FAMILY PICNIC

Our Annual School Picnic last Thursday was a huge success and what a wonderful balmy evening it was. I’m not sure if it was the perfect weather or the many months in lockdown that drew out the crowds but it was our biggest turnout yet. The games run by TheirCare kept the children engaged while parents mingled and enjoyed catching up with old friends and meeting new. I’m sure many of you have already seen some of the photos on Class Dojo. Thank you to everyone for being a part of the evening.

PARENT REPS

Class Reps now have the contact details of parents who have given consent. Many of the reps are keen to organise social activities and assist teachers with organising parent helpers for class run events. Stay tuned for more information from your Class Rep.

EASTER BASKETS & RAFFLE

Thank you to Maree Tame for offering to coordinate our annual Easter raffle once again this year. This has been a long standing tradition at MPS and our students look forward to that special assembly on the last week of term when all the raffle tickets are drawn. Each class has a basket to collect donations for the Easter hampers, and we hope all families can support the raffle by making a donation and buying tickets.

We also support the Royal Children’s Hospital at Easter and on our last day of term we ask all students to bring their gold coin donation for the casual dress day to support this fabulous hospital. Envelopes for additional donations will also be available from the office.

The raffle will be drawn on Tuesday 30 March from 2.40 to 3.30.

LAST DAY OF TERM 1

The last day of term for the students will be on Tuesday 30 March at 3.30pm. School will resume for Term 2 on Monday 19 April. Teachers will be involved in professional development on Wednesday 31 March and Thursday 1 April with the International Baccalaureate extending our knowledge and practice in ‘ Evidencing Learning: a focus on using assessment to plan for improvement.’

THEIR CARE OUT OF SCHOOL HOURS

Long term care is available on the upcoming curriculum days - Wednesday 31 March and Thursday 1 April.

TheirCare will be conducting a holiday program.

Please contact TheirCare directly for bookings.

HARMONY WEEK

This year’s theme is, ‘Everyone Belongs’. The Global Citizenship Leadership Team will be running lunch time activities to create greater awareness of Harmony Day including poster competitions, creating a Harmony tree, and playing trivia games. The assembly on Monday 22nd March will be run by the Global Citizenship Team and they would like all staff and students to dress in green, white or orange the colours representing hope, peace and harmony.

NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION

Our school will Take Action Together on Friday 19 March, and join the national conversation to help address bullying.

The National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence (NDA) is Australia’s key bullying prevention initiative. The theme for the NDA 2021 is Take Action Together. This theme aims to elevate student voice, empowering young Australians to join the conversation.

On Friday afternoon, the Year 6 students (with the support of teachers) will run lessons for each of the classes. The students will read stories, share videos and discuss strategies to ‘stand up and take action together’ to prevent mean or bullying behaviour.

We would like to thank Miss McKellar for her time and energy in putting together the range of age appropriate activities and working with the year 6 students and teachers who will run the bullying awareness and prevention activities.

RESPECT OUR NEIGHBOURS

Lately we have had a number of complaints from both our school parents and the neighbours. Parents have complained about others who ignore signage and road safety rules and the neighbours are frustrated that parents park across their driveways not allowing enough room for residents to drive in and out of their properties. Both Glen Eira Council and the local police have informed us that they will now be randomly patrolling the area at school drop off and pick up times. For the safety of our children, please be a positive role model for your child.

STRENGTHENING PARENT AND SCHOOL CONNECTIONS THROUGH COMMUNICATION

In order to continue to build on the positive relationships brought about by the lockdown, we aim to keep parents involved in their child’s education by sharing how and what they are learning. Through surveys, parents have let us know that one of the benefits of ‘Remote and Flexible Learning’ was that they liked seeing what their child was learning about. ‘Class Dojo’ is being rolled out with the purpose of ‘showing’ parents what is happening in the school. While a lengthy written explanation may be beneficial for some, a picture can speak a thousand words!

We have a range of communication formats to keep parents informed, so the table below is provided to clarify the purpose of each communication format.

Platform	Purpose
Compass	Updates and mass communication to parents Emailing between teacher and parents Excursion/ incursion/ camp / community events (and consent) School reports Parent-teacher bookings School Newsletter – published fortnightly (Wednesdays) Calendar of activities
Compass: text messages	Used to communicate essential information when necessary to ensure 100% of the community is receiving important information (eg. Emergency actions, student absences)
Website	Parent access to policies Student pages (what’s happening around the school) General information about the school eg. AIP, SSP, Annual Report
Class Dojo	Photos of what’s happening around the school Reminders Class, year level, school news posts (the positives)
Google Classroom (A student platform for collaborative learning)	Years 4- 6 students Daily teacher message on the stream page Student learning tasks posted and responded to A place for Leadership groups to collaborate

CYBER SAFETY AND IMAGES OF OUR STUDENTS

The purpose of ‘Class Dojo’ is to share images and news of student learning and events happening within the school. Photos and videos are for our parent and carer community only. These images are NOT to be shared on any app or social media or published in any form.

Parents taking photos and recordings: There are many occasions where parents take photos or video so it is timely to remind parents of our policy ‘Photographing, Filming and Recording Students Policy’ which states:

Murrumbeena Primary School requests that parents/carers, students and invited guests who photograph, film or record school activities only do so for their own personal use and do not publish the images in any form, including on social media, without the prior consent of persons whose children also appear in the images.

This policy will be reviewed by the School Council Education Committee to include Class Dojo and to ensure clarity around parental responsibility to use images ethically.

STUDENTS WHO EXCEL

Many of our students are involved in a range of activities outside the school and some of those clearly excel through endeavour. We welcome parent communication so we can share the achievements of our students.

Murrumbeena Primary School would like to congratulate our sporting star Jesse S, who is now the State Champion in the 800m and 200m track events. In order to qualify for the State competition Jesse competed in the Regional Athletics Championships held on the weekend of February 27-28 and won four of his events.

Congratulations Jesse on your athletic achievements. Success comes to those who know what they aim for and work to achieve those goals. Jesse has listened to his coaches and trained well resulting in his success. We are very proud of Jesse and invite you to read more about Jesse’s events further in this newsletter.

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