From Marie

Last week I spent four amazing days with 17 of our Grade 5/6 students (and another 143 students from across Maroondah and Yarra) at Somers Camp.  What an amazing set up, on a beautiful part of Westernport Bay.  The nine day camp is jam packed with outdoor adventure activities, including surfing, boating, high ropes course, archery, environmental studies, rock climbing and so much more.  Apart from all of these activities it is perseverance and the ability to manage your self that is at the heart of the camp. For all students, nine days is a long time to be away from home, however, to overcome any homesickness, which is a natural part of being away for so long, and knowing that you are able to manage these strong emotions, is a huge part of what Somers is about. The opportunity to attend Somers Camp comes around only every second year, so our current Grade 3/4 students will have a chance in 2025 to attend.  

60th Anniversary Event Planning - Reminder

Back in 1963 Mullum Primary School opened its doors to the local community.  Sixty years down the track we have a thriving school community that is ready to celebrate.  In Term 4 this year we are wanting to plan a special event for current and past families.  I am looking for any people out there who would love to join me in planning this event.  If this sounds like something you would like to do, or you know someone who may be interested, join me after assembly tomorrow, Friday 3 March, around 9:15am. 

School Production Tickets for sale from Monday

We are so excited to be offering tickets for sale for our upcoming production of 'Adventures of Super Stan'.  Ticket sales open on Monday 6 March, tickets can be purchased directly from the school office, or via the order form that is going home on Friday.  Production dates are Wednesday 26 April and Thursday 27 April, at the Karralyka Theatre in Ringwood.

Explicit teaching in the literacy block

Across the school all students spend a considerable amount of their school day undertaking explicit instruction in literacy.  For most days of the week this occurs in the first 120 minutes of the school day.   Explicit teaching is carefully planned and crafted by our teachers to meet the needs of all students.  As children progress throughout the school the focus of the work changes and students develop an increasingly more complex understanding of how the English language works.  Read below for more details of the work at each level:

• Our Foundation to Grade 2 students are rapidly learning all about the letters, sounds,and combinations of letters and sounds, of the English alphabet.  They are learning how to put all of that information together to make words and sentences. Interwoven with that is handwriting, where becoming automated in the formation of letters leaves cognitive space to think about the spelling and sentence work they are undertaking. Our Foundations students have only been at school for a short while but have already been learning their first letters and sounds, S, A, T, P, I, N, M. With these seven letters they are learning to blend them together to make simple Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words like TAP, MAP, TIN, SAT, SIP.  Keep up the great work Foundation students.  
• Our Grade 3/4 students launch into morphology in a big way, looking at how  prefixes and suffixes are used to create new words that have different meanings, spellings and pronunciation.  Handwriting becomes more fluent and they start to join their letters together to increase their speed.  
• In Grade 5/6, students work on learning about the origins of words, etymology, and how knowing the meaning of words helps them to read and understand longer more complex words, sentences and texts.  Automaticity in handwriting continues to be an important factor in freeing up cognitive space to write more complex texts. 

Check out some of the work in the classrooms this week:

School Photos

Next Tuesday, 7 March, is our school photo day.  We start the day at 9:00 so please ensure your child is at school on time that day ready for their class photo.  Please ensure your child is in correct uniform, including shoes of either white or black.  Order forms for photos have already gone home and can be ordered online.

NAPLAN Assessments

Every year our Grade 3 and Grade 5 students are assessed in literacy and numeracy in the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).   The tests measure the sorts of skills that are essential for every child to progress through school and life, such as reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy.  At Mullum Primary School we do not drill our students in test completion, but know that the literacy and numeracy program in all classrooms is preparing our students to complete these assessments confidently and with success. The NAPLAN website has valuable information for parents

https://www.nap.edu.au/home

Below is a table that indicates when we will be administering these tests.

Foundation 2024 School Tours

Our flyers are heading out to childcare centres and kindergartens this week to advertise our upcoming school tours and information sessions for Foundation 2024.  If you have friends, neighbours or family that are interested in coming on one of our weekday, or Saturday tours, then please have them to ring the school office to book in.  I love taking families through our school, checking out all of the action, seeing all the hard work everyone is doing.  

Parking Inspector

Just a gentle reminder to families to ensure you are parking in the correct spaces when you are dropping off your child each morning.  The Parking Inspector from Maroondah Council periodically comes by and takes a photo of your car if it is parked on the yellow lines (even just a little bit) and will fine you.  

Crossing on Mullum Mullum Road

Thank you to all the families and individual students who are using the supervised crossing on Mullum Mullum Road.  This is the safest way for everyone to cross the very busy road.  There are often near misses (and the occasional hit) on this road as drivers are not expecting people to be dashing across at random spots on the road.  Modelling this for your children also teaches them how to be safe near roads.

Student supervision before school

All students are supervised at school from 8:45am.  If you child needs to be at school earlier than this time please consider using our Camp Australia services that open their doors at 7am each day.  Ben Clarke will be at school each Tuesday morning in March from 7am - 9:30am to meet with you to discuss your family's particular needs for care.  Using this service ensures your child is being cared for when you are needing to be at work and school is not yet open.