Term 1 Week 9 2021

Parent Teacher partnerships

It is great to see parent teacher interviews starting this week. A positive parent-teacher relationship contributes to your child’s success at school. Your child’s teacher is usually the second 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.

Finally, a reminder that if your child has conflict with another student, it is NEVER okay to discipline another person’s child at school. Any concerns must be referred to staff to manage.

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

Special events

Over the next week we have a number of celebrations and special events for the end of Term 1.

• On Thursday 1 April we will celebrate with our Prep - Year 2 students with a Fancy Bonnet Parade. Parents are invited to join us. We look forward to celebrating our Term 1 success! (Please see details further below)
• Next week we will also have our showcase celebrations. Prep to Year 2 will be directly after the Fancy Hat Parade. Year 3-6 will send home a digital showcase for families to watch together and discuss the learning for Term 1.
• Kindness celebrations for classes who have worked together to achieve this.
• Homework celebration for students who consistently completed their homework.
• The cross country days have both been rescheduled for next week also. Year 3-6 will be on Monday morning and Prep- Year 2 is Tuesday morning. Parents are welcome to join us!

This Friday, teachers will be reminding students about the importance of using all devices and the internet safely.  This topic ‘IT Safety and Conduct’ links to all four of our Cares:

Ending the Term with a Fancy Bonnet Parade – Prep-Year 2

Mango Hill Sate School is inviting all parents and family members to our Fancy Bonnet Parade and Showcase!

Prep - Year 2 students are super excited to invite our families back into the school grounds to join in the fun of our Fancy Bonnet Parade. Families are welcome to create a fancy head piece to join us in the holiday, festive spirit!  We very much look forward to seeing you all at the Piazza, Thursday,  8:30am ready to watch our students parade in with their fancy head pieces. This will be followed by a Showcase of learning back in our classroom over some morning tea or fruit break. Please feel free to stop by Sole Cafe in the morning to grab a healthy treat to bring back to the classroom as we show you our favourite piece of work from the term.

We look forward to seeing our parents join us as we showcase our bonnet creations and celebrate the beginning of our school year and upcoming holidays.

Student of the Week

We are working so hard in Prep to show our very best work, each and every day!  We are powering through our sounds and letters and learning our sight words.  We are bumping up our drawings and adding labels.  We are being kind to each other and taking turns and sharing. 

Thank you so much to the many, many Prep families who booked Parent Teacher Interviews with us; we truly value you as partners in helping our students to learn.  I encourage all families to follow up on suggestions made by class teachers; whether that be additional practice with gross or fine motor skills, a health check at your GP or with the Community Health Child Health Nurse or using similar strategies at home for reinforcing positive behaviours, that we use at school.  When home and school work together, our students do their very best!

Next Thursday is our Fancy Bonnet Parade.  We encourage parents and toddlers to attend and make their own fancy bonnets!  Our Prep students are making headwear at school that reflects their learning and joy about their first term at school.  Your bonnets need not be Easter themed; we understand not everyone celebrates Easter.  Our parade is the chance for us all to gather at the end of the term, celebrate our learning and welcome the holidays.  

After the Fancy Bonnet Parade concludes on Thursday morning, parents are invited back to their child’s classroom for a visit.  We know our Preps love to show their learning to their families!  We will share brain break together and share our Term 1 drawings with you, before you leave.  Remember, our SOLE Cafe is open to parents; you and other Prep parents should meet up for morning tea in our café space to celebrate navigating your child’s first term of Prep!

Say no to bullying! Our care class focus this past week has been in recognition of the National Day of Action Against Bullying. It was fantastic to see our students across the school dressed in orange to raise awareness for this. Students in Years 3 and 4 participated in a range of activities to connect with one another and develop strategies for stopping bullying. I enjoyed seeing classes engage with this in different ways and hearing some of the positive conversations that were had around saying “no” to bullying.

We are on the final stretch with just over a week to go in the term.  It is great to see that students and teachers are still working hard to ensure our learning continues. We know that every day at school counts! I look forward to celebrating a successful term with our Year 3 and 4 students during their class kindness celebrations next week!

NAPLAN online

On Thursday morning, students in Years 3 and 5 will participate in the NPLAN online practice test. The purpose of this test is to ensure our school’s network is well prepared. It is also an opportunity for students to be exposed to the testing format. Teachers have been and will continue to prepare students for NAPLAN online during class time. More information regarding NAPLAN online and student readiness can be found at https://www.nap.edu.au/online-assessment/public-demonstration-site

Showcase

This term, students in Year 3 and 4 will develop digital resources that will showcase their work from the term. These digital resources will be developed by the students in Week 10 so that they are completed by the last day of term, ready for them to show off to their friends and family at home. It is our aim to connect with our families and friends around the learning that students have participated in throughout Term 1. We hope that the digital resources that students develop spark positive conversations about the achievements of our Year 3 and 4 students so far this year.

Care for Learning in Year 5 and 6

This week has been another action packed week of learning in Years 5 and 6. I have had the opportunity to get into Year 6 classrooms to observe students working on their Speaking and Listening task. Students are required to develop and articulate a point of view on a short story and intelligently discuss this opinion with their peers. Certainly in a world becoming more and more inter-connected, yet in many ways disconnected, the skill to engage with others is such a powerful skills that I am proud we teach our students. In Year 5 this week, thank you to the wonderful Mrs Penrose, our students had the opportunity to listen to some guests speakers talk about natural disaster management. This was to further engage our learners with their HASS curriculum this term which focuses on natural disasters. Some students I spoke to discussed how interesting it was to listen to how the guests were going to assist with the recent rain and flooding concerns and how it was great to listen to “real life people”. Finally, our Year 5 and 6 teachers have been hard at work during their Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and in particular of late, have participated in Student Case Management Meetings. These meetings require teachers to meet in small groups with their colleagues and knowledgeable others to discuss the learning of particular students. The aim of this process is to share our teams collective capacity to achieve learning outcomes and ensure that learning and education is accessible for all students. Great commitment Year 5 and 6 students and teachers.

Showcase

To connect the work our students have completed in term 1, we are offering a Virtual Showcase in week 10. Students will be provided with time to utilise their ICT capabilities and represent all of the content, knowledge and skills they have learnt this term and present it in a virtual platform for their families and friends to see. It is our aim to connect with our friends and families in the community with the teaching and learning of our fantastic Year 5 and 6 students and teachers. We look forward to the conversations you will have with your child around their learning through the Virtual Showcase and perhaps the conversations this will inspire you to have with their class teacher during Parent Teacher Interviews.

Student Leadership

This week our School Captains represented Mango Hill State School at the monthly Student Leader Cluster Meetings. Our students connected with School Captains from around our region at North Lakes State College with the aim of improving their leadership skills and to be a voice in our community. This week students focussed on their ability to speak in public. With recent events like the We Belong parade, upcoming events like ANZAC Day and social issues being spoken about in the news, being a leader who can articulate a point of view is certainly a much needed skill. Great connection School Captains!

A special thank you to a small group of willing volunteers who have recently visited the Hub to offer their help with contacting. We are always keen to welcome new volunteers and can easily provide you with a (small or large) pile of books and a roll of contact. This means you can complete the contacting in your own time and space, while also helping get lots of new books onto our Hub shelves. The Hub is open every day from 8.15am and every afternoon until 3pm.

Accelerated Reader

As the term nears an end, many students are working hard to reach their AR goals. One of those students is Franco who this week reached one million words. We are very proud of Franco and have added his photo to our special 2021 display. Students are welcome to borrow books over the upcoming holidays so they might want to make sure these include some AR books. Once they return to school at the beginning of Term 2 they will be able to complete the quizzes on these.

Assessment in English

The English Learning Area is a complex one that includes a focus on reading, writing, speaking and listening. This term in all year levels students have had the opportunity to develop their understandings in each of these areas as they listen to and read a range of books, and continue to develop their writing and speaking skills.

Our assessment tasks for Term 1 English have included a range of opportunities for students to share their understandings with teachers. Assessment tasks have included Shared Reading tasks, where students answer questions to show their comprehension about texts, language and the ways authors create texts. In Writing, students have written recounts, descriptions, persuasive arguments and short stories. In Speaking and Listening, students have worked in pairs, small groups and larger groups to discuss, respond and actively contribute. Students have also completed tasks linked to their progress in Guided Reading, answering a range of Right There and Think and Search questions about shorter texts.

Teachers use all of this information to make an on-balanced judgement about each child’s progress in English for Term 1. Teachers are able to celebrate and share these judgements and individual work samples at the upcoming Parent Teacher interviews. The information gathered from assessments in Term 1 also acts as a springboard for teaching and learning in Term 2. We look forward to seeing the progress of all of our students in English continue in Term 2.

Pantry Drive

Hi Mango Hill Families,

We are still running a Pantry Drive for Mango Manchies and Sole Cafe. 

We are looking for donations for staple items for example jam, vegemite, margarine to name a few and all the things we need to continue to run a growing canteen.

For each item donated your child will receive a raffle ticket.

Every Friday 2 tickets will be drawn and 2 children get to choose from our prize basket.

Thank you for your support

Louise, Bec and the Canteen Crew