The Moorabbin Primary School Community touch the land and think of the Bunurong People and surrounding Clans of the Kulin Nation who cared for the land before us.

We share our gratitude to their Elders past, present and emerging. As we touch this land, we promise to treasure it, taking care of all its people, animals, plants and waterways. We at Moorabbin Primary School appreciate this land. Thank you.

Dear Parents and Carers,

Hello everyone, what a wild week we have had with our weather!

This week we started the NAPLAN testing period. Our students have been well prepared for the use of the digital platform thanks to all our teaching staff and a very big thank you to our NAPLAN coordinators Mr Crane and Mr Tulip for all their work behind the scenes that are required for the students to be ready.

The NAPLAN data traditionally gets a lot of traction in the press, and – like PISA results – can often be misrepresented or used as 'piecemeal' for news stories. It is important to remember that while the NAPLAN is valued for its big picture snapshot data and trends, it is not the only indication of an individual child’s growth or performance. Whatever the outcomes of the testing period, the NAPLAN is ultimately one piece of information about your child’s growth or attainment from a small window of the school year.

This week I have noticed several students coming to school much earlier than 8:45am. The DE requires that duty of care for school employees begins at 8:45am and finishes at 3:45pm. If your child is on school grounds outside of these times the duty of care for them remains with parents and carers.

PHONES/DEVICES AND SMART WATCHES

Over the last 3-4 weeks we have seen a large amount of children across all year levels coming to school bringing in "digital game" watches and smart watches. While we support children wearing a watch to help them track the time and keep abreast of timetables, lessons etc...

they are using them to play games and are distracting themselves and others in and out of the classroom
children are going to the toilets to share with their friends’ messages/games etc... that they are turning on unsupervised
gathering in huddles in the yard looking and playing the games on the watches
some children are using the devices before school before teachers attend to yard duty and straight after school as soon as they think no one is watching

We are not sure why children at school who are happy to play with their friends/ socialise/chat/play games/attend lunchtime clubs need to be tracking their steps or their heart rates? Let our children be children and have positive interactions and engage with each other in and out of the classroom without the need to check a “device”.

Some of these are really expensive and they should be kept at home. Please refrain from sending these devices to school with your child and only send a watch that has nothing other than a "telling the time feature". The school cannot be responsible for these watches/ devices being confiscated, lost or misplaced.

DET has strict rules around the use of Phones and smart watches, and we will have no choice but to ban these innocent looking watches that have other features, if this continues. Please support us and you children.

WORKING BEE THIS SATURDAY

A reminder to come and join us for our first Working Bee session on Saturday 15th March, from 4.00pm to 6.00pm. You are welcome to join us at any point during the afternoon.

Jobs will be weeding, sweeping, mulching and some structural work around the garden beds near the art room and Bike Shed. Come and join the MPS Parent Community Team and help to beautify our schoolgrounds!

Hope to see you then!

PARENTS AND FRIENDS CALL OUT FOR JARS AND CANS

P & F calling for jars and cans for our Mother's Day stall

Click on for updated news

STAFFING NEWS

Life happens and it sometimes presents us with opportunities to good not to explore. I am informing our community that Ms Romi Katz (3K) has come to see me and shared that at the end of term 2 she will be leaving our community to travel around Europe with her family. Of course, we will be very sad to see her go but it's also important to support staff with their endeavour’s. We have all of term 2 to enjoy and work with Ms Katz before her travels.

I will now engage in a recruitment process to find a suitable replacement for 3K along with a music teacher as I have shared earlier Ms Howden is pregnant and will be off on maternity leave later on in the year.

Some fun Mathematics stats from Mrs Tsekouras

TT ROCKSTARS UPDATE

Thanks again to all our students for their enthusiastic show of support with TT Rockstars Maths. I really appreciate your efforts in class and in our lunchtime sessions.

Here are some stats for you:

Where we sit on the leaderboards (based on number of schools participating)

Victorian Schools - Avg Score: 7th out of 43

Victorian Schools - Total Score: 4th out of 43

Victorian Primary Schools - Avg score: 4th out of 36

Victorian Primary Schools - Total score: 3rd out of 36

Global Primary Schools - Avg Score: 81st out of 249

Global Primary Schools - Total Score: 31st out of 249

Class competition: Total score: 6T then, 5V and 5C. Avg score: 4K then, 5V and 5C

Let's see if we can keep it up and improve or maintain our position on the leaderboard. That last few minutes might make a difference 🙂

STUDENTS SHARE WHAT THEY LOVE ABOUT MPS & HARMONY DAY UPDATE

Hello everyone, we are your SRC captains for 2025, Amelia, Ruby and Jessie and we are so excited to take on the role this year.

The SRCs have met a few times already this year, and we spent a lot of time talking about what it means to be an SRC. We want to do more for the school than just raise money through dress up days. We want to raise awareness about different issues and find out what students feel about what goes on at the school. It is all about giving students a voice.

Our first activity for the term was to ask students about what they love about our school. We used all of the answers, to create word clouds in different shapes. These are being turned into posters that we can display around the school.

Here is an example word cloud.

Harmony Day will be on the 21st March. Students can wear casual clothes and we ask that they wear orange or similar shades as this is the official Harmony Day colour. This year we have decided to donate the gold coin donations to the Ray of Light organisation. They run a small school in Cambodia, and Hannah, one of our aides will be volunteering at the school in April. We hope the money we raise can help the school and the students who go to the school.

We look forward to working with the SRC group this year, and we will let you know about what we have been up to in our school newsletter.

Jessie, Ruby and Amelia - SRC Captains

UPCOMING HARMONY/INCLUSIVITY WEEK 17TH -23RD MARCH:

dressing up in orange on Friday 21st March.
Gold coin donation to fundraiser as noted in this edition of the newsletter from our SRC reps
Zoe our Learning enhancement teacher has a parent workshop to present on and around helpful strategies to support our students and families who had neurodivergent children - Tuesday 18th 9-15-10-15am in 1L
All teachers will be doing some sort of Harmony and Inclusive activity during that week
In SEL-Mrs Kelly is taking the students through “understanding how and why people can be different”
Next week all our TERRIFIC certificates will be around the value”inclusivity”

In practical terms, inclusivity might look like:

Having friends from different backgrounds and cultures in your social circle.
Being open to learning about others’ beliefs and experiences without judgment.
Standing up against bullying or discrimination when you see someone being treated unfairly.

Noxia Angelides

Principal

PARENTS & FRIENDS

WORKING BEE