Term 2 Week 8 2021

Assessment and Report cards

Teachers are currently working hard assessing student progress this semester. Teachers analyse a range of tasks that students have completed and make an ‘on-balance’ judgement of their level of achievement against the Australian Curriculum Achievement Standard in all learning areas. Folios of work are moderated within the school and by colleagues at other schools to ensure consistency of judgement.

Report cards will be sent home on Wednesday 14 July and will include information about your child’s achievement level in all eight learning areas. There will also be information about their behaviour and effort.

Diversity is our strength

How wonderful was the Diversity Day parade? Students enjoyed the Rhythm Culture African drumming, the choir performance and the speeches from our Diversity Leaders. Thank you to the students and families who wore traditional cultural dress and taught us more about some of the different cultures in our school community. Our diversity really is our strength!

Colour Explosion Fun Run Success

What great fun we had at the first Colour Explosion Fun Run. It was such a positive end to a busy assessment week. Over $27 000 was raised and we had wonderful support from parent volunteers. A huge thank you to Amy Swalwell (P & C Vice President) for all her work organising this day and to the wonderful volunteers who assisted.

2022 Enrolments

We are excited to see over 115 prep students already enrolled for 2022. If you have a child turning 5 before 30 June 2022, please contact the office for an enrolment pack. We will shortly be organising prep interviews and can’t wait to meet all our new friends!

A short break

I will be on leave for the last two weeks of term to have some medical treatment. I will be working from home for some of this time and look forward to a little break to recover and catch up after a very busy 6 months. Martin Winney will be acting Principal in my absence and will also continue to manage the Year 5/6 sector. I am very sad to be missing some of the end of semester excitement with athletics and concerts, however I will look forward to hearing all about them when I return in Term 3.

Prep News

It’s Week 8 already and we can’t believe it, can you?!!

Yesterday at our Prep teacher meeting we shared our celebrations for the semester. We celebrated...

• those students who arrived at school not knowing how to recognise their name - now writing sentences with sounds they’ve learned!
• as a team, sharing ideas about how to support our Prep friends who need additional help or a different way to learn. When we share our best ideas, all of our Prep friends benefit!
• our Prep friends who started school with limited English - now chatting with their friends in English and learning English as an additional dialect. How clever are they to learn their second or third language in their first year of school!
• our Prep friends who wouldn’t try for fear of failing or not being able to do it - now they are having a go and seeing themselves as learners. What grit and resilience they have shown!

The next couple of weeks are traditionally tough in Prep households as our little ones tire from a big semester. Our top tips are: get outdoors as much as possible as a change of scene really helps, sleep-ins are your friend and remember the positives from the semester and celebrate these with your child.

We’re finishing off our assessments in Prep and we couldn’t be more proud of the growth in learning that we see.

Have a lovely week

Year 5 - Eureka Gold Rush Excursion

This week our Year 5 students are participating in their Eureka Gold Rush Excursion. The excursion forms an important part of our HASS unit for Year 5 and aims to immerse students in Australia’s history and culture through an interactive learning experience. Students were provided a great opportunity to get outside of the classroom, collaborate with their peers and really see what life was like during the 1800s.

Year 6 Graduation Committee

Thank you to all the families who met with me last week regarding the Year 6 Graduation. Our Graduation Committee has plans to meet again next week to finalise some details and I look forward to advertising more information to our Year 6 families before the end of term. Whatever is decided, I know that our Graduation Committee will work to ensure that this year’s graduation is a fitting celebration of the great achievements of our Year 6 students.

Transition to Secondary School

Recently our Year 6 students had the pleasure of meeting representatives from Murrumba State Secondary College. This forms some of our initial steps in successfully transitioning our students to secondary school. Students were presented with information regarding the Academy Programs. If your child is interested in the Academy Programs offered at Murrumba State Secondary College please indicate this on the Expression of Interest Form when registering your intention to enrol your child in 2022. If you would like to find out more information relating to the Academies, please feel free to contact Head of School, Shannon Carter scart145@eq.edu.au who will be more than happy to assist you with your queries.

Support for events and changes in daily routines

At Mango Hill State School we have many school community events including whole school parades, athletics carnivals, excursions and incursions which impact on students’ daily routines. We also have other changes to routine such as termly drills. 

Students can sometimes find the change from daily routine challenging. Therefore our staff provide additional support before and during the event or change in routine. Some of the ways our teachers and teacher aides provide support include the following.

• Social stories that step through the upcoming event, preparing students for the event and what to expect (sometimes sent home for parents to read with student)
• Practising activities/skills to prepare for the event e.g. students practise events for athletics carnvials in PE lessons prior to the event
• Staff collaboration and decision making regarding support during the event (staff may participate in the event alongside students, course may be modified, etc)
• Daily conversations/reminders about the event or change in routine
• Visuals used to remind students of the changes e.g. first and then board and daily timetable
• Reminders sent home to parents and carers so we can work in partnership with you
• Resources/tools used to support students with individual needs e.g. headphones for events that may be loud, fidget toys to support concentration, seating arrangement to support listening or movement break needed

Have a great week

Assessment in English

At this end of the term teachers are busy finalising their current English units of work. This provides an opportunity for teachers to collect assessment data and for students to demonstrate their learnings and understandings. At Mango Hill, we collect assessment data from a range of sources to create a broad picture of each individual students’ understanding of English. This includes data about Shared Reading which focuses on comprehension of novels, picture books and stories; Independent Reading which focuses on decoding age-appropriate texts and answering comprehension questions; and Writing which focusses on understandings about text types as well as sentence structure, spelling and punctuation.

Teachers use all of the data gathered from Term 1 and 2 English tasks to make an ‘on-balance’ judgement about English, providing one mark (i.e. A, B, C, D or E) for the semester. While collecting and marking the assessment tasks, teachers will also be considering the ‘next steps’ for every student. The ‘next steps’ will be communicated on the report cards and will provide students and their families with a focus for their ongoing learning in English.

We look forward to all of our students demonstrating their English learnings in the coming weeks.

Accelerated Reader

Congratulations to Charlie who last week reached his goal of one million AR words! Charlie has been working hard all year to reach this outstanding milestone and we are very proud of him. We have added his photo to our growing AR display in the Hub.

Don’t forget that now is a great time to set a new goal for the upcoming semester. How many words might you be able to read in Term 3? Which level might you reach? How many books will you read?

New AR Books

We were very excited this week to unpack lots of new AR books. These brand new books were purchased with the generous donation of money from the P&C. We look forward to cataloguing and processing these in the coming weeks. Thank you to our willing volunteers who have been very busy contacting books after they have been catalogued. We anticipate lots of new books will be ready on our shelves for the beginning of Term 3.