13 October 2017

Newsletter Articles

FROM THE PRINCIPAL’S DESK

Welcome back! I hope you and your family enjoyed a restful Spring break with such gorgeous weather! A special welcome to the new families who have joined our school community this term. We are looking forward to getting to know you all over the coming months and years and hope your association with the school is a long and happy one.

Please note that Monday 16th October is a Student Free Day. The school will be closed to students that day.

Fete

Last Friday evening marked another amazing and successful School Fete. Even the 20 minutes of heavy rain and a little thunder could not dampen the spirits of fete goers. A big thank you must go to the P & C for all their hard work not only on the night but for the many months of organisation that came before the event. To my wonderful staff, I also thank you for your unwavering commitment and outstanding contribution to ensuring our fete was a successful one. All of this would mean nothing if not for the support of our community, so on behalf of the P & C and MHSS Staff, I thank you for your ongoing support of our school and for coming out in droves to attend this year’s twilight fete.

Prep Enrolments

If you have a child that is eligible for Prep in 2018 and have not yet enrolled please contact our office immediately to ensure a placement as our Prep classes are Filling Fast. Eligibility for Prep requires your child to be five years of age by 30 June in the year they intend to commence Prep. Early entry to Prep is only available if a child meets certain criteria (such as having previously been enrolled in an equivalent program interstate or overseas, or if the child will turn five years between 1 and 31 July and is considered by the principal as being ready for education). If you are aware of families that have Prep aged children for 2018 can you please pass this information onto them. We do not want any families disappointed.

Attendance

I understand we probably had one of the worst flu seasons in recent history in Term 3 and this affected many families and many staff members. Our target for attendance is 95% and unfortunately we are starting to fall well below this in most year levels. I am again sending out the message of the importance of attending school each and every day unless ill. Last term the number of students arriving late to school was also on the increase and unexplained absences are still higher than we would like so please make every effort to let the school know if your child is away. Every day at school is so important for student learning. Please help us support your children by ensuring their full and regular attendance so that we can give our maximum effort to every student in every lesson, every day.

Here is an interesting fact about the number of learning days and opportunities your child misses out on if they only attend school for 85% of the time. 85% attendance by the end of year 6 means your child has only received instruction equivalent to a child at a year 4 level. So please reflect on the amount of time your child is absent from school without a valid reason.

Parents as Role Models

The vital role parents/carers play in the life of a child is often understated and unassuming. We here at MHSS believe that our parents/carers are the most important link between school and home.

Parents serve as role models not only through direct interactions with their children, but through the examples they set within the family and in the outside world. To teach through examples, respect and tolerance and to provide clear standards of acceptable behaviour helps students adjust more quickly to the rules and boundaries that they will face not only in the school environment but the outside world.

We here at Musgrave Hill value the job you do as parents/carers and together we can ensure our students, your children have strong role models to look up to and the best opportunities possible to succeed.

Julie-Anne McGuinness – Principal

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Cyber Safety

A wonderful website for parents to find out more about Cyber Safety is

The parent section is called iParent. iParent is a site where parents can learn about the digital environment and keep updated on their children’s technology use.

Here you can find guidance for using safety settings on your family’s web-connected devices, tips for choosing movies and games and strategies for keeping young people safe online.

Information about Parental controls for computers, tablets and smartphones:

Parental controls are available for most devices, either through pre-installed settings that can be activated yourself on a device, or via the installation of free or commercial software.

Parental control tools help parents monitor and limit what their children do online. There are many tools available and they all offer different functions, with some even allowing parents to limit the time children spend on specific websites or games.

No tool is 100 per cent effective at blocking access to inappropriate content. They are a good tool to encourage communication with children about their online activities. Currently there are more effective tools for use with PCs and Macs than with mobile, tablet devices and game consoles. Additional parental supervision is required with these.

Every parental control tool is different. Most tools:

• can block children from accessing specific websites, protocols or applications
• filter different kinds of content, like sexual content
• allow parents to monitor use with reports on sites accessed, the length of time and frequency of access
• can be used to set time limits, blocking access after a set time—handy if you are not home and want to limit the time your child spends on a game or social media
• allow parents to change the tool settings to reflect each child’s age and skills.

Do parental controls block all bad stuff?

It is essential to note that no parental control tool is 100 per cent effective. It is important to understand the nature of devices that children are using, and also talk to them about staying safe online and being aware of the behaviours of themselves and others.

Parental control tools tend to be better at blocking ‘adult’ or sexual content than other types of harmful content, such as content that may promote self-harm, eating disorders, violence, drugs, gambling, racism and terrorism. Parental control tools have difficulty filtering content within social media sites and messaging services, including video messaging services like Skype.

Souce : https://esafety.gov.au/

ASSEMBLY AWARDS

ROADWORKS NOTIFICATION

Roadworks on Nakina Street

Road works are occurring on Nakina Street to enable water and sewerage connection for the Flexible Learning school being built at the end of the road.

Traffic control officers will be onsite during October.

The excavator will be completing the road section and then will begin digging up the footpath in front of the Prep Building and ECDP over the next 3 weeks.

Access to ECDP will change as the excavator moves down the road but one access route will always be maintained.

The excavator will then have to dig across Nakina Street before the corner for the water pipes. This work will be carried out on the weekend and again traffic controllers will be onsite.

The footpath in front of the prep will again be impacted.

The building works will be completed February 2018.

Please stay safe.

Roadworks on Musgrave Avenue

A MESSAGE FROM THE OFFICE

If you require a copy of the Term 4 excursion letters, they were inserted in the last newsletter for you to downwload or you can obtain a copy from the school office. Last payment date for Term 4 Excursion is the Thursday 19th October.

LEARN A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT IN 2018

If your child is interested in learning a musical instrument in 2018 or you would simply like to know more about the music program, you are invited to come to our Instrumental Music Information Session to be held in our new Music Rooms (Arts/Music Block) next Wednesday 18 October at 3.00- 3.30pm.

Mr Denning and Mrs Rickert – Music Teachers

CLASSROOM CAPERS – PREP YELLOW

The students in Prep Yellow have been very busy improving their reading and spelling skills. Each day we have been using our ‘Duck Hands’ to sound out words and the spelling clouds to help us spell new words. We really love playing ‘Speech Sound Detectives’ and discovering new ways to represent sounds in our SSP spelling clouds. We practise our sounds and decodable words every day during our daily poster work.

eLEARNING

We have continued to grow our eLearning culture in our school this year, with all classes having access to iPads and Years 1 to 6 laptops as well. Robotics and coding have also been trialled in some classrooms this year and we have had a lunch time Coding Club as well. Our BYOx (Bring Your Own Device – iPad) program has expanded and a number of students in Years 3 to 6 now regularly bring iPads to school.

As we move into 2018 our eLearning program will continue to evolve, with more exciting teaching and learning opportunities to come. Our BYOx Program in Years 3 to 6 continues, as does focused planning of eLearning across the curriculum in all year levels. For the rest of the year in the eLearning section of the Newsletter we will share some of the exciting things planned, as well the guidelines for BYOx for next year for students new to the program. It will also include some handy hints for parents to consider around having devices in the home and for school.

You can visit the following website for more information on being safe online or cyber bullying. For more information on our 2017 school eLearning policy, please go to the school website.

If you have any questions about eLearning, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Annette Vlaanderen - avlaa2@eq.edu.au

A WORD FROM OUR GUIDANCE OFFICER

DIVORCE and KIDS

Divorce is traumatic and unsettling for all those involved. For children the trauma can be intense with many not handling the divorce well. Divorce involves the collapse of many ingrained social norms for the child. Children may become frightened, confused, anxious, depressed, angry, and confused in their emotions toward their parents.

Many parents get worried about the effect the divorce will have on their children. Parents often will convince themselves that "their child" will be okay and will quickly adjust. Unfortunately, sometimes children will sense the parents need for them to be well adjusted to the divorce, and, therefore, will actually pretend to adjust. Usually these children will hide their distress in an attempt to protect their parents. It is only months, or sometimes years later their true emotions begin to show.

I recently came across this great website that parents and teachers can use to help address issues associated with divorce and separation.

On this site you will find resources and a community dedicated to helping children to understand and heal from their parents’ divorce or separation.

Your child’s classroom teacher and the schools Guidance Officer are also key people in helping your child heal form divorce. By keeping your child’s teacher informed, we can work together to make this change work for your family.

Triple P Parenting Program

Joy Wheeler – Guidance Officer

A MESSAGE FROM OUR CHAPLAIN

Chappy's Spare Change 2017 raised $1726.30 thanks to all of you!!!

The support is greatly appreciated and the funds will go toward supporting the chaplaincy program at MHSS.

Top 3 classes:

1st place - 2V (Kids enjoyed a pizza party, thanks Sam (MHSS parent) - owner of Pizza Caper's
2nd place - 5L Ice cream for all!!
3rd place - Merit Awards

Again, thank you for all of your support! Start saving the change for next year!!!

Chappy Rusty

COMMUNITY NEWS

“This is a service provided when space permits. The school acts solely as a messenger and is not actually recommending any activities advertised”

UPCOMING EVENTS