21 February 2025

FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

We have continued our strong and positive start to 2025. Students are benefitting from the lesson planning that our teachers have done, our student attendance is positive and we are displaying pride in our school by keeping our grounds and learning areas clean. Great things are happening at Browns Plains State School.

Whilst our student attendance has been positive, daily attendance figures show that our attendance on Mondays and Fridays is lower than the other days of the week. Every day of learning counts, so I ask that students attend school every day unless they are ill. Consistent attendance relates to better academic, social and wellbeing outcomes for students.

P&C

Our Annual General Meeting for the P&C will be held in the school library on Friday, March 21 at 9am. Afterwards, a brief P&C Meeting will be held. If you are considering nominating for a role, please feel free to reach out to me via email for further details/information in relation to the roles. Please email principal@brownsplainsss.eq.edu.au with any questions. As a school, we are aware that parents and carers are very busy, but we also strongly desire input from parents and carers in order to make our school the best it can be. With this in mind, the aim is to ensure that members of the P&C can contribute as much or as little as they desire, without pressure.

School Priorities

When thinking about learning at schools, we often think only of students. However, the dedicated staff at Browns Plains State School continue to learn and develop their teaching skills too. Already this year, we have focused heavily on developing our professional knowledge and practice aligned to our areas of school priorities. Specifically, we have focused our time on improving staff and student wellbeing by developing and applying our staff vision and values and expanding our knowledge of supporting student wellbeing by learning about how the brain functions and optimal ways of checking in with students.

We have also continued our learning and application in relation to Structured Literacy, which aligns with research. Teachers are working hard to embed this in their classrooms.

Every year, schools prioritise one to three specific areas to focus on over the course of a year. In 2025, our 3 priorities are:

1. Staff and Student Wellbeing
2. English – Structured Literacy
3. Mathematics

These priorities build upon our work over the past two years and align with Department of Education priorities. We believe that as we continue to focus on these priority areas, we will continue to see positive gains in learning and wellbeing outcomes for students.

All the best!

Mr Poulter

FROM THE DEPUTY PRINCIPAL

A huge thank you to all our families for such a calm and positive start to the year. We welcome all our littlest learners in Prep starting for the first time as well as many students and families new to the school Our students have settled in well and are enthusiastically beginning their learning.  

Solving Problems Positively

Even with such a calm start, every day in every school, there are difficulties between students. Many of these begin because students cannot see the other person’s perspective or understanding how to resolve small problems before they become bigger.

Is It Rude, Is It Mean, Or Is It Bullying?

Often students may talk about being bullied without understanding the difference between bullying and conflict. Conflicts are an unavoidable part of life for both adults and children but it is important to understand the difference between these so that we can have conversations and interventions to empower students with tools to solve their problems appropriately.

Rude = Inadvertently saying or doing something that hurts someone else. These behaviours are often spontaneous, unplanned inconsideration, based on thoughtlessness or poor manners but not meant to actually hurt someone.

Mean = Purposefully saying or doing something to hurt someone once (or maybe twice). This might be actions done or words spoken impulsively, often motivated by angry feelings or misunderstandings. This can certainly be hurtful and it is important that there is accountability and intervention.

Bullying = Intentionally aggressive behaviour, repeated over time, that involves an imbalance of power. Bullying is intentionally hurtful to others and is deliberately continued.

As a school we are working to build the toolkit of each student to recognise problems that may occur with others as a speedbump, have a range of strategies to solve these and develop better and more peaceful resolutions. Conversations to support learning these strategies will help students to use them appropriately.

Leesa Warwick

Deputy Principal

FROM THE DEPUTY PRINCIPAL

NAPLAN 2025 – Important information

The testing window for NAPLAN is the 12^th of March – 24^th of March, 2025, inclusive of catch-up dates. The last date for catch-up of the Year 3 written test is the 17^th of March, 2025. Students will complete Reading Comprehension, Mathematics, Language Conventions and Writing. 

Participation in NAPLAN

NAPLAN is for all Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students. ACARA supports inclusive testing, so all students have the opportunity to participate in the National Assessment Program.

Information on adjustments available for students with disability who have diverse functional abilities and needs is provided in the National protocols for test administration.

Schools should work with parents/carers and students to identify, on a case-by-case basis, reasonable adjustments required for individual students with disability to access NAPLAN.

To help inform these decisions, you may consult the National protocols for test administration, NAPLAN public demonstration site, the Guide for schools to assist students with disability to access NAPLAN.

In exceptional circumstances, a student with a disability that severely limits their capacity to participate in the assessment, or a student who has recently arrived in Australia and has a non-English speaking background, may be granted a formal exemption.

Your school principal and your local test administration authority can give you more information on adjustments for students with disability or the process required to gain a formal exemption.

Absences

Where possible, schools may arrange for individual students who are absent at the time of testing to complete missed tests at another time during the school’s test schedule.

Please ensure your child is at school on time to each day.

Below is the testing schedule;

Theresa Kooyman
Deputy Principal

FROM THE HEAD OF DEPARTMENT - STUDENT SERVICES

Positive Acknowledgment System

As a Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) school we implement a Positive Acknowledgement System. The aim of the Acknowledgment System is to acknowledge students for the behaviours we expect. When staff positively acknowledge students for the behaviour expected, students earn tickets. Students may earn tickets for showing respect, being safe and learning. For every 20 tickets students earn, they receive a levelled certificate and begin working towards the next level. At certain levels students will also receive extra reinforcements as shown below.

Morning Muster

This year we have begun conducting mini parades, known as Morning Muster, to review the PBL and Reboot focuses as well as deliver important messages to the relevant year levels. Currently Morning Muster is held for the following year levels in their undercover areas at 9am:

Year 1 and Year 2 – Tuesday

Year 3 and Year 4 – Thursday

Year 5 and Year 6 - Wednesday.

Break Times

This year we have opened up more play areas throughout the school to offer more options for students to engage in. The basketball court, 5-6 chill out area and the hall have all been a hit! Also offered to our Year 3-6 students are a number of clubs.

Attendance

Our attendance target at Browns Plains State School is 90%! We use Attendance Trackers for every student in our school so that each student’s attendance is visible to them. The trackers help students to understand how often they need to be at school to reach our school attendance target of 90%.

It has been a great start to the year in terms of our attendance. Our attendance was highest in Week 1 with all classes sitting in the yellow or green zone! We have continued to see a number of classes maintaining the attendance goal of 90% + attendance, however, there have been some dips. Please ensure that your children are at school every day and on time. Higher attendance is linked to higher learning outcomes and the development of positive relationships with staff and peers. For more information click the following link - https://education.qld.gov.au/initiatives-and-strategies/initiatives/every-day-counts/for-parents-and-community

Please ensure your children are at school every day if they are well. If your child is absent from school, provide a reason for their absence using one of the methods listed below.

• Phone: 07 3809 6222
• Reply to the text message sent by the school on the day of your child’s absence
• Return the Unexplained Absence letter with a reason and signature

Unexplained Absence letters are generated and distributed to students each fortnight. These letters provide dates of your child’s absences which have not already been explained. If you receive one please fill in the reason/s for your child's absence/s, sign and have your child return it to their class teacher. Please work with us to reduce the number of unexplained absences in 2025!

Lost Property

Our Lost Property bin is located outside the Wellbeing Hub. The Wellbeing Hub is located to the right of the administration building if you are walking down from the front gate. This bin is sorted through regularly and items with names on them are returned to students’ teachers to give back. Please ensure you have labelled all of your children’s belongings to help this process. Any nameless items left in the bin at the end of the term will be sorted, discarded of or donated to our second hand uniform stalls.

Jessica Galbraith

Head of Department - Student Services

STUDENT WELLBEING

Fortnightly focus: I can transition safely and respectfully  

This fortnight, students have been unpacking the meaning of transitions. A transition is to change from one activity to another or to move from one location to a new one. Students have been learning to move safely around the school whilst also being respectful to other learners by walking past classrooms quietly.

In their classes, students have co-constructed anchor charts that display the transition expectations from each of the following areas:

Reboot Tool: Our Three Brains

Our Brain can be broken down into three main parts – Smart, Emotional and Wild.

The Wild Brain is responsible for all our automated functions – heart rate, breathing, body temperature control, movement, and our fight / flight / freeze (survival) response.

The Emotional Brain is responsible for our feelings and emotions (both positive and negative) and memory. It also houses the Amygdala which constantly scans like a smoke detection and picks up on any stress or perceived threat to our wellbeing or survival.

The Smart Brain is responsible for higher order thinking – complex thought, problem solving, language, reasoning, creativity and decision making.

When the amygdala perceives a threat, it will set off an alarm that sends us into Wild Brain and activates our Fight / Flight / Freeze response. The Wild Brain then hijacks the rest of our brain, shutting down all other non-essential functions, meaning it’s really hard for us to make a smart decision or to be reasoned with when we’re in Fight, Flight or Freeze.

With the support of Reboot, we are teaching students how to ‘feed’ their Wild Brain with things like breathing and movement so they can move up into Emotional and Smart Brains. We are making sure our learning environments address the physical (Wild Brain), emotional (Emotional Brain) and cognitive (Smart Brain) elements so that all students can effectively engage in learning.