From Marie

Education Week ----- Active learners: Move, Make and Motivate --- Open Evening

A lovely buzz could be heard as families navigated their way around the school as they hunted for all the hidden synonyms for 'move'.  Many students were able to follow their class' text map and share their modelled text with their parents. 

Foundation -- Goldilocks and the Three Bears 

Grade 1 -- The Ugly Ducking

Grade 2 -- The Tunnel (suspense tale)

Grade 34 -- Should the Big Bad Wolf be Banished? (persuasive) 

Grade56 -- Why Robin should leave Batman (persuasive letter)

We look forward to seeing how cleverly our students can innovate on these modelled texts.

Learning the letter/sound correspondences of our English language is where we start our learning to read and spell journey. It is the primary focus of a student's first few years of school. However if we continue to rely solely on recording the sounds we can hear in a word we wish to spell, we will inevitably come up with some rather creative, but inaccurate, alternative spellings. This is where our knowledge of morphology can be very helpful. Morphemes are the smallest parts of a word which have meaning. For example the word 'cats' is made up of two morphemes - the base <cat> and the suffix <s> which makes the word plural. 

As you toured the school on Tuesday night, I hope you noticed the Morphology Walls in many classrooms, showing the prefixes, bases and suffixes which have been explored. Breaking a word down in to its morphemes can help both with determining the word's meaning and in understanding its spelling structure. Teaching spelling through word sums . What is a word sum?  re + move can be rewritten as remove.

The challenge put to both staff and senior students this week was to create a word sum for the word 'education'. Thought I would share with you my creation. 

Connections in meaning can be made with others words which have the same base. For example:

• duke: 'leader'
• duct: tube which 'leads' a substance.
• aqueduct: structure which 'leads' water.
• introduce: 'lead' within.
• educate: 'lead' forth.
• abduct: 'lead' away.
  product: item 'led' forth.
• duchess: 'leader'

PMP - Perceptual Motor Program and is a movement-based program which helps our Foundation students to improve their eye/hand and eye/foot coordination, fitness, balance, locomotion and eye-tracking skills.  Thank you to our parents who have volunteered their time, making it possible for us to offer this valuable program. 

Look out for information on the Premiers Reading Challenge. Mrs. Lee and the Junior School Councillors are working together to encourage every single Mullum student to take up the challenge. 

Attitudes to School Survey 

Students in Grade 4, 5 and  6 are asked by  DET  to complete a survey which attempts to determine levels of student connectedness to school and engagement in learning.  A letter informing parents of this was sent home earlier this week. If you do not wish your child to participate then you are asked to contact the school or myself via email by Friday, May 19. The results of the survey help us to set our wellbeing goals and targets.

Keep reading to find out more that is happening in and around the school.

If pictures are anything to go by, it looks like Marie and her husband have enjoyed exploring and experiencing New Zealand. However, all good things must come to an end, and Marie will be back sitting in this chair next week. 

Jenny

Sausage Sizzle and Footy Night-Thurs 25th May

Our first Fathering Project event for 2023 is coming up next Thursday and it is great to have so many people signed up already!

All fathers and father figures/friends are invited to come, with your student (siblings welcome) to the school netball courts from 6-7pm for a Sausage Sizzle and some footy themed games.

Whatever you support, AFL/NRL/EFL or even Quidditch, we'd love you to come along wearing something representing your team! 

Even if you or your kids don't love footy, or even if you think that soccer is footy, then don't worry, there will be a range of activities for everybody.

Please RSVP via the Compass link, and we look forward to seeing you then.

Cheers

Mullum Fathering Project Team

Mother's Day Stall

The stall was a huge success last Friday and I am sure there were lots of mums and grandmothers that had a smile on their faces when receiving their specially chosen gifts!

Special thanks to our parent volunteers that ran the stall with such ease:

Kerryann Wyatt, Karen Wood, Emily Mojarrad, Priscilla Hetherton, Eima Naghavi, Olivia Thomas, Ryan England, Kristy Biermans, Bao Nguyen and Samantha Bigelow.

Also a special shout out to the following amazingly talented and generous people who donated gifts to be sold:

Julie Malyon, Heidi Vesper, Chris Cussen, Shana Williamson, Gillian Carne, Chloe & Jule Brown, Rebecca Hose, Amanda Tourtoulas, Michelle Clemson, Kate McLean, Emily Shafaati, Melissa Landini, Stephanie Cooper, Jade Rohde, Leslie Tayao and Olivia Thomas.

And also to our own very clever Pippa Kaa for her beautifully made keychains!