Contact Us
2 Ascot Street
Toowoomba QLD 4350
Phone: 07 4591 1200
Fax: 07 4634 4824
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Latest News
Afternoon Pickup
26 May 2020
To assist with traffic congestion please consider delaying your pick up time in the afternoons @ the Stop Drop & Go zones from 3:15 - 3:30
Winter Uniform
29 Apr 2020
The changeover date for the winter uniform is set down for next Tuesday 5th May. Any students in attendance are required to wear the winter uniform, however due to the current circumstances, a 2 week leeway will apply to allow parents time to ensure their children have all the correct winter uniform requirements.
Welcome to Term 2
20 Apr 2020
Welcome to an extremely unique Term Two! We hope you have had an enjoyable Easter break and are keen to begin a new journey of learning.
Thank you for the positive praise many of you have forwarded our teachers. As you can imagine, teachers have been working hard to guarantee continuity of learning and have encountered a steep learning curve using technology to ensure this continuity.
By now you would have received communication from your child’s class teacher regarding the learning students will encounter throughout the upcoming weeks. All year levels have access to a ‘Team’ in Microsoft Teams. This is where you will find communication, activities and resources for learning. Students can communicate with their class teacher(s) in this digital environment.
A Class Notebook is connected to the Team for Years 1- 6 where students will find content and will be directed to upload evidence of learning in their own sections of the Notebook. If using an iPad for at home learning, it is advisable that the Microsoft Teams and OneNote apps be downloaded.
Preps will have take-home packs so please look out for communication from your class teachers for when to pick up these from the school.
To access Teams, your child will need to use their school login which will look similar to this:
Username: ABCSmithJ@twb.catholic.edu.au
Password: Monkey37
Teachers will have student login details if you need assistance. Our teacher librarian has also uploaded ‘How To’ videos to assist with the login process which can be located on our school library AccessIt site https://au.accessit.online/ORL13/. This site also contains direct links to required or optional online activities relevant for your child’s year level. You can also login via office.com.
If you have siblings enrolled in the school, please ensure you logout of one child’s account before trying to access a sibling’s account. Each student has only been given access to their own year level Team so if a student is denied access, it is because they have tried to access their sibling’s team.
Thank you for your patience with any tech issues when trying to login to your child’s Microsoft Office 365 account- there will no doubt be some issues when first using these new platforms. For technical support, please let the class teacher know that you require support and they will contact the school Information Services Support Technician.
Teachers will be communicating with you when they are available and will send schedules for any times that students will be expected to be online, within normal school hours. Each year level will have a suggested timetable of offline and online as well as interactive and independent activities. Teachers will direct students to ‘Must Do’ activities that need to be completed for assessment of learning. There will also be ‘Optional or Challenge’ activities.
Please provide feedback to your teachers about the amount of content and progress of learning at home. The parent’s role is to support the learning but there is no requirement for you to supervise your child the whole time they are learning at home. Your child’s teacher is responsible for teaching and assessing the learning.
If you and your child are unsure of how to complete an activity, please contact your child’s teacher. However, it is important that parents are being mindful of the number of requests or messages sent to teachers. The teachers need to communicate with all families in the class and as you can imagine this is a very time-consuming task. Being bombarded with non-essential messaging restricts their ability to provide assistance to all students and to offer further learning opportunities in the weeks to come.
More communication will be forthcoming. We trust that your child will learn many new skills throughout this new journey of learning.
TERM TWO ARRANGEMENTS
16 Apr 2020
As you would already be aware, The Queensland Government has decided that, in order to reinforce social distancing across the community and slow the spread of COVID-19, Queensland school students will move to a home-based learning model from 20 April 2020 until at least 22 May 2020 (end of week five) when the position will be reviewed. These arrangements will also apply to kindergartens.
Essential Workers
During this period, all students who are able to be supervised and learn from home are to stay home, except for:
- Children of essential workers on days when they are not able to be supervised at home and no other arrangements can be made. Essential worker means any worker who must continue to attend their workplace for essential business during this time.
- Vulnerable children. Vulnerable children include children identified by schools as vulnerable (i.e. at risk) or who:
- are currently receiving services from Child Safety, including children who are subject to a child protection order
- are subject to a youth justice order.
If you are classified as an essential worker and require for your children to attend school, please ensure to inform your child’s teacher or the school office by this Friday (17 April).
For those who attend school, no additional teaching and learning will occur other than what has been provided by the individual Year levels for home based learning.
Attendance
Attendance rolls will still be maintained but adjusted to reflect the current situation. If your child is sick and is unable to complete home based learning, please contact the school, as this will be recorded as per normal procedure.
It is vital that students continue learning remotely and access the content provided for them by their teacher. These learning activities have been taken from units of work which students would have been taught if they were at school. They are directly linked to the Australian Curriculum and evidence of their learning will be collected for future assessment requirements. It is important to know that teachers will be monitoring student access online and parents will be contacted at the end of each week if students fail to access a sufficient amount of home learning.
Home Learning
Teachers will be forwarding suggested timetables and home learning activities for Week One by this Friday afternoon. You will then receive each following week’s timetables and learning tasks every Thursday afternoon. Please note that the timetables are just that…suggested. We know that there are a variety of issues and variations in each household that may affect the timing of access for students. There is no requirement for students who are learning from home to replicate normal school hours. Learning from home can be accessed at any time of day or any day of the week. You need to make it work for your family. I will send home some further information tomorrow which hopefully will assist you in setting up an effective home learning environment and routine.
As you know, there is an enormous amount of online resources for children and parents to access. To provide you with further clarity of what needs to be done, you will notice that the teachers have divided home learning tasks into “Must Do’s” and “Optional or Challenge”. The “Must Do’s” speak for themselves and it will be these activities that the teachers will assess and kept as evidence of learning. Correction and feedback of Optional tasks will also occur.
Feedback
This is new ground for all of us. We are all on a steep learning curve and the school is endeavouring to provide you with the best possible learning experiences. For this to occur, your proactive feedback is most welcome, especially in relation to ease of navigation around online learning.
Other School Routines
- The Newsletter will still continue to be emailed home every fortnight. You all should receive the first newsletter of the term next Thursday.
- I know that you all will be sorely missing our weekly assemblies, so a weekly assembly will be available to be viewed online each Thursday. Be sure to keep an eye out for that special treat each week!
The school admin is open, so please feel free to contact us if you have any queries in regards to the next five weeks.
I trust you all had a peaceful break over Easter and hope you all remain safe and look forward to catching up with you all as soon as possible.
Regards
Chris Golightly
Principal
Next Week Reminder
27 Mar 2020
Students to stay home next week. There will be supervision if needed. Please contact the teacher if your child will be at school Mon- Thurs.
End of Term 1 Arrangements
26 Mar 2020
Tomorrow (Fri 27 Mar) & next Friday (3 Apr) are Pupil Free Days- no students at school. Next Mon- Thurs students supervised if parents work.
Update- End of Term 1 Arrangements
26 Mar 2020
End of Term 1
As a result of the evolving COVID-19 situation, today the Queensland Government has advised that next week Queensland schools will be student free. While students are not required to attend school next week, the school will provide supervision for students, from Monday to Thursday, where their parents are required to attend work and for vulnerable students (e.g. those living in out-of-home care). Schools will not be providing supervision for students on Friday of next week.
The change to the end of Term 1 arrangements is designed to help our staff and school prepare for the remote delivery of teaching and learning in Term 2. Should this eventuate, it would involve learning at home for many families.
I want to thank our dedicated staff for their continued support of our students during this very challenging time. Their wellbeing is also a key factor in our planning and preparation.
Term 2 Arrangements
As the Premier advised, the precise arrangements for Week 1 of Term 2 will be advised closer to that time and will be guided by the advice of health authorities.
Consistent with the Premier and Prime Minister’s recent announcements about the need to provide appropriate social distancing at schools, we anticipate that parents who can support learning at home will be asked to keep their children at home from Week 1 of Term 2.
It is also likely that schools will need to remain operational at the start of Term 2 for those parents who need to send their children due to work commitments (unless their child is sick) or because the student is vulnerable (such as those living out of home). As a school, we are committed to supporting our essential workers at this challenging time.
We will confirm the specific arrangements for Term 2 as soon as we are able to.
Student Wellbeing and pastoral care
We know this is an unsettling time for the whole community and it is important that as a school community and as families we provide reassurance for our students and keep their lives as normal as possible.
Students will be supported with their learning as much as possible whilst working from home. Teachers will continue to be available should you have questions about the any aspect of this.
Tuition fees
We acknowledge the difficult economic circumstances many families now find themselves in and we would encourage any family facing difficulty with tuition fees to contact me at any time to discuss various options. We remain committed to providing an education to all students through these difficult times.
As the school will continue to operate and our staff will keep working to provide continuity of teaching and learning, including under learning at home arrangements, tuition fees will continue to be charged. As mentioned above, there will be special provisions available to families experiencing financial difficulties relating to COVID-19.
School Communications
Although we are likely to commence under new arrangements in Term 2, we will continue to communicate with you through the normal school channels whenever new information is available.
You can contact the school via email at lourdes@twb.catholic.edu.au or by phoning 46341922.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the sick and the vulnerable at this time and also with the frontline health and emergency services workers bringing care and healing to those affected by the virus. I also wish to acknowledge the efforts of our school staff who continue to provide educational and pastoral support to our children and their families.
I know this will be a difficult time for our whole community and I thank you in advance for your support for our students and staff and your understanding as we go forward.
Yours sincerely,
Chris
Chris Golightly
Principal
2 Ascot Street
Toowoomba QLD 4350
Phone: 07 4591 1200
Fax: 07 4634 4824