Term 2 Week 6 2021

This week is a very important one for our community and for all communities across Australia. 

National Sorry Day

Today is National Sorry Day.  Held every year on 26 May, National Sorry Day acknowledges and raises awareness of the history and continued effect of the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from their families, communities and culture. 

Reconciliation Week

Thursday marks the start of National Reconciliation Week (27 May - 3 June), a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures and achievements and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia. Reconciliation Australia’s theme for 2021 is “More than a word.  Reconciliation takes action.” The dates for National Reconciliation Week remain the same each year, marking two significant milestones in the reconciliation journey: the successful 1967 referendum and the High Court Mabo decision, which saw the concept of terra nullius overturned. 

Diversity Day Date Claimer 

Mark your calendars! Our annual MHSS Diversity Day will be celebrated by a whole school parade on Thursday, 3 June. Our parade will commence at 8:40am in the Piazza. Parents are very welcome to join us for the parade. 

Students and parents who are from a cultural background with a traditional cultural dress are welcome to wear traditional cultural dress on Thursday 3 June. What an opportunity for those students to share some of their culture and for other students to appreciate and enjoy it! 

If your child doesn’t have traditional cultural dress, they will wear their formal uniform for parade. On Diversity Day, all students get to learn about and enjoy traditional cultural dress by seeing and learning from their friends and peers who do have a traditional cultural dress. It’s also a great opportunity to remind your child that all students were able to choose and dress to reflect a group they belong to on “We all Belong Day” in Term 1.   

All parents are invited to stay after the whole school parade and have a cuppa with Emma Crawshaw, Guidance Officer and Katherine Tracey, Student Welfare Officer and members of the Leadership Team.

Colour Explosion Fun Run – 4 June

Our Colour Explosion Fun Run is coming up at the end of next week on Friday 4 June.

This is the major fundraiser for the P & C and all students can participate.

A hard copy of the permission note will be sent home today and an electronic copy is below. Please return to your child’s class teacher by Friday.

A little more information

• We encourage all students to collect sponsors. All donations should be made online myprofilepage.com.au (Please don’t bring in any cash).
• Once they have sponsors the children can choose their prize from the booklet (sent home last week). As little as $10 sponsorship allows them to choose a prize. The more donations, the better the prize!
• There are other great prizes for the class who raises the most and individual highest fundraiser.
• Even if they don’t get sponsors, they can still participate if they have a permission note returned. There is no cost to participate.
• On the day of the fun run, students should wear a pale coloured shirt and older shorts that they will stay in all day. Please ensure they are old clothes as the colour may not come out.
• The coloured powder is corn starch and is safe for skin and eyes.
• People with asthma should read the information below to make an informed decision regarding risks.
• The fun run will be on the oval with students participating in their year level at the times below.
• Parents are welcome to attend on the day to assist or watch.
• Parent volunteers are encouraged to assist for a short time. Please consider helping! Your child will love you for it! You can sign up at volunteersignup.org/BH3F8

We look forward to a fabulous event!

Prep News

We are well over halfway of our second term of school! And we are well into learning how to read and write!

Next week we have our excursion to the lake and we can’t wait. It will give us so many things to talk about and write about! When we have rich conversation and we see new things, it helps us to generate new ideas. To be a four star writer, we have to write about three events, so our lake visit will be the perfect thing to write about. We hope to see fish, turtles, birds and maybe even a eel or two!

In Maths we are tackling shape, as well as continuing with our number task. One thing we are all finding a bit tricky is remembering the Maths name for a ball. It’s called a ‘sphere’. There are a few “Sophies and Sophias” in Prep and many of us are mixing up the names of our friends with the name of the shape!

How can you help at home? In the pictures here you will see how some of our classes set up their entry to their rooms so that students can practise the basics - those things they just need to know quickly. You could easily set something like this up in your own home! Pop sight words and letters and numbers on the wall, mix these up regularly and ask your child to tell you them on your way into the house as their “password”.

Have a lovely week

Year 3 and 4 News

One of my favourite things about working at Mango Hill is seeing students showing off the value of teamwork each and every day. This week, teamwork was on display across all of the Year 3 and 4 classrooms! Our teachers do a great job of engaging students in collaborative learning, to encourage each child to share their own thinking and understanding with others.

In 3H this week, teamwork was on display as students worked in groups to write an engaging paragraph for their diary entries, carefully selecting language features that create a consistent mood. Miss Henry and I were blown away by what these groups of authors were able to create. In 3W and 3L, students were working hard at showing their thinking using a range of strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems. We have some seriously good mathematicians in Year 3! Finally, in 4C I witnessed students reading each other’s writing and providing feedback to each other using the success criteria that was co-constructed as a class. Go Team Mango!

Australia Zoo

Last week, our Year 4 classes all went to Australia Zoo to learn about different animal habitats. The students enjoyed interacting with a range of animals and learning from experts about how they survive. Well done to all of Year 4 on how you represented our school. Thank you to the staff and parents who attended as support on the day!

Care for Learning in Years 5 and 6

We certainly are hitting the busy, assessment period of the term and it has been great to see students in Year 5 and 6 really attending to and representing their learning. This week I had the pleasure of visiting 6O, 5I and 5R who were all hard at work in producing their written responses. Year 5 students are learning the art of persuasion and writing their persuasive text. In Year 6 students are deconstructing the novel Blueback and its meaning using the analytical essay structure. Classes were busy collaborating with their peers, reflecting on their scales and racing to their Bump It Up Walls to find resources that would help them be successful. Great job Year 5 and Year 6!

• Look through the book and discuss what is happening in the pictures. Try asking some questions about what might happen in the story e.g. What do you think the book is about? What is the character doing in that picture?

2. Read the book together

• The adult reads the book. The child and the adult read the book together. (Note: This step can be skipped as your child develops confidence and the books get more complex.)

3. Listen while your child reads the book

4. Support your child if they get stuck on a word

• Pause: Wait five to ten seconds for your child to work it out
• Prompt: Use one of the strategies e.g. What clues can you get from the picture? What sound does the word start with? How about you try the sentence again? (Note: Only prompt 2 or 3 times and then tell the child the word!)
• Praise: Encourage your child with plenty of praise and feedback e.g. Terrific reading! I love the way you really thought about what that word might be! That was clever to choose a word that started with ‘b’! Great effort!

5. Celebrate the successes!

Taking the Stress out of Reading at Home

 Don’t make it stressful

• Do your best!
• 10 minutes is okay!
• Be patient. It takes time to cultivate the art of listening.
• Choose books about topics your child finds interesting.
• Be comfortable.
• Take your time.
• Ham it up - change your voice, slow down at important parts.

Writing for fun in the Writing CAFÉ

As part of our school-wide English program, our students are supported each term to complete a significant piece of writing. This term these pieces of writing include character descriptions, imaginative recounts, diary entries and persuasive texts. These pieces of writing are supported by explicit teaching and star scales which describe all of the important elements. Students have time for feedback and reworking, to ensure that their final pieces are the very best they can be!

While we value this kind of focused writing, we also want students to have fun when writing. So throughout the term, students also have a chance to participate in Writing CAFÉ. Writing CAFÉ is focused on writing with creativity, artistry, fun and enjoyment. In these lessons, students may respond to a stimulus or idea or topic, and then have the choice about how and what they write. Real writers often ‘have a go’ at lots of ideas for their stories, poems or descriptions, so we want our students to also experience this part of the writing process. This year students will have been adding to the Writing CAFÉ folios. As the term comes to an end, students will also have the opportunity to choose a favourite piece of writing and ‘bump it up’ and/or publish this to share with others. We look forward to seeing the potential of our future writers through these folios in the coming weeks!

Budding writers can be supported at home in many ways. These include:

• providing special pens or paper to record new ideas
• modelling how adults sometimes record their good ideas on paper or in electronic forms
• supporting all attempts at writing (because our first idea is often not our best idea)
• celebrating the creations by displaying and/or sharing these with others.

Happy writing!

Museum display

Don’t forget that this is the last week for our special display from the Qld Museum. We have lots of things from ‘the olden days’ including a washboard, a hand mixer and an iron for the fire pit! Pop on in before or after school to have a look.

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.

Louise, Bec and the Canteen Crew

Have a great week!

Belinda and Zoe
Uniform Shop Convenors