Dear families,

What a whirlwind of a term this has been. It is hard to fathom that we are heading into the beginning of Holy Week this Sunday. 

 

Fundraising

At our Assembly a fortnight ago, the Parents and Friends Association presented a cheque for $20,000 for our Sensory Garden. I first put forward the idea of a Sensory Garden to our P&F in 2021 and all through last year, we shared with families that our fundraising efforts would all be contributing to the Garden. This has been a mammoth result and I cannot wait to begin work on what will be a beautiful space. 

For those who may not be aware of Sensory Gardens, these spaces are predominantly set up to help support students who may be having a difficult time settling or regulating their emotions. While these spaces are often created for the neurodiverse in the community, we hope that this space will be one that can be enjoyed whenever any students in our community need some time to ‘chill’. Sensory gardens are not just about planting a few trees. These specially designed spaces also often feature structures, textural elements, architectural pieces and places students can explore. I will be working with parents who are occupational therapists as well as parents and students who are neurodiverse to create something that we can all be proud of owning during our time at St Mary’s. If you’re still having difficulty picturing this description, I have included a few pictures for inspiration below.

    

    

    

Thank you for your generosity and continued support of our fundraising efforts. This year’s fundraising efforts will go towards various refurbishments around the school. Our students and teachers have many ideas on what these could constitute. Stay tuned for more information.

We have run a successful enrolment campaign with our official school tours that have taken place over March. We welcomed a record number of families to these tours. It is always a lovely time of year to be able to share our special community with prospective parents

Communicating learning with families

We are currently reviewing our practices around communicating the learning that is taking place. As you would be aware, we usually share a Term Overview with parents at the commencement of each term. We are looking at possibly changing our practices and moving from a term-by-term overview to an overview shared just before each unit of learning commences. Before making such a change, we felt it necessary to ask our parent community for their opinion. We are asking one simple question: Would you prefer to receive one term overview at the commencement of each term or would you prefer to receive overviews at the commencement of each unit? For example, in the area of Maths, we can either send you an overview of the term’s content at the start of each term, or we can send you overviews of each separate unit as we commence them. You can state your preference here.

Uniforms

After receiving feedback regarding the changeover to our new uniforms, the decision has been made to increase the time towards a complete changeover from 2 years to 3. This decision has been made with parental input and environmental factors in mind. I acknowledge that there will always be one year level or a number of families for whom this will be an inconvenience, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

We will be running one last old uniform sale, including second-hand pieces, early next term. We will advertise the date and details early next term.

Learning and Teaching

As you may have read previously and for the families who were with us last year would have known, we embarked on a process to improve our teaching practices in line with the work around Visible Learning.  

As part of this process, we undertake a yearly School Capability Assessment, when the facilitator we have engaged visits our school and meets with leadership, teachers and students and visits classrooms to see how we are going and where we need to focus our energy. 

Last week, we underwent our second capability assessment. We were thrilled to hear that we have made tremendous progress since last year. Our students are more readily able to verbalise their learning progress, understand themselves as learners and articulate how to make improvements. Our next level of focus will be around feedback. Providing timely and specific feedback for students on their learning has huge potential to accelerate their learning. One of our conference days next week will look at the process of feedback and what it can look like for students of all ages. 

I look forward to sharing more about that with you at a later date.

As this will be the last newsletter for this term, I send you all my best wishes for a blessed Easter and a memorable break. Don’t forget our students will get a little more time off these holidays with our staff conference on Wednesday and Thursday next week and with our Staff Review Professional Learning day on Monday 24th April, before the Anzac Day public holiday on Tuesday.  

See you back for Term 2 on Wednesday 26th April.

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

 

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Kristy Busuttil (Logan and Scarlett's mum) is organising a Royal Children's Hospital appeal fundraising event, a Kick for Sick kids relay, through her Taekwondo School. Kristy and her team will 'kick' their way from their Taekwondo school all the way to the Royal Children's Hospital. A massive 10km....that's a lot of kicks.  

Let's get behind her and her team and sponsor them to raise money for the wonderful hospital that has helped many of our students and family members, including Harlen Busuttil, Kristy and Matt's youngest child, who is featured on Kristy's poster.

To donate and support Kristy's efforts, click this link.

Our JSC has agreed that the proceeds of our Term 1 School Fundraiser, our Free Dress day next Tuesday 4th April, will go towards this worthy cause. We ask that students bring along a gold coin donation on the day to help this worthy cause. 

  

Thanks in advance
Regards
Marg Masseni
Deputy Principal & Wellbeing Leader

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

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A reminder that the tuck shop will be closed on Friday 31st March and Monday 4th April, making next Monday, 27th March the final tuck shop day for Term 1.

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

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Congratulations to our March Aussie of the Month students Lily, Mila and Keira.  Click here to see their smiling faces and to find out why they are so wonderful.

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

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Check out this weeks Community News! We have Mount St. Josephs Open Day information, as well as a few holiday activities.
Mount St. Joseph's Open Day

Emmanuel College News

Mancini Easter Colouring Competition 

Salvation Army Trivia Night

School Holiday Science Classes

Westgate Indoor Sports Party Packages 

Synchronised Swimming

Tutor Wanted

Parish Bulletin

Music Lessons

Now We're Talking: Special Interest Holiday Groups

We would also like to thank Mancini Real Estate for their continuous support to St Mary's Altona


             

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

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What a wonderful day we had today celebrating the many kind actions we had experienced over the term.  As well as orgainising an exciting scavenger hunt for expressive emojis at recess, Wellbeing leaders, Mackenzie and Ava, spoke at an assembly before lunch about the importance of being kind.

Here's what they had to say.

Welcome, we would like everyone here today to spread the word that Kindness and Happiness can be spread through to everyone, including yourself.

Kindness and Happiness can be spread to and through others because if we do kind things for other people it makes them feel happy and could make them do something kind for someone else.  When we see the person we have been kind to smile, it makes us happy because we’ve done something good for another person.

We have been encouraging you to do nice things for other people to make you and them happy. We hope that those nice things have made a difference.

Think about what can you do today and every other day to make others happy? We hope that during April and every other month of the year that you keep in mind the Mary MacKillop quote, “Find happiness in making others happy”. 

Thanks everyone for sharing your great acts of kindness.  Don’t let it stop here today.  Remember…KINDNESS IS CONTAGIOUS.  Let’s spread it around.

Wise words from ones so young.
What can you take out of their speech that you can action today?

Have wonderful weekend
Marg Masseni
Wellbeing Leader on behalf of Mackenzie and Ava

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

 

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Movement can bring amazing benefits for our minds and bodies. So this April we're encouraging you to get active in whatever way best works for you. The new Action for Happiness, Active April calendar, is full of great ideas. What's your favourite way to stay active?
For a full month's calendar of daily actions, click here.

In just 5 minutes, Vanessa King, Head of Psychology at Action for Happiness shares her top tips for Active April, based on the key of Exercise, one of the 10 Keys for Happier Living.

For more on the the key of Exercising and happiness visit here

We hope you have a wonderful ACTIVE and RELAXING holiday break.



Regards
Marg Masseni
Wellbeing Leader

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

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Please note the dates for the end of Term 1 and the beginning of Term 2.  We hope the holidays, which include the Easter break are a time to refresh in preparation for the great learning that will happen in the coming terms.

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Respect • Responsibility • Resilience • Courage

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