Welcome back to Term 3. Special mention to our new families joining Mareeba SS this term. Special welcome to Ms Kim Luke who is joining us as our acting Guidance Officer for Term 3 and Ms Rebecca Seibert who has joined our staff teaching 4C for the remainder of the year. The start to Term 3 has been wonderful for our amazing Auslan Choir who participated in another year of Creative Generations On-Stage Performance in Brisbane. From all accounts the choir performed amazing throughout the week and the students had a ball exploring the sights of Brisbane in between shows. Special mention to Mrs Wendy Tilse, Ms Susi and Ms Tahnee De Tournouer for supporting this opportunity for our students. You can read the full CGEN wrap-up
here.
For our students, the start of term has been successful with students settling into
routine and engaging in teaching and learning. To kick off their English task, the year 3 students held a Japanese cultural morning which was a great way to 'hook' students into the unit of work by engaging and exiting their inquisitive minds and our Prep students celebrated 100 days of school and 100 days SMARTER. We also look forward to our MSS NAIDOC celebration tomorrow 9:30-11am – families are most welcomed to attend.
This term we have trialled our new senior parade time (2.05pm on a Monday) as well as our changed student eating times. Parade has been very successful in the afternoon session with classes returning to classrooms after parade to reinforce parade messages and to teach our Social Emotional Learning program. I acknowledge this time is a little tricky for parents to attend as there is a wait time before our school day finishes so the team will continue to monitor this over the next few weeks. We do love having our families attend parade. With regards to our change of eating times, we have seen a very positive uptake by students and staff with our data already showing a calmer transition back into learning in the middle session for our students, a much cleaner school environment and reports from our tuckshop have been very positive. We will continue this trial for the first 5 weeks of the term. Don't forget to send your child with a snack break item for during morning session.
Soon our families will receive an email invitation to participate in the annual School Opinion Survey which will open on July 24th. This survey assists our staff to celebrate the great work we do and to reflect on parent, staff and student feedback to improve areas of further development. More information about the School Opinion Survey can be found here in my Sizzling Spotlight.
The countdown is on until our Mareeba State School Movie Night on Friday 11th August. Our dedicated P&C have been working hard behind the scenes to organise what will be a wonderful family event with showbags, our monster raffle, baked goods, food stalls and much more. Just a reminder that families are asked to donate any prizes they can to go towards the monster raffle and our bottle/jar stall – donations greatly welcomed for drop-off at the office. Our next movie night meeting is Wednesday 2nd August at 5pm in the staffroom – all welcome to come along.
Just a quick update on our Brady Park upgrade. Contractors have advised that our irrigation system is currently being installed and turfing of the area commences today or tomorrow. Students will be able to utilise Brady Park in Term 4 and we hope to have our hybrid football / soccer goal posts/net erected as soon as we can without damaging the turf. We are also liaising with our Project Manager to support the revegetation in the area with trees replanted.
Finally, a big thank you to our wonderful families who assisted with our 4-year School Review over the past few days. Our review team are still here finalising our preliminary report of which they will share key highlights with staff this afternoon. A copy of our final review report will be published to families once we receive it.-
- Hannah Simpson, Principal