What a tremendous sight to be seen last Monday morning with our annual Book
Week parade. The costumes created by both students and staff were amazing with the entire school community congratulated on a wonderful event! Congratulations to the following students who won the competition for best costumes:
Family A - Joanica Jimmy
Prep - Kadence Seles
Year 1 - Lorenzo Tavai
Year 2 - Mack Kendall
Year 3 - Nate Stankovich
Year 4 - Imogen McLennan
Year 5 - Samyra Caamano-Bermudez
Year 6 - Asha Sciani
Well done also to Year 4 who were the winning cohort.
I was equally as proud of our year 6 students and staff who journeyed to the Tinaroo Environmental Education Centre (TEEC) for their annual year 6 camp last week. During these 4 days students built their knowledge of the 5 keys to success; Confidence, Persistence, Organisation, Getting Along and Emotional Resilience to overcome fears and challenging activities. A big thank you to the wonderful staff and parents who attended camp last week, supporting our students to achieve success and build memories that will last a lifetime. For more information about Year 6 camp check out my Sizzling Spotlight.
As you know, we value open communication with our families. Parent/Teacher/Student interviews will be held again at the end of the term on Tuesday 12th September in the large covered hall. Families are asked to schedule an interview with their child's teacher or specialist teacher via our online booking system. Click here to book your interview by this Friday 1st September, as this is when online bookings will close.
Working together with you as parents and carers to achieve the best we can for all our children is a very important part of the way we like to work at Mareeba SS. Research tells us the better we can be at working together, the better the educational outcomes will be for our students. Thank you to all of you who have come along to workshops for families this year, helped out at Reading Café's, attended parent teacher interviews, come along to a parade or excursion or just simply made a point of talking to your child about what is happening in their classroom and what the focus of their learning is currently. Your children will certainly appreciate your interest in their learning and achievements!
We often get asked how Mareeba SS teaches reading. Reading is a focus and we promote it as an important lifelong skill. Having many opportunities to practice reading is key. To do this, we aim to promote a love of reading. Opportunities to do this include:
- Our twice weekly Reading Café which provides children the opportunity to practice their reading so that reading becomes an enjoyable past time for everyone.
- Weekly library lessons that enable children to borrow their favourite books from the library to take home to enjoy.
- In the classrooms, reading is taught in a number of ways – as a whole class group and in small group settings such as reading groups in Prep to year 2. In classrooms we focus on a number of evidence-based strategies such as using Decodable Readers that are proven to assist students in learning to read and also to comprehend what they read.
- Children also read to adults 1-1 as another way to practise their reading fluency and their comprehension skills.
- Celebrating events such as last week's Book Week
This week, 28th August to 1st September is Teacher Aide Appreciation Week. We
have wonderful teacher aides at Mareeba SS who do wonderful work with our teachers and students. Please join me in saying 'thank you' for being a great asset to our school. Lastly, just a reminder that this Friday 1st September is a Student Free Day with minimal staff on site for this day.
- Hannah Simpson, Principal