Dear families,
What a wonderful celebration of Book Week it has been.Thanks to Miss Lycke for coordinating a great week of activities. From our whole-school shared narrative to door decoration competition, to our parade and the prizes for costumes, days like this involve a great deal of work.
A huge thank you to parents and carers. We know these events take a lot of preparation and we are very grateful for your participation and enthusiasm.
The flooring for our tram and upholstery for the seats have been ordered and are on their way. We will soon start to see things changing on the inside of the tram - the last step before we can open it up to our students.
Our P&F have been busy gathering some amazing prizes for the Silent Auction for our upcoming Trivia night at Altona Sports Club. Tickets are selling well. If you haven’t already done so, get in quick to book a table or some tickets. We are looking forward to a memorable night.
Earlier this week, John and I met with a member of the MACS Infrastructure Delivery team. We took him around the classrooms and talked him through our proposed build.
We will meet with the Chief Planning and Infrastructure Officer on Monday to discuss funding and pre-planning. This is an exciting time for our community. We look forward to sharing more updates as they happen.
Last Friday, our teachers attended the second Flourishing Learners West professional learning day at Caroline Chisholm Catholic College. On the day, we learnt more about the Science of Reading. It’s great to know that as a school we are well into our phonics teaching journey. We have begun to explore Daily Reviews that are designed to provide students with regular revision of key concepts being taught throughout the year, to help embed the learning into their long-term memory. As teachers, we have always known the importance that spaced practice has on learning. Until now, we have not had official structures in place that allow this to happen regularly.
These daily reviews are organised in ways that increase student engagement and participation using proven modes of delivery and ways of creating more neural pathways. Many of these will appear old-school, such as choral reading/reciting. We are looking forward to sharing more on these methods with you in the coming months.
Reminders
Smart Watches:
Please note that if your child wears a smart watch it should be set to ‘school mode’ or similar. It is important that if a child needs to contact you or vice versa, they come to the office and we contact you ourselves.
If a child is found with a phone or using an active smart watch, we will hold it for safekeeping at the office until the end of the school day, in line with our policy which can be found here.
If you have any questions about this policy, please contact me.
Fences:
We’ve had an increasing number of parents and relatives come to our fences at break times to chat with the children and/or pass them food.
I ask that you refrain from doing so, as we need to keep our children safe. Staff on duty do not necessarily know the adults at the fence and it is important children are not given food in this way.
Please pass this message on to any family/friends who you know may walk by our school during break times.
If you need to pass anything on to your child, please drop things off at the office and we will ensure your child receives them.
Staff have been asked to move people on if we see anyone around the fence talking to our students. We appreciate your understanding.
Parking:
Please abide by the local parking rules before and after school. We are seeing increasingly dangerous parking which places our community at risk.
In particular:
If we continue to notice dangerous driving/illegal parking, we will engage with parking inspectors.
Next Friday we will celebrate Father’s Day with a shared prayer service commencing at 2pm.
We will then follow with dads and carers visiting classrooms before heading for a quick afternoon tea in the hall.
We look forward to celebrating with the significant father figures in our students’ lives.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Professor Dolores Umbridge (IYKYK)
If your child would like to enter this competition please click on the below link or ask Mrs Murdoch for a printed form.
https://www.respect.gov.au/respectcompetition
Stephanie Murdoch
Wellbeing Leader
smurdoch@smaltona.catholic.edu.au
You will need to CLEARLY write the following on the bag. NB: One bag per child.
NAME:
CLASS:
FOOD REQUIRED:
TOTAL $ ENCLOSED: Please enclose exact amount - no change will be given
Sauce will be provided. No need to order.
Send your order to the front office.
Orders should be returned to school NO LATER than Thursday 29th August.
Menu choices:
Sausage roll $5 Spinach & Ricotta roll (veg) $5 Beef & Veg Pastie $7 Party Pies $2.5 | Plain beef pie $7 GF Plain beef pie (Gluten Free) $7.50 Veg Pastie (Vegan & dairy free) $7 |
There will be no school canteen on this day.
By now, every family should have receives a box of Cadbury freddos and Caramello Koalas to sell to their friends, family and community.
The details are as follows:
The eldest student will receive the box on behalf of their family.
There will be a 2-week period in which the money must be returned to the office in a clearly labelled envelope.
Chocolates sold at $1 per unit, totalling $60 for the box.
If families would like more chocolates to sell, please let the office know and this can be arranged.
Funds raised will go towards recreational & sports equipment.
We had a fantastic finale to this year’s book week this morning celebrating our favourite book characters with a dress up day parade!
A huge congratulations to everyone who put in the effort to dress up. We were pleased to see so many homemade costumes!
Well done to our costume and class door display winners! The energy that went in to the door displays was wonderful!
During the week we also had other book related activities happening around the school.
Last week we had a whole school performance called Maybe a Miracle by perform education where the actors had an interactive presentation to explore some of the shortlisted books. What a fun way to get us excited about books!
Check out our Book Week photo gallery
Don’t forget that the Vicotroian Premier’s Reading Challenge is finishing up on September 6th - happy reading everyone!
Brenda Lycke
Literacy Leader
blycke@smaltona.catholic.edu.au
Event Schedule:
We encourage all dads, grandfathers, and father figures to join us for this meaningful event with their children. It promises to be a day filled with joy, laughter, and cherished memories.
To further enhance our Father’s Day celebration we are putting together a powerpoint presentation for the liturgy. We encourage all families to add a slide which shows our students with their father figure/s. All of the instructions can be found on the first slide of the powerpoint.
We can’t wait to celebrate Father’s Day together!
John Hein
Deputy Principal