Our Explicit Improvement Agenda

Student Voice and Agency

Planning for improved student learning

Celebrations of Learning

Term 2 Inquiry - Design and Technology / Science

Our students were extremely excited and fully engaged with the Building Blocks activity where they were able to work together as a team, demonstrate their creativity, meet the challenges of construction and produce a structure.  The building blocks were a great celebration of our Term 2 Inquiry Focus - Design & Technology and Science.  We are most appreciative to Major Road Projects Victoria and Symal for providing these learning opportunities for our students.

District Cross Country

Our warmest congratulations to the students who competed in District Cross Country last Tuesday 24 May.  10 students have made it to the next level of competition and we wish them all the very best as they meet the challenges of the Division Cross Country Level.

A very special congratulations to:

NAPLAN

The NAPLAN Testing window was extended to tomorrow - Friday 27 May.  Every effort was made for our students to ‘make-up’ any online tests they missed during the testing period.  A very special thanks to our teachers and to Mrs Privitera and Mrs Huntington for ensuring our NAPLAN testing went smoothly for our students and they were able to fully participate in NAPLAN this year.

COVID-19, Flu and Gastro

Our school community is continuing to be impacted by COVID-19, flu outbreak and gastro.  Both staff and students have been significantly impacted over the past few weeks.  Students and their learning are central to everything we do and every effort is being made to ensure learning continuity, on-site at school, remains our highest priority. As such, when staff have been away, teachers, specialist staff and leaders on-site have been picking up extra duties and classes to ensure we do not end up in Remote Schooling. A very big THANK YOU to Lize Privitera for her daily organisation and timetabling and to our staff for the extra efforts, dedication and commitment to our students and their learning.

Catholic Education Week

Tomorrow DOSCEL will launch Catholic Education Week at a Eucharist Mass held in Traralgon.

It begins a week that is celebrated by all Catholic schools in the Diocese of Sale. This year the theme is “Go out into the world and spread the Good News to all creation”, encouraging us as members of a school community to enact a vision for a better world, one where people can live in harmony with each other and with the environment, in response to the call of Pope Francis.

All Catholic schools in the Diocese of Sale are living this call in many ways. The spirit of Jesus is present in every Catholic school community spanning across south east Victoria from Narre Warren and Cranbourne in the west, Wonthaggi and Philip Island in the south, to Orbost in the east. There are 38 Primary Catholic schools and 7 Secondary Catholic schools in the Diocese of Sale. There really is a lot to celebrate isn’t there?

All families and friends of our school community are welcome to join with us as we celebrate Catholic Education Week together next Thursday 2nd June during a Mass celebration in Allen Hall beginning at 9.00am

 A number of photos from each of the three Parish schools in the Narre Warren Parish will be on display in the Church foyer this weekend along with a special PowerPoint presentation shared at all Masses held this weekend at Our Lady Help of Christians Church. Take a few minutes to look through the photos and enjoy the slideshow.

Ms Maria Kirkwood – Chief Executive Officer/Director of Catholic Education emphasises this annual event, “Catholic Education Week is a highlight of the year for the Diocese of Sale, as the broader Catholic education community comes together to celebrate our Catholic identity and unique mission.”

The Ascension of the Lord, Cycle C

Sunday, May 29, 2022

Luke 24:46-53

Jesus is taken to heaven and the disciples remain in Jerusalem awaiting his sending of the Spirit.

Next Sunday is the liturgical celebration of the Ascension of the Lord, when Jesus was taken to heaven on the 40th day after Easter. In Cycle C, our Gospel is taken from the conclusion of the Gospel of Luke. In this Sunday's Gospel, we hear the instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples before he was taken up to heaven. They were to tell people all over the world about Jesus’ life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. They were to preach repentance—or turning our hearts away from sin and back to God—and forgiveness of sins.

OLHC Parish

Our Lady Help of Christians Parish Information

Mary MacKillop Primary School is one of the three Parish Primary Schools belonging to the Parish of Our Lady Help of Christians, Narre Warren within the Diocese of Sale. Fr Brendan Hogan is our Parish Priest and Fr Ajin Albarnas is our Assistant Priest. We are grateful for their ongoing prayers, involvement and support of the students, families and staff of Mary MacKillop School. 

PARISH BULLETIN

Click on the link below to download the weekly newsletter.

Parish-Bulletin

Parent Education

Do’s and don’ts of discipline

Discipline is one of the most confusing - and challenging - topics that parents grapple with. But it doesn’t have to be so hard.

Parents can find themselves put on the spot when their child demands to download an app.

In these situations, it’s best to do some quick research. Use eSafety’s app checklist to help you assess whether an app is suitable for your child.

Would you like to know more? eSafety’s Information sheets for parents and carers cover a range of online safety topics in easy-to-read format. 

Year 1 News

This week the Year 1’s were very excited to build, explore and create with the big building blocks delivered to Mary MacKillop from MTIA Road Projects Victoria. Year 1 students further developed their teamwork skills by working together to discuss what they could build and by listening to each other's ideas. This activity supported their understanding and current learning in Design and Technology by planning, creating and designing an object through investigation and exploration. Students were able to reflect on their designs and make changes to improve their build further. 

Here is what some of the Year 1’s had to say: 

“I had fun using the blocks to build ramps and tunnels for the balls to travel through” - Ethan C 

“I liked how we got to work in a group and work as a team to build something together” - Mila 

“My group just started building and we didn’t know what it was going to turn out to be and then it turned into something really cool” - George

Year 2 News

In Week 3, Year 2 students were involved in a fundraising activity for the Bishop’s Fund, Trinity Families. They combined with their Year 3 and 4 buddies to play a variety of games and then watched a family friendly movie as a year level. These activities were chosen as the fundraiser coincided with family week and these are activities that families often enjoy together.

“I played Monopoly with my buddies. I liked that we got to play our games from home with them.” Jeremy 2EM

“I liked playing Uno with my buddies because it was fun and entertaining.” Caleb 2EM

“I bought in Chess and I kept on winning and my buddy was really good at Chess.” Jocelyne 2JB

“We bought the games in because we were celebrating Family Week.” Tahlia 2JB

In Week 4, we celebrated our Year 2 level Mass and carried through the theme of family. Thank you to the parents that were able to join us in our first level Mass with Father Ajin.

Tuesday of Week 5 saw students engaged in an activity relating to our Design and Technology unit. Students were provided with a variety of foam building blocks, which they used to design and create a construction for a ball to travel along. The students are to be commended on the team work they showed throughout the session. From the discussions about their design, to the actual construction, students demonstrated great cooperation and problem solving skills.

“We all put our hands on and rolled it together, because we are a team.” Thomas 2EM

“When we did it, the ball wasn’t rolling straight and our design wasn’t working. sSo we put some pool noodles on the side to make the ball roll straight.” Elodie and Oscar 2JB

“We came up with four different ideas and tested them all. We wanted to make it bigger and taller so we kept changing it because we wanted to make sure the ball went through and would roll further.” Natasha and Liam 2EM

Students have been exploring the stages of the Engineering Design Process. During the investigating and generating stages, the class researched an existing paper plane design. They then created the design and tested it. Identifying what made their plane successful was part of this stage. Students then explored different materials that could be used to improve the design of the paper plane. They tested their designs and through trial and error, made improvements. 

Within Literacy, students have been learning about procedural texts and have focussed on making ‘Wombat Stew’. This was a fun and engaging way for students to learn about the purpose and structure of a procedure. They also loved chanting the phrase “Wombat Stew, Wombat Stew, gooey, brewery, yummy chewy, Wombat Stew.”

Our focus in Mathematics has been counting, money, subtraction and length. Students practised using coins to make different monetary amounts up to $1. Some students extended their knowledge and were able to calculate the change required from a transaction. Games are a fun way of learning maths skills. Students enjoyed using the ‘count back’ or ‘count up’ strategy to calculate the difference between two numbers. Some children worked with two digit numbers.

こんにちは、

This week in Japanese club, Grade 2 students made carp kites to celebrate Children’s Day Festival. Senior students drew Japanese inspired pictures.

Congratulations to the following students on receiving your Learning Award.