Dear Parents,

It's hard to imagine that two terms have already gone by. Term 2 was a particularly long and busy term.

Thank you to the Parents Association and parent volunteers for organising the community events for Term 2 including the school disco and the end of term movie held at Balwyn cinemas. In particular, a big thank you to Sharlotte Qua for organising the school disco. It was well structured and from all reports a great success. Thank you also to one of our older siblings, James Kakridas, who was our DJ for the evening. We look forward to our next event being our Villains/Heroes Trivia Night coming up in Term 3 on Saturday the 9th August.

During Term 2 we have had a number of opportunities to join with the schools within our Parish including a professional learning day, a reflection day for the Sacrament of First Eucharist and the celebration of the Sacrament of First Eucharist. These opportunities are a wonderful way to come together as one Parish, to share resources and experiences. Thank you to Father Sang and Father Hoang for their ongoing support and spiritual guidance.

At our recent pupil free day, the staff from the three schools in our Parish came together to share in some professional learning. We started the day with Mass followed by a presentation by Fr Frank O'Loughlin on his theological and personal reflection of the Eucharist, it was a rich and practical presentation. We then heard from our Learning Consultants from the Melbourne Archdiocese for Catholic Schools on living the sacraments in the everyday. This was then followed by the staff of the three schools working in year levels to discuss how they could implement the learnings from the day into their classrooms.

To further strengthen the partnership between school and parish, we will be joining together to host Children's Liturgy at the 10.30am Mass starting Sunday 3rd August. This is a great way for our young people to engage actively at Mass and meaningfully with the Word of God. Please see the attached flyer for further information. We are looking for volunteers to help run the Children's Liturgy. You don't need any special training or qualifications and the resources will be provided by the parish. Please see the following flyer for more information.

We have also been connecting with our local Catholic Secondary Schools in order to be more outward facing and to build strong partnerships for the future. Our Year 5/6 students visited Marcellin for a Taste Tester Day experiencing a number of subjects they have on offer. Their Principal, Marco Di Cesare also came to visit me and toured our school. We discussed ways in which we can further support each other moving forward. We also support St Kevin's College with some of their Year 10 students volunteering their time as part of their Community Service Program.

We recently held our House Athletics Carnival for our school and despite the cold weather the students tried their best, supported each other and most of all, had fun. The results were announced at our end of term Assembly and are as follows:

4th Place - Blue House with 196 points

3rd Place - Red House with 240 points

2nd Place - Green House with 253 points

1st Place - Gold House with 386 points

From a staffing perspective, we said farewell to Mrs Cecily Kerr, Classroom Teacher of 3/4KB at the end of Term 2. I would like to thank Mrs Kerr for her contribution to our school and wish her all the very best for the future. As Mrs Kerr's replacement, I welcome Miss Annabelle Boyhan who is known to our community as she taught at our school last year in Year 3/4 and is a parishioner at our church. Annabelle will work fulltime as a Classroom Teacher in 3/4KB and Mrs Leah Blake who worked one in this classroom will move to join our Intervention Team working in the Literacy space. Mrs Blake is very excited by this new opportunity. Please join me in welcoming Annabelle back to our school.

In terms of enrolments, we have four new families joining our school community in Term 3. We have Logan Fernando in Year 2 joining 1/2EC, Tiana Siriharan and Zhengze Qu in Year 4 joining 3/4M and Jingkun Chen in Year 3 joining 3/4KB. In addition, we have two international students visiting for a short term study period: Yutong Xu in Year 1 will be joining 1/2FC from 21st July to 15th August and Yilin Liu will be joining Year 3/4 from 4th August to 22nd August. Please help to welcome our new students and their families to our school. May we continue to grow and thrive!

For 2026, we currently have 14 Prep enrolments and one Year 1 enrolment. However, we are still waiting on some siblings enrolments for Prep and I am still conducting school tours for 2026 as well as for 2027. Also, we continue to visit and work with our local kindergartens in order to build stronger relationships and to obtain future enrolments.

Please note from Term 3, Assembly will occur on Mondays at 3pm. This change is to ensure our two hour Literacy block in the mornings is uninterrupted and also we are hoping that the time change will be suitable for more parents to be able to attend. Also starting Term 3, some of our lunch time clubs including STEM and Minecraft will be opened up to our Year 1/2s. This is a result of feedback from our community.

On behalf of myself and my wonderful team, we wish you a safe and restful holiday break. We look forward to seeing you all on Monday 21st July.

Kind regards

Robyn Thomson

Principal

Our Lady of Good Counsel School, Deepdene

A leading faith community inspiring learners to shape tomorrow

Issue 4 · 06 Jul 2025

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