Before School Supervision

Families are reminded that before school supervision begins at 8:40am. This allows for 20 minutes before school starts for students to get organised and be ready for learning. Students who arrive at school before this time will be asked to remain seated near the courtyard gate, until it is opened.

Visitors/Parents/Families onsite in school buildings

Visitors/parents/guardians who enter school buildings need to wear a mask and when requested by staff must show evidence of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine. Our school is limiting adults onsite in school buildings to ensure the safety of students and staff.

All staff and contractors that work onsite in school buildings are required to be triple vaccinated as mandated by Melbourne Archdiocese Cathoic Schools. The school is not required to know the vaccination status of students and has a duty of care to all students to ensure their safety.

There are some expectations to unvaccinated parents/guardians/family members attending onsite:

1. Administering medication or medical assistance to their own child
2. Collecting their child if they are unwell
3. Attending for a brief period for administration tasks. Eg.school fees

Visitors/parents/families to any school events must show evidence of vaccination. There are exceptional circumstances where unvaccinated adults may be required to attend a school site.

Sunglasses

After discussion with the School Advisory Council we have decided that sunglasses for students are optional. Staff will not remind students to bring to school or wear sunglasses at playtimes. We have found that many students find wearing sunglasses inhibits their play activities and the practice is not sustainable. The school will provide foundation students with school sunglasses for their first year of school and if parents wish to purchase sunglasses for their students they will be available at the school office. 

School Calendar

A number of dates for school events have now been published in the school calendar (available on the school app or side menu of the newsletter). Some dates for events are still being finalised and will be published in the weeks ahead.  Please note that at times dates do change and we do our best to alert the school community of these changes. Please check events for dates each fortnight in the school newsletter. If you notice any discrepancies with dates advertised please let us know.

Year 5-6 School Camp

Plans for our year 5-6 school camp are in the final stages and students are looking forward to attending Camp Rumbug on Wednesday 6 April to Friday 8 April. I will be attending camp, along with Mrs Alana Tavcar, Mrs Paula Hamilton and Ms Sue Pattinson. Mrs Carmel Donlon will be delegated authority in my absence. 

P & F Easter Raffle, Hat Parade and Sausage Sizzle

Families and friends are invited to our Easter Hat Parade on Tuesday 5 April at 9:00am on the asphalt. Students ( and families) are encouraged to create  and wear an Easter hat or Easter hair style  to school on this day and join in the fun.

Our parents and friends will draw the Easter Raffle and provide students with a sausage sizzle. Hard copy order  forms will be sent home with every child next week. Parents are asked to complete an order form for each child and enclose cash in an envelope.

Families are asked to donate and send in Easter items for the raffle to the school office. Raffle tickets will be sent home to families shortly.

2023 Enrolments now open

We are now taking enrolments for 2023. Please let neighbours, family and friends know about our wonderful school. Private school tours are available. We still have places available for our Saturday Tour  at 10;00am on the 26 of  March.

A big thank you to the Castrillon Family who kindly allowed us to place an advertising board in their front yard on South Rd.

Click on the image to book a school tour

Naplan Assessments

This year our year 3 and 5 students will be participating in Naplan Online. Students will complete online practice assessments prior to the assessments in May. Hard copy information with further information about Naplan will be sent home to  year 3 and year 5 parents. If you have any queries, questions or you wish for your child to be exempt from the assessments, please contact your child’s teacher. 

Our school will complete the Naplan assessment on:

Tuesday 10 May- Writing and Language Conventions

Wednesday 11 May- Numeracy

Thursday 12 May- Reading

All year 3 and year 5 students will be required to attend school on these days. In the case of absence on these days, there will be an opportunity for some catch up assessments to take place. 

Parent/Teacher/Student Meetings

Parent/Teacher/Student Meetings will take place on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 March. Please click on the link below to book a time. Meetings will be virtual. Teachers will email parents/guardians a link for their meeting on Monday 21 March.

Click on link below

https://scmoorabbin.schoolzineplus.com/view-session/20

WELCOME PICNIC

Learning - Term 1

Due to limiting adults onsite we have not been able to resume our learning assemblies and invite parents/guardians to engage in learning activities with your child at school. We are hoping we will be able to do this at some point this year.

You will have noticed in our newsletters this term that we included articles on what classes have been learning about in Wellbeing, Religious Education and this week in Mathematics. While this isn’t quite the same as interacting with families face to face, we hope the articles have provided an opportunity for you to engage in a learning conversation with your child. 

Father Clem 

It is with great sadness that our school community says farewell to Fr Clem. Fr Clem will be leaving our Parish next week to go to St Finbar’s Brighton East. Over the last 10 years, Father Clem has supported our sacramental program, class masses and many school events. The students are very familiar with Fr Clem popping into classrooms before class masses to ask a few questions linked to the gospel reading of the day.

We acknowledge and thank Fr Clem for all his love and care of our students, families and staff. We wish him all the best for the future.Our staff and students will farewell Fr Clem on Thursday 24 March. Students will make cards and pray together. Staff have organised a morning tea and a small gift.

Stations of the Cross 

Classes are currently working on illustrating stations of the cross and these will be displayed on the library windows facing the oval. Stations of the Cross is sometimes also referred to as the Way of the Cross. Stations of the Cross depict a series of 14 pictures or carvings portraying events in the Passion of Christ, from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate to his entombment. Classes have been learning about Lent and the Easter Story. Class Stations of the Cross will be on display in the last week of the term. We invite families to take a look at these images at drop off or pick up time.

SACRAMENT of RECONCILIATION 

PRESENTATION TO THE PARISH COMMUNITY AT WEEKEND MASS

10.30am Sunday Sunday 20th March

St Catherine’s Church

The Parish Community welcomed the following children and their families to mass yesterday. Father Peter (Visiting Priest) presented the children with a purple candle which they will use for their First  Reconciliation at 10am on the 26th March. 

Medina Lebdeh

Maggie Willmott

Harlan Kennedy

Lily Casey

FIRST RECONCILIATION- 10am Saturday 26th March

The following students will make their First Reconciliation this Saturday at St Catherine's Church. Please pray for the children and their families. Liana and Cooper will make their First Reconciliation early in Term 2.

The season of Lent began with Ash Wednesday, which also marks the beginning of the annual Caritas Australia Project Compassion Appeal. Donations to Project Compassion allows Caritas Australia, the Catholic Agency for International Aid and Development, to work with local communities around the world to alleviate poverty, hunger, oppression and injustice. This years’ theme is ‘For all Future Generations’.

We encourage you to put your compassion into action this Lent through your prayer, fasting and almsgiving by supporting Project Compassion. Each family has  received a Project Compassion box for your donations or you can donate online via the Caritas Australia website at: lent.caritas.org.au  If you choose to collect during Lent, please return the boxes to school so we can add the school donations to St Catherine's Parish Donations.  

CONFIRMATION 2022- Thursday 2nd June     

The Year 6 students will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation at 7pm on Thursday, 2nd June. Please mark this date in your diaries. An enrolment form and information Letter will go home to students in Year 6 who are eligible to make their final Sacrament of Initiation. (Baptised Catholics who have made their First Reconciliation & Communion)

St John’s Ambulance First Aid Schools Program:

Student Voice

A huge thank you to all of the students who applied to be a member of the 2022 Student Voice team. Student voice involves students actively participating and contributing to decision making processes and collectively influencing outcomes by putting forward their views, concerns and ideas. Congratulations to the following students who received their student voice badges on Friday; Harvey Taffe, Hannah Chan, Dominic Forner, Harry Tzilinis, Analia Carapeto, Cristina Chiodo and Eva Slupecki. These Student Voice team will meet fortnightly to discuss and plan actions for 2022. 

National Day Against Bullying and Violence

On Friday our Sustainability and Arts leaders greeted the school community at the front gates and presented them with the orange ribbons they had made. Staff and students wore their ribbons throughout the day to show their support for the national day against bullying and violence. Each class completed activities that related to this year's theme of creating a ‘Kindness Culture’. The Year one students discussed a very important message, ‘Before you speak, think and be smart, it’s hard to fix a wrinkled heart.’ 

Taekwondo 

Week 1

Foundation skills of Taekwondo.

Week 2

Various moves (Blocking, kicking, moving and exercising with pool noodles (Gentle stick fighting)

Week 3

Block breaking - We really enjoyed this lesson. Some of us had sore hands for a little while but fortunately we were still able to write for our lessons. :)

Week 4

Our final week of Taekwondo, we will be learning various forms of Jumping Kicks. 

Thanks Harry, St Catherine's has really enjoyed this unit of work. 

Congratulations to the winners of our Noodle Battle!

Ride2School 

On Friday 25th March I am hoping many children will ride, scoot, skate or walk to school. Not only is this to increase our level of physical activity, it is also to help cut the level of C02 in the atmosphere by changing our mode of transport. 

On arrival children will place their bags in their Grade lines, then off they go to complete one of the obstacle courses that have been set up. 

The asphalt will be for scooters and skaters and the oval will be for bikes.

2 courses will be set up on the oval. 

There will be a dance station for those who have walked or travelled by car. 

All children will receive a raffle ticket and will go in the draw to win some sporting equipment. This will be drawn after recess.

A healthy fruit snack will also be available.

Any younger siblings and adults are welcome to join in the fun.

Holt Soccer

On Friday 29th April, St Catherines will be entering 1 team in the Holt Lightning Premiership. Children will be selected to play in this team event. Any parent who can transport our team by car please email me at

susan.pattinson@scmoorabbin.catholic.edu.au

Learning Mathematics in 5/6AT

In 5/6 AT, we have been learning about properties of an integer.  We have learnt about factors, multiples, if it is a positive or negative integer, composite and prime numbers.  We also learnt the place value of the integers. We found prime and composite numbers on a chart 1-100. When we learnt the factors of a number, we made a factor tree of the factors of a number. Together we learnt how to add and subtract negative integers, it was really fun.

by Jacob

TIME TO LEARN

I learnt that there are picture graphs and the best thing was collecting data about paper aeroplanes - George

I learnt you can collect data from people and get to know them better - Abbey

In Grade 1 we have been doing a lot of great learning focusing on the Number and Algebra mathematics strand. We have learnt how to skip count by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. To show our learning we even made skip counting caterpillars! We also learnt about addition and subtraction and how they relate to one another. We learnt about addition facts to ten using unifix blocks. We also demonstrated our understanding of addition using tens frames by making scary monsters!

In Maths over the past few weeks the Foundation students have been answering  yes/no questions to collect information. They have organised the answers to their yes/no questions into simple data displays using objects and drawings. We have explored how to use tally marks to help record responses. The students have learnt to Interpret the data displays to share the most popular responses and the least popular. They have answered a series of questions and as a class we have explored different ways to create displays to show the results.

We have read the story about a little mouse named Chrysanthemum who had the longest and most unique name at her school. We created a table to represent the length of all of the names of the students and teachers in our class. We discussed who had the longest and shortest names and if there were students who had the same amount of letters in their names.

The students have used a spinner to collect data. They have gathered blocks according to the colours they spun to make a 3D graph. The students have recorded their responses by colouring a square on the grid each time they spun a colour. The students have shared with the class the colour they spun the most, least and if they had any colours that were spun the same amount of times. 

Special offer to families of St Catherines