Current themes of education that were presented at a recent conference I attended are described below. The journey of education for our children will be different to the journey that we undertook ourselves.

AI (Artificial Intelligence)

The role of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in primary schools is likely to continue evolving as technology advances and educational needs change. Here are some potential roles:

Overall, the role of AI in primary schools will likely be one of support and enhancement, strengthening traditional teaching methods rather than replacing them entirely. As with any technology, careful integration and ongoing evaluation will be crucial to maximizing its benefits for students and educators alike.

Building and Maintaining Positive Relationships

Building and maintaining positive relationships with parents in a primary school setting is essential for creating a supportive learning environment for students. Here are some strategies to achieve this:

By implementing these strategies, primary schools can build strong, collaborative partnerships with parents that support students' academic, social, and emotional growth.

Many of the strategies listed above are in place at Mentone Park and we will continue striving to build positive relationships with our community.

Harmony Day

On Thursday 21st March, Mentone Park will be celebrating Harmony Day, a celebration that recognises our diversity and brings together Australians from all different backgrounds. It’s about inclusiveness, respect and a sense of belonging for everyone.
In recognition of this day, we ask that all students wear a touch of orange. This can be an orange t-shirt, an orange pair of socks, an orange hair ribbon, an orange hat or skirt.
We will be running Harmony Day activities for the Junior School in the morning and then for the senior school prior to lunch time. We will then all meet together for lunch on the oval.
The PFA are also running a Harmony Day morning tea for $5.00, payments made through Qkr. These will be delivered to the students just before recess.

End of Term Arrangements

Our last day of Term 1 is Thursday 28th March and the children will be dismissed at 2:30pm. We will hold our Easter Bonnet Parade and Easter Raffle in the morning at 9:15am. Therefore, there will be no Assembly at the end of the day.

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Spotlight

Hello Foundation families!

We cannot believe that we are already nearly at the end of Term 1! It has been a fantastic term, we thank you for all your support and friendly demeanours!

The last few weeks the Foundation students have been getting up to lots of exciting and new learning. One of the highlights for our students has been beginning Information Technology sessions, where they have enjoyed navigating the Ipads and becoming accustomed to logging onto Reading Eggs and Matific. A reminder that their Reading Eggs, Wushka and Matific usernames and passwords are glued into the front cover of their Reading Journal, for optional use at home.

We are now also into the swing of Show and Tell. This is occurring on Monday and Wednesday each week. We thank you for your support in bringing in family photos on your child/ren’s rostered day. It has been lovely watching the Foundation students present to the class with increasing confidence.

Benefits of show and tell:

• Show and Tell is beneficial for young childrens’ development, as it helps demonstrate vocabulary and articulation.
• It allows turn taking.
• Encourages students to develop their social skills, for example whole body listening, asking and responding to appropriate questions.
• Show and Tell develops confidence when speaking in front of a group.

Student Illness

As the term progresses, we have been noticing that more students are becoming sick which is inevitable.
If your child is unwell, we respectfully ask that you please keep your child at home, to fully recover and keep our whole community safe. In the event your child suffers from a medical condition such as asthma or allergies that causes continuous symptoms, we kindly ask that you please contact your child’s teacher. This will allow us to make an informed decision about whether to send a child home.
If they are unwell at school, parents will be contacted to come and collect their child from school.

School Nurse

Just a reminder that School Entrant Health Questionnaires were sent home last week. These must be completed online by this Thursday 14th of March. The Nurse visit in Term 2 is a great opportunity for us to work together for your child’s health and wellbeing and therefore their educational progress.

Easter Raffle

Just a friendly reminder that the raffle tickets that were sent home a few weeks ago, for our Annual Easter Egg raffle are due on the 27th of March. Each ticket is $1 each. There are amazing gift hampers and prizes to be won!
We also want to give a big thank you to those families who have also started sending in chocolate and prizes for our Easter Raffle, it is greatly appreciated.

Hot Cross Bun Fundraiser

Our yearly Hot Cross Bun fundraiser is back, with fresh hot cross buns being delivered from Bakers Delight on 22nd of March.and sent home. If you would like to support our fundraiser and place an order, head to QKR where you can complete the payment by Monday 18th of March.

Harmony Day

Next Thursday 21st of March the Foundation students will be celebrating Harmony Day. A reminder that we ask all students to wear a touch of orange i.e socks, ribbon, hat, skirt etc. Our Parent Association is also running a morning tea which includes a hot cross bun and juice box. If you wish for your child to participate in the morning tea, head over to QKR by next Monday 18th of March to make payment. The morning tea will be delivered shortly before recess.

Take Home Reading

Foundation students are required to please read a decodable book on Wushka each night. Parents are asked to listen to their child each night, discuss what has been read, sign the child’s Take Home Reading Diary daily and return their diary inside their black take home book bag on Monday. Foundation teachers will review their Take Home Diary each Monday.
Just a reminder that students should be reading books at home that they can confidently read independently and parents are encouraged to read the book to their child if they are not able. The Take Home Reading Program is designed to build confidence and develop a love of books. Don’t forget to ask your child what reading strategies they can use for working out ‘tricky’ words such as ‘stretching the word out’ and ‘sounding it out’. As per our Intialit Literacy Program we please ask that we avoid asking the children to guess what the words say, based on the pictures but rather ask them to use their prior sound knowledge to sound the word out. Again, if they are unsure parents modelling, sounding out the word to them is always beneficial too!

Reading/Phonics: We are learning to connect our sounds to begin to write unfamiliar words and find other words that begin with the same sounds. Our focus letters are O,F,C,R, E and N.

Writing: We are learning about the features of a sentence such as capital letters, finger spaces and full stops

Maths: We are learning about Friends of Ten and beginning to delve into teen numbers. We have also looked at ordering days of the week and discussing certain events that occur on each of the days of the week.

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Literacy

We are entering Week 3 of our new InitiaLit program, by MultiLit. So far our lessons havecovered the following:

At home, your children would really benefit from discussions and practice on the above words and sounds.

Home Apps

In 2024, our school is working towards purchasing decodable readers to help support our InitiaLit program. Decodable readers are highly recommended for teaching reading as they allow students to sound out words with success and build reading confidence. We strongly encourage the use of Wushka decodables in replace of Take Home Readers on a regular basis. Your child’s login details for Wushka are in their Reading Diary.

Library

Just a friendly reminder that Library day is Wednesday for all Year 1/2 students. Could all students please have a named library bag and return their books each Wednesday. In order, to keep our library well resourced, students will not be able to borrow if they have overdue books. Please come and see us if your child hasn’t been able to find a lost book.



Writing: We are learning to... use our senses to write descriptively.
Students have been delving into their senses and brainstorming descriptive words to write about what they see, hear, feel, smell and taste. Students enjoyed taking in their surroundings from a quiet place outside in the schoolyard and being mindful of our 5 senses.
This formed the basis to their writing pieces this week.

Numeracy: We are learning to... use informal units to measure length and capacity.
We have looked into our first measurement topics this year, looking at measuring length with informal units. We measured the length of classroom items and the height of students with informal units like textas and glue sticks. This week we have been investigating capacity and measuring how much our containers can hold. We’ve used informal units like unifix, teddy counters and erasers to measure the capacity of our containers and record the results, finding students who have containers with a similar capacity for comparison.

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Hello Middle School families,

Term 1 is flying by and we can’t believe we are already heading into week 8! There has definitely been some excitement amongst the Middle School this week. 

Firstly, congratulations to the Grade 3’s for completing their first ever NAPLAN sessions for Writing and Reading. They all did a fantastic job, and we are very proud. They will have two more sessions running next week on Monday morning and Tuesday at 11:30am, completing The Conventions of Language, and finally, Numeracy.

During this time the Grade 4’s have also been busy working on a project with the Grade 6's. In small groups, they have brainstormed ideas for creating an inclusive new space within the school. They have begun designing and budgeting their proposed plans and will have the opportunity to present these with one being selected to implement.

Our Inquiry focus this term has been on Rules and Laws, and how following these makes us good citizens. In the last two weeks of school, students will prepare a speech on a drastic rule change within the school and present this to their classmates.

In Reading, We Are Learning To...Make predictions and inferences when reading texts to strengthen our understanding.

In Writing, We Are Learning To...Demonstrate our understanding of persuasive and narrative writing structures and vocabulary. 

In Inquiry/Wellbeing, We Are Learning To...Identify what makes someone a good leader.

In Maths, We Are Learning To...Represent money values in different ways, read time to the o’clock, half hour and to the nearest minute.

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It’s hard to believe we are in Week 8 already after an incredibly eventful start to the year. Congratulations to our students for their hard work and resilience.

Below are some reminders for all students in the Senior School. Please take the time to go through them and discuss with your child. 

NAPLAN

This week our Yr 5 students began NAPLAN testing, completing the Writing and Reading components online. Next week they will complete the Conventions of Language on Monday morning and Numeracy after recess on Tuesday. Students who are absent during this time, will have a chance to catch up over the next two weeks. We wish to remind students and families that these tests are just a snapshot of the day and do not take into account your child as a whole and all of their wonderful and unique attributes. All we ask is that they try their best and know that we are proud of them no matter what!

Health

Ensuring our students are happy and healthy is our number one priority. As you may be aware, we currently have a student and 2 parents in the Senior School who have either recently completed or are still undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer. Due to treatment, their immune systems are compromised, making them highly susceptible to infection and illness. In the event your child or a close contact of theirs is ill, we encourage you to please consider the following:

Further information regarding infectious diseases and the recommended exclusion times can be found here at: https://www.health.vic.gov.au/infectious-diseases/school-exclusion-table#exclusion-periods-table

We appreciate all efforts to help keep everyone here at Mentone Park safe!


Respect

A behaviour focus in the Senior School at the moment is treating others with respect, both physically and verbally. We are reinforcing the importance of respect not only to our peers but also to adults. We encourage regular discussions with your children about ways in which they can demonstrate respect at school and at home.

Interschool Sport

We have had a very successful start to interschool sport having played games both home and away. It is always lovely to receive feedback from other schools about the kindness of our students and to hear that despite win or lose, we still demonstrated excellent sportspersonship. We hope to see this continue and encourage you to discuss with your child the importance of teamwork and having a go.

Reading: use multiple reading strategies to reflect on a book we have enjoyed
Writing: combine all seven steps to achieve success in writing a narrative and persuasive
Maths: select and apply efficient written and mental strategies to solve multiplication problems
Bounce Back: review and adapt our Senior School Code of Cooperation

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Exciting news! We have 2 new fish in our STEAM aquarium. Our students have been very excited to have some new classmates, and are assisting with feeding on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during lunch.

This week in STEAM we have been exploring patterns with weather, water, our Earth and in Space. In 3-6 students have been making representations (a way to show or explain a concept) of day and night and the relationship between the Earth, Moon and Sun. Foundation students have been exploring weather patterns and are learning about different seasons including Indigenous seasons. Students in 1/2 investigated the water cycle and explored how water travels to and from school through playing Melbourne Water’s ‘Drip Trip’ game.

During Tuesday lunchtimes we have been working on maintaining our gardens, with some Junior school students helping Mrs Zienow-Sy with mulching and watering. Our tomato plants are finishing their season, so make sure to come by the STEAM museum/ Kids café on Friday from 3:30-3:50pm to purchase some tomatoes, fresh herbs or worm juice.

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Fri 15th March	Senior Inter school Sport vs. St Brigid's
Thurs 21st March	Harmony Day
Fri 22nd March	Senior Inter school Sport vs. St Pat's
Thurs 28th March	Last Day of Term 1 9:15am Easter Bonnet Parade & Easter Raffle 2:30pm Dismissal

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The Department of Education and Mentone Park Primary School do not endorse the products or services of any private advertiser. They accept no responsibility for accuracy of information contained in advertisements or claims made by them.   

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