Dear families,

It felt way too soon to bid you farewell last Friday, so we felt compelled to publish a proper end of year eNews.

 

It was such a joy to be able to gather as a school and wider community to celebrate our special milestone moments this week, particularly our Graduation ceremony last night and end of year Mass this morning when we also announced our School Leaders for 2022.  See our other eNews article for a list of next year’s leaders.

As we close the page on 2021, we look forward to an exciting new year. Next year we will be working on an important body of work that will see us develop a school-wide set of values that will drive so many other aspects of our school life. And we start this work today, by inviting you along to participate in contributing to the early work in this space.

Over the holidays, I ask that you spend some time contemplating the following:

• What values are most important to instill in your child?
• By the end of their time at St Mary’s, what values do you want your child to represent?
• What values do you want to see develop in your child?

You are invited to fill out this form and identify 5 of the values that are most important to you. 

Next year, our students will explore the concept of values and will also have the opportunity to have a say in what is important to them.

From this we will identify our St Mary’s values. At this stage we are hoping for four values. This work will then inform our wellbeing work, behaviour management policies and procedures and many other school-wide practices.

From this work, we intend to have students learn about various people in our community and the world who live by these values. Four people will be selected and we hope to be able to name our 4 house colours after these inspirational people.

Another large body of work that will be undertaken next year is around Visible Learning. This 3-year professional learning cycle will see our teaching more targeted than ever before. This work will involve having our practices assessed by independent educational leaders before our curriculum leaders having the opportunity to undertake training in coaching. This assessment, which will take place every year, will highlight our school’s priority learning needs and will help us set goals and targets for ourselves as teachers and for our students. 

I was involved in this process in my former role and it is truly transformational. I cannot wait to share this learning journey with you and our students.

If you are interested in learning more, feel free to Google Visible Learning and John Hattie. I’m a bit of a fan! 

I conclude with a few other announcements/reminders:

• We have begun adding some dates to our school calendar. This can be accessed via the website and our Up-dated App. Where possible we have tried to arrange school closure days either heading into the holidays or coming out of them. We will continue to add dates to that calendar as they are finalised.
• A fee summary for 2022 is attached here for your information. In the new year we will send home a note outlining this summary and asking families to nominate how they intend to pay their fees.
• If COVID restrictions remain at bay, from the beginning of next year, we will once again commence the year by having parents on the school grounds at the beginning and end of each day.

We will continue to have students enter their buildings on their own as it has been a most positive experience for their independence to walk into class and set themselves up for the day. 

We will also begin (and hopefully end!) the year with our regular 3pm finish on Mondays and 3:20pm finish on Tuesdays to Fridays

Wishing you all a blessed Christmas and a safe, happy start to the new year. 

Sonia

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Today our Social Justice leaders Gisella and Ruby visited our local Josephite convent to spread some Chruistmas cheer. The girls popped in for a chat with Sr. Clare and Sr. Marea and presented them with a lovely Christmas hamper on behalf of the St Mary's School community. The Sisters wished the girls well in their move to secondary school and sent on their thanks and best wishes for a happy and safe Christmas to all at St Mary's.

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WOW! What a great response we had for our last Social Justice initiative of 2021. We were super pleased with how the community of St Mary's opened their hearts, cupboards and pantries for those less fortunate. Today Gisella and Ruby, our Social Justice leaders, were able to collate all the donations from across the school ready to be picked up by our local Vinnies chapter. We collected so many cans, jars, packets of pasta, rice and noodles that many hampers will be able to be created. It was lovely to see some sweet treats, children's toys, books and Chistmas decorations in their too, offering a chance to brighten Christmases across Altona.



Thank you to the St Mary's school community for all your donations and thank you Gisella and Ruby for all your work in Social Justice this year.

Yours in Faith
Matthew Taylor
Religious Education Leader

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Today at Mass we congratulated and thanked our outgoing leaders and welcomed our 2022 Student Leaders.  In keeping with tradition, our 2021 School Captains handed over the school flag to our 2022 School Captains before leading our Year 6's out of the church through a Year 5 Guard of Honour.

 

Congratulations to...
School Captains: Sophie Belton, Daniel Surbevski, Jacquelyn Le and Koby
Wellbeing Leaders: Andy Jack and Judah Didenkowski
Social Justice Leaders: Amelie Callejo and Zara Azzopardi
Choir Leaders: Eilidh Plumb, Livina Lawrence, Natalie Myers and Zoe Nisbet
Blue House Leaders: Ashley Torre and Mark Morda
Red House Leaders: Luca Devetak and Lina Heffernan-Morales
Green House Leaders: Kamryn Peet and Cooper Thomas
Yellow House Leaders: Kayla Bond and Ethan Agius

  

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Just a reminder to keep an eye on our calendar widgets at the bottom of our School Website home page.  The Event Calendar and Quick View Calendar (both the same info - it really comes down to how you like to view it) give you important dates to keep in mind for 2021 and going forward.
The Quick View calendar also comes to you as part of your eNews each week.  Make sure you take a look.

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As we enter into the final month of the school year (I can’t believe it either), it’s time to think about avoiding the ‘summer reading slide’. 

 

Like many skills we acquire in our lives, if we don’t use them on a regular basis, we lose them. This holds true with reading, including important skills in decoding, comprehension, visualisation, thinking and language ability. 

Over the summer, it’s important to keep up a reading routine with your children that is easy to manage and enjoyable. Here are some tips to instill the love of reading and literature into your family routines:

• Read together and discuss the information you’ve read 
• Set an example - during down time, pick up a book yourself
• Let your children read what they want for enjoyment - tap into their interests, this could include cook books, newspapers, magazines and graphic novels as well 
• Read signs and packaging in shops, traffic signs, signs posted on hiking trail etc
• Create a summer scrapbook to record events and fun outings, collect brochures along the way (also helpful for those with ‘Holiday Recount Writer’s Block’ at the start of the school year)
• Celebrate finishing a book - draw the character, make cookies or treats around the theme of the book, act out a favourite scene or create it with Lego
• Write letters or emails - have your child write letters to family or friends
• Schedule a daily reading time
• Subscribe to magazines 
• Make your own book about a family trip or event or daily life 
• Visit the library

This year Hobsons Bay Libraries are running a BIG SUMMER READ Challenge. 

What is the Big Summer Read?
The Big Summer Read is a fun way to keep you reading during the summer holidays. Using an app called Beanstack, you can track your reading and compete for prizes. The student in Hobsons Bay who reads the most books will win a $300 grand prize!

How do I sign up?

I’ve attached the instructions on how to sign up for the challenge below. There is also a paper tracking sheet that can be submitted for those who do not wish to use the app. Hobson's Bay Libraries

When?

Registration has started now with the challenge running from December 1st to January 31st!

Sign up today and let your teacher know that you are enrolled, I have prizes for the first 50 students at St Mary’s who sign up. 

Some of the staff will be tracking our summer reading too (not in the competition but we’d love to see if you can beat us!) - so let the competition begin!

Click here to read more about it.
Sign up information

Please feel free to email me with any questions

Brenda Lycke

Literacy Leader

blycke@smaltona.catholic.edu.au

 

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We would like to wish all of our famlies a very happy, holy and safe Christmas and New Year.   We hope you find some time to rest, relax and to enjoy some great family time. 

We look forward to seeing everyone in Term 1 2022.

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