers are our first teachers, our giver of life, and first connection, embrace, support and love. This Mother's Day we give thanks to our mothers and reflect on the impact they have made to our lives. Our school is richer for the mothers that are a critical part of the fabric of our school community and the impact they make.
I want to thank the P&C and volunteers who made our Mother's Day Plant Stall possible. The gift of a plant, a symbol of life and growth is a small token to show how much we care.
Next week is NAPLAN for Year 3 and Year 5 Students across the Nation. You will notice that at Coorparoo State School we do not make this a big deal, rather it is another opportunity to gain insights into each child's learning progress. It is a narrow snapshot of skills.
As parents/carers it is what we do that has the greatest impact on our children. If you are relaxed about such activities and give reassurance to your child about simply doing your best on the day, they will be relaxed. Our staff have worked to ensure that students are relaxed about this type of activity. Our regular work in ICAS and Math Olympics, BEBRAS and other online activities makes this type of approach very normal.
For our school this is the first year where students will complete NAPLAN online. The online platform is smart! In traditional paper-based testing the student gets one change to demonstrate their knowledge. The online test allows the concepts to be tested to higher levels if students can achieve this. It also allows for the child to make a mistake and get a second opportunity to demonstrated an understanding of the concept at a simpler level. This capacity will give the school much broader data about students' performance.
If your child is in year Three or Five and participating in NAPLAN please ensure they have a good sleep the night before, have a good breakfast, and are relaxed about what they need to do.
Parents will receive reports of their child's results often later in the year and this is an opportunity to look at how they were performing on the day. The whole of school data we use to ensure our programs are effective.
We should never complain about the rain, it is a much-needed resource for life. Sadly, the rain tends to come when we have sporting events planned! Lucky the Lytton District Cross Country managed to run yesterday. Today we made the decision to cancel our participation event before school when it was raining and more and rain and storms were forecast. The risk of students slipping on the wet concrete when running in large groups was significant. Of course, the rain has now stopped and blue sky has appeared! However, as we had announced a cancelation, we could not proceed knowing that many parents would love to be there.
The Cross Country has now been rescheduled to next Friday 13 May.
I was speaking with a prep parent today about the cross country and it prompted me to remind parents/carers about the Q-Schools App.
Q-Schools is a free app that is created by the education department to allow effective immediate communication with our school community. The app allows all news and communication notices in the school to be easily shared. The app also allows for push notification for emergencies and special events.
We know that over 922 parents are currently using the app in our school to stay in touch with events, news and can easily save information to their mobile devices and calendars.
More information is available via our website under the Support and resources tab (https://coorparooss.eq.edu.au/support-and-resources/qschools-and-qparents)