Principal's Report
As we race towards the end of the school year, there are plenty of events to take note of. A few key things coming up include:
Italian Day Friday 14th November 2024
School Swimming Carnival Friday 29th November
School Christmas Carols Wednesday 4th December
Italian Day
Hopefully, we all have our costumes and/or Italian colours organised for tomorrow's Italian Day, always one of the highlights of the St Finbar's calendar. Once again Lena Sirianni has put in a huge amount of work preparing for this day and has many surprises prepared for us. Feel free to join us from 8:35am for coffee and cannoli before school, followed by our Italian Day assembly - it promises to be a great one.
St Finbar's Recipe Book
Our St Finbar's Recipe Book is just about ready for purchase. Thank you to the families who contributed recipes. I have had a sneak peek, and it is worth the wait. We will launch the book next Friday 15th November at our Italian morning, and taking orders for copies. We will sell copies for $10 (to cover the costs of printing and binding). A huge thank you to Laura Zeeng who has driven this project since Harmony Day, and has put in hours of work collating and formating each family's recipe. It really does look great!
Protective Behaviours
So far our Year 2, 4, 5 and 6 classes have participated in their Feeling Safe session with Cath. I visited a Year 4 session today and the children were discussing the early warning signals that may indicate when they feel unsafe in various situations. It is good for students to be aware of their bodies, and to pay attention to fast heart rate, sweaty palms, and nausea as this may be a sign that they are in danger and need to seek help.
Prep, Year 1 and Year 3 are all scheduled for next week.
MACSIS Data
Each week for the next three weeks I will summarise one aspect of the MACSIS data. This week I will focus on the Family data. We were fortunate to have 79 families complete the survey, with great representation from Prep to Year 6.
As always St Finbar's results were well above the MACS average in nearly all areas.Our school climate in particular is to be celebrated, with consistently high results from Prep to 6, including mutual respect between staff and students, and parents indicating that they feel welcome when they enter the school. 98% of families would willingly recommend St Finbar's to prospective families.
Prep, Year 1 and Year 5 parents feel that Communication is a strength of our school. It was heartening to find that parents find our staff to be approachable and feel comfortable reaching out to staff for support. Student safety rated highly, particularly amongst our Year 5 and 6 families.
Naturally, the results also highlighted some areas where there are opportunities for us to improve. Parents indicated that they would like to be more involved in the classroom in the junior years, and we need to look for more frequent opportunities to provide feedback to parents regarding their children's learning.
Student achievements
Well done to one of our Year 6 art leaders, Estella, who won the Halloween colouring competition at her local Dentist! It's great to see your creativity and artistic ability paying off Estella.
Congratulations to our Maths enrichment students, who have received their certificates for both the APSMO competition and Melbourne Uni Maths competition that they have been working towards in their weekly enrichment lessons.
Volunteers needed
We have a favour to ask...each year the Year 5s take part in a Leadership Day at Caulfield Park. The success of this day relies on having a volunteer at each station. We'll be requesting help from the current Year 5 parents, but teenage brothers and sisters are also perfect for this role. If your teenager is free for a couple of hours on the 2nd December we'd love to hear from you...they may even fondly remember their own Leadership Day and be keen to help out. We can offer them a fish and chip lunch and a small thank you gift.
Take care and God bless,
Michelle Hill
Principal