Term 2 Week 7 2021

TEAM MANGO 

We value our partnership with parents and carers. To support these partnerships, we have established a Parents and Carers Corner on our school website. This is where we will house all of the information sheets, hints and tips and other resources parents and carers will find useful to support their children to succeed. At our Term 1 parent forum, parents gave great suggestions about some new topics to create information handouts about. You will see these new handouts, as well as the many others created over the years, housed in this space on our website. 

https://mangohillss.eq.edu.au/support-and-resources/parent-resources

You will also find our Mango Hill State School Parent and Community Framework in our Parents and Carers Corner. This is a work in progress, as we explore new ways to collaborate with parents and carers. With less than 15% of a student's time spent at school each year, there are many hours in a day, week and year, in which parents, families and the community can guide and influence student's learning opportunities. When you list all the different ways our families and our school work together, the list is quite lengthy!

Our community at Mango Hill State School is a diverse community comprising a large range of nationalities and languages. Genuine parent engagement exists when there is a meaningful relationship between parents and teachers with the shared goal of maximising learning and wellbeing outcomes for students. This is ongoing work, and tricky work, with such a diverse community group!  How do we ensure we capture the thoughts of all families? How can we work together to meet the needs of our diverse community of families?

Across this semester, we have held three parent forums and we have welcomed many families to these forums, to share ideas and collaborate. These forums are about being solutions focused, with a problem solving mindset and it has been heart-warming to hear all the many ideas our families have to make our school community even better. The leadership team are currently working through the ideas and suggestions to determine how to best action suggestions and move our school forward. Please keep your eyes out for our response early next term.

One area parents and carers have flagged they would welcome more information about is parenting in general and best practice ways to tackle tricky situations in the home environment. In July, we welcome Mark Williams, Early Childhood Manager Quality Programs, Services & Educational Leadership, from our North Coast Regional Office, for a parent workshop about the principles of the Circle of Security. Circle of Security is an approach, not a one-off strategy. We hope to see many parents and carers in attendance. Please see the flyer for the finer details and for how to rsvp.

I encourage you to take the time to explore the resources on our website and to continue engaging and partnering with us to help every student succeed.

Colour Explosion Fun Run Friday

We are looking forward to our Colour Explosion Fun Run on Friday. Here are a few final reminders.

• Students should wear older pale clothes that are appropriate for running the obstacle course. They must have a hat and running shoes.
• Students MUST return the permission note.
• Please support the P & C by sponsoring your child. They earn a prize if they raise as little as $10.
• Please consider assisting for some time on Friday. Volunteers can sign up at volunteersignup.org/BH3F8
• After the event, your child should select their prize (depending on amount raised through sponsorship) by 10 June.
• Parents are welcome to attend. Times below!

We look forward to a wonderful day!

Celebrating Diversity!

Our annual MHSS Diversity Day will be celebrated at a whole school parade tomorrow and followed up at Care Class on Friday. Our parade will commence at 8:40am in the Piazza and parents are very welcome to join us for the parade and a cuppa to follow. 

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. All other students should wear normal school uniform.

Prep News

This week our Preps went on their very first excursion! We spent a lovely morning out on Monday and Wednesday, exploring our local community. We visited the lake at North Lakes, which gave us so many interesting things to write about for our writing assessment! We saw turtles, ducks, swans, fish, eels and many other birds. Walking around the lake was a little bit tiring, so it means we need to keep up our exercising after the cross country to prepare for our upcoming athletics carnival!

The lake at North Lakes is a great little mini adventure to add to your list for a weekend visit. There’s lots of places in our local area to explore. Every time our children experience something new, they add new words to their vocabulary. This helps them to learn how to read and write, as they can connect texts to their real world experiences. Other places to explore could be Lake Kurwongbah, the bayside area at Redcliffe or Sandgate or Osprey House on Dohles Rocks Road. As we discovered this week, you don’t have to go very far for our little ones to think they have been on an adventure!

This week, we will participate in two other ‘firsts’; our first Diversity Day parade and our first colour run. That’s three firsts in the one week! Phew!

Thank you to those parents who ensure their child attends school each day wearing the correct school uniform. When we wear our uniform with pride, we show everyone that we are proud to be part of our Team Mango community. All black shoes, white ankle socks and the school hat need to be worn each day. We wear our hats to and from school as this promotes positive sun safe behaviours. School jumpers will be needed as the weather cools. We thank you for your support in helping our students to wear their uniform with pride each day.

Have a lovely week

Year 3 and 4 News

It has continued to be a busy week in Year 3 and 4 this week with teaching and learning the key focus. As I have visited rooms, I have been able to see students working together, giving each other feedback and supporting one another with their learning. Our teachers continue to work hard with their students to provide individual feedback around what they have done well and what are their next steps.

In a visit to 4D, I saw great examples of Team Mango during a Maths lesson. After seeing Mrs Drummond show them how to solve multiplication problems, 4D then worked with each other and coached one another on how to solve these problems on their own. The impact of working with their peers was clear, as I observed the confidence of all students in the room grow throughout the lesson. Great work 4D and Mrs Drummond!

Trading cards and toys

Many students across Year 3 and 4 enjoy bringing trading cards and fidget toys to school and most students use these in a positive way. It is the students’ and families’ choice as to whether these items come to school, but it is important that students take care when bringing them in. We strongly encourage students to not swap or trade cards or toys when at school. If this is becoming a concern for your child, it is recommended they leave these items at home.

Reconciliation Week

Over the past week, students across the school have been taking part in a range of activities as they learn about the importance of Reconciliation week. This is an opportunity to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia. Last Wednesday on National Sorry Day, and during Care Classes on Friday, I was able to talk to students and see them engaging in activities that helped them reflect on the sad and painful history of the Stolen Generations and acknowledge the importance of saying sorry in moving forward together. It was wonderful to hear our students share their understanding and reflect on this important message.

Care for Learning in Years 5 and 6

What a week it has been in Year 5 and 6 classrooms! I had the pleasure of working in a few classrooms this week and assisting students and teachers with their writing assessments and their teaching and learning of fractions. It was great getting into 6R and working with students as they consolidated their understanding of fractions. I had the opportunity to work with some students within a collaborative learning structure, Sage and Scribe. We know from research the positive impact connecting students with their peers has not only on their wellbeing but also on their learning. It was great seeing this strategy in action. I also had the opportunity to work in 5I as students refined their engaging introduction to persuade the audience. Students used an example/non-example activity in which they looked at two writing samples and connected it to the scale. With clarity of success, students then wrote their own introductions which were very persuasive.

RoboOlympics

Well done to all of our students and to Ms Benzie for their participation in RoboOlympics last week. Our students connected with other local schools and enhanced their learning and understanding of coding and robotics – certainly skills needed in the 21^st Century. Students demonstrated great innovation as well as teamwork as they committed themselves to a range of projects. Well done everyone!

First Aid Awareness Training

This week our Years 4-6 students are participating in their annual First Aid Awareness program. This program was championed by the P & C as a way of providing our students some awareness of First Aid before they begin attending school camp. Students loved the real world information on how they can care for self and others as they grow and enter the bigger world.

Year 6 Graduation

Thank you to the families who attended this week’s Graduation Committee meeting. It was a pleasure listening to some ideas on how we can make the 2021 a fitting celebration for our Year 6 cohort. I will connect with the committee again in the coming days to schedule our next meeting in which some decisions will be made. I look forward in sharing these with our community in the near future.

Care class in Term 2

Each week, our parents can read about the Care Class Focus of the Week in this newsletter. This term, Care Class topics have included:

• The Four Cares in the playground
• Communicating with our friends in the playground
• Safety at school including self-regulation
• Road safety
• Commitment, effort and growth mindset
• Reconciliation
• Celebrating cultural diversity
• Building character through our MHSS values
• Managing our big feelings
• Learning about NAIDOC Week.

As you can see, Care Class balances learning about expected school behaviour, social and emotional wellbeing and skills such as communication and managing our own feelings, and our school values such as the celebration of cultural diversity and Reconciliation.

Whilst Care Class is every Friday, our class teachers reinforce the learning on the following four days (Monday to Thursday of the next week). You can also see our Focus of the Week on display in the notice board at the front of the school. Care Class messages are often captured in our message boards around the school. Check out the signs below. They are a few of the signs that you can see around the school.

Diversity Display

This week in the Hub we have a display from the Qld Museum celebrating African cultures. These items not only build our understandings of the wide and complex world within which we live, but also help remind us of the diversity within our own community. Pop on down within the next week or so to have a look at the glorious clothes and artefacts.

Congratulations to Avery who has been working hard all year to reach her goal of one million words. She was very proud of herself, especially as she has been reading some very thick books! We have added her photo to our growing display of millionaire readers for 2021.

Don’t forget it is not too late to reach your AR goal for this semester. You may been aiming towards a particular level, a number of books or a number of words. The Hub is open before school from 8:15am and after school until 3pm. Pop on down soon to find your next book!

Will you be the Matific Olympiad Champion? 

What is the Matific Olympiad?

• The Matific Olympiad is a friendly online mathematics competition for primary school children. 
• Matific, a digital primary mathematics learning platform, hosts the Matific Olympiad to generate excitement about mathematics education among children and celebrate their accomplishments. 
• Over 1,000,000 children participate in the Matific Olympiad held annually around the world. 
• Participants are given access to the Matific platform where they complete Matific activities earning stars for themselves, their class, and their school. 
• A perfect event to introduce children to mathematics challenges in an enjoyable way, thus inspiring their further interest in mathematics. 

Mango Hill State school are already Matific users, so we automatically register into the competition. The competition day runs on the 3 - 4 June. Students complete mathematics activities, collect stars and win trophies. Winners will be announced on the website on June 15.  

For more information visit https://www.matific.com/au/en-au/home/matific-olympiad/ 

Jess Rivett
Head of Curriculum
jxqui5@eq.edu.au