principal s report sarah omino - magneticislandss.eq.edu.au · tern in the poem ‘my country’ by...

Principal’s Report Sarah Comino

Principal’s Report 1

Awards 2

Class Reports 3-6

Date Claimers 7

Literacy News 7

Community Events 8

In this edition...

Fortnightly

Issue 15 Term 4 Week 2

13th October 2020

Magnetic Island State School School Vision: All students can succeed.

Mission: Magnetic Island State School will be a positive and supportive school empowering students to be the

best that they can be. Students, staff, parents, carers and community members will work together to foster an outstanding academic, creative and environmentally sustainable learning environment.

10 - 16 Mandalay Ave, Nelly Bay QLD 4819 Telephone 07 4758 2333 Fax 07 4758 2300

Email: [email protected] Web http://magneticislandss.eq.edu.au Facebook: Magnetic Island State School Official

Be Respectful

Be Responsible

Be Safe

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone has

given me as we launch into what is going to be

an extremely busy and exciting term. Despite

the ever-changing COVID-19 restrictions im-

posed on us, we were lucky enough to be able

to carry on with Year 6 leadership camp. To-

day our Year 6 cohort headed off to Paluma for

three days full of exciting activities. Thank you

to parents and caregivers who have been so

understanding about the late planning. I’m

looking forward to hearing all about their ad-

ventures when they return to school on Friday,

tired and happy. We continue to review COVID

-19 guidelines as we move into end of year

events, and will keep you updated.

A massive congratulations to our P&C who are

Band 6-7 Finalists for the 2020 P&C of the Year

Award! The competition was fierce, with over

50 entries received from throughout the state.

It’s a huge success to make it this far and we

thank each person involved for their hard work

and dedication to our school.

Swimming begins this Thursday for Years 3, 4 &

5 students, and on Friday for Prep, 1 & 2 stu-

dents. Please help us out by reminding your

children to bring bathers, goggles, towel, rash-

ie/swim shirt, underwear, school uniform and

sunscreen. We are happy to be getting back

into the pool as the weather begins to warm up

again.

Over the weekend, some of our children partic-

ipated in the Sounds of Kearney Youth Music

Quest. What amazing talent we have here at the

school – Well done to Esther (1st Place), Rowan

(2nd Place), Andre and Emmy (3rd Place).

Thank you to parents for continuing to respect

the restrictions and challenges in place around

visiting the school. Another change this year is

Oral Reporting, which replaces face to face

Parent/Teacher interviews. This will take place

in the form of phone interviews in week 3 of

this term. You can ring the office, 4758 2333, to

book a time. While face-to-face communica-

tion has been restricted, we still encourage

keeping the lines of communication open via

phone or email.

I am feeling incredibly blessed to have the op-

portunity to work on the island this term. It is

such a pleasure to see the pride each member

of the community has for their school and I am

excited to be a part of that this term.

Every Day Counts!

School target: 95%

Year to date: 91.3%

Mini Mr Andrew (or a Year 4 student pre-

senting our PCL focus on parade.)


PCL Focus Week 2 Be Respectful Follow instructions from all staff members

Student AwardsAwards for Term 3, Week 10: Awards for Term 4, Week 1:

Class Achievement PCL Achievement PCL Prep Kobe India 1 Bridie Oliver G 2 Ella J Finn W Nya Jeremy 3 Jude Lincoln Clarence Holly 4 Will & Tessa Mitchell Stephanie Jazlyn 5 Starr Anakin McA Marcus Andre 6 Esther Nina Hugo Ella S PE/LOTE Aidan Rowan Denzel Harry PCL COTW Year 1 Year 5 Attendance Year 5 Prep

P&C News

Our little P&C is very excited that we are finalists in QLD

P&C of the Year 2020. There were over 50 entries this year

and some fierce competition. Kristyn and Kate will be trav-

elling to Brisbane for the awards ceremony on Friday 6th

November. Wish us luck!

Fundraising:

The P&C are raising funds this term by putting together a

2021 calendar—an ideal gift to purchase for Christmas. A

note was sent home last week with details on the competi-

tion being run for the students to submit entries for each

page.

We are also doing another Christmas Raffle so be sure to

look out for another note headed your way soon.

Our next P&C meeting will be held on Monday, November

9th at 5pm in the staff room. All are welcome.

Congrats to our school

Curlew family. The

students love seeing

how much the baby

has grown each day.


Prep Melissa Digby & Deb Hay

Only one term left of Year 1 so it will

be sure to be busy.

Next week we will welcome Mr Ben

Summers, a preservice teacher, to our

class. Ben has been working with Year

6 and will be with Year 1 for three

weeks.

English: This English unit relates to

procedural texts (like recipes). The

children will be writing a procedure

and presenting it as a PowerPoint.

Maths: Our first unit of the term relates to

interpreting word problems, deciding if

they are addition or subtraction, and

choosing an effective strategy to solve the

problems. We have already been prac-

tising count-ons, doubles facts and rain-

bow facts (friends of 10).

Fridays will be a busy day for Year 1 this

term.

Our swimming will be during the first

session so please send your child to

school with their swimmers under-

neath their uniform (and be sure to

pack underwear for them to change

into). All needed swimming items

should be packed in a waterproof

bag. As always, please name all

items. Due to COVID considerations,

we will not be having our usual parent

helpers to help with changing, so now

is a great time to be sure your child is

able to do this with minimal assis-

tance.

The Preps had a great time today visit-

ing the dental van (see the pictures be-

low). They were all very excited and

interested in what happens there and

they got to sit in the chair and find out

about the various instruments that the

dentist will use to check their teeth.

They were also very excited with their

new toothbrushes they received. The

dental visits started today, after they had

finished their orientation, so if you

would like your child’s teeth checked,

free of charge, please make sure that

you return the dental forms that were

sent home recently, as the dentist can-

not examine your child’s teeth without

permission. If your child requires any

further treatment, the dentist will let you

know. You can then choose to continue

with the treatment, or not, and you can

accompany your child to the appoint-

ment.

Don’t forget that swimming starts on

Friday, so please send your child to

school dressed in their swimmers, rash-

ie and thongs, with sunscreen already

applied. Don’t forget to send along a

towel, goggles and their school clothes,

undies, socks and shoes in a waterproof

bag. Due to restrictions, you will not be

able to stay and watch, or help them to

get changed afterwards. The Teacher

Aides, Mrs Hay and Mr Pullen will help

them get dried and changed at the end

of the lesson. The swimming lessons are

part of the Health and Physical Educa-

tion curriculum and will be assessed, so

please make sure that your child partici-

pates in every lesson (there are only 5

this term), unless they are sick.

Year 1 Jo Terkelsen & Deb Hay


Year 2 Jacky Roper

Year 3 Janette Blundy I have to say that it is an absolute pleas-

ure returning to school with this happy,

caring class. We’ve had a fantastic start

to our final term together and I’ll be

looking forward to lots of fun and more

great learning with these kids.

Our English focus for the term will be

poetry. We have already learned about

rhyme schemes and described the pat-

tern in the poem ‘My Country’ by Dor-

othea MacKellar. We will be reading

and adapting more poems in the coming

weeks.

In Maths we have been continuing to

practise multiplication and division skills

and in Science we have begun to look at

different types of matter. The students

will soon design their digital true/false

questions for Technology and we will be

looking at different drama skills in The

Arts. We are also going to be working

on some collage pieces which could

potentially be used as submissions for

the calendar competition.

Don’t forget that swimming begins this

Thursday. Students should come to

school wearing their bathers under their

uniforms so that we can be ready for our

8:25am start. Please remind them to

pack underwear in their school bags.

In English this term, we will continue our

work on information reports. The stu-

dents have been learning what types of

information to include in an information

report about an animal. They have also

been developing skills in the area of

turning small facts of information into

informative sentences. Last week we

practised these skills by starting an in-

formation report on Kangaroos.

Our current focus in Maths is on calen-

dars, focusing our attention on months of

the year, seasons and reading calen-

dars. The student have been having fun

singing months of the year songs to as-

sist them in ordering the months.

We have now started our last Science

unit of the year called, ‘Save Planet

Earth’. We have started discussing what

living things need to survive and what

resources will rely on from the Earth. In

the coming weeks we will conduct ex-

periments to see how plants grow and

what they need to grow well and sur-

vive.

We are all looking forward to a wonder-

ful Term 4 for the year 2 students!


Year 4 Rosie Pullen

Year 5 Jodie Wilson Year 5 hit the ground running in Term

4, with all students returning from holi-

days with a positive and hardworking

attitude. We discussed the terms

‘optimism’ and ‘exuberance’ on day 1,

and challenged ourselves to approach

everything with these words in mind.

Students participated in ‘cooperative

(paired) writing’, based around these

ideas, where they had 8 minutes each

to create a story, with no consultation of

ideas. There were some fantastic sto-

ries created to show the meaning of

these two words. I was proud of every-

one for putting a little extra effort into

lifting the spirits in the classroom and

putting energy into being positive and

energised with their learning.

This term, our class are learning about

‘matter’, and students were excited and

intrigued to learn that everything

around us is made up matter- which is

defined by having mass and taking up

space. They discovered what atoms

are, and we also had fun discovering

the periodic table of elements. Further

from these ideas, the class will be in-

volved in plenty of experiments to in-

vestigate properties of matter, states of

matter- including physical (reversible) and

chemical (irreversible) changes, diffusion,

density and compression of matter, and

finally have some fun learning about col-

loids and catalysts. I’m sure you will hear

all about the exciting experiments that par-

ticipate in, so remember to ask your child

what the purpose of the activity was, and

what they learned about that concept.

You may have noticed your child discuss-

ing ‘Healthy Habits’ and telling you about

their healthy eating challenge? As we are

learning about ‘Preventative Health’ this

term, Year 5’s will have the opportunity to

try new healthy foods, and they are also

challenging themselves individually to cre-

ate new healthy habits such as: balancing

the foods they eat, exercising regularly,

reducing technology time (especially be-

fore bed) and looking after their wellbeing.

This unit initiates some great discussions

about the importance of developing good

health habits, and it allows Year 5 students

to make some choices about their health

now, so it may benefit them for their fu-

tures. Their assessment will involve creat-

ing a lesson, which they will deliver to

younger students in the school, to teach

them about a healthy habit. This can be a

powerful lesson in which older students

are passing on positive, healthy mes-

sages to the younger students- so that as

a community, we can all support each

other to live healthy lives. Please en-

courage this thinking and be involved

with conversations at home regarding

healthy habits.

On that note, students are very lucky to

have the opportunity to be involved in

the physical activity of swimming this

term. Your child should have received

a note, explaining the importance of this

program, and that it is compulsory- just

like any other subject at school. Please

ensure your child gets into a habit this

term, of remembering their swimming

gear on the Thursdays outlined in the

note. Students are able to wear the

swimmers in the morning (under their

uniform), but please make sure they

have a towel and clothes (including un-

derwear) to change into for the rest of

the day.

Looking forward to a busy and exciting

end to the year.

Keep Smiling. Keep Striving.

This week it became very clear to me

just how much our class have grown

over the year. As we begin the last

term of the school, they have already

shown that they are capable of working

harder and faster than last term. They

will be ready for Year 5 in no time!

We are currently reading the novel

‘Rowan of Rin’ by Emily Rodda in class.

This is a quest novel that follows the

adventure of Rowan and his comrades

as they travel up the mountain to solve

their problem. Most students are very

much enjoying the book! As our assess-

ment task, we will be analysing the novel

and talking about the language features

that Emily Rodda uses to describe Rowan.

In Mathematics, we are investigating loca-

tion and direction. We have been using

compasses in class and describing direc-

tions. Any extra practice that students can

have at home would be beneficial. You

could have your child verbalise direc-

tions to a friend’s house, or to and from

a trip out.

We have welcomed back Esther to our

class, everyone was very excited to

have her back at our school. Unfortu-

nately, at the end of the week, we also

have to say goodbye to one of our amaz-

ing classmates as Cai will be moving

away from the island. Thanks for your

amazing input in class Cai, and all the

best for your future!


Year 6 Martin Hammelswang

Garden News

We have been conducting a bit of an experiment over the last few weeks about the best way of growing sweet potatoes. We

were lucky enough to harvest some from last year that we grew in tubs. Our first job was to wash and sort them ready for

the experiments. The larger ones we took home to taste test - delicious!

Experiment 1. Place in a small container and fill with water, the top of the sweet potato needs to be exposed. They sprouted

over the two weeks of the holidays. We have now planted them in the tub.

Experiment 2. Plant chunks of sweet potato straight into the soil, water and see what happens. They spouted before the holi-

days and this was by far the best way to grow them. The tub is full of new shoots and looking very healthy.

Happy Gardening from the Garden Crew

Year 6 left for Leadership camp at Paluma this morning—Yippee!


Date Claimers: October 2020

13th—15th Oct Year 6 Leadership camp

Thurs 15th Oct Swimming starts—Years 3, 4, 5

Fri 16th Oct Swimming starts—Prep, Years 1, 2

19th—23rd Oct Oral Reporting—call the office on 4758 2333 to book a time

Fri 30th Oct World Teachers’ Day

November 2020

Wed 4th Nov Prep class for 2021 transition morning at school #1

9th—13th Nov NAIDOC week

Mon 9th Nov P&C meeting, 5pm

Wed 11th Nov Prep class for 2021 transition morning at school #2

Wed 11th Nov Remembrance Day service at school

Thurs 26th Nov Interhouse Swimming Carnival

December 2020

Tues 8th Dec Year 6 Graduation

Wed 9th Dec Last day of the school

Term 4 has started well with some wonderful work across the whole school in our Seven Steps lessons. Here are some high-

lights from work that some of the younger children did at the end of last term.

Year 1 learned how great stories are planned by creating story graphs—one of which is pictured here. Year 2 students cele-

brated everything ’insect’ even including creating some new ones like the Flyug. Well done everyone. Keep practising

those Seven Steps skills!

Thank you to everyone who has come to see me about their short stories for the ‘My Life in the North’ competition. I have one

student who is on her fifth draft, which shows her great determination to do her very best. She has inspired me to keep work-

ing on my story. All entries need to be submitted by Wednesday 21st October. Come and see me if you need help submitting

your entry.

Literacy Sharon Jupp

SAME DAY ABSENCE

NOTIFICATION

0472 868 244

After School Care Welcome back to Term 4 with Miss Fiona. I am absolutely thrilled to be the

new coordinator of our wonderful after school care program.

We have some great ideas coming from the children about what activities

they would like to do this term. Some cooking, craft & outside games just to

name a few.

I am really looking forward to meeting you all and getting to know your chil-

dren through Educating Kids.

If anyone has any questions about enrolments or you would like to have a

look through our room, I am available Monday-Friday from 1pm.

Regards Fiona Starr

0466 010 311

School Cleaner Needed

Magnetic Island State School Casual part-time position

17.5 hours per week, 2.00 to 5.30pm Monday to Friday

The ideal applicant will have

the ability to carry out cleaning duties with limited supervision and co-operatively participate as a team member when required.

the ability to use and maintain or learn quickly to use and maintain, cleaning equipment, materials and chemical supplies.

the ability to apply Workplace Health and Safety standards, especially in the use and application of cleaning equipment and materials.

awareness of the need for security in relation to rooms and buildings, personal property and equipment.

Blue card required (can be applied for if position application successful)

Please send applications (maximum of 2 pages) to [email protected] by Friday October 16th 2020.

principal s report sarah omino - magneticislandss.eq.edu.au · tern in the poem ‘my country’ by...

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