Principal's Message-
Laura Spence
Happy Term 3 break!
Parents and Carers, take a moment to tell your children how well their Term 3 was – I promise you they were great. We had a quick 9 week term, but packed in an incredible amount of learning, camps, excursions, incursions, and range of activities. As always, our student participation was fantastic. This COG edition has a small snapshot of the excitement from the second half of Term 3, and I have some brief mentions below.
Yesterday we farewelled the Year 12 Vocational Major students who have worked hard to complete all of their assessments including last week’s Cornershop Carnival. Congratulations to our cohort and best wishes for future endeavours. We will see everyone again for the Celebration Day which is early Term 4. Our Year 12 VCE students will be in during the holidays for practice exams and continue their preparation for November’s exams.
Hopefully parents and carers are enjoying the regular photos of events on our socials, but you can also access this link for a quick photo set:
McC Term 3 Wrap Up.pptx - Google Slides
Thursday this week we hosted an Instrumental event for our Region. Eric Budd has provided a summary later in this COG edition, but I also wanted to share the videos I took, as the quality of the music was exceptional. It was a privilege to be asked to host the 200 students from a range of schools, and a great compliment to our Music team and students.
Last week we packed in a year into 5 days with our whole school assembly, NAIDOC celebrations, Koorie Grade 6 transition day, Cornershop Carnival, RUOK Day, and Shrek Jnr. Add in Rubicon camp, lots of sport, MAP excursions, and the usual amount of top quality teaching and learning. Thank-you all the students for their parts in organising and participating in these events.
We have a lovely mention in an Age article recently about Alumni, Alyssa Vella. It’s an update from last year’s article adding her brilliant Premier’s Award presented recently. Have a read here:
It was fantastic to see so much positive feedback flowing between staff and students during our Parent-Teacher Interviews. Many parents expressed their gratitude for the hard work, care, and professionalism our staff bring into the classroom every day. There was a high level of bookings from families creating great opportunities for discussions about the classroom successes.
A group of 17 of our Year 10 (and one Year 9!) students had a fantastic experience ABCN’s Money Mastery event which was hosted at the Docklands on the same day as PTIs. This one was hosted by Acenda, a life insurance company. The students on their day off, catching the train in with Mr Hemsley and Ms Fusinato to learn about earning, saving, and investing money, and avoiding scammers along the way. The students were exemplary during the day and showed great appreciation of the opportunity.
I would like to bring to your attention a new policy which is now on our website under the Policies tab. Preventing and Addressing Racism in Schools: Policy | VIC.GOV.AU | Policy and Advisory Library. This is a statewide policy, similar to the Child Safe Standards in that all schools will implement the same policy.
If you were not aware, McClelland has a breakfast club, run by our staff, Mel Dunston, Brooke Jones, and Roz Hosking with different students providing support each week. Each week there are up to 120 toasties provided to very appreciative students. Breakfast Club is an amazing program offering so many students each Tuesday and Friday a positive start to their school day with a full tummy and a nice chat.
Congratulations to Taryn Richardson and our two student teams who attend the Quantum Victoria Print a Car Competition recently. Our Year 9/10 students received top marks for design folios and their 3D printed cars. They raced brilliantly at Quantum and excitingly will now be racing in the finals at the end of the year. For preparation students will spend the next three months reflecting on the qualifiers, updating their folios to include adjustments and racing results, making car improvements, and completing a self-assessment. I feel our futures are safe in the hands of these innovative and focussed leaders of tomorrow. See more information and photos later in this edition.
I’ll finish with a mention of our teacher, Tanika Purcell’s outstanding work. Recently she was recognised by Monash University as an outstanding mentor for our Pre-Service Teachers. Congratulations Tanika for supporting our next generation of teachers. McClelland College is a Lead School in partnership with Monash University, where we provide professional learning on site and at Monash for university students about teaching. We have extended our partnership with Monash, establishing an agreement where Monash Pre Service Teachers will provide tutoring to our younger students with the highest identified need for Literacy support. In addition we have Occupational Therapist students who will conduct their placements at McClelland next year, working on projects which will provide learning opportunities for our teachers to develop additional support strategies for students with learning barriers.
I hope everyone has some quality down time planned for the next two weeks, and we look forward to a sunny Term 4. This will be an 11 week term, so we’ll need bit of extra energy – enjoy the break!