Thursday 25 May

Thank you to our school community for supporting our Family Maths Night last week. It was great to see our students enjoying the numeracy activities with their mums, dads, grandparents, aunts and other siblings. We received some positive feedback too which was greatly appreciated.

Enrolments

Enrolments for Foundation 2024 are open. Families are asked to complete an enrolment form and return it to the school office as soon as possible to assist with planning for 2024. If you know of family or friends who may be interested in hearing more about Menzies Creek education for their children, please ask them to contact the school office to arrange a tour. We are available for prospective and existing families to see the school in action. Thank you for your assistance with this.

Staffing update

I wish to communicate with our wider school community that after only 24 years at Menzies Creek Primary School, Anne Matheson will retire at the end of the term when her long service leave is finished. From Anne - Menzies Creek Primary has a special place in my heart. It has been my home away from home for 24 years and the students, families and my work colleagues have been a second family to me. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the wonderful people that have provided such amazing support, fun, and friendship over the years and I look forward to continuing my relationship with the very special community that is "Menzies" into the future. We will let you know our plans to acknowledge Anne’s career and significant contribution to the Menzies Creek school community so everyone gets the chance to wish Anne well and to say thank you. Not all is lost, as Anne will be a replacement teacher when her schedule allows!

Mathematics & Numeracy at Home

As your child’s first teacher, you play an important role in helping develop numeracy skills from an early age. Numeracy skills give children an important start to their learning and development. They also help prepare them for daily life at all ages. For example, in handling money and problem solving.

Numeracy is more than numbers. For example, numeracy helps us:

understand and use numbers and other mathematical ideas in everyday life
recognise and use shape
work out the chance of something happening
understand the data we see in the media.

Numeracy is necessary for everyday living. From daily activities like telling the time, cooking and setting the table, to more difficult tasks such as understanding mobile phone plans, planning a trip, reading a map and understanding timetables.

As children and young people move through life stages, the everyday numeracy demands become more complex.

This Numeracy at Home guide provides information, advice and activities for families to help their child’s numeracy learning at home.

Marrung Aboriginal Education Plan

Recently I joined Education Department staff and Indigenous Community Agencies to discuss where the North Eastern Region of Victoria is at regarding the Marrung Aboriginal Education Plan 2016-2026.

Marrung is the Wemba Wemba word for the Murray Cypress pine tree representing branches of education and knowledge.

I enjoyed hearing about what schools in the region are doing to implement the Marrung Plan and at the same time celebrated the threads of Indigenous Culture that we weave throughout our MCPS school curriculum and community. We will continue to work in this space.

With tomorrow being National Sorry Day and the start of Reconciliation Week, we have some wristbands for all our students to wear.

Being eSmart and safe online

This week we have participated in some age appropriate activities across the school that promote awareness of being safe online and having safe behaviours. This is becoming more and more challenging and may be a good chance to discuss at home with your child.

We also signed up our community to have the chance to join an online webinar run by the eSmart team through the Alannah and Madeline Foundation. If you were able to join this session please feel free to provide any feedback. We are looking at running an evening for parents later in the year at school around Cybersafety.

Covid and illness

We have some COVID-19 cases within the school community this week and are seeing a rise in the number of staff and students who are unwell. We ask all families to be vigilant and to keep their children home if they are displaying any symptoms, in an effort to keep our whole community safe. We still have a large number of RAT kits available upon request at the office and a supply of masks, both adult and child, should you feel you need them.

We have scheduled some student free days that we wish to communicate with everyone so you can be prepared and make necessary arrangements. These dates have been approved by our School Council.

Friday 2 June (next week) - this will be an assessment and report writing day for staff.
Friday 14 July - this will be set aside for our three-way conferences to discuss the semester one reports and set learning goals for the remainder of the year.
Friday 11 August - staff will be working alongside other Dandenong Ranges schools working on student voice.

Please add these dates to your calendars. Should you require assistance with supervision TheirCare are available.

Upcoming events

We have some events planned for our students in the coming weeks such as a hot food day and a disco to end the term. Keep an eye out for further information.

Assembly

We do NOT have Assembly tomorrow.

Regards,

Dale McInerney

Hot food Day