Principal message
Dear community of St Monica’s,
Staffing
We welcome Merridee Griffin to our staff in the role of HR, Finance administration and payroll. Merridee has extensive experience in finance, HR and payroll and will meet with Kirsten for handover before she starts on Monday 20th March.
Merridee has two children at St Monica's- Alice in year 1 and Harry in year 3.
Communication
Communication from the school is our biggest challenge at the moment. We have oversubscribed to a number of communication channels which causes confusion not to mention that dates have changed and not been updated on the newsletter.
This term the leadership team will work on centralising our communication with SIMON Everywhere. The intention is to reduce the number of communication channels so that you can find everything in one place.
In the meantime unit leaders will be sending out a 'what's on for the week' that relates to their unit. This will be sent via class dojo.
Parent engagement-
The Marong Cup
A big thank you to all the families who attended and supported the Marong Cup 2023.
We had a beautiful day for it. The children loved the rides which were great value. We had a team of parents who volunteered to prepare food and sell ride tickets and St Monica’s was well represented and highly visible with a huge marquee. Special thanks to Kim and the P&F committee for organising the volunteer schedule and all the behind the scenes work taken on by The Marong Cup committee with our own Melissa Barras in the role of secretary. The Marong Cup has long been a fundraiser for Catholic schools of Bendigo and we are proud to get behind it as a community event. Thank you to our students Remi and Indi, parents Jo and Trista and teachers Jarrod and Stephanie for taking part in the school race.
Pancake Night
Another great community event was Tuesday night’s pancake night for Shrove Tuesday. This was a lovely family get together and catch up. Thank you to the P&F for supplying pancakes, to Mini Vinnies for shaking the mixture and to staff who cooked and served the pancakes. There was a bit of rivalry amongst staff about who had the best pancakes, the jury is still out. It was lovely to see Fr DJ join us on this occasion.
Volunteer Induction sessions
There are a number of activities coming up that give parents the opportunity to engage with the school. Each year we present a workshop for those wishing to volunteer that covers the child safe standards and gives you an opportunity to understand the expectations for volunteers. This is necessary if you wish to volunteer on excursions or work in classrooms.
Please see Student wellbeing page for details.
Cybersafety workshop
On the Student wellbeing page you will also find an invitation for year 5/6 students and their parents to attend a cybersafety workshop. With social media changing all the time I encourage you to attend, to support you in navigating this challenging area of parenting.
Canteen
Thank you to families who have provided feedback regarding the change to the canteen menu. I made this decision in order to lessen the workload and to provide a healthy lunch to students to keep in line with our health lessons at school. I have been made aware that one day a week can be a special lunch for our students. I am aware that these decisions were made with no consultation and would like to address this by giving you the
opportunity to have your say.
Please respond to the survey to provide your feedback regarding the canteen menu for Term 2.
https://forms.gle/cAMqDbULuHN1BcHS8
Student events
I have asked our school captains to introduce themselves:
School captain
Name: Remi
Age: 11
Favorite color: yellow
Birthday: 26th of May 2011
Hobbies: Guitar, Basketball, netball, skateboarding.
Things I enjoy: Going out with my friends and helping people.
About me: If you ever need help with anything, if you've got a problem or a question I'm always listening, you can find me on the yard playing with my friends
School Captain
Hello everyone, I'm Zander, the school captain of St Monica's Primary School. I'm 11 years old , born in The Philippines, Cebu City. I came to Australia in 2013 when I was just 1 year and 8 months old. Looking back things have changed over the past years. I do altar service every Sunday at St Kilian's church. I build awesome lego creations as a fun thing to do and I like to learn about space. I'm a kind person who will try my best in helping everyone if they feel blue. If you have any questions about me , feel free to ask me when you see me again.
Mercy house Day
I met with the student leadership team last week to plan our House Days for 2023.
Mercy house day will be celebrated on Friday 3rd March. The captains have planned to share their knowledge of Mercy with the students in their house with a pop quiz and at the school assembly in the afternoon. They will organise a series of fun activities for their house and be provided with a sausage on the day. (This will not replace lunch).
Sports equipment-
It was identified last year that our distribution and supply of sports equipment was not meeting the needs of our students. Sports leader Mr Epps and I met to discuss an alternative system. To encourage students to take responsibility for their equipment Mr Epps has colour coded equipment to the unit's new sports bin colour. The bins will stay near the classrooms and students from that unit will be responsible for the care and return of their equipment. Equipment will be reviewed and replaced if necessary at the beginning of each term.
Professional learning
Each year as a staff we identify the areas that we will focus our professional learning.
In 2023 the 1/2 teachers will join the prep teachers in learning about our play based approach in Discovery time. Discovery time is closely linked to the Inquiry unit the students are learning about and gives them the opportunity to develop executive functioning skills, oral language, cooperation skills and shared experiences in the unit topic.
Later in the term our junior school teachers will be building on their skills and knowledge in phonological awareness and phonics.
Other areas of focus for the whole staff are-
-the teaching of writing and reading
-the teaching of fluency in math
-teaching with an inquiry approach
These will be ably supported by the leaders of learning in each area.
Literacy- Belinda Christy
Numeracy- Colm Feeney
Inquiry/Pedagogy- Tanya Balcke
Next Friday the staff will be immersed in a day of Religious Education focusing on
1. The Life of Jesus and 2. Prayer. This will be facilitated by Fr DJ.
Each teacher in a catholic school is required to complete a certain number of hours of professional learning to be able to teach in a catholic school. It is the shared responsibility of the teacher and the school to access/provide this learning. The day will also centre on our role as catholic educators.
In the next few weeks I will be meeting with each staff member to set professional goals for the year and to check in on how the students and staff are settling in. I look forward to these one on one conversations which provide valuable insight into how we are tracking as a school.
This year we will particpate in whole school review. There will be opportunities for students, staff and parents to provide feedback so please keep an eye out for those opportunities.
Catholic Identity Surveys
Another area where we ask for feedback is the Catholic identity surveys. Staff and Year 5/6 students will be completing these surveys and you are invited to provide your feedback.
You can access the survey here https://www.ecsi.site/au/
Click on assess tab
To access the site Klm321
Click new user
Survey access code c3j5y8
To take the survey password Ghj654
You will get a unique user id and password that is unique to you so please write it down in case you need to interrupt your session. Surveys are open until the end of term.
Diocesan Assembly
Last week I attended the Diocesan assembly which was a gathering of parish personnel across the Diocese of Sandhurst. Bishop Shane MacKinlay plans to establish a Sandhurst Mission and Pastoral Council from Catholics across the Diocese to empower the people of God and enhance the sense of co responsibility and synodality across the diocese. Last week's gathering was a final report on the year's work at the preparation and consultation meetings. Each parish group was asked to prepare their own local action plan. Further work will be needed to determine areas of action. If you are interested in being involved in our parish action plan please contact Fr DJ. or Astrid who is our Pastoral associate .
astrid.notarangelo@sandhurst.catholic.org.au
Ash Wednesday/Lent
On Wednesday Fr DJ was welcomed to the Jaara Centre where we celebrated the beginning of the season of Lent with our Ash Wednesday liturgy.
Lent is a period of renewal when we are asked to reflect on ourselves as spirit filled people. We are asked to use this time in prayer, the giving of alms - Project Compassion donations help us to fulfil this but is not the only way we can give to others and to fast. When I was a child that meant giving up lollies for Lent. We bought them anyway with our pocket money each Saturday morning and stored them up until Easter. I'm not sure that that is quite what was intended. These days we talk to our students about giving something up so that we can help others. For example the money that we would have used to buy our lollies we would give to Project Compassion or giving our time that we would use for our own pleasure using it to help someone else.
It would be great to talk as a family about how you can renew yourselves during this Lenten season.
Ms Fiona Dearn
Principal
