Acting Principal’s Report

Celebrating our Education Support Staff

Every day, our education support staff work hard to keep our schools running, support our students to learn and our teachers to teach. On 20 May, we celebrated our hardworking staff through Education Support Day. Our school is fortunate to have an amazing ES team that support our families through the smooth running of our office, and support our students through extra assistance in our classrooms Can I thank Belinda, Libby, Helen, Lisa, Semiha, Mary, Verity and Sengul for everything you do to make our school amazing and in supporting our students and their families achieve their personal best.

Mother’s Day Stall

Hopefully all our mums and significant females received their gifts last weekend for Mother’s Day and got to enjoy some special treats and quality time with their families. Can I thank PnC and all our amazing parents for their work in sourcing gifts for our Mother’s Day stall, helping to run the store on the day, organising the raffle and also to all our families who donated so many wonderful things, ensuring we had wonderful hampers to sell for our raffle draws.

Special thanks to the amazing super team of Chris, Tammie and Vikki plus all the additional helpers on the day and in the lead up. They raised an amazing $4,025.75 with the support of our amazing school community.

Electorate Barbeque, Coffee and Bake Sale AND our Library Resource cenre

A huge thank you to all the parents, helpers and students, that helped to make our Election Day BBQ and coffee and cake stall a huge success. A big thank you to Gary Shaw for all his work in coordinating the day!

A total profit of $1832.90 was made. This resulted in the Solar Buddy fundraising target being achieved.

The remainder of the money will go towards our Library resource centre. Once again, a HUGE thank you to all the families who have made voluntary contributions towards our new Library resource centre and helping bring our Library Resource Centre to life!

If you’d love to see our library come to life, there are several ways you can help:

The easiest way is to make a tax-deductible donation to our Building Fund via Compass. You will see at the top of your Compass news feed a highlighted “Course Confirmations/Payments” which allows you to make a voluntary donation if you’d like to contribute.
Donations of new or very good condition books suitable for primary school aged children. Please continue to drop them off in the tub available at the office. Helen Brown, our Resource Manager is also contactable at Helen.Brown3@education.vic.gov.au We thank families for your generation donations and the many book donations that have already been made!

School Review

As many families would be aware, we are currently going through a school review. This is a great opportunity to assess what’s being going well and to also highlight areas for improvement. The school review will set the School Strategic Plan for the next 4 years. We know that we are on the right track, moving forward, with our goals and targets, that have been highlighted in our 2022 Annual Implementation Plan.

Once we receive the school report after our final review day, we will share the information with our school community. Thank you to the families, students and teachers that provided feedback, as part of the review process.

National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)

Last week students in Years 3 and 5 completed the annual NAPLAN testing. Students completed four assessments over the course of the week in Reading, Language Conventions (spelling, punctuation, grammar etc...), Writing and Numeracy. For the first time, all schools across Australia completed the tests online. A key advantage of the online testing platform is that it can create a ‘tailored test’ that adapts to students correct and incorrect responses and then adjusts the questions to provide a more accurate picture of a student's skill level achievement. We also hope that this new change will result in a quick turnaround for schools and families in receiving student's results.

It is important to remember that NAPLAN testing is a snapshot in time. Often by the time families receive the results, students will have made progress in all areas of their learning. It's also important to note that NAPLAN only paints a small part of the picture that makes up a child's development and achievement. Whilst we want all our students to be successful in Literacy and Numeracy, we also want them to be happy, healthy and engaged in the learning and connected with their peers. Our staff use a variety of assessment tools and methods to gain a rich, full understanding of your child. Our ongoing reporting also allows for families to receive a more current picture of your child's progress.

Term 2 Staff Professional Practice Day - NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS Friday 3 June

As part of the new industrial agreement, teaching staff are entitled to a Professional Practice Day each term. Due to the shortage of replacement teachers, the Department of Education has indicated that we can hold this day on the same day for all staff. Our Professional Practice Day will be on Friday 3 June. There will be no school for students on this day. Families needing supervision for their children can book their child into our Out of Hours Program run by EXTEND.

2022 Student Attitudes to School Survey (AtoSS)

One tool we use to assess student connectedness to school is the Student Attitudes to School Survey. The AtoSS is an annual student survey offered by the Department of Education and Training to assist the school in gaining an understanding of students' perceptions and experience of school. Students were asked about their thoughts and feelings in relation to their school, their learning, peer and family relationships, resilience, bullying, mental health and wellbeing, physical activity, and life in general.

We value student voice as a means of improving student engagement, wellbeing and quality instruction. We will be conducting this survey to find out what your child thinks of our school. In our experience, young people enjoy having their say.

Students from Years 4, 5 & 6 were invited to complete the survey online during class time using a purpose built secure online survey tool. It is important to note that we were not in any way “testing” your child. The survey took around 20- 45 minutes to complete and participation in the survey was voluntary.

COVID Updates - Changes to RAT Requirements

We have been advised that there will be changes to the Rapid Antigen Testing (RAT) Program that has been running in schools throughout 2022. RATs will continue to be distributed to you as they have been throughout this school year for the remainder of this term. However, from Monday 23 May 2022, students will no longer be recommended to undertake twice weekly testing.

RATs however will continue to be required by students who are household contacts to attend school (5 negative tests over a 7 day period) or who have symptoms. These students are also required to wear a face mask if attending school. The ongoing supply of RATs to families in our school will ensure that parents and carers will have them should they need them if their child is a household contact or has symptoms.

Families must continue to notify the Department of Health and the school if their child returns a positive RAT result. Additionally, you should inform us if any of your children are household contacts. Thank you also to all families who have got their children vaccinated. Vaccination continues to remain the best way to protect students and staff in our school. Getting vaccinated is easy and bookings can be done via the coronavirus website. If you have any questions about the vaccines, I encourage you to speak to your GP or a health practitioner.

Maria GiordanoActing Principal

Eid Celebration at MPS

Wednesady 5 May Moreland Primary School held an event to come together as a community and to share and learn more about Eid Al Fitr. A very special time for Muslim people and one that many in our Moreland community celebrate.

The event was hosted by the very charming Bilal Mohtadi the older brother of Ramy one of our Grade 2 students. Bilal talked to the children and their families about Eid Al Fitr. He told us that this is a celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. Ramadan is a month of fasting.

During this time Muslims aged 12-years and older do not eat or drink anything during daylight hours. It is a time to practice self-restraint and control and they are also required to be kind and caring towards others. In the evenings when the sun goes down people come together to break their fast. Then at the end of the month they get to celebrate. They say ‘Eid Mubarak!’ which Bilal told us means ‘Happy Eid’.

Bilal asked some of our Moreland Primary students to talk about what they do to celebrate Eid. Maysara from Grade 6, Rayanne from Grade 5 and Zara from Grade 4 told us about starting their Eid celebrations by getting up early to go to prayers. They get presents and new clothes, eat lots of delicious food and visit their family and friends.

At the end of the session Bilal asked the children if they had any questions. And despite knowing there was a table loaded with lolly bags available at the end, they wanted to ask so many questions! Perhaps the lessons about restraint and self-control were rubbing off on the children! The children asked wonderful questions and were very curious about fasting for Ramadan. They wanted to know if people had to fast if they were sick, what else people did during Ramadan and how they could make up if they did not fast. We learned that some people who are sick or who cannot fast for some reason will do charitable works and care for other people such as providing food to people who do not have enough. We were also told that many people break their fast in the evening by eating dates and that the times for Ramadan and Eid are decided by the lunar calendar, so every year it falls around 11 days later than the year before.

At the end of the afternoon the children each received a treat including some of the special foods people eat for Eid.

A huge thanks to the Moreland community members who helped bring this event together including: Bilal Mohtadi, Zena Yassine, Arief Rasyid, Lia Sulistyodewi, Maha Ibrahim, Nur Insani, Irma Wahyuningrum, Tess McCabe, Rebecca Ostberg and Jane Martin.

School Council

Participation in PnC events

The PnC runs a number of events throughout the year to bring together our school community socially and to raise funds for special school projects. While we invite all parents and carers to participate and welcome any help you can provide with these events, we fully understand that other commitments and household budgets can sometimes be a barrier. We thank anyone who is able to donate funds, goods, or time to our efforts (no matter how big or small), however it is not an expectation of any family at MPS. The PnC runs events alongside events organised by school staff so there is a range of opportunities to be involved, but participation is never mandatory. If you have any feedback for us, we welcome emails to morelandps.pnc@gmail.com

Election Day BBQ results

A huge thank you to Gary Shaw, George Kotridis, and all the amazing helpers (students included!) who made our Election Day BBQ such a success. We made a profit of over $1800, and the Grade 5/6 Solar Buddy project has also been fully funded.

PnC June meeting – all welcome

Our next PnC meeting will be held on Wednesday 8 June 2022 from 7pm in the school staff room. We invite all parents and carers to attend.

IDAHOBIT

Last Tuesday the 17th of May was The International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT)

Our school was proud to have recognised this day through the celebration of the diversity of our school community.

Students were encouraged to wear rainbow themed accessories as a sign of their support to our LGBTQI community. There were also class discussions and a lunchtime activity with Rhyarna, our social work placement student. Rhyarna and the students linked rainbow paper chains together, as a symbol of inclusivity and acceptance of all students within the school community.

We are a safe school and this means that ALL students deserve the right to feel that they belong.

Merri-bek Mail

Issue 7 · 27 May 2022

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