Term 2 Week 7 2020

A positive parent-teacher relationship contributes to your child’s success at school. Your child’s teacher is usually the second or third most important person in your child’s life (after his/her parents of course). We want to ensure the relationship between parents, teachers and students is a strong and rewarding one.

A positive parent-teacher relationship helps your child feel good about school and be successful in school. It demonstrates to your child that s/he can trust the teacher, because you do. This positive relationship makes a child feel like the important people in their life are working together.

Communicating well is a key factor for making this relationship work. Communication is especially important if you are worried about your child’s progress, development or an issue. Our staff want to help and want every student to be happy, safe and successful at school so please take the time to set up an appointment to discuss any concerns you have.

Don’t wait until you reach breaking point.

Don’t gossip and complain in the carpark.

Don’t criticize the school, the teacher, other students or parents on social media. This is just not okay, not kind and not helpful.

Parents who do this are not genuine in their desire to help their child. They are adding to the problem and setting a poor example for their child. If you have a concern, simply make an appointment with the teacher, outline the issue respectfully and I can guarantee we will work together to find a solution.

Most parents at our school do the right thing and work hard to build a positive relationship with staff. There will be conflicts, issues and concerns in life – it’s how we deal with them that makes all the difference!

“The secret is to gang up on the problem, rather than each other.” —Thomas Stallkamp

Next Monday 8 June from 6:30-8:00pm we will be holding our June P & C meeting in the staff room. Due to COVID19 restrictions, we need to manage the attendance levels. We ask if you are planning to attend, please RSVP via email on pandc@mangohillss.eq.edu.au . Below is the agenda for the meeting. If we have more than 20 people RSVP we will utilise zoom to connect with others.

We will also be discussing the 2021 SRS, P & C financial donations to the school and traffic management. Councilor Jodie Shipway will be attendance to hear our concerns and provide an update from the council.

At next Monday’s P & C Meeting, I will present some proposed changes to the Student Resource Scheme for 2021. We will propose a move away from an all-inclusive SRS with stationery and books to only including elearning subscriptions, photocopying and art supplies with a separate book and stationery list provided to parents to organise.

A few celebrations of how productive partnerships and collaboration with our partners have benefited our school community recently.

• Councilor Jodie Shipway has generously donated $5000 toward seating for our planned café for parents and the community to meet and chat.
• Helping Hands OSHC have kindly donated $1100 toward the area also.
• Representatives from Transport Main Roads, Moreton Bay Regional Council, the P & C and the school are meeting this week for a Safe Travel Committee to generate further solutions to the congestion around our school. The focus will be on ensuring safety for everyone!
• The P & C and Helping Hands have both financially contributed to a defibrillator worth over $2000 to keep on site. Hopefully we won’t ever need it but it’s reassuring to have it!
• The State Government and Federal Government have both contributed financially toward a new $9 million hall for our growing school. This project is out to tender at the moment and we will see builders on site by August.

Partnerships and collaboration with parents and community members is highly valued in our school community and we look forward to further opportunities to work together to ensure every student is succeeding!

Kind regards
Tracy

Our Care Class lesson that will be introduced on Friday is ‘Wellbeing and Connectedness.’ Being aware of our own and others health and wellbeing helps us to be the best person we can be. It is important to be committed to caring for our health, both physical and mental. By understanding health needs and doing our part to support others, helps keep us stay connected. 

Health concerns that will be discussed is Cystic Fibrosis, common colds, seasonal flus and Covid-19 and Anaphylaxis. Students will go through behaviours that help themselves and others to keep us all healthy.  

We care for self by doing things that make us happy and healthy and we care for others by staying connected – talking, listening, respecting and being there for others. 

Have a great week 
Peta 

The Care Focus for this week is National Reconciliation Week #NRW2020. We are proud to commemorate this important week, with our community in 2020, in which marks twenty years of shaping Australia’s journey towards a more just, equitable and reconciled nation. Our students are learning about Reconciliation and having fun participating in some cultural activities.

The theme for #NRW2020 – In this together – is now resonating in ways we could not have foreseen when it was announced last year, but it reminds us whether in a crisis or in reconciliation we are all #InThisTogether.

In Prep we are working hard with our beginning reading and writing skills. We are working hard to Bump Up our writing so that we are 4 star Writers. We are particularly focused on:

• Including detail in our recounts, by writing interesting sentences
• Having a good go, matching letters with sounds
• Using finger spaces between words
• Using capital letters and full stops
• Adding in an emotion word.

We also continue to work hard on our automaticity skills. When we hold our pencil the right way, start at the top and go to the bottom and work from left to right, as well as forming our letters correctly, then our brain power is free to take on more demanding cognitive work. If we use all of our brain power on remembering how to do the letter ‘a’, we don’t have as much brain power left to devote to thinking up interesting words to use!  We call this the cognitive load or cognitive demand.  We want skills of writing like handwriting, to become automatic, so that we can use our cognitive energy on more challenging work, like putting words into sentences and figuring out how to spell difficult words, using letters and sounds.

Take a look at some of our writing efforts this week!

Have a wonderful week 
Melinda 

Our Year 1 and 2 students have been engaged working towards their second Number Learning Goals for the Term. Teachers have been engaging them with plenty of hands on learning and providing the students the opportunities to learn and use the academic language of Maths through collaborative activities with their classmates.

In Year 1, students are learning to describe number sequences resulting from skip counting by twos, fives and tens, count to and from 100 and continue simple counting patterns. The students have been working on representing these sequences on number lines and using concrete materials.

Performing simple addition calculations using a range of strategies has been the work in Year 2. Students have been reviewing their basic fact strategies and also learning some new strategies like jump, split, compensation and bridging. Being able to use these strategies to solve the problems has been their main focus. Discussing their process and use of the strategies with their classmates has strengthened their understanding.

Later in the term, students will be working towards identifying the most efficient strategies to solve the problem.

Have a lovely week
Gabrielle 

It has been so wonderful watching the students engage in their learning goals this week and looking for ways to conquer their next steps. This week we started our Guided Maths Groups to practise some of the concepts we had found a little tricky. Students have been representing and sharing their thinking as they solve word problems. It is great to see them show all their working out and justify their answers using mathematical language.

Keep up the great work!

One last reminder! As the weather is cooling down, especially in the mornings please remind students to be bringing in their school jumpers. I look forward to seeing everyone in full school uniform this week with the correct shoes, socks, school hat, bag and jumper. 

Have a lovely week
Michelle 

Last week was a hugely successful return to ‘normal’ school for our Year 5 and 6 cohort. As I visited classrooms I could really see the sense of urgency teachers and students had in representing the learning they did during @Home Learning. Thank you to all of our families that supported their children, whether at home or at school, to continue their learning. I observed teachers using precise learning intentions and co-constructing success criteria with their students. This provided students with clarity of their learning. I saw students give peer feedback regarding writing samples using the star scales. In our team meetings teachers took these writing samples and really thought about how they could cause learning for their students based on the evidence they could see. I look forward to the great results to come at the end of Term 2. Keep up the great learning Year 5 and 6!

On Friday 5 June, all Year 6 classes will get a visit from representatives of Murrumba State Secondary College and will hear about the exciting opportunities on offer through their Academy Programs. Murrumba State Secondary College offers a number of Academy Programs which are tailored to foster and enrich students’ academic, cultural and sporting abilities with a focus on enhancing specialised skills and capabilities.  At Murrumba, they offer 4 Academy Programs in the areas of High Performance Music, Football, Spanish and Engineering Excellence. If you would like to find out more information relating to their Academies, please feel free to contact Deputy Principal, Shannon Carter scart145@eq.edu.au who will be more than happy to assist you with your queries.

Have a great week 
Martin

At Mango Hill State School we are committed to working with families to engage with local agencies and access services where this will benefit the student and family.  The Moreton Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service (Moreton ATSICHS) is a service providing holistic health care to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Moreton Bay area.  A broad variety of health and social services are available and more information about referral to access services is available at:

https://www.moretonatsichs.org.au/

With thanks 
Ellaine and the ILT

Mental computation is the most common form of computation used in everyday life. It is used for quick calculations and estimations, but is more than ‘mental arithmetic’. Mental computation refers to the process of working out and obtaining exact or approximate answers mentally. When calculating mentally, students select from a range of strategies, depending on the numbers used. As they develop their repertoire of strategies, students select those that are more efficient and effective for them.

When teaching mental computation at Mango Hill, the learning focus is on the strategies used to obtain answers. Once students have mastered the strategy, we then focus on accuracy and speed to build fluency in our number facts. Below are some games that can be played at home for all ages, using items found around the house. Your child might have already played these games at school and could teach you how to play them.

Strategies we focus on include: use counting, use ten, doubles, near doubles, use a rule, use a known fact and using square numbers.

Domino Number facts

Suits: Years 2-6

Big Idea: Using number fact strategies

Materials:

Each pair of students requires:

• 15 domino pieces

Instructions:

A game for 2 players

• Distribute the materials to each playing pair.
• Each pair displays ten of their dominos face-up on the table and the remaining dominos off to the side.

• Each player takes turns selecting a domino and saying the strategy used to get the answer. E.g. 4 and 5 is a near double so I think double 4 is 8 and add one more is 9. I used my near doubles.
• Any of the four operations can be used to search for a match.
• The other player checks the answer using the same or a different strategy.
• If the player was correct they keep the domino.
• As the dominos are removed from the table, replace them with a domino from the pack.
• When all dominos are exhausted from the pack, continue to play until all dominos are removed from the table or time elapses.

COMBO BOWLING

Suits: Years 2-6

Materials:

DOMINOS, whiteboard and marker or pen and paper.

Instructions:

A game for the Whole Class

• Player prepare their whiteboard by:
• drawing ten circles to represent ten bowling pins
• write the numbers 1-10 inside each circle (as shown).

• Display five dominos on the classroom whiteboard, eg.

• Students scan the dominos displayed, looking for digit combinations that result in an answer shown on the bowling pins,
• If students find a matching pair, they cross out that pin on their whiteboard, eg. “8 take away 6 is 2” (Cross out the 2)
• Set a time limit of 3 minutes. Challenge the students with, “How many pins can you knock down in 3 minutes?”

Combo Bowling can be played in small groups or as a partner game.
Tiles can be pre-selected or drawn randomly from a pack.
One tile can result in more than one pin being ‘knocked down’, eg. From the card 4 and 1, a player can ‘knock down’ these pins:
4 + 1 = 5         4 – 1 = 3        4 x 1 = 4   or   4 ÷ 1 = 4

Have a good week 
Jess

The P & C have been holding a second hand pop-up online unform shop. Thank you to everyone who has already made a purchase. The P&C is grateful for the overwhelming support and success of the online sale. Money raised to date is $795.00 ($761.86 received after Square fees). This is a great fundraising activity. Families who have uniforms that no longer fit can donate their items to support this fundraising initiative.

Please see link to the online pop-up second hand uniform shop-  https://my-site-109270-105702.square.site/s/order

The site is still live and ready to go with items only showing if they are in starting inventory. Below is a list of current items that are still in stock. Also below you will find instructions on how to purchase. 

 IMPORTANT NOTE – Our online inventory is managed manually and adjusted regularly as orders are submitted.

Low stock items will be allocated in order of order submitted.

If a purchase is processed for an item inadvertently no longer in stock, a full refund will be processed.

Thank you for your support 
Renee