Learning & Teaching 

LEARNING & TEACHING - Vira Pirrotta

REPORTING UPDATE

Dear Parents,

Please be aware, that the way you access your child's report is changing The reporting package nForma has made it easier for you to access your child's reports this semester. This week, you will receive an email with the instructions to download the app. The reports will then be available on 11th December 2024. Please look at for the email from me.

Kind regards,

Vira 

Merri-bek Children’s Reference Group  

This year, our students had the fantastic opportunity to participate in the Merri-bek Children’s Reference Group, an initiative designed to empower children to connect with local government and have their voices heard on decisions that affect them. The group’s key aims are to:

• Increase children’s voice and participation in Council decision-making.
• Promote children’s civic engagement.
• Develop children’s leadership capabilities.

Our school was proudly represented by Zara and Gemma, who joined ten other students from across the Merri-bek council zone. Together, they contributed ideas, provided feedback, and learned about the council's role and decision-making processes. They gained valuable negotiation, planning, and collective decision-making skills while attending four 90-minute meetings held once each term. During these sessions, the group worked on several exciting projects:

• Food System Strategy: Exploring ways to involve children in creating a healthy, affordable, accessible local food system.
• Digital Guides in Parks and Playgrounds: Collaborating with artist Jessica, the group shared ideas on making parks more imaginative and inclusive through digital adventures.
• Council Information Consultation: Advising how council information could be made more accessible to children.

A highlight of their experience was meeting Cr Annalivia Carli Hannan, Mayor of 2021, who shared insights about her role in representing the community and making meaningful changes.

Zara and Gemma participated enthusiastically, contributing thoughtful ideas and working collaboratively with their peers. They represented our school exceptionally well, ensuring our students’ voices were heard.

We are now preparing to select our next Year 5 representatives for the 2024 Merri-bek Children’s Reference Group! A letter of expression of interest will be sent to parents of current Year 4 students. Interested students will need to apply for this exciting role, and we look forward to selecting our following representatives to continue this important work.

Congratulations to our excellent representatives on a job well done!

LITERACY NEWS - Bernadette Parnis

Library

It has been wonderful to see the excitement and enthusiasm from students as they visit the library each week to enjoy the collection of books at St Fidelis. I'm sure they have truly appreciated this fantastic privilege. 

As we approach Week 10, please note that borrowing books from the school library will now cease. Kindly remind your child/children to return all borrowed books. We encourage you to check around the house or under the beds to ensure that any library books are returned, so they are ready for everyone to enjoy in the new year.

Take-Home Readers

Borrowing of Take-Home Readers will also conclude. It has been fantastic seeing students engage with these books, reading at their level from home. Just like the library books, please remind your child/children to return any Take-Home Readers they have. This will help us sort and prepare our resources for the 2025 school year. Thank you for your support!

Reading and Writing during the holidays

As I have suggested at the end of each term, the holidays are a great time to get into the local library and borrow books to read at home. Often various activities are scheduled over the school holiday period. Encourage your child/children to read for enjoyment during the holidays. 

A  reminder, St Fidelis School has a subscription with Sunshine Online. This is a great platform with levelled books as well as other sections that work on alphabet and spelling. Our login details are: https://library.sunshineonline.com.au/login/student

log in Stfidelis password read123

Bernadette Parnis

Literacy Leader 

bparnis@sfmoreland.catholic.edu.au

NUMERACY NEWS - Colleen Monaghan

It has been so good looking over the assessments across the school and seeing the growth our students have made.  Thanks for all your support at home, together we can and do make a difference.

As we approach the end of another school year, I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you of the importance of helping your children to celebrate their progress and wins. There is much research to show that our brain loves to feel it has been successful.

It releases dopamine, making us feel good and encouraging us to seek similar opportunities again. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, which means it is a chemical messenger that takes messages from nerve cells in your brain to your body.  Our brain releases dopamine when we experience success. In terms of evolution, this reward system was in place to encourage us to continue to do the things we need to do to survive: eat, drink, reproduce. I believe we should be harnessing the power of our dopamine system to help change how children feel about maths.

So this week, I encourage you to look back on the year with your children. Talk to them about their successes and show them how far they have come in their maths learning. Let them experience the 'good feelings' associated with making progress in their schoolwork. Hopefully their brain will begin to find this motivating and seek further experiences of success. And as reports come home this may be an ideal time to focus on this with your child. Celebrate their progress and wins.

I have enjoyed being back at school and working with your kids. We had a great day on Tuesday with the Senior Maths Games day. Thanks to the teachers, Chris Message and one of our parents, Mr Allen Cutts who helped us out in the middles session.

Congratulations to the amazing students who worked so well in their teams, collaborating, encouraging and persisting on the maths throughout the day. 

Our 2024 Year 5/6  Maths Games Day Winners are:

Team 11, who scored the highest amount throughout the day.

Mia, Lennix, Amelia and Jack.

This Wednesday, the Foundation students have their Maths Games Day. We welcome parents and would love your support.

The juniors have been learning about shapes, 2D and 3D. We worked on making 3D objects using playdough and matchsticks. Here are some of our students working hard on creating and describing the features of each one made.

Colleen Monaghan

Numeracy Leader

SPORT & PE NEWS - Michael Jennings

St Fidelis Sports/Athletics Carnival

As you are aware, it was decided that our Athletics/Sports Carnival would still be held for all F-6 students over last week at school. However, once again, Melbourne’s weather made it difficult for our Athletics Carnival to be completed by the end of last week.

Thus far, we have completed the Years 1/2, 3/4 &  5/6 events. The students are highly commended for their efforts at their respective events.

On Tuesday, our Foundation students will be participating in their Athletics events from 11.40am. We hope they have a great time!!

Thank you to everyone involved, especially staff who have assisted with the events during last week, staff,  students and parents for your flexibility and patience with the timetable changes. It has been very much appreciated.

CONGRATULATIONS

Congratulations to Ava who played AusKick at half time at the AFLW grand final, scored a goal and celebrated with a cartwheel.