16 September 2016

Newsletter Articles

Assistant Principal's Report

Dear Parents and Carers

Hello to all our members of the Henbury community. We are now seven weeks into the new school and eight weeks into the term, and students have settled in beautifully.

New School opening

In the very immediate future we will be having our official opening ceremony. We cannot give the official date for when this will occur but expect it to happen soon.

End of term assembly

Our End of term assembly will occur on Thursday 29 September in the hall. This will begin at 11.00am and finish at approximately 12.30pm.Awards will be presented to students and the video of the Lip Sync battle (produced by CSC OUTREACH) will be shown. Please come along for our first official school assembly on our new premises.

HK – Holistic Health Klub

A huge thank you to HK –Holistic Health Klub (owners Hector and Karlene) who has raised $7000 for our school to help with the purchase of our new wheelchair bus. HK donated funds from various health and exercise sessions they ran over the last few months where they donated $10 from fees for each participant in selected programs, to our school. HK is a full service club with a comprehensive range of programs and personalised service. Tailoring programs to people of all ages, no matter their size or strength. Highly trained staff are on site to assist with any requirements around the gym, as well as delivering personal training, group fitness, strength training, injury rehabilitation, body composition training, yoga and tai chi classes. Please look them up through the following link.

Programs

Henbury School has had a number of exciting activities happening over the last few weeks:

Clontaff Foundation Football Academy

We have also been very fortunate to receive the services of the Dripstone Middle School Clontaff Academy, currently running in the hall on Wednesdays for our male students. Henbury is seeking to have its own academy in conjunction with the staff of Dripstone Middle School's Academy, and discussions are underway with Clontaff's General Manager to make this happen, hopefully to begin early next term on a more permanent basis.

Stars Foundation

Henbury school is also in negotiation with Dripstone Middle School Stars Foundation to establish a girls program into our school. Stars Foundation works along similar lines to Clontaff encouraging young indigenous girls to attend school. More information on this program to come.

Apart from Clontaff activities, students can now access the hall for ball games at recess and lunch and for those looking for a quieter time students can also access the dining room to watch DVD's.

Mist area

Given that it is now getting very hot, as well as opening the hall area, the Wet area in front of the pool is now accessible for students at recess and lunch times. This area has a series of overhead sprinklers that put out a fine mist which has a very soothing effect on students.

Cricket Gala day

Cricket Gala day is to be held on 21 September at Marrara Stadium, please check your student's bags for any permission forms that may have been sent home.

School based immunisation Program

The 3rd round of immunisations occurred for some of our students on Tuesday this week, please stay tuned for notification of further immunisations.

Woodwork/ Metal work programs

The new Woodwork/Metalwork room has had almost all of its equipment arrive and will have programs operating early next term.

Farewells

Cheryl Graham, Aboriginal Islander Education Worker has retired after working at Henbury for 16 years. I thank Cheryl for all the work she has done with students at Henbury. We will officially farewell her at the Term 3 Assembly.

School Review

The school review was held 23 and 24 March. The outcomes of the review will be included in each newsletter. Included this week are Domain 3: A Culture That Promotes Learning. This data will be used when writing the Strategic Improvement Plan towards the end of the year.

Rod Opie
Assistant Principal

NDIS Understanding workshops (Darwin 03, 04, 05 October)

Over three days from 03 October 2016, Darwin based staff and volunteer trainers from community information, capacity building, and advocacy organisation who work directly to inform people with disability and their families about the NDIS will be able to build their capacity in a series of half day workshops. The workshops have been progressively rolled out throughout Australian capital cities over the last few months. Make sure you are subscribed to the Disability Loop eNews to stay in the loop.

The NDIS Understanding series are 'Train the Trainer' workshops that provide the information and resources organisation need to inform people with disability and families about the NDIS. These are particularly important now that changes to the 'Participant Pathway' has changed with the 'transition to full Scheme' in July 2016.

There are six (6) half day NDIS Understanding Train the Trainer workshops. The Darwin workshops will be held over three days (03-05 October 2016) at the Mantra Pandanas.

COGSO Issue 3 Newsletter

Please find attached the electronic version of the 3rd Issue PareNT Newsletter for 2016 of the COGSO PareNT Newsletter.

Printed versions of this newsletter will be sent home before the end of Term.

BLUE 1

We have been very busy settling into our new classroom and school. We absolutely love the new playground equipment that we can use while in our wheelchairs, it has certainly made recess and lunch times more engaging and fun. We enjoy socialising with lots of other students. Now that the weather is warming up, we have access to the hall during these break times where we are able to watch a movie if we would like to. If we work well in class, Janine will often take us out to have a swing on the Liberty Swing or a turn on the spinner. Yesterday we went to the wet play area with the mist sprinklers. It was the best way to cool down after being on the Liberty Swing!

Tessa has returned to school this term and we are very happy to have her back in our classroom. Hamish also celebrated his 16th birthday which was an exciting day for him. In class we have been busy with our communication and mobility programs. Hamish and Indah continue to develop their skills using eye gaze technology. Hayley is becoming a wizz using switches to communicate. Tessa is brushing up on her eye gaze skills after being away for a period of time. We are all working very hard on keeping our bodies mobile, flexible and strong. We love the fact that we have been able to recommence our hydrotherapy programs in the huge, new pool! As a class we are also working on an art piece to put in the art show next term. We are still grocery shopping for the Coffee Club each week and have been enjoying a variety of destinations for community access. One of our favourites is 'The Quarter' at Casuarina. We love to watch the wet play area with the pools, waterfalls and fountains. We look forward to getting to know our new school better as everyone settles in.

Happy 16th Hamish

YELLOW 3

Yellow 3 (formally known as F2) would like to give a huge thank you to Nathan Roach and the Crew at A100 UGL Kentz for their generous donation of $2412.30 to go towards two desktop computers. We can't thank you enough. We are super motivated to use the computers to further our learning. Computer skills are a fundamental part of education. Students that learn to type efficiently and use basic computer functions such as word processing, email and web browsing have a significant advantage in becoming contributing members of their community. The computers donated have already been used to;

• Log in and log off using personalised accounts
• research animals of the Great Barrier Reef using internet explorer and google
• learn to read digital and analogue time and recognise and count notes and coins through the use of interactive websites
• create certificates using Microsoft Publisher
• Send and receive emails
• download and save images
• attach images to emails

In the coming weeks we will use the computers to enter data into spreadsheets using Microsoft Excel and explore the functions and uses of Microsoft Word.

Yellow 3 are very happy with our new school, in particular the BIG new kitchen. Once a week we've been cooking lunch following simple recipes. We cooked pizza, zucchini slice and pasta bake. They tasted delicious and were fun to make.

Upcoming Events

Happy Birthday

SEPTEMBER

Katie V – 3rd
Malakai – 3rd
Breeanna – 4th
Mihali – 6th
Rivers – 11th
Manoli K – 18th
Dominic – 24th
Molly – 27th
Nicole – 29th

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