Principal Update

Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

Welcome to Week 4! Hitting the ground running has really paid off; our students and staff have quickly got back into the swing of things. Our new Year 7 students are engaging well with the Mordialloc College way: high expectations around Personal Best, Integrity, Respect, and Responsibility. Since my last newsletter, we have had a busy two weeks with a stunning array of programs, events and activities for our students to participate in and I am proud to share these in this fortnight’s edition of our Mordialloc College Newsletter.

Chinese New Year

Year 7 in the Community

Mordialloc College Chess Club versus Chess Master Leonid Sandler.

Lunchtime clubs have commenced with great enthusiasm and our Mordialloc College Captains, and other student leaders are continuing to discuss how to make this year’s whole school House and fundraising events the best ones yet for participation and engagement. 

House Assembly

All information about clubs, house points and leadership can be found on the ‘MoreMordi’ section of Compass (under the star menu).

More Mordi Website

Wellbeing sessions, study skills support, and other subject-based teaching & learning opportunities have all taken place over recent weeks, carefully crafted by our sub school, teaching, and Student Services teams. A huge thanks needs to go out to our staff who will often go above and beyond to create teaching & learning opportunities that support your child’s progress at Mordialloc College.

School Strategic Plan

Throughout 2024, we worked as a community through our School Review process to develop our School Strategic Plan (2025 -2028); I am happy to say that this document has now finally been endorsed and I can share it with you via our website. 

The School Strategic Plan outlines the school's vision and values, sets goals and targets for improved student outcomes, lists the key improvement strategies that will help achieve these goals and targets, and is bespoke to the needs of our Mordialloc College community. 

Please have a read, celebrate our hard work and commitment to your child’s success, be curious about how you can engage with us to support your child’s learning journey, and of course, feel free to reach out with any questions that will better support your relationship with us.

College Council Elections

College Council elections are approaching, and this is an amazing way for you to get involved with supporting Mordialloc College; we are fully aware of the importance of family involvement in student success.  Further information about School Councils can be found on this link, and nomination forms are available from the Front Office. 

Please give some thought to contributing to the College by participating in School Council; there are generally two evening meetings per term, and it can be very rewarding.  School Council decides, to a large extent, the policies and direction the College takes and therefore contributes some really important work for our Mordialloc College community.

Further information about the School Council Nomination Process can be found in our official notification later on in this newsletter. 

Homework

The College believes that to promote student engagement with their learning, some homework should be set and done regularly under the coordination of the teacher. I know too well the sound of my own children telling me that they ‘have no work to do at home’ so, I hope that I can offer some ways to support you when that message makes its way to you!

The work completed at home by a student is a vital and necessary extension of the class lessons, it is an important way to consolidate and reinforce the work covered during the day.  This work is best completed as close to the lesson as possible, in quiet conditions, and as far away from the distractions of a mobile phone as you can muster. The Department of Education has further information about homework but to surmise, students’ work at home is divided into two categories:

HOME STUDY is where students independently follow-up on class work by creating notes, revision posters, and annotating work from the day to ensure that work is understood. Home study is a great opportunity to apply understanding to practice tasks, and for students to reflect on what they need to highlight to their teacher for further support, or extension.

HOMEWORK  is a task set by the teacher and will have parameters, for example a due date.

Please reach out to your child’s subject teacher if you need help with supporting your child’s schoolwork.

To further support your child, we run a variety of Homework and Study Support sessions throughout the College, the most popular being Study Support sessions for Years 10-12 in the Senior Centre (these run most days after school), and Homework Club sessions for Years 7-9 in the LC (these run on Wednesdays after school). Students should also ask their subject teacher if they have lunchtime study sessions, as many Mordialloc College staff will give up their own time to run small study sessions for their own students on an ‘as needed’ basis. 

Year 7 Information Afternoon: Wednesday 26th February

On Wednesday 26th February (3.30 - 4.30) we will hold our Year 7 Information Afternoon in our bespoke Year 7 and Year 8 Learning Centre.  We hope our new Year 7 families can attend as it is always a real pleasure to meet new members of our college community.

The session will provide an opportunity for families to be introduced to the key features of the Year 7 program (structure of a typical day, communication with home group teachers and leadership team, home study, Compass, Google classroom and docs, benchmark tasks and assessment). Thanks to Jo Hannan (Year 7 Coordinator), Simon Cummins (Assistant Principal for Junior School) and Brendan McFarland (Director of Junior School) for organising this afternoon. In addition, a number of our core Year 7 teachers and home group teachers will be available to introduce themselves to parents/carers. A copy of the presentation will be made available to all families as we understand, given the timing, not all parents/carers will be able to attend. 

Communication

To segway in from the above, it is easy to see how the transition from primary school into secondary school might cause a little anxiety for some new families, our college is often a lot bigger than your primary school was! Whilst we put many measures in place to smooth out this process, we know that communication is the key ingredient for a successful relationship with you.

Communication is slightly different at secondary school in that our main method of communication is via Compass. You will find the Compass App an invaluable way of quickly checking your child’s attendance, your child’s lessons for the day, and any upcoming Learning Tasks and/or Benchmark Tasks. If you need help with resetting passwords etc, please contact the Front Office.

If I can encourage you to look at the Learning Tasks regularly, you should clearly be able to see the due date and the submission status for each learning task. Via your Compass App, you will be able to see information similar to this:

If you access Compass via your browser, you will have the option to not only see upcoming Learning Tasks, but to also see any overdue Learning Tasks.

If you click on the ‘Send email to’ you will be provided with the option to choose which of your child’s teachers to contact as regards a subject-specific concern. Please feel free to contact a classroom teacher if a Learning Task does not have the due date provided, and this is therefore stopping you from better supporting your child’s organisation.

We really want families to be aware of exactly what their child is doing in class, we know that this information can help you to feel empowered to better support your child with their progress at Mordialloc College.  Using Compass to share this information with you is an evolving space for us and we are far from perfect but, we are on a journey of continual improvement, and we have made great gains! 

So that we can evolve our pedagogical practice and further develop our curriculum, we have dedicated a lot of Professional Learning time to evolving our Instructional Model and Positive Behaviours for Learning matrix. We will continue to prioritise Learning & Wellbeing, and I am confident that our Mordialloc College families will quickly see the benefits of our focus on meeting our students at their personalised point of need.

Save the Dates: 2025

I did send out these dates at the end of 2024 but, just in case our new families missed that article, I would like to draw attention to this information again. 

Please allow me to share some key dates that I feel you will want to know for 2025; we will still continue to add other pertinent dates to the weekly newsletter but presume the below information might be useful from now for some of our families. 

A reminder that term dates and Professional Learning  Day 1 are all set by the Department of Education, and that subsequent Professional Learning dates are arranged to avoid impact to other calendared events including externally arranged dates such as NAPLAN

Term 1:

Professional Learning Day #1: Tues January 28th, (Student Free Day)

Online Parent Teacher Interviews: Tues 1st April (Adjusted day for staff / students work from home)

Professional Learning Day #2: Thurs 3rd April (Student Free Day)

End of Term 1: Fri 4th April (Early finish for students – 1.30pm)

Term 2:

Open Night: Wed 30th April (Early finish for students – 2.30pm)

Professional Learning Day #3: Friday 13th June (Student Free Day)

End of Term 2: Fri 4th July (Early finish for students – 1.30pm)

Term 3: 

Professional Learning Day #4: Mon 25th Aug (Student Free Day)

Online Parent Teacher Interviews: Weds 3rd Sept (Adjusted day for staff / students work from home)

End of Term 3: Friday 19th September (Early finish for students – 1.30pm)

Term 4:

Professional Practice Day: Friday 21st November (Student Free Day)

Awards Night: Wed 10th December (Adjusted day for staff / Early finish for students – 1.30pm)

End of Term 4: Friday 19th December (Early finish for students – 1.30pm)

Rachael Stone

Principal