Principal's News

Dear Parents and Friends,

TEACHER FOR THE DAY - YEAR 3/4 CLASSES

Well! What a surprise I got when I went to the 3/4 classrooms on Tuesday and discovered I had employed new teachers!!  Well done Year 3’s and 4’s on your amazing persuasive writing, giving arguments for why we need to have students as teachers for the day!! I was a bit disappointed that a Year 6 student (Mrs Harrison) had to be sent down to the Year 3/4 classroom and the new student (Cassie) in Year 4 had way too many toilet breaks!!

SEPTEMBER AWARDS

Congratulations to Mato, Hudson and Asher for winning our Aussie of the Month and St Brigid's Light the Way Awards for September.

Mato B (3/4H) - Aussie of the Month

Mato is respectful towards his peers, staff members and all involved in our St Brigid;s community. He is consistently welcoming, including others in all aspects of work and play. Mato’s mateship is ‘second to none’ ensuring that everybody gets a ‘Fair go.’ He speaks with genuine concern for others, checking that his peers are okay whilst offering encouragement and support to all. 

Hudson S (1/2A) - Light the Way Award

Hudson has a kind heart, is caring and is always the first to check in and make sure his classmates and friends are ok if they get hurt. Over the year he has grown into a great role model for his peers: constantly demonstrating what it means to be a good friend. He has developed a positive attitude towards his learning and tries his best in all subjects.

Asher B (3/4H) - Light the Way Award

Asher is a supportive and encouraging class member. She participates in all tasks with positivity and enthusiasm. Her willingness to assist her peers and work collaboratively is consistently part of her approach to learning. Her respectful, kind attitude is contagious, contributing to the happy and wonderful atmosphere in 3/4H.

CELEBRATION OF LEARNING 

On Monday, we had our Term 3 “Celebration of Learning”. The children were very excited to present their work to the other classmates, their parents and special friends.  It was great to see so many parents attend the afternoon - the children are so proud of their work and love sharing it with you! Thankyou for taking the time to come and see their work.

SUMMER UNIFORM

As we head into Term 4, we now move into wearing our summer uniform including hats. The weather has not really turned to Spring at the moment, so for the first week if the weather is cold your child is more than welcome to wear their winter uniform. Please make sure that whichever uniform your children are going to wear (summer or winter) it must be the full uniform, not a mix of both.

Our Uniform Supplier - PSW is open 6 days a week over the school holidays.  They are located at 1 Age Street, Cheltenham.  

SOCIAL MEDIA

Just a reminder with the holidays starting to please make sure your children are supervised when they are on Social Media. Holidays seem to be when our children are on social media much more and this is when potential issues can occur.  Please remember to look at the eSafety Commission website to gain an understanding of what the protocols are for online behaviours. This website is an amazing site to help parents navigate the minefield that can be social media. 

If your child is having any issues when using social media please report it to the eSafey Commission.

Click here for the link to the eSafety Commission.

A good platform for children to use is Kids Messenger, making sure the camera is on. This allows the children to see the faces of their friends, which allows them to see the reactions to things that are being said. 

VISION FOR INSTRUCTION

Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools launched “Vision For Instruction” for all schools in 2024. We have included the link below to the parent guide to help you to understand what Vision For Instruction means.  

At St Brigid’s our Naplan results the last 2/3 years have continued to improve due to the teaching strategies which we have implemented including Explicit Instruction.  Our Foundation students have been using a phonics program for a number of years called ‘Jolly Phonics’ to build up their phonemic awareness and phonic skills.

Changes to the English Curriculum in 2025

A new English curriculum framework will be introduced in 2025.  We have completed some professional development around the new curriculum ready to implement at the start of 2025. Due to this new curriculum we will be separating our Phonics program and using:

• Heggerty’s for Phonemic Awareness; and
• “Little Learners Love Literacy” - An approach to teach phonics and spelling in the junior areas.

Fluency, vocabulary and comprehension will continue to be used throughout the school as part of our reading comprehnsion strategies.

Anew Mathematics curriculum was introduced this year and within that we have worked with the children to:

• develop number sense.
• Building fluency in basic operations
• Understanding the ‘why’ and ‘how; of mathematics
• Be confident using concrete materials
• Teaching problem solving strategies and
• Using precise mathematics language

For both Math and English we follow the I do, We do, You do model:

I do (Teacher Modelling) - explicit instruction by the teacher

We do (Guided Practice) - practice the skill as a whole class

You do (Independent Use of a Strategy) - independent practice of the skill with teacher support where needed 

I could not be prouder of the staff who have worked very hard this year to implement the new  Maths curriculum as well as fine tuning the Explicit Instruction which underpins the Vision for Instruction.

Please read the Guide below and if you have any questions please see your classroom teacher or Suzie (F-2 Learning and Teaching Leader) and Cassie (Year 3-6 Learning and Teaching Leader).

Parent Guide for Vision for Instruction

ART SHOW

Our Art Show is fast approaching - Save the Date - Wednesday 9th October. The Art Show this year will feature a range of artworks, including painting, collage, mosaic and sculpture. There will be a chance to vote for your favourite dog to receive the ‘Best in Show’ award. There will be a class auction piece which has been created with the classroom teachers. So many exciting things to view and more information to come! Tickets ON SALE NOW via CDFpay - children 12 and under - free.

This year, our class teachers and their students have created a class art piece that we will auction off in an online silent auction. The art pieces will be displayed at the Art Show with the silent auction being opened on the night of the Art Show at 6.00pm. The online auction will remain open for a week and will be closed on Wednesday 16th at 2.00pm and the winning parents will be notified soon after the close of the auction.

SAD FAREWELL

It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Fr Ignatius who is leaving our Parish to be Assistant Priest at Box Hill.  We have made for Fr Ignatius a beautiful print with our school prayer for him to remember us by. We will be having lunch with Fr Ignatius on Friday to say our farewells. Our loss is Box Hills gain. We wish Fr Ignatius all the best for his next role at Box Hill.

FOUNDATION 2025 STORY TIME

It was so lovely to see our Foundation 2025 Students and their families at Storytime last week.  They were all very excited to be finally coming to school!  They enjoyed stories read by Mrs Sullivan, made some fun things to take home followed by monring tea. However without a doubt, the play on our new playground at the end of the session was probably the biggest hit of all!

END OF TERM 3

We are nearly at the end of Term 3, how quickly the time goes.  It was such a cold and wintery term I am looking forward to hopefully seeing some sun next term!  We have had such a busy term:

• Year 6 Confirmation
• Foundation 2025 Get to Know you Interviews and Story time
• Student Led Conferences
• Grandparents and Grandfriends day
• Book Fair
• Book Week
• Camp Experiences
• Family Movie Night
• District Basketball
• Athletics Carnival 
• LitStem
• Mordi Pre-School visits
• Father’s Day Breakfast
• Year 4 Camp
• Celebration of Learning
• Footy Day

TERM 4

First 2 weeks

Monday 7 October - Students Return to School for Term 4

Wednesday 9 October - St Brigid's Art Show - 6pm to 8pm

Monday 14 October - F-2 Excursion to Science Works

Wednesday 16 October

- Year 3-6 to Mordialloc College Market Day

- Foundation 2025 Information Night

Friday 18th October

- Year 1/2 attending Mass

 - 5/6C assembly - 2.15pm - All Welcome

ANAPHYLAXIS REMINDER

Our School is concerned about the safety and well-being of all our students. Many of you will know someone who is affected by anaphylaxis, a life threatening allergic reaction. Our school does its best to be an allergy aware school. Staff have had training in severe allergy management and we have implemented lots of strategies to help keep students at risk of anaphylaxis as safe as we can. We now have 6 students who live with the risk of anaphylaxis to foods and insect stings. Whilst these children are being taught to care for themselves at an age appropriate level, we ask that you help us educate your child on the importance of not sharing food with others, washing hands after eating and calling out to an adult if they think their friend with allergies is sick. With increased awareness and understanding of anaphylaxis, you will be able to help protect those around you.

For the safety of these children we do ask parents to avoid sending products containing nuts to school in an effort to limit the chances of these children being exposed to nuts. 

Enrolments for 2025 and 2026

Enrolments are open.  If you know of anyone who is still thinking about schools please encourage them to contact the office to arrange a tour with me.

Running Club

Running club this week - it was great to see so many get involved and walk around talking with friends. 

Laps = 206 

Km run = 10.3km

Total km = 550.3km 

We are on the Hume Fwy/National Hwy in New South Wales passing Jugiong. 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

I would like to thank you as always for your wonderful support you give me, admin staff, ESOs and teaching staff.  As the adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child and we have the best village!

For those who are travelling, travel safe and we look forward to hearing about your adventures. 

Take care, stay safe and enjoy the holidays! 

Wendy Sullivan