News From Mr Smith

Dear School Community Members,

Welcome to Term 3! It has been a wonderful start to Term 3 with students eagerly catching up with friends and beginning new curriculum topics. Like the first half of the year, Term 3 will see students engage in an exciting and challenging curriculum and extra curricula activities. We are committed to our mission of every student having access to high quality instruction and wellbeing supports with minimal variation between classrooms. Extra-curricula activities will include excursions and incursions, our Grade 6 Camp, the Victorian State School Spectacular for selected students and our much anticipated Concert to support the formal learning in classrooms.

Please keep an ‘eye’ on the calendar of events in our newsletter to keep abreast of all that is happening.

Welcome Miss Botten: We extend a warm welcome to Miss Kristy Botten as our new Prep D teacher. Miss Botten replaces Ms Dove who has begun family leave. Miss Botten has been super impressed with the manner in which our students and staff welcomed her.

We look forward to Miss Botten’s contribution to Mano and we wish Ms Dove well with the impending birth of her first child.

NAIDOC Week: Due to our holidays last week, we are celebrating NAIDOC Week this week, and this includes students engaging in activities that builds their understanding and knowledge of our First Nations people. NAIDOC Week is a time where we celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our NAIDOC Week celebrations conclude tomorrow with an assembly where our special guest, Ash, will share with our students the meaning of NAIDOC week, a Welcome to Country and a Smoking Ceremony. We will also have some of our Grade 6 students share their perspective of NAIDOC Week. We warmly invite all families to attend:

Date: Friday, 19th July

Time: 2:40pm

Venue: In front of Flag Poles

It’s not Okay to be away!: Manifold Heights Primary School has prioritised the promotion of school attendance over the last two years due to our higher than expected levels of absences. We have promoted and focussed on:

the State (Victoria) and Mano’s commitment to promoting regular school attendance
the correlation between attendance at school and academic and wellbeing outcomes
Mano’s data on student attendance (well below when compared to State)
students not attending school when unwell
offering support to families

I am pleased to report that this focus has achieved some major improvements across the school in the last 12 months – see graph below. We had 42% of students have fewer than 10 days absence in 2023, and we reduced the amount of students who had at least 30 days or more absence by 50% from 2022. We will continue to promote regular school attendance to provide our students with the opportunity to thrive in their academic, social and emotional development.

Student Voice - Attitudes to School Survey: Student voice is a key priority for our school. Student voice refers to the values, opinions, beliefs, perspectives and ideas of individuals and groups of students. Research indicates that when schools have high levels of student voice and agency, academic and wellbeing outcomes are higher. Alongside the work led by our Student Voice and Agency Leader, Mr Gibson, we recently engaged our Grade 4, 5 and 6 students in the annual Attitudes to School Survey. The Attitudes to School Survey is a Department of Education survey that seeks the ideas, opinions and views of our students. We recently received the results of our 2024 survey. According to our students, the following aspects of our school are well above the State:

Effective classroom behaviour
Sense of Inclusion
Stimulated learning
Advocacy at school
Student voice and agency
High expectations for success
Community connections
Emotional awareness
Life satisfaction

According to our students, the following aspects are areas for improvement:

Resilience
Respect for diversity

Our ‘Student Voice, Agency and Leadership’ School Improvement Team will utilise this year’s Attitudes to School survey data to reflect on areas for celebration and opportunities for improvement.

Annual Implementation Plan – 2024: Our Annual Implementation Plan outlines the key areas we will focus on to maximise student learning and wellbeing outcomes. As a Leadership Team, we recently reflected on the progress of our Annual Implementation Plan. This included leaders highlighting aspects of our plan that we ‘have achieved’, ‘are working on’ or ‘need further focus’. Our key improvement strategies for this year are:

Wellbeing: Embed the Mano Health & Wellbeing model to build resilience and support student wellbeing and inclusion.
Writing: Implement and embed the Mano Writer’s Workshop Approach consistently across the school.
Numeracy: Develop and implement an evidence based and whole school approach to the teaching of Mathematics.
Curriculum and Assessment: Develop and document a viable curriculum map and implement consistent assessment practices.

As a staff team, we are committed to achieving the targets against our improvement plan and are highly engaged in each of these areas. In the upcoming newsletters, I will provide our families with regular updates on our progress and achievements.

Reporting to Parents/Carers: Thank you to families who took the opportunity to participate in the Parent-Teacher Conferences late last term. This is an important aspect of our reporting to parents and carers program, as well as maintaining the ever important home – school partnership. These discussions are designed to compliment the Semester 1 Student Report. I encourage families to provide any feedback regarding the

Parent-Teacher Conferences and the Semester 1 Report Cards, or any other aspect of the Reporting to Parents program, to me through the school’s email address:

Att: Feedback Reporting to Parents Program

manifold.heights.ps@education.vic.gov.au

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

Christian Smith