7 December 2022

Newsletter Articles

Date Claimers

Principal’s Report

A Magnificent Year in Maleny

When the going gets tough, they say the tough and resilient stand up and shine. I am so proud and honoured to have worked with staff, parents, students and a community that have shone and made a most challenging year a very successful one. As a school and P&C we certainly didn’t sit back and ride out the storm of the Covid aftermath but forged ahead with students achieving excellent academic results while introducing a number of new ventures such as our Out of School Hours Care and P&C Store.

This year we have engaged with our Jinibara Elders who have worked with staff and students in numerous workshops throughout the year integrating cultural knowledge and language into our curriculum. We are proud that we are one of the very few schools that has closed the Gap this year with 100% of our Indigenous students achieving a ‘C’ or better in Maths, English and Science.

I congratulate all staff that have ensured our school is performing incredibly effectively in all areas. These results are not achieved easily, and do not occur unless students, staff and our community are all working together to create a very supportive, inclusive, engaging and achievement focused school. Many thanks to our leadership team who provide support and guidance to myself and staff.

Thank you to our P&C who are driving community engagement within our school. This year successfully bringing our community together for our first Maleny Community Country Fair inviting other local schools and numerous community groups, and as a result, tripling our profits.

A special thanks to our P&C executive who have continually sacrificed their time to ensure our school is forever improving. They continue to ensure that our students are catered for effectively and our parent voices and ideas are heard.

Thank you also for the tremendous work done by our Volunteers, Tuckshop Convenors, Uniform Shop, Mother’s and Father’s Day Stall and Book Club Coordinators. A huge thank you to all P&C members and those parents who are leaving us this year, that have been great supporters of our P&C over many years, you will be missed.

Farewell to retiring staff

This Tuesday we held a special assembly where we said farewell to our Year 6 students, retiring Tuckshop Convenors (Gunnar - 17 Years, Aki - 10 Years and Jo - 4 Years) and staff. Mr Faulkner -13 Years, Mrs Thompson - 26 Years and Ms Cave - 4 Years. I thank them for their tremendous contributions to our school and the positive impact they have had on thousands of students that have passed through Maleny State School. They will all be greatly missed and we wish them well in retirement.

End of Year Concert

Last week around 200 parents attended our End of Year Concert. A huge thank you to all students, your performances were amazing, along with Tristan our Master of Ceremonies for the day. Thank you Nina Abbot our music teacher who coached classes with their performances. I am already excited about our 2023 concert.

Crazy Free Dress Friday

Thank you to our Student Council who coordinated this fun day last Friday.

Class Formation 2023

One of our most important and difficult tasks at this time of year, is devising our school’s class structure and staffing for 2023.

Teachers have spent a considerable amount of time making sure that classes are composed with a balance of factors in mind, including legitimate parent preferences. There are many variables involved and the change of just one student can have a domino effect that affects other students and the balance of the class. Now that classes are formed, there will be no room for changes to be made. Please respect this process. As parents the best skill we can assist our children to develop is resilience, which means facing issues rather than avoiding them.

Students will be advised of their 2023 classes on Thursday.

At this stage we look like having 16 classroom teachers in 2023 (we currently have 16) including 2 composite classes namely a Prep/One and a 3/4. It is always difficult to know exactly how many new families will enrol over the holiday break and how many families will leave. Our staffing is dependent on our student enrolments on Day 8 in 2023.

School Reports

Parents will be emailed students Semester Two Report Cards this Wednesday. Please discuss your child’s progress with them and seek any clarification if required with your child’s teacher. Remember a ‘C’ academic rating means your child is achieving the outcomes expected of a child at their year level. The majority of children will generally fall within this rating.

Congratulations Year 5 Campers

Our Yr 5’s had a wonderful time at Maranatha Recreation Camp (Yandina) Camp recently. Students welcomed me on arrival saying, “This is the best camp ever!” I congratulate them for receiving some wonderful praise from both Maleny staff and Camp staff on their conduct and behaviour.

Year 6 Graduation and Farewell

Our special Graduation Ceremony for Year 6 students was on this Tuesday.

Our Year 6 Graduation Dinner (students only) is at the Maleny RSL Tuesday evening (6:00pm – 8:00pm). Parents are welcome to come early and take photos in the grassed area in front of RSL.

It is always a proud moment to farewell our Year 6 students. I wish all of our students the best at High School and for the future. We will also sadly miss many of our Year 6 Mums and Dads, Grandparents and Guardians who have over the last seven or more years been a great asset to our school in many different capacities. Thank you also to our School Leaders, Sports Captains, Music and Student Council representatives for showing such initiative and enthusiasm in their roles within the school this year.

Thank You to our Volunteers

We have numerous volunteers who assist in the important areas such as reading, swimming, tuckshop, arts, classroom help, religious instruction, excursions, P&C activities, sporting teams, mentoring and a host of other activities on a daily basis.

We acknowledged our volunteers last Monday providing them some wonderful student entertainment and a beautiful morning tea in our hall. A huge thank you to Trish McKay who coordinated this activity and to all staff that assisted in providing cooking and decorating the Hall.

Anyone interested in becoming a much-valued volunteer in 2023, can contact the school on 54998333.

Donate old uniforms

Good quality used uniforms are needed by our uniform shop. This includes hats, black shoes, shirts, jumpers, sports shirts etc. Please drop these into the office or uniform shop.

We ask parents of Year 6 students if they are in the position to gift any quality uniform items back to the school to assist future families to please contact Desley. Your generosity is very much appreciated by many families whom we are able to gift these.

Purchase Black Shoes and White Socks to start the 2023 year

Please ensure your children help to make our school look and feel great in 2023. It is an expectation EVERY student in every year level will have BLACK SHOES (joggers) and WHITE socks to commence the year.

Uniform Shop Opening Times 2023

Our Uniform Shop will be open each morning from 9:00am – 11:00am from the 16 – 20 January 2023.

Leaving our school or have a 2023 student enrolling

Our staffing formula is based on student day 8 2023 enrolment numbers and as such it is crucial that 2023 students enrol now to assist us with our class structure organisation. It is also crucial that if families are leaving next year they alert us as soon as possible.

Attendance this Week

Children are expected to attend every day this week including Friday. Please ensure you call the absentee line if your children are away, especially Friday this week. The additional work caused by parents that do not do so puts incredible pressure on Desley in the office at a very busy time of year.

School Watch

Thank you for keeping an eye on our school over the holidays by reporting any suspicious activity on 131788.

2023 Welcome Back to School

School Commences on Monday the 23 January 2023 at 8:50am. Please ensure your children have their required equipment from their appropriate book list (booklists are available on our website) and the correct uniform to ensure they enjoy a successful start to the year.

Bringing Students Books in before school starts

Parents are able and encouraged to bring students books into their children’s classroom and place them neatly on any desk (purely an operational efficiency, teachers will decide on their final classroom seating plan) on Friday 20 January. This will reduce the number of parents needing to physically come into the school on the first day of the year and enable a smoother start to a very busy morning remembering we will have close to 100 new families commencing at our school. Teachers will be involved in professional development activities on our professional development days and will not be available to meet with parents.

2023 Booklists

Booklists can be found on our School Web page:

P&C Meeting

Our next meeting will be Wednesday February 8 at 2023 at 8:50am in the Innovation Centre, we hope that you can attend our first meeting of 2023.

Tremendous Maleny Team

As this is the last Newsletter for the Term, I would like to acknowledge and extend my sincere thanks to the great school team of staff behind me. This is my tenth year at Maleny and I am excited that once again we have added value and have a school that continues to improve in all areas each year. Thank you to all staff for your dedication, professionalism and support of our children and families. We have had a tremendous 2022 and produced some amazing outcomes, thank you for the positive contributions you have made to our school, and each and every student, every day.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Enjoy the festive season with your family and have a safe and relaxing break. I look forward to seeing everyone in the New Year. Thank you for your support in 2022, have a wonderful holiday we are excited to welcome you back in 2023.

John

From the Deputy Principal

2023 School Leaders

Last Familygram I announced the four School Captains for 2023, below is the final list of School Leaders for 2023. Congratulations to

At the start of the 2023 school year, our Year 6 teachers will seek out nominations from the Year 6 cohort for Student Council positions.

Happy Holidays

Once again, another year has quickly gone by, I hope you all have a lovely holiday, stay safe and I look forward to seeing you all in 2023!

Paula Heiniger – Deputy Principal

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.

Lost Property

There are quite a lot of items in lost property and, if not collected by the end of the term, will be washed/cleaned and donated to local charities. Please ask your children to have a look, or yourself, in the alcove next to the Year 4 eating area.

QParents is coming in 2023!

Maleny State School is aiming to make school business processes simpler for not only school office staff but for parents as well. QParents is an Education Queensland service provided by the Queensland Government, that is available to all state schools.

Maleny SS is aiming to reduce the amount of paper we print as well as reduce the need for high volumes of inbound and outbound phone calls related to student absences. The QParents app will allow for parents to send a message to report an absence, check invoices and make payments in app, access report cards, see important upcoming events and eventually, when activated, even provide consent for special activities (coming late 2023) all within the one app or online website.

QParents internal testing was very successful!

We conducted internal testing with staff who have children who attend the school to test functionality as well as provide staff training to make sure when it is released to the parent community things will run as smoothly as possible.

Initial feedback from staff, using the app as a parent, they found the app easy to use and invoice payments especially handy. The newly release consent management section (e.g. school camps, swimming note, online 3rd party website consent, etc) can now all be done online through the QParent app. Staff were very impressed at how quick and easy it was, especially in that the consent when granted, is immediately sent straight into our system.

More news will be coming early 2023 as we get closer to a full rollout to the parent community at Maleny. In the meantime check out the overview video and basic QParents Factsheet on the school website.

Basic tour of QParents

PBL (Positive Behaviour Learning)

Congratulations, the Rocket is full!

Well done everyone, students and teachers alike are all so excited to have reached our goal. Class teachers will be organising an extra 20 minutes of play time with their classes as the reward!

Be Respectful – Keep Your Hands and Feet to Yourself

To end a wonderful year, it’s great to re-visit this very simple but effective ‘Be Respectful’ rule. Keep your hands and feet to yourself.

This means:

• I keep my hands and feet to myself
• I solve problems with my head not my hands – think first, move away, breathe, report
• I let go of what I can’t control
• I use calming strategies when I feel upset
• I use the high 5 to help solve problems
• I move away and re-set
• I play fairly
• I am a team player and show good sportsmanship
• I use positive talk to myself, my peers and adult

As our final communication of the year, we would like to wish all our students and families a happy and safe Summer Holiday. We look forward to welcoming you all back into a Positive Behaviour for Learning environment at Maleny State School in 2023!

The PBL Team

Year 2A

What A Wonderful Year!

A huge congratulations to all students in 2A. We have been overwhelmed by the amazing learning you have achieved this year. Thank you to all the Happy Helpers each week who helped manage the day by completing lots of tasks to help us run the day smoothly. Thanks also for using up all the ink in our 4 Bee stamps. Some great rewards for your hard work were well earned! Smiling faces greeted us each day and we hope you have made some life-long memories this year. All the best in Year 3 to you all and we will look out for you in your new classroom next year at Maleny SS. Have a safe and happy Xmas break.

Sarsha Anthony, Tam Johnston (2A)

Year 3A & 3B

Farewell and Thank You

2022 has been an extremely busy and productive year. To think that the end is now in sight is astounding. We can finally say goodbye to all of our assessment tasks and start to focus on a happy conclusion to this school year, plans for holidays and Christmas events.

Ms. Chandler and I are very proud of the efforts of our Year 3 students throughout this year. They have on most occasions applied themselves academically and socially, showing respect and tolerance towards each other. We would like to wish our students every success for the future. May we also take this opportunity to thank you, the parents and carers, for your continued support in assisting us in our role as teachers.

We would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a safe, happy and relaxing holiday. Looking forward to seeing you back at school next year.

Kathryn Brown (3A) & Shelly Chandler (3B)

Year 4

The 4A students enjoyed exhibiting their artwork on parade last week. Dianella surprised Desley with a drawing she completed for her to put up in the office.

On Thursday we held our MasterChef Fruit and Veggie Juice competition and the students enjoyed making up their own recipe and tasting the different teams' creations. They had to include fruit, two vegetables from our school garden and a herb. We all enjoyed tasting and rating each of the juices.

Students of the Week: Week 8

War On Waste

Just a quick note to say we have had some positive feedback on our grant application to purchase new large compost bins for the garden club - $2500. We will be looking for some volunteers to help out with a working bee in March next year to dig some holes to put our compost bins in around our garden beds.

It has been a wonderful year and we look forward to Imogen our new Sustainability Captain for 2023 to lead our Garden Club in a productive greener and sustainable future for our school.

Best wishes for a restful holiday break

Kind Regards
Lou Walsh

P & C News

Next P&C Meeting Wed 8 February 2023 @ 8.50 in the Innovation Centre. All welcome to attend.

Uniform Shop

Due to delays in the refurbishment of the existing space, the Uniform Shop will only be able to take and process online orders with delivery to classrooms.

For online orders and to check out our new items, please visit:

Special Uniform Shop Opening Times 2023

Our Uniform Shop will be open each morning from 9:00am – 11:00am from 16 – 20 January 2023.

Chappy News

Finishing up

Well, it is the end of the school year once again. Having worked in schools for the past five years and having school aged children myself I know the relief it is to finish up. No more rabbiting through piles of clean washing early morning to find uniform shirts and socks, no more trying to find interesting and healthy lunch box items both at the shops and at home (ones that they will actually eat as well). The pressure of home reading and homework is relieved for a while. At the same time we can be thankful that our children can attend such a wonderful school with dedicated staff and volunteers. Going to school helps our children develop such life skills as time management, relationship building, following directions, emotional regulation, critical thinking, just to name a few. We live in a world full of diverse people and systems and we need to assist our children in learning to operate in this domain whilst still maintaining their individuality and joy.

As I said in the last newsletter I feel school holidays give us as families a great opportunity to spend some quality time together. Why don’t we continue to learn new things together with our families and from each other this holiday? It may be as simple as learning how to body board or body surf, maybe visiting an art gallery or museum, taking your family to visit an elderly relative and sit and listen to their wisdom and life experience, maybe attending church on Christmas Day to learn more about the Christmas tradition. We all know learning comes from more than books. So, find a new and unique thing to learn or experience this holiday break.

As 2022 wraps up I want to again say such a big thankyou to the staff, volunteers and families of Maleny State School. I feel so blessed to have been your School Chaplain since the beginning of term three. I will be back next year of course but wanted to take this opportunity to say Happy Christmas to you all and thank you for welcoming me. Until next year.

Chappy Chris’ quote for the day “Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will” Vernon Howard.

Chappy Chris

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

You can keep updated with Maleny Community News and the Maleny Local Shopper at the NEW link:

P&C’s Qld - Click through to view their most recent editions of Parent Talk -

Sunshine Coast Libraries Summer Reading Program

Get ready to have an adventurous summer with quests to complete, challenges to undertake and libraries full of amazing tales just waiting to be discovered.

The annual Summer Reading Club runs from Thursday 1 December 2022 to Tuesday 31 January 2023. For ages 0-16 years.

Its so easy!

Step 1: Become a library member.

Step 2: Register for the Summer Reading Club online or at your local library using your library membership. Register under your local branch, and in your age category.

Step 3: Pick up a copy of your Adventure Map.

Step 4: Complete three quests to go into the draw for prizes.

Adventure map

Quest 1: Complete 5 challenges, bring the map into your local library to get the official stamp of approval and claim a free torch.

Quest 2: Complete 6 challenges, bring the map into your local library to get the official stamp of approval and claim a free drawstring library bag.

Quest 3: Complete 9 challenges, bring the map into your local library to get the official stamp of approval and go in the draw to win a $50 book voucher.

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