Our Explicit Improvement Agenda

Student Voice and Agency

Planning for improved student learning - key focus in Mathematics

Celebrations of Community

Our Welcome garden area has been transformed to honour our Australian Olympic Athletes currently competing in the 2024 Paris Olympic games.  A big thank you to Jacqui Meunier for her creativity and efforts to set up the display and to keep our tally medal count up-to-date!  We look forward to celebrating our GREEN and GOLD day tomorrow as well as our own school olympics with the students’ potato athletes.  It is sure to be a fun and engaging day!

Celebrations of Learning

Foundation 100 days of learning

On Monday 5 August, our Foundation students will celebrate their 100 days of learning.  We are very much looking forward to welcoming our ‘elderly’ Foundation students and to celebrate them being 100 days wiser!  Photos of the days celebrations will be shared in next week’s newsletter.

Green and Gold Day & Potato Olympics

Tomorrow, we will host a GREEN and GOLD Day & Potato Olympics. Students have been busy decorating their very own special potato character in preparation for the olympic activities planned tomorrow.   Students are encouraged to wear green and gold colours to support the day’s celebrations as their potatoes compete in various activities. Please note a special Olympic Assembly will be held in the morning and there will be NO Assembly in the afternoon.  

Schedule Overview for Friday 2nd August 9:00 am - 10:30 am
Special Potato Olympics Assembly in Allen Hall  [Parents and families welcome to attend] 

Students are encouraged to wear Green and Gold colours

• Opening Ceremony 
• Presentation of potato athletes  
• Each class has been designated a country participating in the Olympics. 
• Environmental leaders message
• Closing with the National Anthem.
• 11:10 - 12:40 pm - Each level participates in their activity rotations

Year 6 Camp

From Monday 5 August to Wednesday 7 August, our Year 6 students will attend camp at The Ranch, Cape Schanck.  A big thank you to Marg Vlajankov, Josh Kippen and MMPS Staff attending camp for the preparation, planning, going above and beyond so our students have memorable and fun camp experience.  A reminder note about camp was sent home today to Year 6 parents today.

Mary MacKillop Feast Day Celebrations

All families are invited to attend the annual School Family Mass to be held on Saturday 3rd August at Our Lady Help of Christians Parish Church at 6.00pm (please refer to the information below in the section -The Feast of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop).

The following week on Thursday 8 August we will celebrate our whole school Feast Day Mass at 9.00 am in the Allen Hall and on Friday 9 August we welcome back KABOOM SPORTS with their OLYMPIC extravaganza on the small oval 11.30-1.00pm. Parents and families are welcome to join us and bring along their own picnic blankets and chairs. Students can wear their sports uniform on this day. Assembly in the afternoon will commence at 2.15pm due to the altered timetable for the day.

Student and Community Safety - Car Park

Parents who pick up their children at the Lowry Court access are reminded to note the locations designated as no standing zones. Since council parking officers frequently visit the area to conduct inspections, strict adherence to the notice is vital. Drivers who park in the bowl area may be subject to Council fines.

Student feedback

An integral part of our cycle of teaching and learning is student feedback.  Every week, staff record and acknowledge feedback to students and this is shared with them in class and  via the school newsletter, at Assembly and in MMPS News on Wednesday mornings. Read on for this week’s feedback to students.

Thank you to the Year Four students for showing respect and participation. You listened well to the Gospel and Father’s Homily as well as answering Father’s questions. 

Well done to the Year 6 student who listened and helped the Foundation students problem solve what to play during lunchtime. Fantastic Leadership demonstrated! 

It was great to experience and be a part of our Year 1s learning on Tuesday morning and seeing how well they extended the number 101 = 100+0+1 and were able to spell words with the sound “oo” as in hook, book and cook as part of Little Learners.  Great work Year 1 on all the amazing things you do in your learning!!

Amazing work to all the Grade 3’s for applying themselves towards their new maths unit of time, we can see the school value of being a problem solver. 

Fantastic work to the Year 4 Lego Group with following instructions and showing great teamwork during your first session. Keep up the great work!

It was amazing to see how welcoming the students in F-LL were to a new student. Thank you F-LL for being such nice friends to each other and especially when someone new joins our class. 

Well done to students all students  in the way they have begun their Music lessons. It is great to see everyone’s input in decorating the room and the way you are using and respecting the instruments. Years 3-6 the Djembe drumming is sounding fantastic!

It has been inspiring to see the creative ways students have made sculptures to celebrate the Olympics during Art sessions. Students have built, problem solved and invented amazing structures, sports grounds, olympians and athletes and your effort is commended.

Year Fives - It was terrific to see you thinking about others this week by bringing in extra potatoes in case your classmates forgot and weren't able to decorate their athletes.

Kaboom Sports Day

Friday 9th August on the small oval beginning at 11.30am. Students can wear their school sports uniform. Parents and families are welcome to come along to spectate and stay for a picnic lunch beginning at 1.00pm. Bring your own chairs, lunch, etc.

The Feast of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop

Our Feast Day celebrations will be held next week. A letter has been sent to families outlining the forthcoming activities celebrating the Feast of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. 

A School Family Mass will be celebrated at Our Lady Help of Christians Church on Saturday 3rd August 2024 at 6.00pm. Students and families are invited to attend. It would be wonderful to see many of our school families at this Parish mass time. Thank you to the students and their families who have taken pn active roles in the mass by being part of the Offertory procession, reading a prayer of the faithful or joining in a school choir. For those at the mass, all children will be invited to join together as a group to sing a special school song.

Our whole school Mass will be celebrated on Thursday 8th August beginning at 9.00am in Allen Hall. A family is invited to be part of the Offertory Procession during our school mass on Thursday 8th August. Please email lprivitera@marymacnarre.catholic.edu.au if your family will be attending the school mass on this day and would like to participate in the Offertory Procession.

Further Feast Day activities are listed on the letter sent to families last week via PAM

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Sunday, August 4, 2024

John 6:24–35
Jesus teaches the crowds that he is the “bread of life.”

This Sunday we continue to read from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, but not continuously.

In today’s Gospel, we learn about something else that we need. Last week, we learned that Jesus fed more than 5000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish. After they ate, the crowds of people followed Jesus and the disciples.

We hear that the people were seeking out Jesus because he had fed them with bread and fish. Jesus tells the people that God will provide a wonderful gift that will satisfy an even more important need. Jesus says that he will give them more bread, but this bread will be an even better gift than the food they have already eaten. The bread that he will give them will permit them to live forever with God in heaven. Jesus says that he will give them the gift of himself, that he is the bread of life. This is the gift that Jesus has given to us in the Eucharist.

Foundation Classroom Learning

Miley - The PAST is something that happened a long time ago or just yesterday. You can’t go back to the past because it has already happened. The past could be years or months or days or hours ago. Now we can talk about the past and what happened. 

Charlotte - The PRESENT time means it is happening now. So my daddy is sleeping right now! We are at school right now. I am 5 years old right now. The present is not yesterday because that’s already happened and it’s not tomorrow because we haven’t had that time yet. It has to be about right now. 

Yixi - The FUTURE has not happened yet. We don’t know what is going to happen in the future. We know we are going to have a birthday, but we have to wait for the day to come because it is in the future. We might use toys that are not even made yet!

Mia - We have been learning about what our Grandparents life might have been like when they were kids. They played games like Rock, Paper, Scissors, Wooden Blocks, Spinning Tops, Hide & Seek, Marbles, Elastics, Dancing, Ring a Rosie, rolling a metal ring, wooden toys and balancing on a bar. They didn’t get to play with a video game controller or an iPad or a TV. They were not made yet! 

We have been learning how to play some of the games our Grandparents played with and it is fun!

Division Soccer Playoffs

Congratulations to our senior boys 9 a side soccer team who competed in the Casey North Division playoffs last Friday . The boys finished runners up on the day.  All students showed great skill, teamwork, effort, determination, comraderie and fair play.

Thank you to all parents who came and supported on the day. It was evident that the boys enjoyed you being and your presence gave them a boost.  Special thanks to Mr. Tom Susanj for coaching the boys and doing a wonderful job.

Well done to the team:

Tyler, Jovan, Isaac, Adrian, Andrew, Archer, Peppe, Raf, Cruz, Jeremy, Mason and Romeo

‘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 in 

Week 5 (Monday 12th August, Tuesday 13th August or Wednesday 14th August) 

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.

NB: 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.

We hope you can support this wonderful cause and help the ‘Write the Book in a Day’ team raise as much money as possible.  

Thank you from

THE MARVELOUS MARY MAC WRITERS!

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

Student Wellbeing Boost

The Australian Government’s Student Wellbeing Boost provides one-off funding to schools to address the impacts of COVID-19 on the mental health and wellbeing of Australian students.

Schools must spend their Boost funding on mental health and wellbeing activities, which may include:

• extra school mental health professionals, such as psychologists and school counsellors
• camps, excursions, sporting and social activities that improve students’ wellbeing
• proven student wellbeing, student engagement and mental health initiatives.

Mary MacKillop School has embarked on implementing The Resilience Project. This program is committed to teaching positive mental health strategies to prevent mental ill-health and build young people’s capacity to deal with adversity. Since the early part of Term 1 teachers and students have engaged in weekly lessons and activities around the key principles of Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness (GEM) and Emotional Literacy to build resilience. Check out The Resilience Project  website for more information: The Resilience Project And check out TRP@HOME; a place filled with inspiration and activities for the whole family, to help improve your wellbeing and build resilience. TRP@HOME.

Over the coming weeks further information about this wellbeing program will be shared. Ask your children about the sessions that are happening in class.

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.