LONGREACH SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION Email:admin@longreachsde.eq.edu.au

 Phone: 07 4658 4222Fax: 07 4658 4200

What a great term it has been! As I write this we have just had two fabulous days with our artist in residence Arthur Conlon who haspainted a wonderful mural on our tank outside the Conference Room. Arthur also did an on-air art session with the students whichwas well attended and most enjoyed by all participants. Report cards will be out next week. This gives you the best insight into how your student is doing. Your teachers spend a lot of timeensuring the rating your student receives is accurate. The column I always go to in Report Cards is the Effort. We want all students tohave tried their best to achieve so if your student’s academic rating may not be an A, if they have given it their all, that’s all you canask. Term 3 sees our first Western Alliance Virtual camp. Thanks to Mrs Bates and her team for arranging this. I’m sure that students aregoing to have some great fun. School Musical Workshop goes ahead in Week 7 and we are so looking forward to having our studentsall together again. Mrs Moore will send out further details regarding this early next term. Our School Review also takes place in Week 8 next term and we will be holding special information sessions for our parents and Home Tutors in preparation for this Review during our School Musical Workshop week.Have a safe and enjoyable holiday. Travel safely if you are heading away. Yours in education, Bobby Harding Principal

Bobby Harding

BUSH TELE 2020TERM 2 2020

ISSUE 125/6/2020

Excellence in Education for Isolated Families

PRINCIPAL'S NEWSFLASH

DEPUTY PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Deputy PrincipalRachelle Moore

Here we are at the end of the most unique term in schooling, that we are sure to remember forever. Fortunatelyfor SDEs, life was mostly normal, however we did miss our face-to-face field services hugely. This term we have had a few unique and exciting opportunities for our students despite COVID-19, namely ‘The Outback Cup’,Musica Viva concert ‘Taking Shape’ and our Artist in Residence on-air art session with Arthur Conlon. Thank you to Miss Cassin and all the guest presenters who made the ‘Outback Cup’ so much fun. Unfortunately for me, beingYELLOW through and through, Boree were runners up, however all families who took part did an amazing job. I loved watching thevideos. Thank you to Miss Pallotta for assisting in the successful running of the Musica Viva concert. I have already been in contactwith Musica Viva and we look forward to providing our families with more online Music opportunities in the future. Thank you toMiss Judge for organising the Indigenous Art with Deadly Arthur. Next time you visit the school, be sure to check out our amazingwater tank. We hope to invite Arthur Conlon back to our school in 2021 for more art sessions with our school community. Thankyou to Mrs Winterbotham, Mr Schiffke and Mr Millar for their weekly on-air sessions with the musical cast. They have done awonderful job in ensuring our cast are rehearsing together, learning their lines and developing their characters. It will be veryexciting next term when the entire cast and chorus of the musical gets together for the School Musical Workshop. It is only 8 weeksaway. Lastly, enjoy the holidays and do not forget to keep practising your musical dances and songs!Take care, Rachelle

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT'S REPORT

Head of Department Dane McDonald

It has been a busy term and one that has certainly had its challenges. I want to thank everyone for embracing these challenges andcontinuing to make this school the resilient and well-functioning community that it is. While it has been a while since I have seen manyof you, there has still been plenty happening within our school and I want to take this opportunity to share where some of my focus hasbeen this term. Coming into Term 2, there was much uncertainty around COVID-19 and how this may influence learning within our school.Contingencies were made, but fortunately, due to the nature of distance education we were able to continue with teaching andlearning at least largely uninterrupted. It has certainly been disappointing to have so many of our face-to-face events cancelled orpostponed. The decision-making due to these uncertain times has been ongoing and we all look forward to normality when it finallyreturns. A welcome addition to our staff this year has been our LSODE-based District Relief Teacher, Ruth Charles. Ruth worked with many ofour staff and students as part of her induction in order to understand and become confident with our very different setting. Ruth hasbeen working for the best part of this term supporting staff who have been developing curriculum by taking lessons, telephone readingand marking work. Ruth will be working to support staff again next term. There are many policies and procedures that teachers are required to follow as part of their practice. This term, teachers have beenundergoing formal lesson observations and peer lesson observations. These processes are ongoing throughout the year and involvefeedback and self-reflection against our explicit instruction model and the standards of practice for teachers.Moderation for our Prep to Year 6 teachers with other SDEs has also allowed them to quality assure their marking and grading againstother submitted work around the state. Using data to inform teaching and individualise learning forms part of our explicit improvement agenda, which I discussed in the lastaddition of our Bush Telegraph. Teachers have been working in this space throughout the term. Some important documents, whichform part of this process, include class differentiation plans, my class data tracking and goal setting. As part of this process,teachers consider how they differentiate individually for all students within their class to support and extend. They also look at areas of improvement and set goals and strategies to help enable this. Your teachers will be discussing goals with you shortly. Updating Independent Learning Materials to Version 8 of the Australian Curriculum is an ongoing process, which our teachers in Years1, 2 and Secondary have been heavily involved in. A big mention also has to go to Mel Hunt who is working full-time to desktop publishall changes. LSODE is working in collaboration with the Western Schools of Distance Education – Charleville and Mount Isa – tocomplete these changes from Years 1 to 10 for Maths, English and Science (P-10) and History and Geography (7-10). Brisbane SDE isworking to develop updated Prep materials and Capricornia SDE is working toward, updating the Arts, HPE andTechnologies. This process has been ongoing since the beginning of last year and will continue well into next year with Humanities andSocial Sciences as a priority. Several frameworks are due to be updated and several are new and have been prioritised by the Department. The leadership team areworking together to update our Pedagogical Framework. This process will involve staff input to ensure a comprehensive framework isdeveloped for teaching and learning at our school. This framework will align to the State Schools Improvement Strategy and our LSODEpillars of learning will form the basis for our pedagogical framework; quality teachers, quality instruction, individualised learning andstrong partnerships. Other frameworks undergoing work include Student Health and Wellbeing, Student Code of Conduct, Parent andCommunity Engagement and Literacy frameworks. A whole school Literacy Framework is something we as a school are working towards with Heidi Begg from SPOT. As you would all beaware Heidi has been working with Home Tutors, Govies and staff to help develop literacy skills within our school. Heidi has also beenworking with staff to evaluate our literacy processes and make recommendations to streamline and solidify what we are doing. She willcontinue to work closely with me and the leadership team to develop some key strategies for supporting students and a clear wholeschool Literacy Framework. To cap off the term, we recently learned of the changes to Blackboard Collaborate and the rapid transition to Collaborate Ultra.Negotiations with the department around these changes and trying to create as smooth a transition as possible for families and staffhas been paramount in recent weeks. Thank you all, for your ongoing support and positivity in this space. It will require patience fromus all and creativity to continue to best support students on-air. Until next time, Kind regards, Dane.

Good news! Tourism is back on the agenda and from Term 3, the LSODE Tourism Room will be open for business. Our P&C tourism business generates income that is directed back into the school to support students and families, contributing insmall and large ways. If you’ve ever read a ‘Books for the Bush’ donated book from the library or attended Minischools or camps, beenpart of the school musical or represented the school in sport or one the many other ways our funds are used to support students andlearning, you’ve been supported directly by P&C and our tourism business. We encourage all our families to take a tour with us when they are in for school events, to meet some of our visitors and support ourbusiness with the purchases of goodies from our Tourism Room. Encourage your family and friends to tour with us when they arevisiting. We tell the story of distance education over the years and the many changes to the way our students have been learning overtime. It’s interesting and fun and we’d love to share it with you. Pop in next time you are in at school.

Head of Department WAPeta Bates

Wow! What a term – a very unique one. With COVID-19 altering how a lot of schools functioned, in my opinion, our WA students wereamongst some of the luckiest students in the country. School mostly stayed the same for them and disruptions were minimal. It wasdisappointing that our camp was cancelled and we have still been unable to get together face to face this year. But hang on... Mark your diaries!!! Our first ever WA Virtual Camp is Wednesday 12th & Thursday 14th August 2020.

Staff in the WA who have been talking to me lately, will know that I am very pumped for our Virtual Camp next term. I am constantlytalking about it and the super sessions we are planning for all our students. This will be two days and nights of no curriculum (I can hear you all cheering), and it will be jam packed with fun, laughter and mostimportantly - time for students to chill and enjoy each other’s company. We have scoured the web, chatted with friends and are buildinga program that will give students choices, and delight you with activities and challenges. A sneak preview I hear you ask – how about My Kitchen Rules, a Fashion Challenge, a Technology building Challenge, a Games Round,Trivia Night and even some Physical Challenges. Details, timetable and more information will be coming your way very shortly. Keep an eye out for an email from me soon.

I wish you all a safe and happy holiday!

Warm regards, Peta

Thank you to the families who participated in the Art On-Air session with Arthur Conlon (Deadly Arthur) yesterday. We had a fantasticturn out with 27 families attending the session! The session began with Deadly Arthur providing a painting demonstration and explaining some Aboriginal painting techniques, andshowing a range of his oil pastel artworks. Then we got into the fun stuff – Deadly Arthur showed the students how to draw and colour a picture of a turtle! Everyone did afantastic job of this and Mrs Moore’s email was flooded with photos of students' work. Deadly Arthur was kind enough to offer that the two pictures he created in the session could be given to families who attended. In order to decide who the lucky families would be the surnames of those who attended were listed in alphabetical order and allocateda number from 1 to 27. These numbers were then placed into a random number generator.The students who will be receiving the artworks are Blade, Alethea, Jayda & LincolnCongratulations!

TOURISM ROOM OPENING

The Tourism Committe

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT'S REPORT - WESTERN ALLIANCE

ARTHUR CONLON - ARTIST