Term 1 Week 5 2021

Building a safe and supportive environment

At Mango Hill SS we are committed to providing a safe and supportive school environment.  We explicitly teach students how to follow rules, get along with others, look after their mental health, manage disagreements and conflicts using the High 5 and we provide a large number of positive play options.  During the first few weeks it has been great to see students accessing lunch time clubs, making new friends and using the High 5 to manage conflicts. 

Some students need additional support to manage their behaviour. This may be due to anxiety, health needs or many other factors.  In 2021 we are focusing on high standards of behaviour while providing appropriate adjustments and support to students who require a differentiated approach.

We look forward to working in partnership with parents and students to build a safe and supportive environment for all students. Look at these students below engaged in positive play options!

Clarity to Learn

We are committed to every child achieving to their potential. This year we are focused on further precision and clarity in our curriculum and pedagogy to ensure we engage, stretch and include all students. Our Annual Implementation Plan outlines a range of strategies we will implement to improve in this area. We are utilising the Investing for Success funding to build staff capability to support students achieve to their potential

Over the past few weeks I have been visiting classrooms and have been impressed with the staff commitment to excellence and the students focusing on their learning as they start to enact our 2021 strategies. The photos below show some of the wonderful work in action.

Let’s work together!

I would like to thank the vast majority of parents and carers who show consideration and courtesy toward each other in the carpark and surrounding areas. We understand the frustration of congestion, however it is vital that we all work together to ensure students are safe.

Our Safe Travel Committee met again yesterday and celebrated the achievements to date including

• Building over 100 staff carparks to clear the front carpark for parents
• Doubling the shade structure and seating of the Look Out Area for pick ups.

We also have a number of projects almost complete including

• Installation of Traffic Lights at the corner of Bonnet Parade and Mango Hill Boulevard (due for completion in the next month)
• Doubling the bike racks at the front of the school (due to open in the next few days)
• Additional stop, drop and go off Mallard Street (due to open 8 March - watch out for further information!)
• Road safety films of the options for safe travel in our school (due next term).

We are also exploring how to manage the blockage at the entry to Carpark 2 with a traffic engineer assessing this for a solution. MBRC and TMR continue to support us and are looking further into how to support students walking or riding to school to be able to cross Kinsellas Road East more safely.

I appreciate your continued support as we focus on safe travel for all students.

Have a wonderful week

Tracy Egan

Principal
tegan4@eq.edu.au 

Focus of the Week

The Care Class focus delivered on Friday, is ‘Before and After School Routines’.  Below are the routines and expectations that will be discussed during Care Class and will also be revised in the classrooms throughout week 6. 

Prep – Year 2

Mornings:

• Lining up quietly in the designated areas, behind the coloured lines
• Not waiting outside classroom doors or playing on the playgrounds
• Sitting in the Junior Undercover Area

Afternoons:

• Walking safely out to the Lookout area (Preps will be walked out be a Teacher Aide)
• If in Prep, waiting for a family member to collect you from the classroom
• If in Yr 1 or 2, going to the correct area when the bell rings
• If attending Helping Hands, listening to the staff for their instructions

Years 3 – 6

• Sitting quietly until the 8.15am bell
• Playing safely until the 8.30am bell
• Visiting the Hub for borrowing or Attending a Before School Club in the Piazza, Middle Years undercover area or on the Oval

Afternoons:

• Walking safely out to the Lookout area
• If collecting younger siblings, walking straight to their pickup area

All Students

• Walking bikes or scooters in and out of the school grounds
• Wearing your hat to and from school
• Listen to the Teachers when using the Lookout area. Staying seated on the seats at Lookout
• Hopping off your bike or scooter to cross at the crossings
• When the bell rings, move straight to class to unpack and get ready for learning.
• Following instructions from all Teachers and Crossing Supervisors

Remember to use the Hi Five…

When I care for self, I try to be a problem solver using the High 5.

When I care for others, I solve disagreements using the High 5 or

I respect others when they are using the High 5 by listening to what they are saying. 

BIG LIFE JOURNAL has some fantastic resources to use at home with your kids. https://biglifejournal.com/blogs/blog/how-teach-problem-solving-strategies-kids-guide

Student of the Week

Relief Cleaners required

Mango Hill State School is seeking a pool of relief cleaners.

• Hours of work are between 4:00 am to 8:00 am or between 2:30 pm to 6:00 pm.
• Applicants must have a current Working With Children Blue Card - $93.95 prior to commencing work.
• Undergo a Criminal History Check.
• Mandatory Training, Student Protection training will also need to be undertaken.

Please send a brief resume to bsm@mangohillss.eq.edu if you would like to be considered for relief cleaning.

We are working hard in our drawing task, learning how to be four star drawers. We are especially looking at the Big Purpose of why we draw. We draw a picture as a way to communicate a message to an audience. We want the person looking at our drawing to know about the people in our drawing, the event or situation involved, the feelings conveyed through our drawing.

This means we need to put as many details as we can into our drawings, so the picture conveys all of these things, without words needed.

 

You can help to support this work at home by encouraging your child to focus on the following things when drawing:

• ensure the drawing is purposeful and shares an idea with you. You could try and guess what your child’s drawing is about and if you get it wrong perhaps prompt with “hmmm, I think you need to add some more detail to this, so it’s very clear!”
• encourage your child to really observe themselves and their surroundings. When drawing a person, we have a head, body, arms and legs, hair, eyes, nose ... If we are drawing about a game of soccer, our picture will have green grass and a soccer ball, goals, others to kick the ball to.
• focus on adding enough detail to the drawing so the “reader” knows exactly what it’s about.  Prompt your child to add more to their drawing if needed.
• add colour and ensure people are in size ratio to each other (eg adults taller than children).

Have a lovely week!

Melinda White

Deputy Principal - Prep
mwhit37@eq.edu.au

Before School Procedures

 Over the next few weeks our little Year 1 and 2 friends are going to be working with their teachers to focus on morning transitions. As part of re-learning our morning expectations it would be wonderful if we could get your help!

Before school in the morning students should be arriving at the Junior Undercover Area no earlier than 8am. It can be a very long wait for little people especially when they need to be seated and engaged in quiet, calm activities on the mats or in their line up spaces (for those who are under the shelter). Older siblings should be dropping off and heading to the Piazza as we have teacher aides on duty from 8am to supervise our little friends. For parents who wait with their child in the mornings please remind them they need to sit with you, or their peers. We should not seeing running around or students on the playground before school.

A calm start to the day is very helpful in setting up your child for a successful start to their school day. Teachers continue to work hard with sharing social stories with students and keeping the morning routine predictable and calm.

Your support in encouraging your child to follow the before school procedures to help us with the transition between home and school is greatly appreciated.

Have a wonderful week everyone
Michelle Alcorn

Deputy Principal – Year 1 & 2

malco14@eq.edu.au

Improving our writing!

Over the past week in Year 3 and 4, there has been a big focus on improving our writing. Our young authors have been taking on feedback from their teacher, looking at their next steps on their writing scales and ‘bumping-up’ their work. We have seen some writing samples go from good to great! I’ve been most impressed by the creative use of complex sentences, careful choice of noun and verbs groups and in some cases, figurative language. Over the next week or so, students will continue to craft their writing pieces, making deliberate choices that will influence their audience in a specific way.

Caring for learning

We love seeing our students care for learning at Mango Hill State School. One way they can do this is participating in all classroom activities. Our teachers work hard to make learning fun and engaging. Across many of our classrooms, you will see students collaborating as they develop ideas, practise new learning, solve problems and demonstrate their understanding. Collaborative learning tasks can be structured so that every student is given a voice in the learning and so that students can learn from one another. Below are some photos of students engaged in collaborative learning lately.

Have a great week
Ben Mills

Deputy Principal – Year 3 & 4

bxmil3@eq.edu.au

Care for Learning in Year 5 and 6 

It has been busy, busy, busy in Year 5 and 6 classrooms this week and it is great to see their commitment to caring for learning. I had the pleasure of visiting 6T this week and observed their collaborative writing structures to create consistent characters for their story. Students deconstructed some example texts to find the lexical chain and used these examples as a modelled example for their own writing. It was great seeing students connect with each other to improve their writing. I also had the opportunity to observe 5S and their commitment to their narrative writing. Miss Stacey was relentless in giving each individual student some descriptive feedback so that they could improve their writing. It was great seeing students take this feedback and make their own writing even better. In particular their use of their Bump It Up wall. Great work Year 5 and 6!

Student Leadership 

This week I had the pleasure of announcing our Student Leaders to our school community. However even before Thursday’s assembly our students have made a great start to their leadership journey. On Wednesday of week 5 our students ventured into Brisbane to attend the Halogen Leadership conference. They listened to national and community leaders and connected with other student leaders. They discussed and developed their own sense of what it means to be a good leader. Over the last two weeks our students have visited all classrooms to meet students from across the school and to celebrate the great achievements of each class each week. They also collect the golden tickets from each class as part of this celebration. Finally, each lunch time a collection of Student Leaders assist the teachers on duty and run clubs for the junior students. They are building great connections across our school.

Have a great week
Martin Winney

Deputy Principal – Year 5 & 6

Big thank you - Regional Inclusion Scan and Assess

Our school owes a big vote of thanks to the parents and students who met with the Regional Inclusion Scan and Assess team last week.  The Regional team particularly commented on how honestly and openly our parents and students shared their experiences with them.  I was lucky enough to sit in on the student conversations, and all of our students did the school proud.  The team were thrilled by how welcomed they felt.

MHSS Student Code of Conduct

If you are just starting to become familiar with our MHSS Student Code of Conduct, you might want to head to Page 13 which sets out our Whole School Approach to Behaviour.  It includes staff and parent guidelines.

We All Belong

In Week 7, we will celebrate “We All Belong” with a whole school parade.  What a great term for our classes to be focusing on Kindness, to ensure that we all feel included and have a sense of belonging.

Have a lovely week

Ellaine Warner

Deputy Principal - ILT
ewarn23@eq.edu.au

Pine Rivers District Swimming Results

Mango Hill competed in the Pine Rivers Swimming Carnival last Wednesday at Lawton Swimming Pool.  8 students aged 10-12 years competed as part of the Mango Hill State School team.   Students competed in various stroke events ranging from 50m to 100m.  While some of our swimmers only competed in 1 or 2 races we had others competing in up to 6 races on the day.

Overall, Mango Hill had some amazing success.  From our 8 swimmers, 3 were selected in the Pine Rivers District Swimming Team to compete at the Metropolitan North Swimming Trials.  Congratulations to Freya S who made the Pine Rivers team for four events; 100m Freestyle, 100m Breaststroke, 50m Butterfly and 50m Freestyle,  Leela M for the 100m Freestyle and Ashton A who made the Pine Rivers team for the 50m Freestyle event. We wish you all the best at the upcoming trials. 

Some other notable efforts were Ruby M and Fergus C who all swam fantastically and only missed selection in the Pine Rivers team by one place! All students should be proud of their results and their sportsmanship and conduct during events was wonderful. 

Mr Hills & Mr Newell

Physical Education Teachers

nhil96@eq.edu.au
tnewe20@eq.edu.au

P&C

We will be holding our first fundraising committee meeting on Thursday 4th March 8:30am.

Please email Amy at mhsspandc@gmail.com to confirm attendance

Helping Hands