TERM 4 - WEEK 4

Principal's message

Hello Cairns West families

IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION: Term four is always the busiest term of the school year as there is so much additional stuff happening. We endeavour to communicate information to parents on multiple platforms (txt, Facebook, email, notes and newsletter). Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for the latest information on school events as we approach the end of 2024.

NO POLLING BOOTH AT CAIRNS WEST: Due to our school’s car-park upgrade, the electoral commission are not using Cairns West State School as voting location this Saturday. The closest voting locations in Manunda are Emmanuel Uniting Church Hall (Brown Street) or Cairns School of Distance Education (Hoare Street). Other schools open for polling this weekend in our area include: Balaclava SS, Parramatta SS, Whitfield SS, Woree SHS.

CLASSES 2025: Moving up to the next year level is always an exciting time for students. However, it can also create anxiety and stress for some children. Our school has a thorough process for creating class compositions to ensure we get an equitable balance across all year levels. If you have any requests or would like to discuss anything about your child’s class placement for next year, please contact me personally. It is easier to manage changes or support requests now, as we are planning for 2025, than it is once we have allocated students to classes next year. Any request from parents are treated with utmost confidentiality.

TEMPORARY STAFF CHANGES: Ms Lawton is on leave until 13 November. Mr Gleave will be acting Deputy Principal, and Ms Smyth will be acting Head of Department during Ms Lawton’s absence.

SCHOOL OPINION SURVEY: Last week our school received the results of our 2024 School Opinion Survey. This survey provides our school and the Education Department with valuable information from staff, families and students around themes such as fairness, clarity of rules, culture, partnerships, teaching & learning, wellbeing and staff development. Although our results dropped slightly compared to 2023, we achieved significantly higher than similar Primary Schools, Far Northern Regional schools and Qld State School in 98% of the student survey results, 90% of the staff survey results and 83% of the parent survey results. The areas we scored lower was by a margin of less than 2% in the vast majority of survey areas. These results are strong affirmation of the dedication of our school staff, the positive support of our parents and an endorsement that your children feel safe, valued and happy at school. Thank you all for your support of this survey.

COMMUNITY PLACE: Please feel free to drop in and visit our Community Place at the front entrance of the school on Mayers Street. Our Community Place is designed to offer parents and families a range of services to support with your child’s education.

SCHOOL HOURS REMINDER: Our school hours are 8:30am – 2:30pm daily. The school provides supervision from 8:00am to 3:00pm. Parent support around ensuring children are picked up from school by 3:00pm, at the latest, each day is sincerely appreciated.

INFRASTRUCTURE UPDATE: Finally, after multiple delays, our staff carpark upgrade has commenced. This work is expected to be complete before the end of term. Other work in the pipeline includes the removal of E & F Blocks over the Christmas holidays, our junior playground upgrade (which is now scheduled for Easter holidays next year) and initial planning has commenced for our Go-for-Gold multi-purpose sports facility, which is scheduled for completion by the end of 2025 (hopefully). We look forward to these facility upgrades to support the delivery of quality education for your children.

Yours in Education, Jason Evert - Principal

Deputy Principal - Teaching & Learning

Hello CWSS community,

Welcome to the final term of the school year! Term 4 is always action packed full of engaging teaching & learning and wonderful opportunities both within and outside the school grounds.

This week our youngest students went on an excursion to CPAC to watch the Sarah & Pevan show. A fun, engaging & educational musical performance. How lucky our prep students were to extend their learning outside of the CWSS gates.  Our Preppies were extremely well behaved and were the cutest movers and shakers in the theatre!

Speaking of our youngest students our PREP 4 PREP transition program has commenced on Fridays 9:30-10:30 am. This program led by our awesome Prep teachers, introduces our kindy aged students and their families to the routines and familiarised them with the school environment. If you know a kindy aged student starting school next year please encourage them to contact our school to find out more about this very important program. 

Also this week our intensive swimming program has commenced with our year 5&6 students attending lessons by qualified swim instructors at Woree pool. Thank you to Mr P & our dedicated teaching and support staff for supporting our students with this essential life lesson. The benefits of learning to swim & be safe around water in our tropical environment is so important for all children. Please contact the office regarding permission and payment for your child to attend our swimming program which continues for all grades over the next fortnight.

These are only 2 of many examples where our dedicated teaching and support team go above and beyond the learning in the classroom to benefit your child/ren. This Friday 25 October we recognise World  Teachers’ Day. Please join with me in acknowledging the important role teachers play in the lives of children and families and reach out to a teacher and show your appreciation. CWSS teachers rock!

 Another important role in our community is grandparents and this Sunday 27 October is Grandparents’ Day. Thank you to the grandparents and elders who support CWSS students and share their knowledge, experience and traditions with the younger generation. Grandparents play such an important role in children’s lives and we acknowledge and respect that at CWSS.

Keep up to date with all the exciting learning opportunities happening at CWSS through our school calendar and Facebook page.

I look forward to connecting with families throughout this busy & exciting term!

Thank you for being a partner in your child's learning journey.

Megan Mitchell   Deputy - Principal Teaching and Learning

Deputy Principal - Student Services

Hello Cairns West Families,

What a great start to term 4!  We have started with sunshine and warmer weather which is always nicer than the rain!

Thank you to the families who came to Big Breakfast in week 1.  Big Breakfast is a Cairns West tradition that staff feel is valuable to connect with families and community partners.  Bringing our families back together after school holidays, seeing all the smiling happy children.

There are two partnership initiative  schools in Cairns and that is Cairns West and Balaclava State School.  We are building a stronger partnership with Balaclava and initially this has started through sports and our Interschool Excellence Program supporting transitions into High School.

At the end of week 2 we held our Gala Day where senior students from both Balaclava and Cairns West engaged in sports across the two schools.  It was a hot day however, the children all had a fabulous day getting to know their peers from BSS and playing sport.  Thank you to Aspire Hockey and  Radars Netball who supported the day by refereeing Hockey and Netball.  We plan to do more sporting events into the future and welcome your input and feedback.

Our next big venture is supporting our year 5 (soon to be year 6) students transition successfully into High School by working with Balaclava and Trinity Bay High School on an Interschool Excellence program.  Students have chosen an Excellence program that they are interested in and are engaging in a 6 week program developing their capability in their chosen field and better prepare them to write an application for an Excellence program.  The amazing staff at all 3 schools have created a unit of work and are working together to see our students be successful in the future.  We are so lucky to have such committed and dedicated teachers!  Our year 5 parents will be invited to the Interschool Excellence Showcase in week 8 (more information to come).  This will be an opportunity for students to share their project and give parents an opportunity to enquire about year 7 Trinity Bay High School enrolments.

We look forward to busy Term 4!  It is imperative during this busy term that your children are here every day!  There are so many opportunities for them to win amazing prizes, just by coming to school.

Take care of yourself and each other

Hayley Lawton -Deputy Principal Student Services

RACQ Streets Ahead

The RACQ Community and Education Team will be delivering the RACQ Streets Ahead road safety lessons to Prep to Year 2 students from Wednesday 27 November to Friday 29 November 2024.

If you would like to reinforce and extend your child’s learning of pedestrian, passenger and riding safety, you can access Resource Packs with different age-appropriate activities in each.  In addition to these packs, there are also four educational videos demonstrating the strategies taught for Prep – Year Two students.  These resources will assist you to continue teaching road safety, implementing the strategies your children will learn, and applying them to your everyday lives.

https://www.racq.com.au/streetsahead

Nepal visit by staff

At the end of term three, staff members – Mrs Kathy Laurila, Mrs Naina Gurung and Ms Gilaine Dalglish went to Nepal to deliver school stationery supplies to the Beldangi refugee camp in Jhapa.

This was made possible by many CWSS staff members who generously donated to this worthy cause. The team at the Bhutanese Refugee Children Forum and Pastor Jonathon Rai asked us to pass on their sincerest heartfelt thanks and to let you all know that this special gift will make a world of difference to their educational outcomes.

Mrs Gilaine Dalglish

WHAT'S on at the WEST in term 4

PREP 4 PREP information

Cairns Fire & Rescure Service visit year 1's

On Wednesday year 1 students  had a visit from Cairns Fire Service. Students were reminded in case of a fire to;

1. Stop, drop and roll
2. Get down low and go, go, go
3. Test your smoke alarms
4. Scream and shout if there is ever a fire

Students then had an opportunity to look inside a fire truck and have a turn of using the fire hose!

Unity Care September newsletter

Welcome to the UnitingCare Newsletter for July - September!

We are very excited to see our new building coming along, so this could be the last full newsletter written from our temporary office!  Once we have a definite date for our re-location back to Birch St, we will issue a mini newsletter to let you all know when it is happening, and any programs or services that may be affected.  

In this edition you will find information and updates about:

• Free Weekly Community Pantry Days
• Family Support Services
• Child & Adolescent Counselling Services
• Sunshine Multicultural Playgroup
• Pantry Day Partners - With SHAC, and in October with QSTARS!
• Our events and celebrations over the past few months
• Next Learners Driver's Licence Course - October

The Hub Team

Disability resources

The Australian Government Department of Education has released new resources for students with disability and their parents and caregivers. The resources provide practical information about the rights of students with disability and the obligations of education providers under the Disability Standards for Education 2005. The resources were co-designed by people with disability, with help from Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA).

Find out more at: www.education.gov.au/students-with-disability-resources

BIG BREAKFAST - FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER 2024

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Thank you Piccones IGA😍

A huge THANK YOU to all those families who shop at IGA and nominate Cairns West ss as a recipient of points.  The points add up and over the past 6 months we have accumulated many points which equals $463.24. 

Thank you IGA for your community benefits donation

HPE news - term 3

Rugby League

Well done to the school Rugby League 9’s team who performed exceptionally well at the FNQ carnival winning all of their pool games. Unfortunately, we missed out on a spot in the final by a couple of tries.   All team members are commended for their excellent attitude sportsmanship and behaviour throughout the day.

Futsal

Awesome performance by the inexperienced boys Futsal team at the recent FNQ championships. The team finished 2^nd in their pool and then progressed through to semi finals. Unfortunately, we went down to the eventual winners St Theresa’s in a close game.  All players displayed a positive attitude and respectful behaviour throughout the day.

Athletics

Congratulations to Louange Assumani for her 3^rd place finish in Age Champion at District Athletics carnival

Cairns West State School had the privilege of hosting a touring netball team from Singapore!

The girls were very excited to be able to play an international team and especially being able to show their skills in front of their fellow students.

Both teams got off to a steady start scoring goal for goal and first half was even.

Singapore used a more aerial game and used their extra height to have a very strong 3rd quarter and they went on the take the game 30 – 20.

It was a great experience for our team. The girls all play for Radars club and anyone wishing to join in 2025 can contact Miss Bruton or Mr P.

RATEP WrapUp - term 3

Hello everyone

Sharing our most recent newsletter which showcases the successes being had across the state in the RATEP program........

STEAM Showcase 2024

STEAM is Science, Technologies, Engineering, Arts and Maths

CWSS students have been developing their Science, Technologies, Engineering, Arts and Maths skills while experimenting, programming, coding and designing robotic devices, computer games and much more!   We have been exploring where all of our power comes from and how we can save power and find different ways to generate power in the future.  All these skills will be shared at STEAM Showcase on 7th and 8^th of November.  During the Showcase, students will get to delve deeper into technological and science experiments and use digital tools to learn about human health and fitness. 

All students will get to visit the STEAM Showcase with their class over the 2 day event.

Families and toddlers are welcome to come and explore on Thursday from 1.15pm to 2pm before you head to parade.

Come and see what amazing work CWSS students have been working on throughout the year.

Mrs Feletar - Digital Technology Teacher

CWSS ADOPT-A-COP

🤩Celebrating Student Achievements😍

Term 3 - Week 9 & 10

Term 4 - Week 1

Term 4 - Week 2

Term 4 - week 3

Term 4 week 4

Swimming Program Information

Students from Prep to Year 6 will be participating in the Swimming Program in Term 4 at the Woree Aquatic Centre. The program will be based on Water Safety and Learn to Swim and will be administered by qualified Aust Swim Instructors.

Students participating in the Swimming program will have the opportunity to:

• Develop important life skills 
• Undertake swimming and water safety in, on and around the water

Students will be travelling to and from the pool by bus.  It is strongly encouraged that all students attend this important educational opportunity, unless the student has a medical condition supported by a doctor’s note.

• What to bring:   Togs, towel, swim shirt, hat, shoes, goggles (optional) in a marked bag
• Transport:           Students will be travelling by Kinetic bus
• Dates:                     See timetables below for each year level

Year 5C swimming

TRYFOR5! Term 4

100% Attendance Reward Winner - ATTENDANCE STAR!  - Each week 5 tickets will be drawn from the Try for 5! 100% Club Box to win TRYFOR5! prizes. Mid-term prizes to be drawn in week 5 - 2 x $100 Movie vouchers and 1 x $100 Timezone voucher End of term prizes to be drawn in Week 10 - $100 Movie vouchers 2 x Timezone vouchers Cowboys Merchandise packs to be distributed throughout the term.

Lucky door prize winners at the Big Breakfast

Term 3 - Week 8 & 9

Term 4 - Week 1

Term 4 - Week 2

Term 4 - Week 3

In week 6 on Wednesday 6 November the TryFor5! Team will be visiting our school. Tilly and Ray will be visiting classes from 8:30am-9:30am to provide breakfast (sausage sizzle) to any child that is at school. The junior and senior classes with the best attendance for weeks 1-4 will then be invited to attend a ‘special’ breakfast to meet the TryFor5! Team at 9:30am. The winning classes will be announced at parade in week 5. 

TRYFOR5! WINNERS - Each fortnight 1 class from the Junior school (P-3) and 1 class from the Senior school (4-6) class with the Best/Most Improved (alternate fortnight) attendance will be rewarded with a class set of Try for 5! Prizes.  The classes will be announced on parade and prizes delivered to classes. 

Term 3 100% Club

Miss Smyth, Chappy Esther and Mr Evert had an ice cream party with the Term 3 100% attenders earlier this term. Coming to school 100% of the time can be difficult to achieve. Well done to our 100% students. 

Ice cream Party - week 2

Preps go to Pevan and Sarah show

On Monday all the Preps went on an exciting excursion to CPAC to see Pevan and Sarah perform.

They represented our school beautifully with exceptional behaviour. This was a great morning of singing and dancing.

Pevan and Sarah exursion

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Cairns Safer Streets Program- Term 4

Cairns Safer Streets is a multi-agency, co-located group of State Government representatives delivering innovative projects through community and whole-of-government partnerships.

We have developed a place-based approach in Cairns West which enables the development and implementation of innovative strategies to address underlying causal factors of complex social issues.

See the timetable for term 4 activities below.......

Gala Day - held on Friday week 2

Gala Day photos

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Community Space and Place

What’s happening in our Community Garden and our Community Place

We have recently been having some meetings within the school with outside organisations.  Some of these are Government organisations and some are not.

The result of these meetings is our Community Place will have more People, Places and Programs to help us help ourselves.  Please visit our Community Place and check out what is available and keep an eye on the board outside the room or refer to the information in the table below

Organisations who are still to confirm are the registry of Birth, Deaths and Marriages

If your child has not been registered or is in need of a birth certificate, they will be in the Community Place room Thursday 7 November from 1:30pm – 2:30pm.

PLAYGROUP - We have two playgroups per week in the Community Place - One is on Wednesday morning with Uniting Care and the other is on Friday morning with Wuchopperen.  Please come and play with your pre-school child on either of these days.

Look forward to seeing you there   -   Annie