Newsletter Term 1, Week 8 2023
Don’t forget to send back your Easter raffle tickets to be entered into our Easter Raffle bonanza!! If you’d like more opportunities to win some of our great prizes you’re most welcome to collect some more raffle tickets from the office.
Please refer to the Term 1 Dates for some changes to the dates this term.
Hello Everyone,
The term is flying past and the children, our staff and supportive parents have all contributed to a great start to 2023.
We certainly had a downpour yesterday morning and I was once again overjoyed at how our parents and staff came together to ensure the children arrived at their classrooms safely and in good spirits. One parent, humble by nature, spent over 15 minutes in the rain shepherding the students into the school by sharing her umbrella and getting drenched in the process.
It is this collaborative care of our children and the willingness of the adults of SMM to “step up,” that is what makes for such a fabulous and inclusive school. This is then echoed in the behavior and values of our children.
Last week was Catholic Education Week (CEW) and it was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our outstanding parish school. We hope you caught our full page feature in the local Star newspaper and please keep a look out for the follow up article next week.
We continue to enjoy positive responses to our social media campaign and the significant turn out to our open morning yesterday was testament to this alongside the positive reputation we have in the local community.
We had so many families come through that all students in Year 6 had the opportunity to conduct school tours. The visitors gave glowing reports about our year 6 guides who guided with confidence, respect and positivity about our hidden gem, SMM!
St. Patrick day celebrations filled our school last Friday. There were splashes of green and all sorts of fun activities to celebrate the patron Saint of Ireland. Our Year 6 school captains and liturgy captains, myself and Mr Dalton attended the MACS C.E.W. mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on St. Patrick’s Day.
2024 Foundation Enrolments for Siblings
In preparation for our processing of 2024 enrolments, we request all families that have a potential sibling enrolment for 2024, please make contact with Fiona through office@smmspotswood.catholic.edu.au
An electronic pack will be sent out to you and while you are most welcome at this Wednesday’s Foundation 2024 information evening, it is not essential for you to attend. Please let family and friends who have a potential 2024 enrolment to pop in for an enrolment pack or make an appointment for a school tour.
Parish of St. Joseph’s Feast Day
Our parish community came together last Sunday to celebrate mass, the blessing of the new Mary Mackillop garden and share food and make connections. On Tuesday our students travelled to Sacred Heart Newport to also celebrate mass, learn about St. Joseph with the children from our sister school and share lunch and play. The children reported that they “loved it!”
Athletics Day and Coming events
Due to rain, we unfortunately, we had to postpone our athletics day until Wednesday the 5th of April, the last week of term. The last week of term please note the subsequent adjustment of times and days for the Easter Bonnet Parade, Easter Egg Raffle, and our Junior, Middle and Senior Easter Liturgies. The last day of term is Thursday and it is a casual clothes day. Please ensure the children dress in clothes that can get coloured chalk on them as they are all spending the day creating a Spanish inspired Easter pathway in the yard. Parent’s please feel free to pop in from 12.30 to see this amazing art installation!
Take Care,
Colleen McCambridge
Principal
Upcoming events and reminders
If you know of anyone looking for a school for their Prep student for 2024, please let them know about our open mornings and Prep 2024 Information Evening.
Prep 2024 Information Evening:
Wednesday March 29th 7pm
Follow our socials for the latest learning posts from the classroom
St Margaret Mary’s students are independent life-long learners inspired by Gospel values and empowered with a sense of purpose and responsibility. They confidently engage with others and are equipped with skills to adapt to an ever changing world.
Each week, students who embody our values, apply the school mindsets to learning, work hard to improve or persevere to deliver on learning objectives are awarded a class award. The students who earned an award in the past weeks are:
Term 1, Week 8
Term 1, Week 7
Literacy and Excursions!
The Year 2 and Year 1/2 classes used their shared experience from our St Joseph Feast Day to enhance their literacy skills. The students wrote recounts about their day at Sacred Heart. Sharing information about a past event develops "decontextualised language". This is the ability to talk and write about something that happened in another time and place and is important for higher level language and literacy development.
Recounts also develop the ability to structure language. Writing about the past also helps develop language skills such as using verb tenses. Writing about an event is complex and requires linking sentences together which develops use of joining words known as "conjunctions". Here’s a sample below of their great writing.
Isla and Daniel from Year 1/2
St. Joseph’s Parish Feast Day
On Tuesday, St Margaret Mary’s and Sacred Heart school communities came together to celebrate our Parish Feast Day. The focus this year was on St Joseph. The day started with a Mass celebrated by Fr Binh, our combined school choir led the hymns and treated the schools with a song sung by them at the end of Mass. The students then participated in activities focussed on learning more about St Joseph as well as making friends and connections with children from Sacred Heart. Everyone enjoyed a sausage sizzle lunch, some playtime time together and then it was time for our school to head home. Many thanks to Sacred Heart PS for hosting us this year and to Ms Brown for organising the excursion.
Easter Egg Raffle
Upcoming School Masses
Family Mass: Feast of St. Joseph
Sunday, March 19⋅10:00 – 11:00am at Sacred Heart Church
Easter Bonnet Parade
On Monday the 3rd of April we will be having our annual Easter Bonnet Parade from 9am. Students are invited to create and wear a hat to celebrate this special time. Our Easter Raffle will also be drawn at the conclusion of the parade.
Important Dates
Trying to find an important date? Check out our updated Term Dates page.
Save the Date!
St Margaret Mary’s has recently engaged Inform and Empower to work with our students around cybersafety. Students will be involved in termly online sessions and we have an online parent information session as well. Raising Kids in a Digital World will take place on May the 11 and we would strongly encourage all parents to make the time to view the webinar. More information to come in following weeks.
Playground
Please note that the playground is not open before or after school as there is no teacher supervising the playground at those times. If your toddler or preschool child is playing on the playground before the bell in the afternoon it would be helpful if when the bell rang, they then came off the playground so other school children aren’t tempted to play alongside them. Thanks for your support with this.
Also, as much as we love the cute dogs that come down to school to pick up their humans we ask that they don’t come into the school yard. We have some kids that are frightened of dogs and like to be with their parents before having to walk past any dogs.
Target Aquired!
At the first FSG meeting some potential fundraising targets were discussed. One thing everyone agreed on was a new audio visual system for the hall was a must. Stay tuned for updates about how we can make this dream a reality.
Easter Egg Raffle and Donations
Thank you for all those families that have donated easter eggs, crafts and books for our Easter Raffle so far. The Easter Raffle is one of our major fundraising events for the year and any assistance is greatly appreciated. If you require any more raffle tickets, please drop in to the office and collect another pack. Please note that the Raffle draw and the Easter Bonnet parade has changed to Monday the 3rd of April
Footy Tipping
Well the season has started with a few upsets and already there is a gap opening up on the ladder. Shaqatak and Bomber Love have got off to a great start with 8 correct tips. This weeks has gotten off to a bumpy start with the reigning premiers Geelong going down to Carlton and making them 0 from 2 so far.
Yours truely tipped the doggies but we all know hw that ended up.
There’s a big game in Brisbane tonight and it will be a tough one to predict. The Saints and Doggies should make for a good game as well.
Just a reminder that we have a few changes this year including:
The return of the Joker round
Away sides for non tippers
Bonus point for tipping 9
$25 to join and prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd to be announced soon.
Payments made via school FSG bank account. Please have entry payments made by round 3, using your footy tipping alias as a reference.
Account SMM FSG
BSB: 083 347
Acc: 365426557
You can also send in $25 in an envelope, labelled with your alias and titled "2023 footy tipping"
Join the competition below: https://www.footytips.com.au/comps/SMM_2023_AFL_Footy_Tipping_Competition?p=stmm3015
Best of Luck!
Emmanuel College News
Another week and another round of exciting events at Emmanuel. Our Year 9 students recently visited the Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSSEC) where they completed a simulated mission to Mars.
Year 7 2024 students came along and participated in the Amazing Race, getting to know other students, staff and their new secondary school a little more. This is just one of a range of orientation events that we hold, while students are in Grade 6. This allows them to feel really calm about joining the Emmanuel community.
Last Wednesday morning we welcomed former students and staff to the College for the Annual Alumni Business Breakfast where Andrew Gaze AM was our guest presenter. It was wonderful to see so many past students together, continuing secondary school friendships and reconnecting with staff. In further connections for our past students, on Monday we held the Nexus Mentoring Program dinner, where we connected students in the mentoring program with their Old-Collegian mentor. We had more than 70 people in attendance.
Our next major event is the College Open Day to be held on Sunday 21 May 2023, see times for each campus below:
St Paul’s Campus 10:30am - 1:30pm
Notre Dame Campus 11:00am - 2:00pm
Applications for Year 7 2025 are now open and will close on Friday 18 August 2023.
If your child is currently in Grade 5, it is a requirement to submit an application if you wish to be considered for a place in Year 7 2025, even if you already have an older child who attends the College.
A Prospectus Pack containing an application form can be requested under the Enrolment Information tab on the right-hand side of the homepage of the College website:
https://www.ecmelb.catholic.edu.au/enrolment-information/request-a-prospectus , or by
picking one up from either campus office.
We hope to see you at a College event soon.
Kind regards
Jenny Hendricks
Community Connections Officer
Mount St. Joseph Girls’ College
OPEN EVENTS
VISITING MOUNT ST. JOSEPH GIRLS’ COLLEGE IS A GREAT WAY TO EXPLORE OUR DYNAMIC LEARNING SPACES AND EXPERIENCE LEARNING IN ACTION.
We invite you to join us at our Open Events in 2023 on the following dates:
OPEN DAY 10:00am – 2:00pm Sunday 7 May
OPEN MORNINGS 9:15am – 10:30am
23 February (Coming soon, register now!)
24 March
8 June
20 July
3 August
7 September
You will meet our College Principal, students and staff and see why Mount St. Joseph Girls College is the best choice for your child. Tours of the College are led by our student
ambassadors. This gives visiting families the unique opportunity to ask questions and gain an honest insight into our programs and what it is like to be a student at Mount St. Joseph Girls College.
To register your interest in attending, please visit our website on the VISIT US page
ACADEMIC NEWS
Congratulations to all our graduates of the Class of 2022. There were many stories of students achieving personal success and we are proud of the achievements of all our VCE and VCAL students.
We are pleased to share this snapshot of our results. We wish the Class of 2022 continued success in their future tertiary studies and career pathways.
College VCE DUX: Tanvi Arora (98.95)
College VCAL DUX: Lauren Agosta
Top Study Score: Zoe Nasser (Year 11), Psychology (50)
Median Study Score: 30
Scores above 40: 42 (Top 9% of the state)
Students with an ATAR above 80: 26%
Students with an ATAR above 90: 9%
ENROLMENT DATES
YEAR 7 in 2025
Applications for Year 7 at Mount St. Joseph Girls’ College should be made during Year 5 of your child’s primary school education.
Parents/Carers should complete an online application form with the required documentation and payment of a non-refundable $50 application fee. Applications for Year 7 in 2025 close 18 August 2023.
Our very own Aarti Vincent is performing at the Melbourne International Comedy festival. Tickets available below.
https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2023/shows/tight-mums-loose-units
We welcome your feedback so if you have anything to contribute to the newsletter, questions about content or general feedback, please let us know.