May - Issue 8

8


Message from the Principal

Open Afternoon

It was great to see so many families pop in and visit our classrooms last week. The students were extremely proud to show off their wonderful work and challenge you in a game.

Cross Country

Congratulations to all of our runners who participated last week in the District Cross Country. Well Done to Mackenzie O and Hugo J who qualified for the Divisional Cross Country competition. A terrific achievement!

Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea/A Day in May

On Friday 31st May we will be supporting the Cancer Council by participating in Australia's Biggest Morning Tea and combining this also with ''A Day in May.'' Children will be able to purchase a cupcake and Juicebox for $6 that they can enjoy with their classmates at recess. All proceeds will be donated directly to the Cancer Council. Orders can be made via QKR. Children can also participate in the "A Day in May Fundraiser'' by wearing a touch of yellow and bringing a gold coin donation where proceeds will go directly to Challenge, supporting kids with cancer.

Semester One Reports and Parent Teacher Interviews

As we have reached the halfway mark of this term, our children are busily completing assessments in a range of curriculum areas. Please take note of the following dates:

Curriculum Day for Report Writing – Friday 7th June

Student Reports available on Compass – Friday 21st June

Parent Teacher Interviews – Wednesday 26th June 2:00 – 6:30pm

More information will be provided via Compass about Student Reports and Parent Teacher Interview bookings as they get closer.

Junior Mayor

Well Done to our School Leaders for presenting at the Kingston Junior Mayor Competition on Thursday 23rd May. The team of Ollie B, Kiara F, Toby D and Pippa P have worked together to create the presentation which will be delivered by Ollie B.

Education Support Appreciation

Recently, we celebrated our Education Support staff and all the work that they do inside and outside of the classroom. Our team at MPPS is always willing to assist our teaching staff in any way, provide activities at lunchtime and be there for our children when they need it the most.

Foundation Enrolments

If you have a child who will be in Foundation in 2025 then we ask that you complete an enrolment form as soon as possible. We hosted our first Foundation Experience session on Wednesday and it was great to see many children enjoy this opportunity.

Tree Works

Next week there will be tree works taking place around the school following our recent Safe Tree Audit. All works deemed ‘High Priority’ will be carried out by DE appointed arborists. At School Council this week discussion was held to look into the planting of new trees to replace those removed as part of the works.



Foundation

In the Spotlight 

Hello Foundation families! 

It was lovely having most families in our ‘Open Classroom’ last Friday, to celebrate Education week. We hope you enjoyed being taught by your child on how to play Addition Connect Four and the opportunity to see how far they have come in their Writing! We are very proud of their accomplishments! 

Another very big thankyou to our parents and grandparents that attended our Mini Working Bee on Monday and were fantastic classroom helpers! Your time was greatly appreciated, getting our Tricky Words ready. 

We are officially a little over half way through Term 2 and 63 days into Prep! The Foundation students have excitedly enjoyed putting their Mathematics skills to the test everyday, counting down to their 100th day of being in Prep. 

We will be celebrating our 100 days of being in Prep event with exciting activities in early Term 3. More details regarding this will be communicated closer to the date. 

Please find important reminders and helpful information below for the Foundation area: 

Reminders: 

Student Illness: 

As previously communicated earlier this week there has been a particular rise with our little ones in the Foundation area, presenting as very unwell to school. Ensuring our students are happy and healthy is our number one priority. We do have a number of students in our Mentone Park Community that have immune systems that are compromised, making them highly susceptible to infection and illness.Therefore, we please ask that if your child is unwell that you, please keep your child at home until they have fully recovered. Even if they don’t have a fever, they still may be infectious and too unwell to complete the tasks that come with school. 

Just a reminder if your child is experiencing diarrhoea and/or vomiting, as per guidelines they should not attend school until 48 hours after they no longer have symptoms. If they are unwell at school, parents will be contacted to come and collect their child from school.

We have been discussing the importance of personal hygiene and hand washing in class but we please ask if you could also further discuss this at home, we would greatly appreciate it.

Take Home Reader Tips: 

A friendly reminder to read with your child nightly and record it in their Take Home Journal. We are very proud to have been witnessing our students have a continual excitement to read! Again, we still encourage the use of the decodable readers on Wushka, that have been assigned to your child, in combination with their hard copy readers. 

If your child gets stuck on a word, encourage him/her to have a go at sounding out the word. If necessary, demonstrate what this looks like first. Remember to praise with abundance when your child is successful at working out a word or when your child goes back to have another go. Never tell your child to ‘guess’ a word or use the picture to help them. Always keep the focus on letters and sounds. Learning to read initially requires a lot of effort for many children and at this early stage much patience is required. It is important to build up confidence and allow them to enjoy success as they work out words with your help. If your child stumbles over a tricky word that can’t be sounded out, simply give him/her the word and ask him/her to repeat it. Tricky words can be practised at home, using the key chain that will be sent home. 

Tricky words: 

Each student will receive a keychain next week with our Tricky Words for Term 2, that we will have learnt by the end of Term 2. Tricky words are words with irregular spelling

patterns that cannot be sounded out letter by letter but rather memorised after being exposed to the words in context. We encourage you to practise the words with your child at home before/after their nightly reading, in combination with our learning in class. 

Mathematics Tips: 

Developing numeracy skills early gives children an important foundation for their learning and development. It helps prepare them for daily life, including general problem-solving and handling money.

Here are some simple yet effective optional activities you can do with your child at home to help them apply the numeracy skills they learn at school:

  • counting forwards and backwards from one to twenty and beyond
  • count everything — toys, the number of pegs needed to hang clothes on the

line and the number of buttons on your clothes

  • record your child’s growth on a height chart
  • make a home supermarket using empty grocery items and packets — attach price tags, then play a shopping game where your child can purchase items and calculate the change they will receive
  • estimate, measure and compare lengths and heights, how heavy or light objects are and how much containers hold — for example, how many cups do you think it will take to fill the bucket with sand?
  • play number games using playing cards, books and number plates. We highly recommend Michael Minas on Youtube who showcases a range of Maths games that can be played as a family, filled with rich learning opportunities, do not require very much in terms of resources and are both fun and easy to play.
  • take your child on a ‘number hunt’ in your home or community — point out how numbers are used on everyday household items such as the telephone, or your house number in the street
  • play ‘I spy’ and look for different shapes and colours — ‘I spy something that is round’ or ‘I spy something that is rectangular’
  • go on a ‘shape hunt’ — have your child look for as many circles, squares, triangles and rectangles as they can find in the home or in the yard
  • Using mathematical language e.g: behind, beside, in front of, under, over, next to etc

Staff Car Park:

We kindly ask that you please do not drive, walk and bike ride through the school staff car park, directly in front of the Foundation classrooms. This is to ensure the safety of our school community. Thank You for your understanding in this matter. 


Below are our current focus letters/sounds and words. Your child would greatly benefit from practising these at home!

Letters/Sounds: m,s,t,a,p,i and f

Vocabulary: gloomy, hopeful and stared 

Writing: reading fiction mentor texts and then using this as inspiration write a narrative with a beginning, middle and end. 

Maths: use a variety of strategies and hands on materials to add and subtract objects such as play dough. In addition to beginning our new unit of shapes, the students have particularly enjoyed making 2D Shape Pizzas! 

Thank you for reading our Foundation newsletter! 




Junior School

Term 2 is flying! We would like to thank everyone who attended our open afternoon last Friday. It was a big hit with all involved and it was so lovely to see the children proudly sharing their work and showing off their classroom.

This week the whole school participated in the National Simultaneous Storytime event. The book was titled ‘Bowerbird Blues’ by Aura Parker. After reading the story the children engaged in a variety of activities including a character profile, sequencing events, redesigning the front cover and making predictions. You can listen to this book online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhH-OmyRO74

Library Days and Times: 1/2A and 1/2C have library on Tuesday, and 1/2B have library on Friday. Please ensure your child brings their library bag on their day. We have had a discussion with our students about taking good care of our library books and making sure we return them on time.

Literacy

A big thank you to the parents who have helped us in the morning with daily reading. Students thoroughly enjoy reading out loud and it also greatly improves their reading skills and focus. We welcome all parents to join us during this time (8:50-9:05 am)! Please ensure the school has a copy of your Working With Children Check and that you have signed in at the office before entering the classroom. Thank you so much!

Writing

Create our own storybook with a clear and interesting beginning, middle and end. Include the features of a storybook (title, illustrations, blurb)

Students have now all completed their very own narrative books! We have spent time sharing and celebrating their very creative and wonderful stories and illustrations! You can look forward to reading your child’s book when they go home in a few weeks.

InitiaLit Year 1

Tricky Words (sight words): mother, brother, father, sister, cousin, family
Digraphs: y (cry), igh (light), ue (glue), ew (grew)
Terminology: Adjectives, suffix/plurals
Wow Words: shiver, hesitate, ridiculous

InitiaLit Year 2

Trick Words (sight words): Alright, Always, Already, Said
Digraphs/Trigraphs: Dropping the ‘e’ and add ‘ing’, doubling the final consonant and adding ‘ing’
Grammar: Working on Adjectives and creating depth in our writing
Wow Words: Generous, Stumbled and Paced

Numeracy

 Share amounts equally into groups. Is it a fair or unfair share? Using hefting and balance scales to identify the mass of an object

We finished off our sharing unit last week where students learnt how to share different amounts and whether it is a fair or unfair share. We continued to use thinkboards to show our understanding and then moved to worded problems and identified what the question was asking and how to form a number sentence to solve the problem.

This week, students brought in potatoes to use in our mass investigations. We hefted (lifted or held something to test its weight) the potatoes and compared them with our peers to identify whose potato had the heaviest mass and which had the lightest. We then went on to use balance scales to compare and measure the mass of our potatoes. We used unifix as an
informal unit to discover the mass of our potatoes.

Thank you for reading our newsletter and keeping up to date with what’s happening in year 1/2. Stay warm and have a great weekend!



Middle School

Hello Middle School Families,

Can you believe we're already halfway through Term 2? The students have been hard at work over the past two weeks completing assessments, and we're so proud of the effort they're putting in. It's wonderful seeing how much they've grown already this year.

In maths we've been focusing on multiplication and division, and exploring how the two are related. In writing the students have begun identifying the features of different styles of poetry, and had a go at writing their own pieces.

This week in reading, we focused on the book Bowerbird Blues which is the chosen text for this year's National Simultaneous Storytime. The students have enjoyed strengthening their comprehension, questioning, and predicting skills wiggle completing the related activities.

Finally, we have begun our new subject, Social Skills. This week, students were asked to describe what being safe, kind, and fair look like at school.

We hope you all enjoy the rest of your week!

Reading: Strengthen our comprehension skills, focusing on the Simultaneous Story Time book Bowerbird Blues.

Writing: Exploring language features and text structures to create pieces of poetry.

Maths: Identify the relationship between multiplication and division facts and learn to solve division sums using a range of strategies.

Inquiry: Compare the diverse characteristics between Australia and neighbouring countries.



Senior School

We’ve officially hit the midway mark for the term! Thank you to the Senior Students for continuing to be resilient as we brave the changing weather and undergo mid-year assessments. Below are recent and upcoming events within the fortnight and some important reminders. Enjoy!

Recent/Upcoming Events:

  • Big Green Schools Conference - The Green Gang attended Carrum PS last week to experience ‘hands-on’ action in a variety of workshops conducted by students, showcasing great sustainable action. They brainstormed ideas for a ‘Sustainability Action Project’ that will make a difference here at MPPS and to the local environment. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet student teams from different Primary Schools and challenge for the ‘Golden Chook Award’.
  • Education Week - Open Afternoon - Thank you to all parents who were able to visit during the open afternoon to help us celebrate Education Week. We had some incredible Yr 5 Time projects on display (a topic of interest to explore while Yr 6 go to Buddies), along with some awesome mini homework projects. Students participated in a live tournament of Strategy Plus or taught their parents how to play. There were some real nail biter games and we are still waiting to hold the final showdown to determine who is the Strategy Plus Champion! If you would like to play the game at home with family, please click HERE for instructions and gameboard.
  • National Simultaneous Storytime - The book this year is ‘Bowerbird Blues’ by Aura Parker. Together the Senior School students read this beautiful story and then had the choice to rewrite their own endings to the story or create a Haiku poem.
  • Division Cross Country - A huge congratulations to Mackenzie and Hugo who participated in the next stage of Cross Country on Thursday. We wish Hugo all the best as he progresses through to Regions.
  • Junior Mayor - On Thursday, our 4 School Captains presented to the City of Kingston as part of the Junior Mayor Program. Ollie B  represented MPPS as headspeaker to discuss the chosen topic - If you could add to the vision of a child-friendly creative Kingston, what would your ideas be? Ollie and the rest of the Captains did an incredible job!

Reminders:

  • Winter Interschool Sport – Please ensure you have made payment on Qkr for transport. We have 2 more away games, 1 at home and the potential for a makeup match (TBC) to also be played at home. Win or lose, we are proud of everyone for having a go and encourage you to discuss with your child the importance of being a good sport.
  • Homework - To ensure consistency and accountability among the Senior Students, homework will be handed out on a Monday and due the following week, on the Friday. This allows students 2 weeks to complete ALL tasks neatly and ensure that they are responsibly managing their time in preparation for Secondary School. Homework will be posted digitally to Google Classroom on a Monday to save printing, however students are required to complete the tasks by hand in their homework book so that we can correct them collaboratively on the due Friday. We have discussed the expectation of neatness and setting out, along with the importance of using a ruler, headings and subheadings. Tasks include spelling (our SMART spelling list is included as the first page), reading comprehension, grammar, number, measurement/geometry and/or statistics/probability & STEAM. Depending on their year level (5 or 6), all SMART spelling words in that list are to be written out 5 times across the 2 weeks. We do not recommend the students writing the list all in one night as it can cause them to repeat a spelling mistake. Nightly reading is encouraged (at least 4 nights a week) and should be recorded in their homework books. If you require a printed copy, please email your child's teacher.
  • 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:
  • Keep your child at home until recovered or advised by a health professional
  • Inform the school of any contagious illnesses such as Covid or chickenpox
  • Discuss the importance of personal hygiene and hand washing

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!

 

Reading: Identify details and information from a different social, cultural and historical context. We continue using the text ‘Parvana’, to achieve this.

Writing: Create informative texts directly linked to our inquiry topic.

Maths: Calculate the perimeter and area of self constructed shapes.

Inquiry: Explain the impacts of bushfires or floods on environments and communities, and how people can respond.

Bounce Back: Consolidate our understanding of the BB acronym and apply it to our everyday lives.



Weekly Awards

                                            Week 4

FoundationZach M
 Eliza R
 Eden W
Grade 1 & 2Casey A
 Jack B
Grade 3 & 4Dylan GB
 Brodie L
Grade 5 & 6Micah C
 Hugo J
STEAMAustin S
ArtXander M


Community News



Important Dates

May/June
Fri 31st MayBiggest Morning Tea
Fri 7th JuneStudent-Free Day
Mon 10th JuneMonarch's Birthday
Fri 14th JuneSchool Disco
Fri 28th JuneLast Day of Term 2
Find the yearly Events Calendar HERE


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