Dear School Community Members,

Manifold Heights Primary School is a great place to be!

I am currently with our Grade 6 students and teachers on their camp at Cave Hill Creek. I am overwhelmed with pride at the fun, joy and happiness our Grade 6 students are experiencing. According to the students, highlights include the Bike Riding, Canoeing, Ropes Courses and the opportunity to strengthen their friendships (and hang out in the cabins). Highlights for me have been observing the manner, respect and sense of adventure shown by our students and staff. Tim, the camp coordinator, sought me out to congratulate our school on the behaviour and maturity of our students, and the care, attention to detail and sense of fun from our staff. Thank you to all six staff members in attendance and our parent volunteers for providing a wonderful program of activities for our Grade 6 students.

Manifold Heights Primary School is a great place to be!

Resilience:

Recently we have been exploring how we can further nurture and develop ‘Resilience’ within our school community. Part of this exploration was engaging in the research of Luke Ross. Luke is the founder of the Social Intelligence Group who deliver and offer Social Intelligence Programs for Schools. I want to share with you some of Luke’s research on ‘Resilience’, along with how schools can develop resiliency in primary aged children.

An ‘Adaptive Mindset’ develops resiliency
An ‘Adaptive Mindset’ is an ability to adapt to pressure, stress and constant change
Resilience is the ability to cope and return to “normal” as quickly as possible
50% of 7-12 year olds show stress related symptoms
Adversity, such as teasing and failing, is part of the human condition and an important ingredient of building resilience
Telling students to be resilient is not effective
Resilience is a learned skill and can be taught
Everyone has a happiness set point – after a period of time, it doesn’t matter what the event is (good or bad), a person returns to their happiness set point. A study has revealed that a person with a permanent disability has the same “set-point of happiness” 12 months after their accident as a person 12 months after winning lotto
The same study found happiness is 50% genetics, 10% external influences (eg. salary, cars etc) and 40% dependent on how we think and act (eg. comparisons we make (Instagram))
Resilience is not fixed and can be learnt. Resilience is learnt from following our role models (parents, teachers, peers). Therefore, resilient behaviour must be modelled with low resilient behaviour challenged and high resilient behaviour rewarded.

As a school, we will continue to explore research from ‘experts’ like Luke Ross to maximise the ‘resilience’ of our students. We are also looking forward to the partnership we have developed with Jess Dimitrious from Raising Resilience. Jess will present to our community on “Nurturing the Parent-Child Relationship to support Resilience”. We thank the 38 families who have responded that they are attending Jess’ session. Registrations are still open, so we encourage families to consider this opportunity.

Book Week – next week:

The anticipation is building as we prepare for Book Week. Many fabulous activities have been planned to continue to develop the love of reading and books. Our traditional Book Week dress up day will be on Thursday, 21st August. All families are invited to the parade which will commence at 2:35pm. Students are encouraged to come to school on this day dressed as their favourite ‘book’ character. Further details regarding the parade and the other events are included in this edition of the newsletter.

Staff Professional Learning – Spelling:

Led by Literacy consultant, Rachael Buck, last week our teachers engaged in a professional learning session focussed on the teaching of spelling. While in the infant phase of the implementation, our spelling approach at Mano is underpinned by Phonics Plus for our Prep – Grade 2 classes, and Spelling Mastery for our Grade 3 – Grade 6 students. Rachael worked with our staff on the different components of our spelling approach, which included: phonology (the sounds of words), orthography (the way words are spelled), morphology (the parts of words), decoding and encoding, spelling ‘GPC’s’ (Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence), and the assessment of spelling. We look forward to sharing our progress of our spelling approach throughout the remainder of the year.

Sunsmart Hats:

It is that time of the year when we need to ‘dust’ off the Mano Sunsmart Hat. All students are required to wear their Sunsmart Mano hat from Monday (August,18th) during all outside activities. This is part of the ‘Student Dress Code’ and ‘Sun Smart’ policies of our school. Students will be required to play in a designated shaded area if they don’t have their Sunsmart hat. Please locate your child’s Sunsmart Hat and send along to school from Monday.

Parent/Guardian Opinion Survey:

WE WANT OUR FAMILIES TO TELL US WHAT THEY THINK!

We are aiming for 100 Mano families to participate in the survey.

Our school is conducting a survey to find out what our parents and guardians think of our school. The Parent/Guardian Opinion Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education that is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of families’ perceptions of school climate, student behaviour, and student engagement. We encourage all families to participate in this survey. Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies. While previously a random sample of approximately 30 per cent of parents/caregivers/guardians have been selected to participate, this year, all families are invited to participate in the survey.

The Parent/Guardian Opinion Survey will be conducted from Monday, 18th August to Friday, 19th September.

The survey will be conducted online, only takes 20 minutes to complete, and can be accessed at any convenient time within the fieldwork period on desktop computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The online survey will be available in a range of languages other than English. Please contact the office if you would like more information.

Thank you for supporting our school and have a great week.

Christian Smith

Mano Market