Mount Macedon Primary Newsletter

Care - Create - Collaborate

Mount Macedon Primary School aims to develop positive, independent, resilient and inquiring students who are ready for the future.


Principal's Report

Wednesday 17th August 2022

Hello everyone,

I’d like to start by saying a big thank you to all of the parents who participated in the International Baccalaureate review, which occurred over the last couple of days. You have helped us to develop a future direction for the next five years.

The school achieved accreditation in every standard.

I was very proud of the way the teachers spent two days in meetings explaining every aspect of their teaching and learning programs. It is very intense, and the evaluators were impressed with their excellent Literacy and Numeracy results and commitment to the students.

The students were also fantastic. The evaluators went into every classroom and spoke to a wide range of children to assess their understanding of their learning and of the Primary Years Program. The assessment from this, was that we have intelligent, articulate students who have a strong set of skills.

The reviewers were very complimentary about the whole school, its students and community; and about the results that we are achieving. The plan for the next five years is to; -

·         Improve parent and student understanding of the language and requirements of the Primary Years Program.

·         Develop a stronger school-developed program of assessment for each unit of work to allow us to report to parents more comprehensively on what their children are achieving in the PYP

·         Ensure that our policies for the IB are reviewed and understood by the school community

Our next IB Evaluation will take place in 2027.

School production is humming along nicely. Our production schedule is: -

 Monday 5th September      - Dress Rehearsal                          1.30pm

                                                             - Evening performance               7.00pm

Tuesday 6th September     - Twilight performance                   4.00pm

Wed 7th September            - Evening performance                   7.00pm

Thursday 8th September   - Evening performance                   7.00pm

The production is reasonably short and should go for just a fraction over an hour. We do know that it is a big week for the children (and staff) but we need this many performances to allow every family to attend. The children usually love performing and generally get through it all happily.

Tickets for the production go on sale today. Below this report you will see a link and a QR Code. Either one will take you to the Trybooking website. Once there, please follow the prompts to book your seats for the production on the nights/afternoon you would like to attend.

PLEASE LIMIT YOUR BOOKING AT THIS STAGE TO 6 SEATS PER FAMILY TO ENSURE THAT EVERY FAMILY GETS SEATING. If we have any spare seats left at a concert, we will let you know.

Next week is Book Week and the theme is “Dreaming with eyes open”. On Friday 26th August we will be having a dress up day and children can come dressed as what they would like to be, or what they hope for, when they are grown up. We will hold a dress up parade at the school at 3pm on that Friday. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Our new vegetable garden is now ready for planting. The seating area is finished and it looks fantastic. Have a look at the pictures in this newsletter.

Have a lovely week everyone.

Kind Regards,

Trish

School Production "Bug Boogie" Tickets

Below is the link to purchase tickets for the MMPS 2022 School Production "Bug Boogie", as well as the QR code.

Please click on either to ensure you purchase your tickets to this much anticipated event!

https://www.trybooking.com/CBYLO 

MMPS Fete News

Hello Everyone,

As mentioned in previous newsletters, the Fete team has been working hard planning for this year's Spring Fete on Saturday 12th November.

This newsletter is how we communicate with you, our school families, but we also communicate with the wider community, showing what they have to look forward to when attending our beautiful school fete.

We have 2 social media pages (Facebook page Spring Fete 2022 & Instagram) where we post regular updates about our fete. These pages are very important for advertising our fete to the wider community.

If you are on social media, can you please "Like or Follow" these pages and share them to your "Friends & Followers".

More followers = More people attending = More funds raised for our school and children.

 

Please"Like or Follow" our Fete social media pages and share them to your "Friends & Followers" :

  https://www.facebook.com/Mountmacedonschoolfete/

https://instagram.com/mountmacedonps_springfete/ 

Thanks

MaryRose Harrison

Parent Information Session - New Date

Parent Information Session – Conversations around mental health 2

We have a new date for our second parent session on how best to support child emotional and social development - Wednesday 31st August at 7.30 pm. We would really like this to be guided by you, so if you are interested please let us know what areas you would like covered in the registration link below. There will be space for open Q&As in the live chat. 

Who is Dr. Billy Garvey?

Billy is a developmental paediatrician with over 18 years experience working with children in a number of settings. His clinical and research interests include child development and mental health, multidisciplinary collaboration, improving health literacy and promoting community engagement to support all families. Billy holds clinical, advocacy and research roles in government and not-for-profit organisations at a national, state and local level. He is currently undertaking a PhD piloting a model to support child emotional and behavioural development in primary schools and is a Churchill Fellow exploring how social media can be used to support parenting. He is also the co-founder of the Pop Culture Parenting podcast which aims to support child development and wellbeing using evidence in a meaningful, fun and realistic way. 

Who is Jennifer Dix?

Jennifer is a Clinical Psychologist who has worked for several years in community welfare, specialising in working with children, adolescents and adults who have experienced trauma or are caring for others with a history of trauma. Jennifer has experience in adult inpatient care and community mental health, as well as in facilitating children’s therapeutic groups and parenting workshops. She is particularly passionate about empowering adolescents and young adults to develop the tools necessary to reach their potential. 

Expression of interest link:

https://forms.gle/UpkAZFcFVsQFFAZ47

When? 

Wednesday, 31st August 2022

7:30 PM

Where?

Event address for attendees:

https://eduvic.webex.com/eduvic/onstage/g.php?MTID=ecd5529393ea1c073b7d37513272b436a

Event number:              2651 204 6927

Event password:           EjSmMUvT742

MMPS Wellbeing and Inclusion Education Newsletter

Please click on the download below for our Wellbeing and Inclusion Education newsletter, where you will find some valuable information about how we are supporting our students, as well as some valuable resources for parents.
Download

Inclusion Resources

At Mount Macedon Primary we engage with resources from The Victoria Inclusion Agency to drive best practice in teaching and learning that creates an inclusive education environment for all our students. Here are a few resources  which we use in our classrooms that can be carried across to home. 

CBCA Book Week

Each year since 1945 the Children's Book Council of Australia has brought children and books together across Australia through CBCA Book Week. During this time schools and public libraries spend one glorious week celebrating books and Australian children's authors and illustrators. Classroom teachers, teacher librarians and public librarians create colourful displays, develop activities, run competitions and tell stories relating to a theme to highlight the importance of reading.

This year, MMPS will be holding Book Week Dress Up day on Friday 26th August, where students can come dressed as what they would like to be or what they hope for when they grow up! A parade of costumes will be hosted at 3pm that afternoon, please feel welcome to come along!

MMPS Update by School Reporter Eliza

Welcoming visiting experts back into our school.

It has been great to have people back in our school to offer learning experiences this year. There have been many incursions and many learning opportunities, to hook our interest in different subjects. There have been visitors including Meerkat Productions, Western Water (for foundation), a parasitologist from Melbourne University and a member of the CFA who maps fires.          

The Meerkat Production that came and gave a presentation to the whole school was excellent in keeping us entertained, as well as preparing us for our own school production. Production is a fun and exciting way to express our creativity. They performed ‘Stellarphant.’ This production showed us how to use expression, volume and actions, which helps us to remember and take these ideas and skills into our own roles in our school production.

Western Water also paid a visit to the Foundation class. They taught them about the water cycle, the importance of water, and how you shouldn’t waste it. They learnt it in a fun way with fun characters like Sammy and Francis. They had a lot of fun and learned a lot from the experience.  

We also had a visitor from the CFA who maps fires. She came into the 5 / 6 class to share what she does. She maps fires, floods and lots of other things for the CFA. She taught us how to use coordinates, and how to communicate where a fire is and where it is likely to go. We really enjoyed this lesson, and it helps us learn the importance of her role for the community. 

Recently, the Grade 5/6's welcomed a parasitologist into the classroom. He taught us about parasites and organisms. He taught us about the world under the microscope. It caught our interest and made us wonder about the world we cannot see, beneath the microscope. 

All these visits have been exciting and important to our learning and curiosity. We all enjoyed the visitors and hope they come again soon.

Eliza

Meerkat Incursion - Stellarphant

 This years Meerkat incursion was based on the book Stellarphant by James Foley. Stella the elephant is fighting interstellar discrimination one pachyderm at a time! Stella wants to be an astronaut. There is only one problem: Stella is an elephant. Every time she applies to Space Command, they come up with a new reason she can’t join. But where there’s a will, there’s a way and Stella is determined to reach for the stars.

On Wednesday 3rd August, Meerkat Productions arrived at MMPS to perform "Stellarphant". Everyone enjoyed the production, it was very entertaining with lots of student interaction and a great message behind the story. Below are some photos of the performance, and some student reflections about the play.

Digital Technology at MMPS

It would seem the Grade 2 students have got the filming bug, and this week they were keen to do more (oh, and spoiler alert for the end, the Grade 1 students got in on the action too)

This week students learnt about Green Screening (or Chroma Key if you want to sound smart) and made their own, accurate, weather reports.

They needed to research a part of the world of their choosing, find out about the weather for the week, find an image to represent that location, and then film their weather reports. 

You can see some of the completed reports from the link below. 

I had left the Green Screen set up when I had my Grade 1 students, and as they were keen to give it a go, I may have changed my lesson plan... to produce, well, I don't want to give too much away but every good movie needs a dance number, right?

You can see the Grade 1 student's work by clicking the second link below.

PS: One small spanner in doing Green Screen work at MMPS is, well, their school uniforms are 90% green, so some tweaking was required (and the odd body may have disappeared - but we thought that was kind of funny) 

Mr Garcia

Grade 2 Student work:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cdi5Morae0ncbi5fWAXZ06ost8bEfloS/view?usp=sharing 

Grade 1 Student 'Dance off':

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZPbBIKQ3R8XAYyh43XdV_hQIo3Cr80yg/view?usp=sharing

Our New Veggie Garden Area

Have a look at our new Veggie Garden Area! What a great spot for our students to get involved in some planting and nurturing of home grown fruits and vegetables. We are looking forward to watching these veggie pods become full and flourish with some delicious organic food that we can hopefully use in some cooking classes at school. A big thank you to the Quinn family who dedicated their time and effort into creating this amazing space for our students to learn and enjoy.

Rubbish in our art - Not in our Oceans

As part of their Transdisciplinary PYP Unit called Sharing the Planet, (an inquiry into rubbish and sustainability), the Grade  2 students have been collecting items that we would usually throw away. They have turned them into a beautiful collage of art to inspire us to think about what happens to our rubbish, where it ends up and how else we can use it. What a creative way to get us all thinking about how our rubbish impacts the ocean and the wonderful sea creatures that live in it.

Helping to Protect Wild Gorillas

One of our Grade 2 students Liam, is calling upon our help to recycle our old mobile phones to help protect wild Gorillas. As part of the Grade 2 Sharing the Planet inquiry, Liam is instigating action and calling on our community for help. Please read Liam's message below. Liam has set up a collection box for your old and used mobile phones at the school office. What a fantastic project and a great way to raise awareness and interest in this important world issue.

Victorian Premiers' Reading Challenge

New School Beanie

Winter is well and truly upon us, and it is especially cold here in the Maecdon Ranges! To help keep our students as warm and comfortable as possible, we now have a new MMPS School Beanie that is available from Beleza School Uniforms in Gisborne. Please pop into store if you would like to purchase.

COMMUNITY NEWS

Gisborne Secondary College Tours

MRSC Detox Your Home

Macedon Cricket Club Sponsorship

Calling for any friends or families of the school that might be interested in sponsoring the cricket club. Please see attached Sponsorship Presentation, and more information. Please contact the Macedon Cricket Club at macedoncc@hotmail.com if you are interested. Thank you.
Download

The Mount Players

Help Wanted!  Ever been interested in joining the Theatre but didn't know where to start? Come and help us Front of House! Meet new people, get a feel for the theatre and be a part of an amazing show without having to jump on stage! We're looking for helpers for all shows to help usher and do tea and coffee service at interval. Please contact Shelly on 0417 514 797 or shellyjandrews@gmail.com, Or find me at school pickup! I'm the one trying to hold Bruno the Brown Lab 😊 

Thanks!!

Young Warblers

Tennis Term 3

Futsal

Bushfire Resilience Information

Important Dates

Friday 26th August - Book Week Dress Up Day & Parade at 3pm

Tuesday 30th August - District Athletics

Monday 5th - Thursday 8th September - School Production

Thursday 8th Sept - Division Athletics

Saturday 12th November - MMPS School Fete

2022 Term Dates

Term 1 - Monday 31st January to Friday 8th April

Term 2 - Tuesday 26th April to Friday 24th June

Term 3 - Monday 11th July to Friday 16th September

Term 4 - Monday 3rd October to Tuesday 20th December