Term 3 Week 7 2020

Caring, Kindness and Resilience on display at MHSS

Last week our school focus of the week was on bucket filling. It was such a lovely celebration of kindness across the school with students and staff focussed on complimenting, smiling, listening, helping and generally making others feel cared for. We hope to see this bucket-filling continuing.

This week we are focussing on resilience and it was fantastic to meet our care class mystery person last Friday. The children in my group spoke about never giving up, persistence, bouncing back and optimism. One student shared a quote ‘As much as talent counts, effort counts twice!’ which really resonated with some students.

Our care class mystery meet each Friday provides our leadership team with an opportunity to meet different students across the school and also for those students to meet younger and older students to build a shared understanding of the focus of the week. It is now one of my favourite times and I look forward to meeting with another mystery group this Friday!

Pictured below

Mrs Warner and Mr Winney meeting with their Mystery Person last Friday. These students were chosen because they had done some great bucket filling last week!

Parent consultation

This year has been challenging for us to consult with parents due to COVID restrictions limiting visitors on site. We have worked to get parent voice through surveys and hope that you still feel you have a voice in our school. We value your input! Of course the P & C committee continues to play a strong role as a school partner and parent voice in our school.

We have two policies that we would like parents to provide further input into via attendance at a socially-distanced meeting.

The first is our Gifted and Talented Policy and our Reach Class Selection Process. If you are interested in attending a meeting to provide input into these areas, please email Michelle Alcorn (Deputy Principal) on malco14@eq.edu.au . Michelle will then organise a time that suits the majority of interested parents.

The second area is the Homework Policy. The staff have worked hard to draft a policy based on the feedback from the parent, staff and student surveys, of course guided by research. If you wish to attend a parent consultation meeting to provide feedback on the draft policy, please email Martin Winney (Deputy Principal) on mwinn7@eq.edu.au who will organise a time that suits the interested parties.

We strongly value parent consultation and input and look forward to hearing your views on the policies outlined above.

Have a lovely week
Tracy
tegan4@eq.edu.au

Focus of the Week 

The focus of the week introduced last Friday and continued throughout this week is ‘Resilience’. Resilience is generally regarded as the ability to cope with and bounce back after adversity and this can extend from day to day challenges through to life changing events.

Learning about resilience focuses on caring for self by growing and demonstrating resilience. It is a continuum, and something that can change over time. We can all learn ways of becoming more resilient.

“Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”  ― Nelson Mandela 

Achieving Goals in Prep

We’ve hit the last half of the term, where everything starts to “come together”. Over the next few weeks, many assessment tasks will be implemented so we can see our Prep students’ progress in Term 3. 

Our area of focus in Maths over the coming weeks is capacity. How much does a container hold? Does a taller container hold more than a short container? We answer all the big questions in Prep!  In Number, we continue to focus on building our knowledge, understanding and use of numbers to 20. 

In English, we are starting our Shared Reading assessment and completing our writing assessment. Over the coming weeks, we will begin a short poetry unit and focus on rhyming words.  We will create a short poem to entertain our friends.  We think this will be lots of fun! 

In the playground, we continue to focus on kindness. We are practising taking turns, sharing and using our words to solve problems. We don’t always get this right; but we keep working at it – we know that when we persevere, we can do our best.  The tuckshop staff are very impressed with how we are using our manners when we visit at break time to purchase our treats!

Have a lovely week
Melinda
mwhit37@eq.edu.au

Year 1 Friendship and Resilience skill building

For the last part of this term and the first 5 weeks of term 4, all Year 1 classes will be involved in a Friendships and Resilience program run by our Guidance Officer Ellie Goodwin and Student Welfare Officer Jane Courtney.

Classes will receive weekly half hour lessons focusing on:

• Identifying body signals
• Relaxation and techniques
• Helpful vs unhelpful thinking
• Turing your thoughts around
• Empathy and kindness
• Friendship making skills.

Half of our Year 1 classes have commenced with the Resilience program and the other half, the Resilience Program. Next term they will swap the focus to develop all of these skills. We are excited to see our Year 1 students building their resilience skills and developing lifelong friendship making skills.

Look at our Amazing Writing!

Year 1 and 2 students have been working so hard to improve their writing skills and have shown amazing improvement this term. Year 1 students have been writing a retell of an Aboriginal Dreaming story and the Year 2 students a description of their favourite place. During the term, students have been learning to use descriptive words to enhance their writing and have also developed their sentence structures beyond simple sentences to compound sentences. They have also focussed on using time connectives, linking their word choices to enhance the mood of the writing, and using the components of the generic structure of the writing, for example the beginning, middle and end of the Dreaming story.

I am so impressed with the students’ writing so far! You should definitely ask to see your child’s writing at the Parent Teacher interview. Please see some of these pieces below.

Have a good week
Gabrielle
gdoug7@eq.edu.au

Year 3 PCYC Bike Education Program

PCYC has been such a blast! How lucky were our Year 3's to go on an excursion where they got to go for a ride whilst learning about bike safety. It was so wonderful to see everyone with their helmets on, big smiles and learning lots. Thank you to our Year 3 teachers for making this great day happen.

Please enjoy some pictures below of our Year 3 students who have already been on their Bike Education Program. 

Fractions and Decimals in Year 4 

Whilst our Year 3's were out riding, the Year 4's were busy learning about the relationship between fractions and decimals. Students created their own learning walls representing the numerous ways they could demonstrate a fraction, including the decimal representation. What clever mathematicians!

Have a wonderful week
Michelle 
malco14@eq.edu.au

Care for Learning in Year 5 and 6

This week I had the pleasure of spending time in 5W as they enter into the Representing the Learning phase of their current writing unit. Students participated in a peer feedback activity in which they read a sample of writing from another group in the class and provided feedback to those students using the star scale. John Hattie, educational researcher, states that the use of peer feedback can account for more than a year’s growth in the one year. It was great hearing the conversations students were having and their focus on making their peer’s work better. In turn, they were also taking stock of their own writing and developing an awareness of how to bump up their own work. Well done 5W

Gala Day   

After three terms of many cancelled events and opportunities, it was great to finally see our Year 5 and 6 students attend their first Gala Day for the year. Our students participated in a range of sports including AFL, cricket, league tag, ultimate frisbee and netball. In many of our sports we celebrated great success however what is more important is that since the day, I have had many conversations with teachers from Mango Hill State School and teachers from other schools, and they have all reported the exceptional sportsmanship displayed by our students. Great care for others Year 5 and 6!

Year 6 Graduation

Last week the official invitations for the Year 6 Graduation went home to families. Graduation is at the Eaton’s Hill Hotel on December 7 commencing at 5:00pm. As soon as students return their RSVP forms to the office the school will invoice families so that families have time to pay off their tickets. To help raise money to fund the event the Graduation Committee is hosting the Queensland Election Day on Saturday 31 October at the school. From 8:00am-2:00pm we will be facilitating a sausage sizzle, drinks and bake stall. If you are interested in volunteering your time, drinks or baked goods, please see my email sent to all Year 6 families. We are also asking each Year 6 class to provide a hamper to be raffled off during the day. These hampers are always popular and will be drawn on Election Day. If you can, please donate to your class hamper. The themes are: 6V and 6K – "for him", 6H "for kids", 6B and 6D – "for her", 6L – "gourmet savoury" and 6T – "gourmet sweet". All donations can be submitted to the classroom teacher. It is this help that ensures each Year 6 Graduation is a wonderful evening, thank you.

Have a good week 
Martin
mwinn7@eq.edu.au

Self-regulation

It is important for children to learn how to manage or express their emotions so they can successfully cope with frustrating situations or take a few deep breaths to calm and focus before a school activity. This is called self-regulation. This will be the Care Class focus that will be delivered in class on Friday for next week.

Year 1 students are focusing on self-regulation as part of Circle Time each week at the moment, using a program called Zones of Regulation. The Zones of Regulation uses four colours (red, yellow, green and blue) to help students identify how they are feeling and use strategies to self-regulate.

Understanding our emotions, recognising triggers and learning strategies to manage our emotions helps all of us self-regulate.  It also helps make us aware of the affects our emotions and behaviours can have on others. 

Take care
Ellaine
ewarn23@eq.edu.au

Developing our Speaking and Listening in English

After weeks of focussing on developing our reading and writing skills, over the next few weeks students from Prep to Year 6 will turn their attention to developing and applying their skills related to Speaking and Listening as part of our English units of work. Speaking and listening are significant parts of the learning in English for all year levels, providing opportunities for students to listen for specific purposes and to interact with others in positive ways.

In our upcoming units of work, our Prep students will listen to and create some funny rhyming poems; while our Year 1 and 2 students will create some multimodal texts and share these with others, presenting their ideas with confidence and listening to others in order to ask relevant questions. In Year 3 students will engage in a mini-debate and in Year 4 they will create and share a spoken retell of an Aboriginal Dreaming story. In Year 5, students will share and discuss their shape poems, asking clarifying questions and sharing opinions. In Year 6, students will present an original poem as part of a Poetry Slam!

Don’t forget, that encouraging your child to engage in conversations and discussions at home will support their learning and performance in these English tasks. Speaking with others is such an important part of our daily lives, so we look forward to watching all of our students continue to develop their abilities in this area.

Premier’s Reading Challenge

After several months of reading, this week is now the last chance to complete the Premier’s Reading Challenge forms. All forms need to be returned to the Hub by Friday 28 August to be included in this year’s Premier’s Reading Challenge. Congratulations to everyone who has participated this year. Once we have all of the forms returned, the details will be forwarded to the Premier’s office. We expect the certificates to be returned in Term 4.

Have a great week
Suzette
Shol0@eq.edu.au

Science Week Reminder

Don't forget entries for our Science competition are due in at the end of Week 7. We have already been inundated with innovative projects and look forward to seeing the rest of your entries. 

Working Together with Helping Hands 

CANTEEN NEWS - SOY milk (250 ml) is now available in the canteen. You'll find it listed on Flexischools in the Drinks menu and the Snacks menu as a pack with cookies. Vegan cheese is available in both the canteen sandwich cold pack and stand alone sandwiches. The vegan cheese is also on offer for staff and parents through our SOLE Cafe.

FATHER'S DAY RAFFLE NOW LIVE - The MHSS P & C is running a prize-busting Father's Day Raffle. Tickets available now from $3.00. Click here - https://www.rafflelink.com.au/mhssfdraffle2020 to secure your chance now.

A big thanks to all our wonderful local businesses and school families that have donated prizes for our raffle. Details of our sponsors are included in the prize information. Please support these local businesses if you can.

We received support from the following businesses -

• Mango Hill Skirmish
• Helping Hands
• Red Digital Systems
• The Athlete's Foot North Lakes
• Kara Gough Prep D Teacher
• Best Western North Lakes Hotel
• BOQ North Lakes
• City Cave North Lakes
• MyFoot Dr North Lakes & Redcliffe
• Meatland.

A special shout out to the following families -

• Tang family
• the Puckeridges
• the Dumbell family
• the Fosters 
• Radika Reddy.

The Raffle opened yesterday and closes on the Wednesday 2 September 2020. The raffle will be drawn on the Wednesday 2 September 2020 through a random computer-generated draw online at 5:00pm. Details of the Winners will be displayed on the official Mango Hill State School Facebook page. Prize distribution will be arranged prior to Sunday 6 September.

Thank you for your support
Renee