6 September 2018

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

This week our year 5 & 6 students attended the Great Aussie Bush Camp at Tea Gardens. They will enjoy camping out and participating in activities including archery, raft building, the giant swing, Lost Island and rock climbing. This camp is always a wonderful experience for students and teachers. Thank you to Mr Dylan for organising the camp and Mrs Cash, Mrs Humphreys, Ms Martin, Mrs Ward and Mrs Lee for attending the camp. Stage 3 students will return from camp at approximately 4.30pm on Friday. We will update the Schoolzine app with any changes to arrival times.

Father’s Day Breakfast

Thank you to Penny Dixon, Maura Magee, Penny Bjorkmann, Kate Harrison, Cheryl Miles-McGirk and Ian Hills and the Café Owl team and all the volunteers who assisted in last week’s Father’s Day breakfast. It was a wonderful morning and lovely to see so many of our dads visiting classrooms and sharing breakfast with their children. Thank you to the school choir, conducted by Mrs Lucey and Ms Mason, for performing at the breakfast. Congratulations to the Voorderhake family who took home the raffle prize!

SASS Recognition Week

This week has been set aside to thank our School Administrative and Support Staff (SASS). At Manly Vale we are very lucky to have such a supportive SASS staff. Please take time to acknowledge and thank our support staff including:

Office staff - Mrs Pam Davison, Mrs Luise Nealon, Mrs Annabel Marsden and Mrs Ann Baleisis

School Learning Support Officers - Mr Pete Snailham, Mrs Mary Garth, Mrs Jayne Crain and Ms Stephanie Davison

General Assistants - Mr Grant Lee, Mr David Smith.

Our SASS staff work tirelessly to support the programs we run in the school, manage all the administration, communication and finance within the school, help students in their classrooms, liaise with parents, clean and maintain the grounds, fix and repair classrooms, toys and equipment and answer all the parent enquiries as they come through the office.

They are often here longer hours than they are paid. Thank you to all our support staff for all that you do for the students, teachers and parents.

Zone Athletics Carnival

Last Wednesday and Thursday our school athletics team went off to Narrabeen Sports field to compete against other schools at the Zone Athletics carnival. All competitors performed to the best of their ability and demonstrated excellent sportsmanship and behaviour on the day. Mr Dylan and Mrs Birrell were very proud of the whole school team.

Congratulations to all competitors in representing their school on the day. Special mention to Charlie Kanu who stopped to assist another competitor in his race and demonstrating our “Caring and Sharing” motto. Congratulations to the following athletes who will go on to compete at the Regional Carnival at Homebush on Monday 17 September:

Lucy Sholtens - 1st- Snr Girls long jump, 2nd- 12 years girls 100m, 2nd – 12 years girls 200m, equal 1st Snr Girls Age Champion

Levi Coates Westerink - 2nd Snr Boys High Jump

Pipi Te Pania - 3rd Jnr Girls 800m

Hilton Kennedy - 2nd Snr Girls 800m

Mackenzie Jeffs - 3rd Jnr Girls High Jump

Oliver Solberger – 4th Jnr Boys 800m

Kyan McDougall - Discus entry (from Little Athletics) to Regional carnival

NAPLAN Online

This year Manly Vale Public School completed our year 3 and 5 NAPLAN tests online. We were one of the 430 schools to be chosen to trial the NAPLAN online platform. Individual student’s results will come out as early as Thursday 13 September. There will be some significant differences between the online NAPLAN test results and the pen and paper results so comparative data between Manly Vale and local schools will not be able to be used this year (2018) or next year (2019). Next year we will again do the test online along with another 700 schools, and by 2020 all schools will complete the NAPLAN tests online. The tests were developed by ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority).

NAPLAN Online:

• NAPLAN helps parents, carers and educators to see if children are meeting important numeracy and literacy standards. It is used to support school improvement processes by enabling teachers to monitor their students’ progress over time and to identify areas of strength and development.
• NAPLAN provides parents and carers with an individual report, showing their child’s results and a national comparison of their child’s performance against other Australian students in their year level.
• NAPLAN Online will provide better assessment, more precise results and faster turnaround of information.
• NAPLAN Online will use ‘tailored testing’, which gives students questions better suited to their ability, resulting in better assessment and more precise results.
• The precision and improved timing of the results will help teachers tailor their teaching more specifically to student needs.
• An online national assessment platform has been developed by Education Services Australia with funds from the Australian Government. The platform has been used to trial online assessment in 2018 and to deliver NAP sample assessments.
• Significant planning, development, research and trialling have been ongoing since 2012 to support the move to NAPLAN Online.
• State/territory education authorities will determine the timing of their move to NAPLAN Online and lead implementation for their state/territory.
• For schools that are not able to access the internet to the required level for online testing, alternative information technology solutions will be available.

School Fees

We will be sending out reminder notices for our annual school fees. Students have been on most of their excursions and camps and have now completed dance and gym programs. Please pay the costs of these programs as soon as possible. If you are experiencing financial difficulties, please contact me for a confidential interview.

School Band Cake Stall – Sunday 9 September at Balgowlah Bunnings

Please support our school band program by purchasing a cake from the stall at Bunnings this Sunday.

Dancesport Challenge - Monday 10 September

Next Monday our year 5 students will put on a ballroom dancing display on the school netball court at 11.30am. All parents are welcome to come up and see the display. Our finalist couples from year 5 will then travel to Homebush to participate in the Dancesport Challenge. These 398 students will compete against other schools in the Tango, Cha Cha, Jive and Salsa.

This program supports our wellbeing focus this year by allowing our year 5 students to develop Respect, Courage and Self Belief. It has been fantastic to see the improvements on all our year 5 students. The Gala event on Monday night will be the grand finale to a wonderful term of work. Good luck to all our competitors.

Kindergarten Orientation 2019

Next Tuesday 11 September we have our first Kindergarten Orientation morning starting at 9.30am and finishing at 11.00am. All our prospective Kindergarten students will go into classes whilst their parents will be entertained in the school hall. It is important that all of our new students attend all Kindergarten Orientation sessions so that they have a positive transition to their new school. If you haven’t brought in your enrolment form, please do so by next Tuesday.

P & C Meeting –Tuesday 11 September

Next Tuesday evening at 7.00pm in the staffroom we will have our monthly P & C meeting. We invite all parents and community members to come along to these meetings. At this meeting we will hear from Mrs Aga Banham on the various gifted and talented programs the P & C has been supporting this year. All welcome.

Tina Lee

K-2 Assistant Principal Report

Developing independent, resilient students within a safe and supportive learning environment.

Parent Information Forum Update

Dear Parents and Carers,

It was so wonderful seeing so many dads in the playground playing handball, touring classrooms and sharing a delicious Café Owl breakfast with their children last Friday morning. I hope all our MVPS dads had a wonderful Father’s Day.

We have two more Parent Information Forums coming up this term. You will need to register at the front office if you would like to attend either session. Each session is capped at 30 participants. Thank you!

Please find below an outline of upcoming Parent Information Forums for Term 3:

I would like to sincerely thank the parents who have attended Parent Information Forums to date, the feedback has been extremely positive. We have more sessions planned for term 4 and will be offering later timeslots for parents who work.

Kind Regards,

Carol Speight

SASS Thank you

The administration staff, the school learning support officers and general assistants would like to thank the students and staff for the wonderful wall of flowers and messages and the morning tea in recognition of SASS week.

Waste Free Wednesday

Dates for Your Diary

Father’s Day Breakfast and Raffle 2018

The P&C would like to thank you everyone who supported the Father’s Day Breakfast and Raffle held last Friday. The weather was mild, the queues were short and the handball comp was awesome! We hope you enjoyed the morning with your children!

Thank you to our events committee, community sponsors, parent volunteers, Mrs Lee and her staff for their open classrooms, the choir and all the families who joined us in celebrating our dads, parents, carers, uncles, grandads.

We would love to hear your feedback on the event, please take 1 minute to complete this short feedback survey. All responses are anonymous.

Warm regards,
P&C Events team

Scholastic Book Club

Orders are due back at school no later than Friday 14 September 2018.

Canteen News

Waste Free Wednesday

Please remember that the lunch containers need to be dropped to the canteen as early as possible, we give the children a ‘waste free’ ticket to show to their teacher. If no container is provided, the lunch will be served in usual canteen packaging and will not count as waste free.

Plastic free

Sushi hand rolls are now available on Wednesdays – another yummy waste free option, the Sushi Baby Boxes are not waste free however.

Reuseable plastic forks

If you have any unwanted Ikea/picnic forks we would love to have them in the canteen for children to use for their waste free lunch.

Pie & Popper Day

Thursday 20 September - $5.50 for a large meat pie and choice of juice popper. Order now via Flexischools or over the counter.

Thursday & Friday lunchtimes

Can you spare 1-1 ½ hours to help out with canteen counter service? An extra pair of hands during these busy times would be really appreciated and your children will love seeing you working in the canteen.

Term 4 Roster

Robyn is working on the volunteer 4 roster, if you would like to join our lovely team of volunteers please let us know.

Kerry Smallman - Canteen Supervisor

Canteen Volunteers Roster Term 3, 2018

Community Notices