10 November 2022

Newsletter Articles

FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Newsletter

2022 Active School Travel School of Excellence

A huge congratulations to the staff and community of Worongary! What a team effort!! On Friday night, the AST committee attended the Annual AST awards night at SeaWorld. The AST committee was nominated in three awards: School of the Year, Innovation Award and Teacher of the Year Award.

Congratulations to Kathrine Davies for the unanimous nomination by the AST committee. Her involvement and leadership in this committee has been outstanding!!

The Worongary SS received the School of Excellence Award. This is an amazing feat with strong competition between the schools, all making a difference in their communities across the South East Region.

Congratulations to the AST team who have achieved so much in our first year of the three-year program!!

WORONGARY STATE SCHOOL STUDENTS TAKE TOP HONOURS AT THE SOUTH QLD STATE CHAMPIONSHIP – ELEMENTARY DIVISION

Backing up from National and World Competition last season, Worongary State School have qualified again for spots at the Australian National VEX Robotics Championships in Sydney

Gold Coast, Queensland – 29 October, 2022 – Worongary State School’s students from our VEX IQ Competition team SS33007S, secured first place in the Teamwork Challenge with Team 4216B from Biggera Waters State School at the 2022-2023 VEX IQ Challenge, Slapshot - South Queensland State Championship held at Merrimac State High School this past weekend. Team SS33007S were awarded the Teamwork Champion Award as well as the Excellence Award. The Excellence Award is awarded to a team that exemplifies overall excellence in creating a high quality VEX robotics program, with high rankings across design, teamwork challenge and robot skills and other judge award rankings. The students collaborated with 29 teams from Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

Our Girl Powered team, 19931C ranked 3rd in the finals and Team 19931B ranked 12th overall on the day at the end of a tough day of competition. These teams also now have the opportunity to showcase their skills at the Australian National VEX Robotics Championship (Elementary) to be held in Sydney this December.

Worongary State School’s VEX IQ Robotics teams has grown from three students in 2021 to twenty-two students from Years 4, 5 and 6 this year. In the VEX IQ Competition, students, with guidance from their STEM Teacher, student and parent mentors/volunteers, build a robot using VEX IQ parts to solve an engineering challenge that is presented each year in the form of a game. This season’s game is called Slapshot. Teams work together to score points in Teamwork Matches and get to show off their skills individually in driver-controlled and programming Robot Skills Challenges.

The VEX IQ Competition fosters student development of teamwork, collaboration, critical thinking, project management, and communication skills required to prepare them to become the next generation of innovators and problem solvers.

Once again, I cannot wait to share the journey of these students with you!

Mr Adam Brandt
Principal

Save the Date

FROM THE GUIDANCE OFFICER

Managing anxiety – the Batman effect!

As you know, I am a big fan of Mindfulness as a way to bring your focus in to the present and stop your monkey mind overthinking things.

However, many people find it more stressful than helpful trying to slow their minds, and people with trauma backgrounds can find it confronting and anxiety-provoking.

So, what if you’re not the kind of person who wants to breathe deep, focus on bodily sensations, and let those thoughts come and go? What if you’re a more “active” responder to stress, adversity, and challenge? What if you want to “do something”, and being mindful isn’t the something you have in mind?

For many of our children, the following strategy could be worth trying out (as an adjunct to Mindfulness practices, please!), especially for assessments and presentations. A fellow GO told me a while back how her son created a costume for a class talk which covered his face and gave him somewhere to hide. He still gave the talk … just as an ‘alter-ego’.

The following article was written by Australia’s very own family therapist, Dr Justin Coulson (who is worth looking up by the way – great, practical and positive approaches to parenting and child psychology). So, I will leave it in his words:

Let me introduce you to “The Batman Effect”.

In a recent podcast conversation with Professor Ethan Kross , a University of Michigan researcher (whose PhD supervisor was Walter Mischel of the “Marshmallow Experiment” fame), described a study he completed with several colleagues where a sample of 4 and 6-year-old children were invited to complete a boring task on a computer.

The children were instructed to work hard, keep at it as long as they could - and they were reminded the task was boring. And then, to test their commitment to the cause, the researchers informed the kids that they could take a break whenever they wanted to play a fun game on a tablet. This distraction opportunity is very important. You’ll see why in a moment.

The children were divided into three groups:

Group one - Researchers told them to ask themselves, "Am I working hard?" while they completed the task.

Group two - Researchers instructed these children to ask themselves, "Is ______ working hard?" (they filled in the blank with their own names). This creates some “self-distance” or “psychological distance” by talking to oneself in the third person.

Group three - Researchers told these children to pretend they were a favourite hard working character like Batman, Bob the Builder, or Dora the Explorer. They received a prop, like a cape, as a visual reminder to act like their character. And what they asked themselves was "Is Batman working hard?"

Rachel White, Ethan Kross, and their colleagues found that children who referred to themselves in the first-person did not enjoy the task. They took the most breaks, motivation was poor, as were results, and they essentially struggled to get through the task. The second group - those who referred to themselves in the third person - did a little better. But those with the most psychological distance from the task, the ‘Batman’ group, worked harder, took fewer breaks, and enjoyed the task more than the others!

Subsequent research by Kross and his colleagues has found that this idea of pretending to be Batman works for adults too.

Here’s why:

• Thinking of yourself as a separate entity can reduce anxiety. It’s not you that has to perform. It’s Batman. This seems to not only reduce anxiety but build confidence and determination.

How?

It allows us to “self-distance” or “psychologically distance”. We step back from the situation and see it with less emotion, less passion. It reigns in that worry and stress and helps us to show additional restraint and discipline. Adopting an alter ego is a powerful way to step away from our immersion in a stressful or challenging moment and it allows us to respond the way that our alter ego might, rather than the way we are about to.

In practice, the stories are extraordinary:

• A drama teacher told me that her shyest students became new people as they explored the character they were asked to play on stage.
• A special needs teacher told me that an autistic child became braver and more gentle as he pretended to be his favourite character in a movie.
• A father told me he became more compassionate toward his child when he took on the alter ego of a friend who was patient with his children.
• A police officer I’d taught this to explained how being ‘Batman’ brought humour into an interaction with a partner before they dealt with a challenging situation, and helped them deal with it more effectively than they had planned (and without the vigilante justice).

Being Batman might not work for you. But here’s what I’ve found does:

1. Imagine an audience. Just knowing people are watching you when you’re stressed might be enough to help you deal with it better. (As an example, we tend to be kinder towards our challenging children in public than at home.)
2. Think of a mentor and channel them during stressful times. I call them my inner mental mentor, and when I try to be that person, I become a better version of myself.

The Batman effect is an active cognitive strategy that moves us forward with confidence as we stay in the stressful situation, but with our alter-ego leading the charge. So long as we choose our alter-ego wisely (make sure it’s not Deadpool or the Hulk), we’ll usually find better ways forward than ever before.

Dr Justin Coulson CSP

SPEAKING OUT 2022

Junior School Speaking Out

This term we will be holding our annual Junior School speaking out competition.

This is a wonderful opportunity to discover the hidden talents within our school.

The overall aim is to help students gain confidence and experience in public speaking. This is not an assessable item but a very important skill none the less.

Students will learn about the basics of public speaking in class (stance/gesture/ eye contact and projection)

The planning and writing of the speech will occur at home and then be presented in class during weeks 7 and 8.

A finalist will be chosen from each class to compete against other finalists in week 9.

Prep Topics:

30 seconds My favourite (sport/ movie/ activity etc)

Year 1/ 2 Topics:

30 seconds- 1 minute (My favourite/ Favourite Superhero/A family story)

Heather deWatteville Doe
Worongary State School

ACTIVE SAFE TRAVEL

Nearly 100 students at Worongary State School entered the AST (Active Safe Travel) drawing competition and even though the winners have not been decided by the GCCC as yet, we thought it might be nice to showcase some of the entries in the newsletter each week. Here are the ones for this week.

You have the chance to win 1 of 3 bikes by completing this survey.

This survey closes on Friday 18 November 3:00pm. 1 entry / household.

Winners will be announced at the Worongary State School AST Travel Breakfast on Wednesday
30 November at 8:30am. If you are unable to attend, winners will be notified.

Supercheap Auto has kindly donated these prizes especially for our community.

The Active Street Travel Committee is interested in collecting data on how our families travel to Worongary State School.

We appreciate your feedback.

AST Travel Committee

P&C NEWS

DISCOS BACK

The P&C have voted on purchasing our own disco lights, working towards being more sustainable, we’ve been able to conduct 2 Discos: A Pyjama Party and the Spooky & Kookie Disco. We were also lucky enough to have the talented Mr. Jay as our DJ Host, where he grooved and got the party started for each of the junior & senior discos. Overall, this has saved the WSS P&C approximately $400-$600 per disco as a result it means that we are able to have a disco EVERY TERM! Yay! We have already started planning for 2023, it’s in the calendar, we are hosting a Disco on the Thursday of week 5 EVERY TERM!!! We will just change up the Theme here and there. Speaking to the students around WSS, they are so excited about the discos being back and to say they had an awesome time, is an understatement.

We have also had an amazing group of Parent community Volunteers and our Amazing Teachers attend the discos, to assist with supervision, service, and an overall great night. We thank you all for working with us and making the event successful, and it has been a pleasure to meet and working alongside you all.

We would also like to extend our humble gratitude to some of our local businesses who have contributed towards our discos with prize give aways for both the students and volunteers. Thank you again to Hudson & Rosies Café, Hungry Jacks Nerang, McDonalds Nerang and most recently Le Vintage Boutique Café. Your kind donation really highlighted the student’s night and was very much appreciated in further thanking some special (& Lucky) Volunteers.

CONTAINERS FOR CHANGE/BATTLE OF THE SCHOOLS

Term 3- Raising funds for New School Readers & participating in the Battle of the School Program with Express Recycling. Thank you to everyone that helped contribute to the Collection Days throughout Term 3. Our collection dates alone awarded us with an additional $383.00 towards purchasing some new home readers. In addition, we were acknowledged and surprised with an additional $250.00 from the Battle of the Schools Program. That gives us an amazing total of $633 to spend on Home Readers. Thank you to Express Recycling Nerang and Hon Meaghan Scanlon. You certainly did surprise us with a runner-up prize! Congratulations to Gilston SPS who took out the winning prize of $500.00- Well done.

Term 4- Collection Dates have already started. The Remaining dates are Friday November 18 & December 2. We hope you can continue to support us in collecting 10c Recycling containers and dropping them off into our Recycling Specific Lime Green Wheelie Bins located in the courtyard area of the Administration Building. Furthermore, you can continue your support over the Christmas holiday period by donating to our Scheme ID C10265867.

WONDER RECYCLING- BREAD BAG COLLECTION

This incentive is now over for the year 2022. However, you can still recycle your soft plastics and drop them off at Woolworths, Coles or the Red Cycle area. We thank our community for assisting with collecting the bread bags, we didn’t meet the 5 Box Minimum collection (5kg of bread bags per box). However, we came ever so close, with 4 whole boxes, which is pretty good. Thank you.

TUCKSHOP NEWS

We have had some celebrations in the Tuckshop- Paul, our convenor’s Birthday and Teacher/staff Appreciation Day, where we put on a special brekky for the Staff & teachers of WSS. We celebrated another year with Tuckshop Appreciation Day, we thank all the students and teachers that made Paul’s & Caitlin’s day by saying thank you and showing their appreciation.

LAST DAY OF TERM

The Tuckshop will be closed on the very last day of term for cleaning & stock take. We apologise for any inconvenience however this is a requirement due to the Extended School Holiday period. Please stay tuned for an announcement of the end of term meal deal on the WSS P&C Facebook page.

UNIFORM STORE NEWS

We are all set for our Stock levels for Back To school (BTS). Orders were placed back in June and will arrive the week before school starts back in 2023. We are currently out of stock of Size 10 & 12 Polos and will no longer be stocking the Non-Embroidery hats.

For all your BTS uniform requirements please become a member of the WSS Face Book page to keep up to date on appointments and BTS online ordering and collection.

REMINDER- the uniform store is Eftpos only and no longer accepts cash or keeps cash on premises.

Senior Shirts for the year 2023 are now on pre-sale. These will be different in design to past years as it is the 30 Year Celebration of Worongary State School being open. We have general shirts available to try on in the Uniform store. Please ensure you choose the correct sizing as these are made to order. It is the responsibility of the Parent/carer/guardian to ensure the correct sizing is ordered as NIL returns, refunds or exchanges are available and purchasing is NOT available after the pre-order date. The senior shirts pre-sale is open now until 10th February 2023. The shirts are a one-time order only and will not be available for purchase after this date. 2023 Year 6 student families, please ensure you attend the Uniform store during operating hours to try on the senior shirts to ensure correct sizing.

2022 Graduation Keepsakes are now on sale through the QKR! App. Order now and by 21 November for all your Graduation Keepsake needs. We have a number of Signature style keepsakes available and photo frames/albums ad pens. Look under the P&C event menu IN QKR! App for further details.

GRANT SUCESSES

We recently won 2 x grants: Nerang RSL awarded WSS P&C with funds to purchase a 3- Flag Display for all our formal presentations & acknowledgements. We also were delighted to receive notification from Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace MP, advising that our Triple S Grant (aka School Subsidy Scheme Grant) submission completed in November 2021 has been successful! We've been awarded $57,619 that we will be putting towards our $100,000 goal of much needed playground upgrades. This will be in addition to the fundraising efforts over the last 2 years of the WSS P&C and School Community, where we raised $55,000 towards this goal. In addition, Worongary State School are contributing a $10,000 Contingency allowance towards the same goal. What a great achievement, and we are looking forward to starting the infrastructure planning phase of our playground upgrades. Thank you!

BE IN THE KNOW

Stay up to date by joining the Worongary P&C Facebook page. Need to know what's happening around the tuckshop and uniform store or what events are coming up? Join and never miss anything.

VOLUNTEERING

We have some events coming up next year that require some support from our school community. Please stay tuned on specific support needed.

Do you own a business? Do you want to support your school fundraising? We are looking for donations, contributions or sponsors for the Colour Foamraisers. Do you want to sponsor a particular obstacle, or colour station, or donate prizes for the highest fundraising cohort/class? We are looking for some great prizes to conduct a large raffle, as for every $10 fundraised the student gets a raffle ticket and could be a winner of one or even multiple prizes. Examples: weekend/nights away, activities, shows, big ticket Toys (lego/ video games etc). Please contact Tracy via email at Pandc@worongaryss.eq.edu.au if you are keen to donate or sponsor.

SAVE THE DATE – TERM 1/ 2023

WSS P&C meeting - 8 February 2023
Disco- Thursday 23 February
Colour Foamraiser – Friday 31 March

SCHOOL PLUS

EXCURSIONS

Community Notices

Choose how to add this event to your calendar:

Apple Calendar iPhone, iPad, Mac - Download .ics file

Outlook Desktop Outlook - Download .ics file

Android Calendar Android devices - Download .ics file

Other Calendar Google Calendar, Yahoo, etc. - Download .ics file

Download Event