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COVID LOCKDOWN AND HOME LEARNING
Please see Operoo sent out today for further details.
The Victorian Premier has announced today that the current restrictions will continue beyond Tuesday 20 July.
Support your child’s learning and help get their spark back
Andrew Fuller - Clinical Psychologist, Author and Family Therapist
Tuesday 20 July @ 1pm - 2pm
FREE webinar - Register:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/163334348433
Home schooling and the uncertainty of 2020/21 have left families feeling anxious and perhaps a little overwhelmed.
Clinical psychologist and family therapist Andrew Fuller is holding a webinar which is applicable to every family and empowers parents to guide their children (and themselves) towards success.
Andrew’s webinar will help parents with practical tips on homeschooling and show them how to get their kids’ mojo back by finding their particular learning strengths and identifying 10 things highly successful students do to study. He will also help parents to deal with the after-effects of 20/21 with tips and information on how to overcome anxiety in children.
Andrew Fuller combines the latest research from brain science, positive education and resilience to create strength-based education.
There will be a presentation and then the opportunity for parents to ask questions directly.
Dates for events for next few weeks
Please note that at the time of publishing this newsletter the dates for events on the left hand side menu are incorrrect. The dates for the following events have been updated in the school calendar, however it takes a few hours for google calendar to zync with schoolzine.
Parent/Teacher/Student Meetings
These meetings will go ahead on the dates and times planned but will be ONLINE meetings. Teachers will send google meets invitations to parents on Monday 2 August.
School Closure Day- 26 July
There will be no school for students on this day. Teachers will spend the day engaged in online Religious Education Learning Professional Learning and Anaphylaxis Training and Mandatory Reporting.
St Catherine’s Got Talent
We were to begin our very first St Catherine’s Got Talent audition this week. Auditions and the timeline for the final will be postponed. We hope to begin, once students are back onsite.
Grandparents' Day
Sadly we will be unable to go ahead with our planned Grandparents' Day. As there is no certainty with what may be possible at the moment, we will attempt to plan for this event in term 4.
Eucharist Reflection Day & Family Workshop
We will not be able to go ahead with our Eucharist Student Reflection Day. We will organise a new date for the Family workshop and this will be delivered online. Parents of students receiving the sacrament of Eucharist will be contacted with a link for the online work shop.
Student Reports
Student Reports will go home on Friday 30 July.
Camp
Our year 5-6 camp experience was fantastic, even though we came home early on Thursday evening. Our students' engagement in activities and conduct on camp was exceptional. The students participated in all the major activities planned: canoeing, flying fox, making a camp fire, building a bush hut, cooking sausages and damper, the maze, initiatives course, night walk and toasting marshmallows. Thank you to all parents of year 5-6 for supporting their child to attend camp.
P&F Trivia Night
The Trivia night will not go ahead on the advertised date. This event will be postponed and rescheduled for a date later in the year.
Curriculum Term Outlines
Please see attached outlines indicating the curriculum for each year level this term.
Please note, teachers prepared these documents prior to the recent COVID restrictions- some events will not go ahead on the dates indicated in these documents. Please see our school calendar.
On the 1st of January 2021 all catholic primary schools and regional secondary colleges in the Archdiocese on Melbourne had a change of governance. As per a recommendation from the Royal Commission, the Parish Priest is no longer responsible for the governance of schools, this has been handed over to the newly established MACS (Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools).
As a result of this change of governance MACS has developed numerous policies over the first two terms that as of the 12th of July are now found on our Parental Portal. These are mandated policies that all MACS Schools have had to adopt and implement. These are not new policies as most schools already had existing policies they are now universal for our system and allows our system to comply with VRQA (Victorian Regulations and Qualifications Authority) which registers all schools.
These MACS Policies can be found on the Parent Portal where you find the eNewsletters.
Schools will still have school specific policies ie: Homework Policy, Uniform Policy etc and these can also be found on the same page.
Michael Juliff
Co-Ordinating Principal
As we begin another period of Home Learning it’s important to check in with our feelings. As a family, take a few moments each day to share how everyone is feeling. We need to remind everyone that it’s ok to have lots of different feelings. Often a kind message or positive affirmation to ourselves or from others can help each person feel supported. You might like to get everyone to write down a variety of different activities like yoga, meditation, play a board game, get active eg: going for a walk, dance to a go noodle or kidbopz video, the choices are endless. Place them in a jar / bowl and each day take turns to pull out an idea and complete it as a family. Have fun and look after each other.
Stay safe and take care..
Year 5/6 Camp at Weekaway.
On Wednesday the 14th of July the Grade 5 and 6 classes headed to camp weekaway. We were all ready to have lots of fun and try new things! Here is what some of the students wrote about their experience.
“The canoeing was fun because Darcy and I kept bumping into Miki and Jackson for tag. Roy said Darcy and I were doing really well at canoeing.”
- Alexander D’Silva
“We did a bush day and we built huts, found wood and made campfires and cooked our own lunch on the fire. Our hut did the worst out of the other two huts when we tested if it was waterproof. I had the most fun job out of everyone in my group to build the hut. I built the rock walls on both sides of our hut. One side I built too high up and it fell down twice.”
- Nathan Anesidis
“One of the fun memories I had at camp was the activities that we got to do and friends that were in my group. Some activities that I liked were kayaking and the flying fox. In the flying fox you got to go over a 9 meter river and scream the whole way, kayaking there had lots of scenery and you got to kayak with a friend.”
- Sabine WIllmott
“On the first day we went canoeing. Zara and I went in a yellow canoe together. Apparently, although we didn’t realise, the seats were very wet, so when we sat on the seats our pants got drenched! Zara and I were both terrible at paddling our canoe. We kept paddling in the wrong direction! We kept getting stuck on the edges of the lake.The man that was running the canoes had to pull us back to the group. He told us to “NOT” paddle! So we didn’t paddle. But, instead, we just floated off! It was hilarious.”
- Scarlett Novak
As you can tell the students all had a lot of fun, practising teamwork and getting to know each other a little better. We filled our days with lots of activities, roasting marshmallows on campfires and making each other laugh. On the last day of camp, walking away from the hut building covered in mud Miki summed it up for everyone: “If I had to describe camp I would say fun and dirty!”
In the last week of Term 2 the school gathered to meet Mr Jim Miles from the Highett RSL. Two of our SRC representatives Cameron McKell and Veronika Cary received the $500 donation on behalf of the school. We are very fortunate to have a community partnership with the Highett RSL. Every year they generously donate money to the school. This year the money will go towards an initiative that the SRC have been working towards.
Student voice is a way of empowering our students. At the beginning of the year the SRC reps spoke with their classes and asked what activities the students would like to see happening during the break times each week. The students nominated to have the learning hub open to enable students to play chess, build with Lego and to have some time to draw. They also requested the return of the reading combi van to be filled with books for students to sit and read. The final request was to have more creative play opportunities.
The SRC have planned to make four portable play centres in some wheelbarrows we had kindly donated last year by one of our families. They have sourced ideas and have spoken to their classes about the themes of each play centre. We will be creating a fairy land, a construction site, an animal kingdom and a dinosaur valley. We are very excited to get started with construction when we return to school.
Scholastic Book Club Issue Number 5
Issue 5 of the Scholastic Book Club was distributed last week.
