Term 4 Week 8

From the Principal

Staffing 2023

While there are a few aspects of our 2023 staffing to be finalised, we can announce our teaching staff for next year. 

We welcome Michelle John and Jessica Ward as new classroom teachers to Mapleton next year. Helen Frawley will also be joining us at Mapleton next year. While Helen comes in as our SWD teacher, she will be working across the school supporting our students. Helen will work Tuesday to Thursday. Nick Young will be our new PE teacher. Nick will also be working at North Arm State School. We also have a new school-based psychologist- Jess Thompson who will be at Mapleton once per fortnight. This is shared with other schools as a cluster arrangement. Leanne Harvey will be our new Guidance Officer

Sadly, we will be saying goodbye to some of our staff:

Tim Hackney, Emma Hancock, Njaire Wood, Jason Spies, Rebecca Browne and Rebecca Garvey. Each one has done a wonderful job supporting our students at Mapleton State School. On behalf of our school community, I would like to thank each one for the caring support they have brought each day to their respective classrooms and specialist roles. We wish them every future success.

2023 Classes

Next year, we will have seven classes at Mapleton. Student lists are currently being finalised. Students and parents will know their respective classes before we go on holidays. By Day 8 of school next year, we will have a better idea of student numbers. We will not be making any changes to classes until after Day 8.

Further updates will be sent via ZSapp.

Book lists

Our 2023 Book Lists have been finalised. They will be available on our website and from the Office from Monday the 28^th of November.

School times for next year

We are working through the process of having an Outside of School Hours Care (OSHC) program at Mapleton next year. While there are many hoops still to jump through, we are optimistic that OSHC is viable at Mapleton. All going well, OSHC will be open by the end of Term One, 2023.

To prepare for OSHC, we need to change some of our supervision times at school. This will be in place from Day One.

Our active supervision of students will begin at 8:30am. We know this will be an adjustment for some families. Once OSHC commences, students arriving before 8:30am, will be expected to go to OSHC. That doesn’t mean we will be turning students away during term one. Term one will be our transition time. Support staff will supervise students from this time until the bell rings for students to go to class. To work within the Teachers Award, teachers will not be expected to have students in their classroom before the school bell.

We are also looking at changing the lesson times during the day. We know that our key learning times are first and middle sessions. Our plan is to extend the morning session to two hours, and have the middle session at 90- minutes. Our last session of the day will be shortened.

We will trial the change of times during Term One, 2023. 8.50 students arrive at class, 9-11 first session, Morning Tea 11-11.30, 11.30-1 middle session, Lunch 1-1.40, Afternoon session 1.40-3:00pm.

Reflection on 2022

While there have been many success stories, this year, has also been a challenging year for the school. Our successes have been our NAPLAN and A to E data. In many areas, in particular our A to E data, Mapleton is well ahead of many schools across Queensland and across the nation. This doesn’t happen overnight and is a credit to the work put in by all members of our teaching and administration team over the last couple of years. This also shows that our targeted intervention programs are achieving results.

The positive recognition of our students has been another success. Through our Mapleton Way awards, the number of students having positive entries made in their OneSchool profile has increased significantly. We will review this and see how we can implement further improvement in this area.

While I acknowledge, that communication from the school can be better, our use of the Zsapp and our digital newsletter, are helping us take steps in the right direction. We plan to have greater clarity around excursions/incursions/camps next year and have clearer timelines for payments in place.

Our school grounds and buildings have also started to be refreshed. This has included tree work, the painting of buildings, the resurfacing of the multipurpose court and new interactive technology and whiteboards in classrooms. Next year, we will continue with our painting refresh program, roll out new classroom furniture for students and staff and look at further improvements to our school grounds.

Staffing has been one of the challenges for Mapleton State School this year. We go into the school holidays, knowing who our teaching staff will be, knowing our class structures and hopefully by the end of the year, clarity around our support staff.

Finally, on staffing, Mapleton State School Principal, Julianne Emmett has extended her leave. I have been asked to continue as Acting Principal until the end of Term One.

On behalf of our staff at Mapleton State School, we wish all of our families a safe and enjoyable holiday break. We look forward to working with you as we support our wonderful students for the 2023 school year.

Prep News

“PREP POST OFFICE”

The end of term has been a busy place in Prep as we are learning about writing letters. We have written postcards and will be learning more about writing letters before the end of term. We are even planning to write letters to Santa. We read a story called “The Post Office Pup”, written by Margaret Gibbs, a local Mapleton author.

In our classroom we set up our own Post Office and made our own mailboxes.  We even have our own “post office pup” at Prep! The children have enjoyed buying envelopes and stamps from the post office. They have been writing letters and post cards to each other, and then mailing them in our post box. Each day the “postman and postlady” deliver them to people’s mail boxes.

We will also write letters to our Year 6 Buddies, to thank them for helping us throughout the year.

Year 3 News

Dr Conroy Visit

On Monday 7^th November Mrs Shillig’s year 2 class and Mrs Longhurst’s year 3 class were treated to an ecological experience with the knowledgeable Dr Gabriel Conroy (Gabes).

We also collected specimen’s from the area and placed them under a microscope for a closer look.

We sincerely appreciated Gabes taking time from his busy schedule to educate us on this local species.

End of Year School Concert

The concert is more of a celebration rather than a big production.

The Concert Band, Choir and some smaller instrumental ensembles will perform.

Class presentations will include dances that our students have created. Some of these are still works in progress, but the focus for students is to have a go and have fun with the creative process.

Costumes are simple and affordable, basically a shirt that students may have in their cupboard at home. Or maybe you can borrow from a friend. Colour schemes are as follows:

Prep: colourful shirt

Years 1, 1/2 and 2: Summer – Yellows and Reds

                                  Autumn – Oranges and Browns

                                   Winter – Blues and Whites   

                                   Spring – Greens

Years 3 and 4: colourful shirt

Year 5 and 6: monochrome black or white

Choir:  class shirt and sunglasses

Band and Instrumental students:  class shirt

Looking forward to seeing everyone there. 

Thanks,  Mrs P.

Chappy Chat

Food for Thought

It is that time of the year again where everyone is saying “Where has the year gone?”  We are all busy attending end of year events and planning what to get everyone for Christmas.  In the busyness of the season it is easy to rush through our days without stopping and giving our bodies and brains a time to process and catch up.  When we keep up a fast pace for an extended period of time we can often find ourselves irritable and emotional.  When you get a group of irritable and emotional people spending more time together because it is the holidays, they may not be in for the best time. 

Can I encourage you to take a break in your day when you can?  This can be as simple as taking your lunch outside and sitting in the sun instead of sitting at your desk working on an email.  When you get home from work listen to one of your favourite songs, play it loudly.  Eating something you like and taking the time to taste it.  Going for a walk after dinner with the family. Catch up for coffee (or a beer) with an old friend.  If you are deliberate with those snippets of time you have available, you may just head into the silly season with much more calm and enjoy it so much more.

Book Club

A very big thank you to the parents for supporting our book club program. This year we sold $6221 worth of books. From your amazing efforts, Sheila has been able to order some wonderful books for the library using our reward points. Looking forward to another outstanding acheivement in 2023. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from your Book Club Organiser Renee Donaldson. 

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