Principal's Update

Dear Families, Students and Community members,

Having Positive Conversations about School with your Child

Parents, in partnership with the College, can have a significant impact on a child’s achievement. Do you ask your child the following question “How was school today?” and get the following answer “OK.” A real conversation stopper! Another way to ask the question is “What have you learned today that might be useful for a lifetime? Your child will have to think more deeply about this question if they are going to be polite and answer you. It will also help them see the way their learning can be applied to “real life”. Other questions you could ask include:

What have you done today that makes you feel particularly proud?
Can you think of a time today when you went out of your way to be helpful to someone?
What is the most demanding or challenging experience you had today?
Can you think of a time today when you were especially enthused?

Instrumental Music Showcase

On Thursday September 7, our Instrumental Music Showcase was held in a packed Year 7 Learning Centre with over 60 students performing! This was such a wonderful night of celebration for our instrumental and vocal students along with their family members. A credit to our dynamic music team - Demis Danoudis, Nigel Maas, Phillipa Edwards, Michael Follent, Kelly Ferguson and Malcolm Abbott and I thank them for their ongoing support of our students.

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”

Awards Night Wednesday 6 December 2017

This is one of the key events on the College calendar! Every year we come together as a College community to celebrate student successes in a variety of areas such as Academic Excellence, the Arts, Technology, Sport and Community involvement. There are many prizes awarded on the night, thanks to the generous sponsorship of many organisations in the school community. Students are nominated for these awards by their teachers, home group teachers and year level coordinators and these nominations are based on specific criteria for each award. I encourage all students to strive to achieve your best for the many awards celebrated at this important occasion. These include:

Academic Excellence: The ‘Academic Excellence’ award is bestowed upon students who have demonstrated outstanding academic results within a subject. They have consistently worked above the expected level and/or have been achieving an A or B (in relation to Victorian Curriculum Achievement levels) on their reports where possible. At a VCE level students need to be consistently attaining high or very high on all assessments.

Students also need to have demonstrated very good to excellent learning habits in their learning area.

Achievement- Endeavour: The ‘Achievement-Endeavour’ award is awarded to students in recognition of consistent efforts made to strive for their personal best. This is demonstrated by improvements in their learning behaviours from term 1 to 2 or 3 to 4 ( or it could be term 1-4 for year long subjects). They have demonstrated academic progress within a subject and have made significant growth in relation to their Victorian Curriculum Achievement levels based on benchmark tasks.

Community Service: The ‘Community Service’ award is awarded to students from across each year level who have served the College in a particular way. For example participation in a variety of school activities as determined on an annual basis, such as: SRC, House Athletics, House Swimming, School Production, subject competitions, contribution to the College Magazine, participation in Open Night, primary school visits, etc.

Sport Champion: Awarded to one female and one male student from Year 7, Year 8, Intermediate level and Senior level in recognition of outstanding sporting achievements made throughout the year.

Special Awards: These awards are contributed by particular organisations to recognise achievements made by students in particular categories. For Example, City of Kingston, Rotary, Victoria Police, Australian Defence Force etc.

Year 12 Subject Awards: The ‘Subject Award’ is bestowed upon the student who has consistently attained the highest academic results in all assessment tasks within the subject (for each Year 12 subject).

Year 12 VCAL Awards: The ‘Year 12 VCAL Award’ is awarded to students who have demonstrated significant achievements and progress within the VCAL program. A total of four awards will be given to four students in the subject areas of Numeracy, Literacy, Personal Development and Word Related Skills.

Year 11 VCAL Award: The ‘Year 11 VCAL Award’ is awarded to a student who has demonstrated significant achievement and progress within the Year 11 VCAL program.

Art Award: Awarded to students across all year levels in recognition of outstanding art achievements and progress made throughout the year.

Quality Learner Award: Awarded to a Year 7 and a Year 8 student who has shown high quality commitment to individual learning excellence achieved through teamwork, a process of continual improvement and taking responsibility for their learning.

This night is also a significant event for our Year 12 students. It is here that we celebrate the achievements of the graduating class by presenting all students on stage in academic gowns. Students are presented with a graduation certificate in front of the rest of the college community. Subject awards for Year 12 and a number of special awards will also be presented. We look forward to this very special event, held at the City of Kingston Town Hall in Moorabbin on Wednesday 6 December at 7pm. Please enter the date into your diary now!

Bike Shed

Unfortunately in recent weeks we have had a couple of bikes that were secured correctly with a lock, stolen from the bike shed by intruders with bolt cutters. In order to reduce the risk of theft from the bike shed we now need to permanently lock the gate closest to the shed and over the holidays, work will be completed to enclose the shed itself to make it a less appealing target.

A reminder that the department does not hold insurance for personal property (this can include mobile phones, iPads, calculators, toys, sporting equipment and bicycles) brought to school and it has no capacity to pay for any loss or damage to such property.

Mordialloc College Alumni Association (MCAA)

The MCAA continue to work tirelessly on preserving and digitising the history of the school. Recently they have been successful in being awarded two grants to support this important work. A grant from the Public Records’ Office of Victoria and a grant from the Kingston Council. All funds will go towards archival folders and sleeves for their photo preservation work. The grants will also fund the digitisation of the “McDonald Collection”—8000 negatives and slides—a vast collection of photographic memories of the school and local area that have never previously been seen.

You may have seen the MCAA in the local paper recently: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/inner-south/mordialloc-college-alumni-unearthing-documents-and-thousands-of-photos-preserving-past/news-story/aa0d49cf995ccb841477cb1acb76d82c

They are very keen to increase their membership base. Past students of the College are encouraged to contact MCAA President, Dr. Martin Davies admin@mordialloccollegealumni.org

Staffing Term 4

We will be welcoming experienced maths/science teacher, Peter Walters who lives within our community and is most excited about joining the staff here at Mordialloc. He has been teaching at Somerville SC for the past ten years. Peter will be taking over from Merv Ferguson who assisted us by filling in this term while we found a permanent replacement for Kevin Osborne.

I hope everyone has a relaxing break and comes back refreshed for a busy Term 4.

Ms. Michelle Roberts

Principal