Principal News
Dear Families
Welcome to this week's newsletter. It is an incredibly exciting time at our school, filled with moments of celebration, community spirit, and the joy of learning.
A Moment of Celebration: Our Vision for Instruction Story
It is with great pride that we share with our Sacred Heart Community a video showcasing our implementation story of the Vision for Instruction (MACS).
Recently, this video was shared with over 290 schools across Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS). It served as the official introduction given at each of the Flourishing Learning Improvement Networks across the four regions: Northern, Eastern, Western, and our very own Southern region. We had the pleasure of sharing this with the School Advisory Council (SAC) earlier this term, and we are thrilled to now share it with our wider community.
Sacred Heart Sandringham, is a vibrant community of 274 students, including 10% from language backgrounds other than English and 32% identified through the NCCD. Sacred Heart is recognized system-wide for their strong Tier 1 curriculum and pedagogical practices, which successfully support a diverse range of neurotypical and neurodiverse learners.
Over the past four years, they have moved from 11 classrooms operating with 11 different approaches to a coherent, whole-school approach to teaching and learning. In the video, you will hear from former Principal Simon Collis, Cathy Ferrari, current Principal, and Deputy Principals Sarah Rafferty and Kate Stroud as they reflect on this evidence-based journey. You will also see two of their outstanding teachers, Sophie Prosser and Kate Newey, demonstrating a Year 1 Literacy lesson and a Year 6 Mathematics lesson in action.
We are so incredibly proud of Miss Prosser, Miss Newey, Ms Rafferty, Mrs Stroud and Mr. Collis. We extend our sincere thanks to them, and to all our staff and students, for generously sharing our Sacred Heart story to help drive improvement for students right across the MACS system.
Faith & Parish Life: Archbishop Peter Comensoli’s Visit
We have a very prestigious guest arriving soon! Archbishop Peter Comensoli will be visiting our Holy Spirit and St Francis Parish next weekend.
As part of his visit, he will be coming to Sacred Heart next Friday, May 29th. Parents and families are warmly invited to join us at our morning assembly to welcome him. Following assembly, the Archbishop will be spending time meeting with our staff, the Leadership Teams of Sacred Heart and St Mary's Hampton, and visiting our students in their classrooms. We look forward to showing him what makes Sacred Heart so special.
Child Safe Standards: Focus on Standard 4
This May, our school focus is on Child Safe Standard 4: Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing. We believe that keeping children safe is a partnership. We encourage all families to download and read the attached resource to see how we can continue to work together to promote a safe, nurturing environment for every child.
Benvenuti! Italian at Sacred Heart
We are so blessed to work with Maestra Mary Caliri, who celebrates the Italian language and culture with each of our students every week. Whenever I step into her lessons, I feel instantly transported to Italy! Thank you, Mary, for bringing so much passion and joy to our languages program.
Assembly with our Leaders
A weekly highlight of mine is meeting with our School Captains and assembly hosts. Over a warm hot chocolate and some Tiny Teddies, the assembly hosts and myself plan out the upcoming assembly and I get the wonderful opportunity to learn more about each of our student leaders.
Choir Hits the High Notes
It is fantastic to see our school Choir up and running, beautifully led by Mrs Pennington and Mary Bedford. They are practicing hard, and we cannot wait to hear them perform at our school assembly later this year.
Sporting Updates
Dendy AFLW
On Thursday, a team of Year 5 & 6 girls travelled to William St Reserve to compete in the Girls Footy Lightning Premiership. With many students playing footy for the very first time, the girls should be incredibly proud of the way they represented Sacred Heart throughout the day.
The team played their (Sacred) Hearts out in every match, showing fantastic teamwork, resilience, determination, and sportsmanship. After an outstanding few games in their pool matches, the girls progressed all the way to the Grand Final, where they narrowly went down by just 5 points - an incredible achievement considering our students limited experience playing footy! When I popped in to visit, I was greeted with squeals of delight, several of them beyond excited to have kicked their first goal!
A big thank you to Ms Matilda Tench, Mr Theo Jaynes and Byron Budin for coaching and supporting the team throughout the day. This is such a wonderful opportunity for the young women across the Dendy Sports Association, to play AFL. We hope this experience has sparked a passion for the girls to continue their football journeys in the future!
Beach side Cross Country
We wish Noah, Oli, Amelia, Lily, Isabelle, Elwood and Ruben, all the best for next Tuesday. They have trained hard, are well prepared and we know will give it their all.
Congratulations Annabelle
We congratulate Annabelle who has been selected to represent Sacred Heart & Victoria in the upcoming School Sports Victoria team (SSV) competing in the 1 & 3m springboard events for under 11 girls. The top 3 from each age group were selected for the team. The event runs from the 25th to 31st of July at MSAC. We wish her all the best.
Kinder Visits
Last Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of taking our first group of Year 4 students to visit Nagle Kindergarten. The students were really excited and represented our school with maturity and showed great care for the kinder students, they played with. It was great getting to know some of our 2027 Preps and some siblings. We look forward to the next groups visiting the kinder and hope that the kinder students can walk to Sacred Heart and visit us. This important partnership has been developed over several years, and this year is no exception.
Helping the Sacred Heart Community
We are incredibly blessed to have such a supportive community. A huge thank you goes out to:
- Keith, for fixing our netball goal nets
- Brendan, Chloe and Toby, who spent last Saturday gardening and raking up lots and lots and lots of autumn leaves!
- Michael & Brendan, who are continuing to put hard work into transforming our front garden bed. It is looking fantastic!
P&F Notices:
Grazing Hampers
Looking to relax over the long weekend? Our P&F Association is organising gorgeous Grazing Hampers. Please see the attached flyer below for details on how to order and support our school fundraising efforts.
Sacred Heart Disco
The children are really looking forward to our disco next Friday night.
2 Minute Parking Zone
A gentle but important reminder that the parking in Sandringham Road outside the school gate, is a 2-minute standing zone. If your child is not ready when you pull up, please loop around the block to keep traffic flowing safely. The safety of our children is a shared responsibility, and I thank you for your patience and cooperation during these busy times.
✨ Mother's Day Lunch ✨
We wish all our amazing Mums an enjoyable and well deserved lunch tomorrow at Sandy by the Bay. Adele has led this gala, ensuring it will be loads of fun! We can't wait to hear all about it.
Important dates:
Reminding everyone that Grandparents and Special Friends Day is on Thursday 4th June 9:00am, starting in the hall for a special assembly and then our visitors can see the students in their classrooms.
Friday 5th June is a School Closure Day
Take care and wishing God's blessings and peace upon each of you.
Mrs Cathy Ferrari
