From the Principal

Mrs Cathy Ferrari

Dear families

Welcome to Term 4, which seems to have happened very quickly. I am sure each of the students have grown taller over the last two weeks. It is great seeing everyone in their Summer Uniform, with hair neatly styled and clean shiny school shoes being worn. Please remember that a hat is compulsory for playtime as the weather warms up. It has been great hearing about the holidays and all that you have been up to. We are so pleased to have our new students Lucas, Lottie, Scarlett, Ivy, Imogen and Jackson joining our St Mary's family. I know each of you will reach out to them when you see them. Many of them have come from overseas and interstate and are new residents in the St Kilda area.

We welcome back a few of our staff members who took some time off in the last weeks of Term 3. In particular we would like to thank Ms Rosemary Perri for working with Year 1 for the later part of the Term. The parents kindly thanked her for her work. It is great having Mrs McDonald back and walking as good as new with her new hip and we look forward to seeing Ms Perri on her usual Friday in Year 1. This Term Roe Maas has joined our team as a Learning Support Officer. We are thrilled to have her and look forward to having her onboard on Wednesday and Thursday mornings in Year 1. Roe has a background in education and has also worked across many business sectors.

We love sharing family news and congratulate Makeda (3C), Aurora (3M) and Arabella (Prep) for being big sisters and their families for their new arrivals. We know they will do a wonderful job.

Over the holidays there have been some updates around the school. We are thrilled to announce that we now have an oven in the Community Room. This will allow us to heat up food for special events and the students can participate in cooking for some units of work. The sand pit now has two benches in it, so that the students can make and display their café creations and other games instead of using the outside edge and loosing all the sand. We thank Steve for the work that he does to improve our facilities and his ingenuity in finding what we need on Facebook Market Place and giving it a face lift. We have designed a wish list and look forward to seeing further updates in the years ahead.

Thank you for supporting our staff Professional Development Day on Monday. The focus for the day was an evaluation of our Mathematics program. The day allowed us to begin a rigorous auditing process of our current program and planning documentation. A survey was completed and robust dialogue was held around several prompts. We then watched and read some evidence based research. This together with the data gathered from the survey allowed us to start examining our current sequential learning practices and how to 'grow' each student within numeracy. This work will continue within our facilitated planning sessions and Professional Learning Community (PLCs) meetings this term. Again thank you for giving us the time to complete this important work.

We look forward to hearing Anthony's presentation about 1:1 devices this evening at 7pm. This is an initiative we are proud to share with the community and thank Anthony for sharing his expertise with us. Anthony would be too humble to tell you, but he is well known and regarded within the Google world and has worked with schools locally, nationally and internationally within digital technology. He is accredited and has won several Leadership Awards for his work within this space.

One of my favourite games is Tee Ball. It was great seeing the students playing this game with Mr Addicoat in the last week of Term. Hopefully the children can continue this as spring warms up.

This Term we many events planned for the community and we are excited about each of them. Please check the calendar to make sure that you can participate when you can. In the next few weeks we look forward to Italian Day, meeting our 2023 Prep students and their families, our Art Expo and lots more. We are also hoping to have a parent soccer tournament to celebrate the World Cup. More information about this to follow.

Could I please invite you to participate in our Social Justice drive of supporting primary school students in Fiji. Please read further information about this, on our Religious Education News page, from Tammy, Daniel and Milica our Social Justice Leaders supported by Carmel Vozzo our Faith Leader. The stationery supplies required include pens, pencils, coloured pencils, rulers, lunchboxes, backpacks, water bottles, rubbers, sharpeners, glue, scissors, and pencil cases. Thankyou in advance for supporting this worthy cause.

On Wednesday we celebrated World Teachers' Day, but we called it World Education Staff Day. Kasia and Louisa prepared a magnificent lunch for us all, on behalf of the Parents & Friends Association. Each of us felt so appreciated and special and were so appreciative of the gesture. What a team and what a spread!