From the Principal's Desk

Exceptional, Responsible, Respectful.

It has been such a fantastic start to the 2024 school year with all students returning to school with such a positive disposition launching themselves into their learning. A huge congratulations for the positive start our students have all experienced in these first few weeks. It has been so great to see and hear of the calm, focused manner with which students have returned to school. Our entire school community should feel extremely proud of this achievement - it certainly bodes well for a wonderful 2024.

Our cover photo for this edition of our newsletter is the article that Moriac PS was featured in recently for the Surf Coast Times. Celebrating the beginning of the learning journey for our Prep students, a very big milestone for both students families.

Wellbeing Hub Launch

We have launched our new 'Wellbeing Hub' this year in the centre part of the Year 1/2 building. The idea of the hub is based around a few things; 

1. An alternative place to go at lunch time if a quiet inside play area is needed by a student. 2. A calm environment that enables mindful activities and supports students in a different way.

We have timetabled some lunchtime clubs and activities in this space fully supervised and this has already been a really popular addition to our school. So much so that we have had to split the year levels to cater to the students, with some days dedicated to P-2 and the alternate days dedicated to 3-6.

Curriculum Day Learning

Last Friday all staff from MPS including our office team and education support spent the day learning all about the Berry Street Education Model.  The model really is about supporting students to learn by catering to the many needs that we have as humans, enabling brain breaks after long periods of learning, incorporating mindfulness activities each day to support mental health and wellbeing, ready to learn plans and much more. This was the first day of learning with a second to follow in Term 2. Later in the year the staff will do more of this in an online capacity to complete the course. Many schools in the Barwon area have already undertaken this work and we are excited to join our colleagues in this space as we learn about each domain. You may hear more from your children about this as the term goes by.

The learning domains are as follows and are pedagogical lenses that reflect durable understandings and evidence-based practice that inform daily classroom learning.

Domain 1- Body

Domain 2- Relationships

Domain 3- Stamina

Domain 4- Engagement

Domain 5- Character

School Leaders- Assembly

Next Friday 23rd February we will hold our first whole school assembly where we will celebrate the term so far. Our student leaders from Year 5/6 will also receive their badges for the year and we will once again reward our students that have received a Moriac Star award by calling out some lucky names of students who will join me at the end of the term for a special lunch. All families are welcome and the assembly will begin at 2:50pm.

Attendance

Every Day Counts — is your child at school today?

Being at school every day counts. If your child is absent one day per week, this quickly adds up to two months of missed school in a year.

Every day counts is an initiative aiming to improve attendance at school. The initiative promotes four key messages:

1.  All children should be enrolled at school and attend on every school day.

2.  Schools should monitor, communicate and implement strategies to improve regular school attendance.

3.  Truanting can place a student in unsafe situations and impact on their future employability and life choices.

4.  Attendance at school is the responsibility of everyone in the community.

Parent Payment Voluntary Contributions

Thank you very much to those families that have already contributed to the voluntary parent payments so far. As a Victorian Government school, parent payments are completely voluntary however they do make a huge difference to the school in terms of supporting programs we implement, supplies and resources for the students as well as equipment items we need as well. We appreciate all the families supporting us with this that are in a position to do so and are happy if you would like to pay via compass or would prefer to come in and pay via EFT as well. These payments can be made at any time during the school year.

Family Community Evening- Meet the teacher

Thank you to all the families that joined us this week for our family community evening and informal meet the teacher session. We had a magnificent turn out and it was again such an amazing feeling seeing and being part of our tight night school community. I have had lovely feedback from many families who really enjoyed the time wandering around our school and meeting teachers and other staff. Our wellbeing hub was certainly a hit and I thank the staff for staying back to allow this event to happen.

A special thanks to the Toull family for bringing the wonderful Timboon Ice Cream van, this was most certainly a hit with everyone.