Dear School Community Members,

Tutor Learning Initiative:

On Monday, I joined in on a Tutoring session with Mrs Seeckts and two Gr 6 students. Our Tutoring program includes approx. 24 students per term, and this term, students are involved in two 60 minute sessions each week for ten weeks. Students work in small groups and focus on an area of the curriculum requiring additional support. Each session is connected to their classroom program and is aligned to our Teaching and Learning model so that students can transfer their learning back to the classroom. The following is a summary of the session I observed:

Connect: Students commenced their session with some Brain Gym activities – specifically working on fine motor development to prepare for writing. The two students then had a handwriting task of adding a diary entry. The focus of the handwriting task was on letter formation. While completing this handwriting task, Mrs Seeckts was providing individual support to each student.

Teach: The students then transitioned into their phonics part of the session. Mrs Seeckts and the two students then worked together to blend and segment a range of words such as ‘voice’, ‘frown’, and ‘noise’. Questions from Mrs Seeckts included, “Which sounds can you hear in that word?”

Mrs Seeckts then challenged the students to manipulate sounds further by adding, deleting, and substituting sounds in each word.

The session then focussed on a writing task that complements their classroom Inquiry Learning program. Specifically, the students commenced a Diary Entry on the events of an immigrant from the Gold Rush.

Learn: While writing, Mrs Seeckts encouraged the students to consider the characters, the setting, the things you would see, hear and feel, and the emotions of the immigrants. Mrs Seeckts asked many questions to assist the students to develop vocabulary and ideas for their diary entry. These questions were purposeful, timely and extremely beneficial to both students’ writing. Both students had approximately fifteen minutes to complete their diary entry plan.

Mrs Seeckts then guided the students to investigate, reflect and edit a diary entry from last week. This involved rich discussion that led to some significant additions and alterations that substantially improved their entry.

Questions from Mrs Seeckts included, “What additional punctuation could you add to improve its readability?”, “Could you add some emotion to this paragraph?”, and “Is there something more you wanted to add to this entry?”.

The two students were then guided to add some further facts to their entry, as well as their opinions.

Ultimately, the students were allocated this time to improve their diary entry in readiness for their Inquiry Learning lessons later in the week.

Reflect: The session finished with a reflection of their learning and celebrating their success, along with a fun game called ‘Tennis’.

Our students love attending their tutoring sessions and feel very safe and comfortable in this learning environment. Our students are very fortunate to have access to this program and Mrs Seeckts’ passion, skills and expertise.

Parent/Teacher Discussions

Our Parent/Teacher Discussions will be held on Thursday, 3rd July from 2:00pm until 7:40pm. We have approx. 75% of our families who have ‘booked’ their Parent/Teacher Discussion. Families who have not ‘booked’ their Parent/Teacher Discussion can do so via Compass.

A reminder that students will be dismissed at 1:30pm on this day.

Child Safe Standards:

Like all schools across the State, Mano is committed to the Child Safe Standards. Our school actively promotes the safety and wellbeing of all students, and all of our staff and School Councillors are committed to protecting students from abuse or harm in the school environment. The Child Safe Standards are Victoria’s approach to ensuring a zero-tolerance approach to child abuse. For schools, the Child Safe Standards will ensure that proactive systems and processes are in place to prevent and respond to child abuse. They are:

Organisations establish a culturally safe environment in which the diverse and unique identities and experiences of Aboriginal children and young people are respected and valued
Child safety and wellbeing is embedded in organisational leadership, governance and culture
Children and young people are empowered about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously
Families and communities are informed, and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing
Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice
People working with children and young people are suitable and supported to reflect child safety and wellbeing values in practice
Processes for complaints and concerns are child focused
Staff and volunteers are equipped with the knowledge, skills and awareness to keep children and young people safe through ongoing education and training
Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed
Implementation of the Child Safe Standards is regularly reviewed and improved
Policies and procedures document how the organisation is safe for children and young people

Our policies related to the Child Safe Standards, along with our Code of Conduct is available on our website.

Term 2 Social Service Activity:

Following Mano tradition, our Junior School Council invite our community to partake in a Social Service activity each term.

A Social Service activity is where our Junior School Council identify a charity they would like the Mano community to support.

We are pleased to inform you that our Term 2 Social Service activity has been finalised by our Junior School Council.

Date: Friday, 4th July

Charity: Launch Housing

Donation: Gold coin

Students and staff are invited to come to school dressed in ‘PJs’. Please see poster in this edition of the newsletter for further information.

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

Christian Smith