4 April 2019

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

It has been a very busy week with the parent/teacher interviews. Thank you to all the parents who have made time to chat with your child’s class teacher. It is a great way to set up goals and expectations for the year. Please be aware that you can make appointments with your child’s class teacher whenever you feel the need.

Barefoot Bowls - Friday 5 April

The teachers have an 8 strong team to take on the parents this Friday night at the Barefoot Bowls social evening. The evening is always a great one to start off the year and if you haven’t already done so, purchase your tickets via the link below. The evening kicks off at 5.45pm tomorrow at Manly Bowling Club. Thank you to Karen Murtgatroyd and Kristen Te Pania for your organisation of this event.

Easter Hat Parade - Friday 12 April (last day of term)

K-2 students will be busily making their Easter hats at school with their buddies and we welcome all parents and grandparents to come and see the parade under the K-2 COLA area at 10.00am. It will be a wonderful way to finish off the term!

Certificates of Leave

If you are planning to go overseas, or take a domestic holiday for more than 10 school days you must apply for a “Certificate of Leave.” The application forms are available at the front office or in our school newsletter (on the side panel). For an international travel a copy of the itinerary or airline tickets must accompany the application. You will receive from the school a certificate, which you are to carry on you for the entire trip. Please try and give at least a week’s notice to allow time to process the application.

DMI Finalists

Congratulations to all our school finalists on their Design, Make and Innovate projects. Last Friday, 4 of our school teams displayed their creations at Freshwater Senior Campus with 2 teams winning awards for their efforts.

Interrelate – Parent Information Evening - Wednesday 10 April

Permission notes have gone home to all families of students with children in years 3, 4, 5 & 6. The Interrelate program is done every year by our year 5 & 6 students and covers topics such as puberty, healthy relationships and eating, personal development, and prepares pre-teens for the changes they are about to go through.

The parent information sessions are an excellent way to have open and honest discussions with your child and I encourage all parents to attend these sessions with their children. The first session, “Where did I come from?” is from 6.00-7.00pm and is available for all primary aged students and their parents. Session 2 “Preparing for Puberty” 7.15pm- 8.15pm is targeted at the year 5 & 6 students. Please return permission notes and money to the front office before Wednesday.

NAPLAN ONLINE Information Session- Wednesday 10 April – 3.30pm

Next Wednesday there will be a short information session in the hall run by Mrs Blackband and Mrs Lee for any interested parents, on the NAPLAN testing and NAPLAN online. We will be there to answer questions and explain the process of the NAPLAN testing. All parents are welcome to come to the hall to learn more about these tests.

Manly Vale Public School has been a trial school for the NAPLAN online testing format. This is our 3rd year of using technology although this year most of the assessments will be done online whereas previously only some of the tests were done online.

Between Tuesday 14 May and Friday 24 May, our school will participate in NAPLAN Online. Students do not need to be computer experts to take the NAPLAN test online. Making sure students have computer skills is part of our school curriculum, and our teachers will ensure your child is familiar with the online format. To see the types of questions and interactive features of NAPLAN Online, visit the public demonstration site.

If you have any questions about NAPLAN Online, please contact your child’s teacher.

For more info:

• How to support your child during NAPLAN
• Information for parents and carers
• Watch a video that explains NAPLAN Online
• Subscribe to ACARA’s monthly parent newsletter, Parent Update

Please make sure that children have their own set of headphones for this test.

School Council Meeting - Monday 1 April

Last Monday we had an update from the Department of Education at our School Council meeting. The landscaping is to be completed by October of this year with a lot of works taking place over the school holidays.

The School Council decided to remain as a consultative parent body for the new school construction until the end of the year. No re-elections will take place this year as the council will be a working party attached to the P & C for the remainder of 2019. Thank you to all these very interested parents and community members for their ongoing support of the school and for their expertise they willingly share in these meetings. The current position holders are:

President - Damian Pincus
Vice President - Miranda Markezic, Stephen Hancock
Secretary - Louise Stedman
Community representative - Yorick Sweetnam
Teacher representatives - Pat Dylan, Sarah Humphreys

Meetings will take place once a term for project updates and community consultation. The meetings will be less formal and more of a discussion, which can feedback information to the P & C and DoE.

Thank you James Fewtrell (P & C President) and John Gillings (P & C Rep) for their attendance at the meeting last week.

NSWEE - Junior and Senior Band - Monday 8 April

Good luck to our Junior and Senior bands next Monday night 8 April at 7.00pm as they perform at the NSWEE concert at Forest High School. This will be their first performance for the year. Both bands have been practicing hard with their enthusiastic conductors Ben and Carlos. We all can’t wait to hear their first performances of the year.

No Dogs

Just a reminder that no dogs are allowed on the school grounds at any time. If you wish to walk your dog up to school please arrange for your child to meet you at a spot outside the school grounds. Dogs should not be left unsupervised or tied up outside the school at anytime.

Tina Lee - Principal

K-2 Assistant Principal’s Report

Shaping little minds for the future through creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking

Dear Parents and Carers,

We would like to congratulate our year 1 and 2 students who attended the Sydney Observatory excursion on Monday and Tuesday this week. All students displayed exemplary behaviour and beautiful manners towards instructors, teachers and parent helpers. Much fun was had shooting rockets into the sky, measuring weather using a variety of devices and learning about the seasons. We would like to sincerely thank our parent helpers for their support, time and engagement on both excursions, it was truly appreciated.

Our parent/teacher interviews are proving to be a wonderful opportunity for parents to connect with their child’s class teacher and discuss their child’s goals for the year. Working together as a collaborative team, in the best interest of the child, is something we pride ourselves on at MVPS. We appreciate your time and ongoing support as a school community.

Kindergarten students have thoroughly enjoyed working with their buddies this term and are looking forward to their ‘Buddy Bonding Day’ which will take place on Tuesday 9 April next week. A note will be sent home detailing the plan for the day.

Carol Speight - K-2 Assistant Principal

Dates for Your Diary

Waste Free Wednesday

Stage 3 Science

In science this term, stage 3 students have been investigating how and why food and fibre are produced in sustainable, managed environment. They learnt about sustainable practices used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to manage food and fibre resources. We walked towards Manly Dam and located the plant species, Lomandra, which was commonly used as a fibre by Indigenous groups for weaving baskets and mats. They attempted to use the weaving technique to make cordage and baskets. Students realised that this method required a fair bit of patience and trial and error.

Sarah Humphreys - Stage 3 Science Teacher

Stage 2 Science – Paddock to Plate

Our students were learning about food origins, processing and production this term. This engaging topic let students explore the olden days' ways of producing flour using mortar and pestle and appreciate the advances of modern machinery to make mass production feasible.

Hands-on activities such as peeling an apple were hugely popular with our students. We all concluded that watching apple slinky machine work is fascinating and that the apple tastes better this way.

As a culmination of this topic, six classes that make our lovely stage 2 attempted to make lemonade. Each student brought lemon and I would like to thank our parents for supporting students in this project. We aimed to make enough lemonade to try it ourselves and to share it with our stage 1 buddy classes.

We looked at various lemonade brands labels and decided that our recipe should have less sugar content. Most students agreed that commercial lemonades are too sweet.

The students rolled their sleeves up, put their safety glasses on and used every muscle to squeeze a lemon in a juicer. Their minds were buzzing with maths required to calculate a correct ratio of squeezed lemon juice to water amount. Then, they needed to work out the actual amount of sugar necessary for the volume of lemon juice. Many students were surprised to see 42g of sugar poured into the 600mls of lemon juice. Some commented that they never realised that so much sugar goes into every bottle of commercial lemonade.

The highlight of the whole process was to share our produce with year 1 and 2 students. I want to thank stage 1 teachers who accommodated our invitation into their busy schedules. The students were delighted to come to the stage 2 spaces and asked many probing questions. I was very pleased to hear from my students comments like 'it is very satisfying to share our lemonade with year 1s because we made it ourselves'. I was even more elated to hear year 1 and 2 students telling me that they went home and made the lemonade for their family, repeating in their heads ingredients and quantities so they will not forget!

I smiled to myself thinking this is why I am a teacher. This collective effort highlights the community spirit that makes such wonderful experiences possible for our students. Thank you all!

Aga Banham

Woolworths Earn & Learn

The Woolworths Earn & Learn program gives schools around Australia the chance to earn amazing school equipment.

Between 1 May and 25 June 2019 collect as many stickers as you can. With every $10 spent at Woolworths, one sticker is collected. To help boost your sticker collection, look out for the range of participating products in store which will earn you double stickers.

These can be placed onto the Earn & Learn sticker sheets. Sticker sheets are available from the link below and will also be provided in the front office. Sticker sheets can be dropped into the collection box in store or to the front office at Manly Vale Public School.

Tegan Robertson - Coordinator

Learning Support

Worries and Anxiety in Children

Worries, anxiety and fear are a normal part of life, however when they begin to impact our wellbeing and how we operate in our day-to-day life, we need to take this as a sign that help is needed. As parents and teachers we need to assist children to understand and manage these feelings, and encourage them to learn and use strategies that can help.

Children with anxiety might:

• worry about lots of things
• strive to be perfect
• be reluctant to speak up in class
• find tests and assessments very stressful
• be afraid of new or unfamiliar situations (often asking lots of questions, over and over, in new situations – for example, ‘What’s going to happen?’ or ‘What if … ?’)
• require constant reassurance
• complain about feeling sick when worried (physical signs such as daydreaming, stomach aches, headaches, tiredness and inattention)
• take a long time getting to sleep at night due to worrying about the events of the next day.

Here are some ways to assist your child in learning how to handle their worries or anxiety:

If your child is asking lots of questions (which you’ve answered), encourage them to think about the situation and come up with their own answers and judgment.

If your child uses a special object to make a situation ‘safe’, this is OK to start with. However, eventually faze these out so your child learns to handle situations themselves.

Try not to give your child constant reassurance, or help them to avoid the things they worry about - it’s important for your child to learn to handle worrying situations.

Avoid criticising your child or being negative about their worries or need for reassurance, no matter how frustrated you feel.

Make a conscious effort to build your child’s self-esteem by giving them lots of positive attention, particularly when they’ve been brave and courageous.

The Stepladder approach is a gentle step-by-step approach to exposing children to their fears. Read more about it here:

Maggie Dent’s website below is another source of information regarding fear, anxiety and calming children. Maggie is an author, educator, and parenting and resilience specialist with a particular interest in the early years and adolescence.

More resources:

Hopper, D., Teaching Kids to Manage Anxiety – Superstar Practical Strategies (2019)

Wilson, R. & Lyons, L., Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents – 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children (2013)

The Learning Support Team

School Safety

Uniform Shop

Canteen News

Menu Audit

We are very excited to announce that the canteen menu has been audited by NSW School Canteen Menu Check Service and the menu met the new healthy eating criteria so we are now officially a ‘Great Choice – Healthy School Canteen.’

Canteen Made

Did you know that we make the majority of the canteen food from scratch these days? The bolognaise, pizzas, burritos and sausage rolls are all made by us with the help of our fabulous volunteers and they all contain lots of ‘hidden veggies.’ We also bake banana bread, muffins and cookies daily and make our own hummus. Look out for our new Winter menu which will come in for Term 2 and will include butter chicken and burgers (all canteen made).

Kerry & Robyn – Canteen Supervisors

Canteen Volunteers Roster Term 1, 2019

Community Notices

Northern Beaches Council School Holiday Activities Autumn 2019

Brochures are available at the school office or see council’s website for more information.