Current News

Dear Families,

Today is our Annual Sports Day and we have been blessed with cooler weather. Our school is in the fortunate position of being able to host this event on our school grounds. This allows for students to have a rest break during the day in their classrooms.

Thank you to our families who have come along to support this event. It is always a great time for our community to come together and celebrate our students.

Catholic Education Week

Catholic Education Week 2025 (16-23 March 2025)

This year, Catholic Education Week will be celebrated across the Archdiocese of Melbourne from Sunday 16 March to Sunday 23 March.

Catholic Education Week is an opportunity for all Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of

Melbourne to celebrate their Catholic identity, the pivotal role they play within their local

community and the strength of the sector.

The theme for 2025 is

‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you’ (Isa 60: 1).

Catholic education is committed to delivering enriching and high-quality learning experiences, guided by the teaching of Jesus Christ.

Some of our students will attend the Mass of St Patrick for Schools held on Friday 21 March, followed by the Concert in the Park for primary school students.

Catholic Education Week is an opportunity for all Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne to celebrate their Catholic identity, the pivotal role they play within their local community and the strength of the sector.

During Catholic Education Week we will -

celebrate St Patrick's Day
attend St Patrick's Day Mass at the Cathedral
Father Justel will visit each classroom and meet with all of our students.

St Patrick's Day

On Monday 17th March all students and staff are encouraged to wear a touch of green to school to celebrate St Patrick's Day.

Each student is encouraged to bring a gold coin donation to purchase an icecream cone with green sprinkles on this day.

Money raised will go towards our fundraising for Caritas.

Sacrament of Reconciliation

Please keep our Year 4 students and their families in your prayers as they cotinue to prepare to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

These students will receive the Sacrament on Wednesday 19th March at 5pm.

Staff Learning

At Holy Family we are a 'community of learners' - staff, parents and students!

As Principal of the school, I am proud of the engagement shown by our staff, parents and students to continue to improve in all areas of school life. We have offered staff intensive support to improve instruction and creat a calm, orderly learning environemnt.

On Friday 28th February our staff joined staff from some other schools who are in our Reading and Learning Collective to find out more about explicit instruction, writing (sentence level) and a knowledge rich curriuclum.

Dr Nathaniel Swain was the presenter on this day and he will work with our school in 2025 to develop a 'Knowledge Rich Scope and Sequence' Prep-Year 6.

This approach -

Develops student expertise through Explicit Direct Instructional techniques
Models and facilitates text comprehension and analysis
Explicit vocabulary instruction
Builds depth and breadth of content/knowledge
Embeds history, geography, and civics knowledge and skills

researchED Ballarat

This weekend members of our staff Leadership Team will be in Ballarat for the researchED Conference.

These leaders will use the knowledgde gained to continue to support our staff and students.

I have included the outline below -

Parent Education

Tuesday 25th March (7pm-8:30pm) - an evening with Maria Ruberto. Places will be limited!

Maria Ruberto is a Psychologist and Founder & Director of Salutegenics. With over 30 years of clinical experience, consultant to hellodriven.com, Beyond Blue and reachout.com. Maria is a research partner to Southern Cross University and Swinburne University and co-designer of Resilience First Aid – nationally accredited resilience program.

Maria has been a guest on 'The Imperfects' podcast.

Before attending the evening you may like to listen to these podcasts.

https://theresilienceproject.com.au/at-home/podcasts/season-7-episode-2-maria-ruberto/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar625GcrTUI

The Parent Workshop will focus on 'Understanding Wellbeing' and the following topics will be explored -

The reset brain
Basic brain function for learning
Anxiety and the role of experience and response
Dysregulation
The role of parallel processing
Co-regulation
3 step parent strategy in the role of communication

The session hosted by Holy Family will be held at Bunjil Theatre, Avila College.

A small fee of $5 will be the cost to attend. To book your seats go to-

https://events.humanitix.com/understandingwellbeing

Kinder to Year 2 Reading Evening

I would like to thank Natalie Dib for prearing and presenting an informative, hands on spelling session with our parents.

During this session Natalie explained the reasons behind why we have changed our approach to systematic synthetics phonics, decodable books and explicit instruction.

Holy Family is ensuring that each student has a strong foundation in early literacy.

Year 3-6 Reading Evening

Please mark Wednesday 14th May (6:30-8pm) in your diaries.

Parents of students in Year 3-6 will have the opportunity to attend a hands on session which will explain the change in instruction in the upper year levels.

Halogen Young Leaders Day

On Monday 3rd March, our School Captains (Micah and Georgia) and Vice Captains (Xavier and Sienna) travelled to the Convention Centre to engage in the Halogen Young Leaders Day. It was a pleasure to accompany such outstanding young people on this experience.

During the day the students took notes and met the presenters.

I have included their reflection later in the newsletter.