3 March 2020

Newsletter Articles

Date Claimers

Timetable for Maleny State School Swimming Program for weeks 2-9, 2020

Principal’s Report

Welcome to our half way mark of Term One.

One of our values is to ensure we develop a love of learning and help our students to become reflective lifelong learners. This will be true for all of us no matter what employment field we enter into, unfortunately those that stand still will quickly be left behind.

One of the best things we can do as parents is to model this to our children and ensure we also spend time listening to our children (Prep to Year 6) read EVERY day and have our students retell what they have read. Retelling is an important skill that students need to develop. Oral language is also crucial to develop in addition to correct pronunciation from an early age to assist reading development.

Our Prep students are introduced to their phonemes (sounds) each week. Students learn 44 phonemes and how each can be represented. Hence when children come across: ‘place’, ‘kiss’ and ‘sell’, to understand that phonemes /s/ can have many spelling choices: ‘ce’, ‘ss’ and ‘s’. Repetition and practise of these phonemes in addition to nightly reading is essential for the development of reading. Reading is the key to every subject area and will assist children to gain a wider vocabulary which will in turn benefit our school focus of ‘Writing – Spelling’.

As when we learning anything, those that do not practice will not progress. Every student should have a variety of reading material that is appropriate to their reading level to access. Please see your child’s teacher or the library (as children progress) to assist with this effective match up.

Last week our Deputy Principal, Literacy Coach, Learning Support Teacher and Guidance Officer all attended professional development on how to assist students that are having difficulties mastering the skill of reading and identifying the next steps that children require to learn. To be able to read students need skills in the following areas:

• Phonemic Awareness
• Oral Language
• Phonics
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension
• Fluency

Identifying individual students’ specific area of difficulty and developing this area can be the key to assisting readers that are struggling. As teachers, we realise that parents are children’s first teachers and acknowledge the wonderful job that parents play in their child’s learning. The stronger we can develop the link between home and school the more beneficial this will be to our students. Please do not hesitate to seek support from our staff on how you can best help your children to develop their reading.

Tuckshop Helpers Required

Please see Gunnar at the tuckshop if you can assist in any capacity, your support will be much appreciated.

Have a Great Week John

From the Deputy Principal

Our Focus this year:

This year our focus in writing expands into looking more closely at spelling and feedback. Today I thought I would talk about spelling and highlight the ‘4 spelling knowledges’. For students to become proficient spellers, there are 4 different kinds of spelling knowledge they require. Proficient spellers know how to use, explain and apply these knowledges.

1. Phonological Knowledge

A proficient speller develops a deep awareness of the phonemes (sounds) in our language and their relationship with the letter combinations that represent the phonemes in written form. They can segment words into individual phonemes and syllables, blend phonemes to form words, manipulate phonemes, and recognize onset and rime.

2. Visual Knowledge

Proficient spellers look at words as a whole, as well as syllables and as individual graphemes (letters). They learn to recognise spelling patterns and also to identify deviations from regular patterns.

3. Morphemic Knowledge

As students continue to explore the words of our language, they start to discover more patterns and generalisations. As they look at the meaning of words and how words are formed, they discover that words conform to certain patterns and can also deviate from these patterns. Proficient spellers explore the formation of compound words and the use of prefixes and suffixes to change word meanings. Word building is explored and students look at how changes to a word create changes to the word’s meaning and grammatical use of the word.

4. Etymological Knowledge

Students who use this knowledge explore word origins and the history of words. Students explore the roots of words and word meanings and learn to recognize the relationships between words. They develop an understanding of how some words are derived and how the meaning of unfamiliar words may be determined by examining parts of a word and similar related words.

Paula Heiniger

Students of the Week: Week 3

Highest Class Attendance for Week 3

Congratulations Prep B

Students of the Week: Week 4

Highest Class Attendance for Week

Congratulations 1A

Contact Details – Do we have your most up to date contact details?

There are times when we may need to contact parents and carers. Do we have your most up to date contact details? If not, please contact the school on 5499 8333 so we can update our records. These details include parent/carers’ name, address, phone numbers, email address and emergency contact details. Please remember to contact the school if any of these details change.

PBL (Positive Behaviour Learning)

Be FUN (Flexible – Understanding – Negotiate)

Currently we are focussing on reinforcing Positive Behaviour outside of the classroom. Our BUZZ PHRASE is “Be F.U.N to have fun”. We are encouraging students to be FLEXIBLE – willing to do what others want to do, UNDERSTANDING – try to look at things another way and NEGOTIATE – work together to make a plan that works.

Whole school reward

During play and eating times, students being F.U.N will be recognised with a sticker which is then exchanged in class for a ball in the bucket. Each class gets to tip their balls into the school ‘rocket’ on parade. Once the rocket is full, a school-wide reward of extra playtime will be enjoyed by all!

PBL Team

Year 3/4C

It has been a fantastic start to the year! Students have settled in well and are developing good work habits and adjusting to new routines. This year’s class is quite an artistic bunch! I am impressed with the students’ drawings of characters from the novel ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ by Roald Dahl for our English unit.

HASS this semester has been very interesting, as we study atlases and maps looking at the world’s seven continents, five lines of latitude and three climate zones. Students enjoyed the challenge of piecing together the seven continents during a cut and paste task in class.

We already have a comprehensive classroom library setup in our classroom for which students collected several book titles each from our school’s library to enjoy. As I allowed the students to borrow these books under my library loan, I think I have the largest book loan in the school! It is great to see such avid readers enjoying a variety of children’s literature.

Kerry Lees (3/4C)

Year 4A, & 4B

Having Fun with The Twits

In English we are learning about how to write a narrative. We have enjoyed reading The Twits and have been busy planning our own chapter for the book. We have used picture strips to sequence our ideas to match our hamburger plans and brainstormed to write noun groups that portray character traits.

While listening to the story we drew pictures of what we visualised and showed each other our interpretation.

In art, we have enjoyed learning to draw and Maggie came in to teach 4B how to do continuous line and portraits, focusing on alignment of the facial features. The students were very proud of the portraits they completed of Mr Twit.

4A completed colourful faces of Mr Twit and his very wild, dirty beard

Both classes enjoyed role playing using the witness box to interview Mr Twit.

In Science the students are investigating weather and erosion. We are learning about the different types of soils on our earth’s surface. We have all enjoyed completing experiments to see the difference.

Kylie Hulm (4A), Lou Walsh & Trish Mackay (4B)

Year 5A & 5B

So far this year...

5A, 5B and 5C have all been busy since the start of the year reading “The Forests of Silence- Deltora Quest” novel by Emily Rodda. We have been looking at the precise language used, analysing the characters and how they are portrayed by the author. Now we are starting planning and writing our own short narratives focusing on the imaginative quest genre.

In Science we have been investigating animals and their structural and behavioural adaptations for survival. Soon we will start creating our own creatures to survive in two different environments. We will use PowerPoint to present this information and to show scientific understanding.

Friday Morning Session is always a highlight in Year 5 and the three Year 5 classes have started the year in style. We have had some informative interest talks with many more still to come.

We’re looking forward to....

In the coming weeks we have a number of new and exciting things happening like Maths and Writing GEMS, Interschool sport (Softball), the Cross Country and we will also start our art sculptures of our own heroes and villains.

Deb Darcy (5A), Eric Faulkner (5B) & Tammalee Johnston/ Caroline Hartley (5C)

Year 6A & 6B

GRIP LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

On Thursday the 20th of February, the Yr 6 school leaders were treated to a day out from the classroom where they attended the GRIP Leadership Conference held at Kawana. Here our Yr 6's had the opportunity to meet many other leaders from schools across the Sunshine Coast and participate in a wide range of engaging activities. These activities concentrated specifically on training student leaders for their role as school leader. It was great to see our school so well represented at this conference amongst so many larger schools. We all left feeling very inspired and energised. A great day was had by all!

Emma Back (6A) & Greg Corkin (6B)

LOTE - Japanese

Great start of the year in Japanese

Yr 5 and Yr 6 students have had a great start of the Term in Japanese by drawing their own title page of ‘Doraemon’ the beloved Japanese robot cat from the future and revising some of the hiragana writings. They are all doing such fantastic work.

Emi Obara - Japanese Teacher

War on Waste

Introducing Our 2 New Sustainability Leaders!

For the first time ever Maleny State School has introduced Sustainability Captains. Ava and Imogen were voted in at the end of last year after delivering a speech to the upper school. They will be presenting updates regularly in our Familygram.

Introduction from Ava and Imogen

Hi, I’m Ava and I love breeding chickens. We have four chooks at school and we are planning to feed them our bread, cheese and meat scraps from the lunch eating areas.

Hi, I’m Imogen and I love nature and I think our garden at school is a beautiful space. We plan to have some fun activities for kids to join our garden club. Soon we will have a workshop where we will learn how to make bee motels.

GARDEN CLUB SUCCESSFUL WITH GRANT APPLICATION

We are very happy to share some good news with you all. Our school was successful in receiving a grant of $3300. We have used some of this money to buy three native beehives.

The hives are situated in the prep grounds, near our senior toilets and outside the office. We have a fourth beehive in our garden area donated by Barung Landcare.

Dean from Brymac Native Beehives spoke on parade about the importance of native bees. We know that our bees fly 500 metres from their hive each day and do not sting.

We have been very busy replanting our wicking beds and mulching. Our beans and sweet potato have grown up the post and spreading across to the next post to make an arch. It feels like we are in a jungle!

Our goal for collection of 10 cent containers will be $1000. We will be using the money raised to fix our old greenhouse so the garden club members can start propagating seeds)

Kind Regards,
Ava, Imogen and Lou Walsh

Glasshouse District Swimming Carnival 2020

On Wednesday 19 February, the Glasshouse District Swimming Carnival was held at the Beerwah Pool. Maleny State School sent an enthusiastic team of 20 swimmers to compete against 15 other schools in the district. Throughout the day, swimmers from all schools swam strongly with many great times being recorded. Maleny State School swimmers showed great determination and endeavour in all races. This helped them secure 4th place just behind the winners, St Michael’s College, Mooloolah & Glasshouse Christian College. All Maleny State School swimmers are to be congratulated for their achievements and good sportsmanship.

A special congratulations needs to go to Conor and Zac who received Age Champion awards.

CHAPPY NEWS

THE “LITTLE” THINGS MATTER

On the weekend I had the privilege of attending a wedding of an ex-student from Rockhampton where I used to be a teacher. This young girl had been with her partner for 13 years and they had 2 children together. They finally tied the knot on Saturday, celebrating in a very intimate family gathering, that I was honoured to be part of. Marriage and relationships are such an important topic and I want to share briefly about it. As someone who has been married for almost 19 years, I am quite aware of the difficulties and strains that most families experience. One thing that I have been thinking about of late, is the importance of not neglecting the little things in our relationships. There is a proverb that says, “Catch the little foxes that spoil and ruin the vineyards (of love), while our vineyards are in blossom.”

It’s actually very powerful advice. Don’t allow the “small” things to become big things and ruin what is truly important. That means noticing the things that we may have become neglectful about. Picking up after ourselves, telling the other that you love and appreciate them, helping with the dishes and housework, making an effort to look nice and going the extra mile to prioritise time together. Don’t neglect the small stuff. One big relationship destroyer is apathy and neglect. Your relationship with your spouse has to be of the utmost priority because while your relationship is flourishing, your children are also flourishing. Take time this week to appreciate and thank one another for all the things that often go unnoticed. Have a wonderful week everyone.

REMINDERS…

1. Grandparent’s support group is every Monday morning from 9-10am. Please come and enjoy a cuppa and a chat
2. Breakfast Club is every Wednesday. Volunteers needed
3. Mentors needed. One hour a week with one child

Chappy Becky

P & C News

Next P&C Meeting

11 March 2020

From Our Tuckshop

The Tuckshop is open three day a week – Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

If you can help, please see Gunnar at the Tuckshop. Your support will be much appreciated.

FlexiSchools is our preferred ordering system and is simple and easy to use.

To register go to the link below:

Uniform Shop

If you have one hour per month that you may be able to help us out in the Uniform Shop please contact the office on 5499 8333. Open from 8:30-9:30am on Fridays, bring along a friend and be part of our happy team

The Uniform Shop's regular hours are Friday mornings between 8.30am and 9.30am. Payment options are EFTPOS, cash or cheque at the uniform shop only. Alternatively, orders can be placed online at the link below by 5pm Wednesday for Friday pickup or class delivery.

From the Office

Payments

Payments can be made by any of the following methods.

1. Directly into our bank account noting the invoice number, initial and surname of the student for whom you are paying. Our Bank account details are:
   BSB: 064-462 Account Number: 10080359
2. Credit card using the bPoint reference number that is located on the bottom left hand side of your invoice. Credit card payments can also be made in person at the office.
3. Cash and cheque can be made by placing the cheque/correct change in a payment envelope and depositing it into the drop-safe in the office. Please ensure that the envelope is sealed so the cash does not fall out. Please write the student’s name, class, amount enclosed and what the payment is for, clearly on the envelope.

Office hours are 8:00am to 4:00pm on Monday - Friday.

Community News

Please see the link below to the Maleny Sports and Rec Maleny Events Calendar

Choose how to add this event to your calendar:

Apple Calendar iPhone, iPad, Mac - Download .ics file

Outlook Desktop Outlook - Download .ics file

Android Calendar Android devices - Download .ics file

Other Calendar Google Calendar, Yahoo, etc. - Download .ics file

Download Event