Our Explicit Improvement Agenda

Student Voice and Agency

Planning for improved student learning - key focus in Mathematics

Celebrating Student Learning

Feast Day Celebrations - Kaboom Sports

Last Friday, Kaboom Sports and a Subway lunch provided an exciting, all-school event. Students demonstrated incredible engagement in all of the enjoyable activities that Luke, Sam, and Tara offered.  We were quite fortunate that during our Kaboom celebration, the sun shone through, and the rain held over.  We appreciate all our friends and family members who came with chairs and picnic blankets so they could watch the events and eat lunch together. An excellent way to cap off the week while honouring our Feast Day. 

Book Week

Each year, across Australia, the Children’s Book Council of Australia brings children and books together celebrating Children’s Book Week. Throughout the year, the CBCA works in partnership with authors, illustrators, publishers, booksellers and other organisations in the children’s book world to bring words, images and stories into the hearts and minds of children and adults. On Friday, August 23, we will have our Book Week Dress Up Day. All students and families are invited to dress up in their favourite book character. We are having a special assembly commencing at 9:00 am in Allen Hall, and families are welcome to attend.

Father’s Day Celebrations

Father’s Day Stall -  Wednesday 28th August (all gifts $5)

Father’s Day Breakfast – Friday 30 August

Our school community will celebrate our Father’s Day Breakfast on Friday 30 August.  The timetable for the morning of the breakfast is as follows on Friday 30 August:

• Gold Coin donation supporting Trinity Families (Trinity Families is a charitable fund which operates to serve other charities supporting families in the Greater Gippsland area).
• Father’s Day Breakfast - serving bacon and egg rolls from 8.00 am - 8.40 am (please note starting time)
• Time in classrooms with your child - prayer, Father’s Day activity from 8.45 am - 9.00 am
• Father’s Day Special Assembly - in the Allen Hall from (including Father’s Day School Community Raffle) 9.00 am - 10.45 am approximately 

Families are invited to send a photo of students with their dad/grandfather/father figure/carer. These photos will be part of a powerpoint presentation to be shown during the Father’s Day Assembly. All photos must be emailed to lprivitera@marymacnarre.catholic.edu.au by Wednesday 28th August.

Student Feedback

Congratulations to 2EM on your participation in our Healthy Harold session. You participated well and were engaged throughout. It was great to see the connection between the Safety Rules sessions and our Resilience Project lesson this week.

Fantastic work to all students for their enthusiasm and participation in Kaboom Sports. It was great to see you all having fun, showing great team work and enjoying working with students from different levels. 

Awesome job to all the Year 6 leaders who led all the Kaboom activities. You displayed great leadership and role modeling by encouraging your team to have a go and do their best! Fantastic work!

Great work to all the Write a Book in a Day team for going around this week to all the classes during your eating time to run your Lucky Dip fundraiser. You did a great job promoting this great cause and taking the initiative to raise money for our Write a Book in a Day event. 

It was terrific to see Year 3 soccer boys helping each other during playtime. You showed empathy and followed the school rules. Thank you Year 3 boys!  

Well done to the Year 5 students for supporting and encouraging the younger students in our KABOOM sports. It was terrific to have other students share how you showed leadership during this event. 

A Concert With Andrew Chinn

Andrew Chinn Concert: On Thursday 29th August, 2024

Australian religious songwriter and singer, Andrew Chinn, will be visiting our school to share his songs with our children. Andrew’s songs, such as “These Hands”, “Rainbow”, “An African Blessing” and “Rise Up!” are used in classrooms and liturgies around Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada. 

The concert will take place in Allen Hall, at 2.00pm -3.00pm. We look forward to seeing you there. Parents, families and friends most welcome to attend.

Andrew Chinn: Biography

• Was a teacher for 20 years in Catholic schools in Sydney, taught all grades from kindergarten to Year 6 (was a kindergarten/prep teacher for two years)
• Song writing since 1993
• Has released 14 albums, 6 picture books, and 5 DVDs and has an online resource for teachers: www.butterflyhouse.online
• His music is used in schools across Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada and he has visited more than 1100 different schools around those countries.
• His best-known songs are These Hands, Rainbow, An African Blessing, and Rise Up!.
• Lives in Wollongong with his wife, Bernadette and a couple of Shetland Sheepdogs called Mollee and Elbee, who love going to the beach.
• He has four daughters and TEN grandchildren!!
• He is a proud Sydney Swans, Illawarra Hawks and Brisbane Broncos supporter.
• Andrew’s music is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Thursday, August 15, 2024

Luke 1:39-56

In today’s Gospel reading, Mary visits Elizabeth. Both of them are about to become mothers.

Mary praises God for all he has done for her and for his people. God truly blessed Mary. Today we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We remember that Mary was taken to heaven, body and soul. The Gospel reading for today is taken from Luke's Gospel, and it tells us why Mary received such a special privilege from God.

Each person in your family may wish to write or draw one or more ways in which they see God working in your family life and in our world today. As a family pray a Hail Mary, pointing out that some of the phrases of this prayer come from Elizabeth's greeting (“Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”).

Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Sunday, August 18, 2024

In next Sunday’s reading, Jesus is telling us about the special gift he gives us in the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. When we share in the Eucharist, Jesus makes himself one with us. Jesus is truly with us when we celebrate the Sacrament of the Eucharist. We remember that Jesus sacrificed his life to save us from our sins. Just as our bodies are nourished and strengthened by food and drink, our spirits are nourished and strengthened when we celebrate this sacrament.

We would like to congratulate Joel from 3CN on his fantastic AFL dreamtime Guernsey. 

Joel's design was sent to Laura Kane the COO of the AFL, Laura was so impressed with Joel's design that she kindly gifted Joel with a signed Essendon Dreamtime Guernsey. 

We all so proud of you Joel and we can’t wait to see you wear on Footy day. 

The Year 2’s have had a fun filled couple of weeks. They showed great enthusiasm and encouraged each other during our celebration of the Potato Olympics. The sportsmanship then continued into Week 4, with our students participating in Kaboom Sports. The way the students cooperated with each other and supported one another within each of the activities is something they can be very proud of.

The excitement continues into Week 5 with our excursion to Como House on Friday. Students are very excited to see how people lived in the 1850’s. This will be a fun filled day where students can experience life in the 1850’s (if you lived in a mansion) and get a glimpse into what the day to day life of someone working at Como House was like. It will be a fantastic way to wrap up our Term 3 History unit.

FOUND - SLEEPING BAG LEFT OVER FROM YEAR 6 CAMP

Please pop into the office if you think it may belong to you :)

Write a Book in a Day

Thank you to all the students that have participated in our Lucky Dip this week for our WABIAD fundraiser.

We appreciate parent’s support and look forward to sharing with you how much money we raised for kids cancer research. 

We will continue with the fundraiser next week in Week 6 during Book Week and below is a reminder of all the details....

‘Write a Book in a Day’ is a fun, creative and collaborative competition for students in years 5 to 12 and adult writing groups. Teams of up to ten have just twelve hours to write and illustrate a book from start to finish. To make it even more fun, unique parameters must be included in the story. Digital editions of the completed stories are made available on the Online Library and shared with hospitals across Australia.

Funds raised through sponsorship go to The Kids’ Cancer Project, a national charity supporting childhood cancer research.   In 2023 the competition raised $901,045 for childhood cancer research, thanks to 1,939 teams, 694 schools and 14,073 individual writers from every state and territory.

This year Mary MacKillop Primary School and the Year 6’s have again taken on the challenge to write a book in a day - from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm. This will occur on Thursday 22nd August 2024. Our wonderful team of writers and illustrators are:   

Dior, Zara, Demi, Eliza, Raffael, Jovan, Alyra, Jeremy, Emily and Layla

We need help in raising money for this event so we will hold a Lucky Dip throughout the school where we ask students to bring $2.00 to have a turn at the Lucky Dip competition.

The Lucky Dip will take place -

Week 6 (Monday 19th August, Tuesday 20th August and Wednesday 21st August)  

Students are invited to bring along a $2.00 coin on these days if they would like to participate.

Please Note: Students participating can have more than one turn but every turn requires the $2.00 donation - the number of turns may need to be limited based on the amount of prizes.

Thank you from

THE MARVELOUS MARY MAC WRITERS

Bullying No Way : National Week of Action

The theme for this year's campaign is Everyone belongs. This theme highlights the importance of creating a sense of belonging and inclusion for students. We recognise bullying often thrives in environments where individuals feel marginalised or excluded, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure that every student feels valued and respected. During the week we will be engaging students in meaningful discussions and activities aimed at promoting empathy, understanding, and respect for diversity.We encourage parents and carers to take this opportunity to have open and honest conversations with their children about the impact of bullying and what they can do if they need support. You can visit the Bullying No Way website for tips around how to have this discussion.

Term 3  - Health, Wellbeing & Personal Safety Programs

During August the following Health, Safety and Wellbeing programs will be offered to students across Foundation to Year 6.  We look forward to empowering our students with simple strategies if faced with an unsafe situation.

We are a Happy Families School! 

Our school is subscribed to the Happy Families School Membership! Owned and run by Dr Justin Coulson, one of Australia’s leading parenting experts, the membership offers a wealth of parenting education and resources. We will regularly share resources available through our membership with you, including Insight Articles and Webinars. You can also access your resources at any time using the below URL (unique to our school) and password.

Unique URL - https://schools.happyfamilies.com.au/login/mmnwn

Password - happymmnwn

We recommend bookmarking this link. You should only need to put the password in once and the site will remember you.  The latest weekly Insight Article Parenting with Influence, Not Control    

School TV 

https://marymacnarre.catholic.schooltv.me/wellbeing_news

Improve sleep with the Sleep Health Foundation

The Sleep Health Foundation is the leading advocate for sleep health in the community.

Their factsheets explore how sleep connects with a range of topics such as ADHD, anxiety, autism, behavioural problems, caffeine, mindfulness, memory, technology and teenage sleep. They offer insights and practical advice on sleep health, helping individuals improve their sleep quality and overall wellbeing. Visit the website for further information . https://www.sleephealthfoundation.org.au/all-sleep-factsheets-a-z

Child Safe Standards

Our school is safe, student centred and animated by our school values.  

We aim to Inspire Hearts and Minds.

"Children are the future of the human family: all of us are expected to promote their growth, health and tranquillity." Pope Francis 2021

At Mary MacKillop Primary School, we believe that ensuring the safety of the students in our care is an integral part of who we are as a Catholic faith community. We adhere to Victorian Child Safe Standards and Ministerial Order No. 1359.  We embed a culture of child safety and the matter is taken very seriously.

MMPS Child Safe Standards

Catholic Education Commission of Victoria (CECV)

The updated CECV Statement of Commitment to Child Safety - A safe, nurturing and empowering culture for all children and young people in Catholic schools, is attached to this newsletter.  This statement has been updated in light of the revised Child Safe Standards coming into effect from 1 July 2022 and the supporting Ministerial Order No. 1359