Mount Macedon Primary Newsletter

Tuesday 13th September 2022

Hello Everyone,

As this is the last newsletter for this term, I wanted to start by thanking everyone for your input and commitment to the children and the school. As I have mentioned before, this has been the best term in a long while.

Last Thursday night we had our last performance of our school production. “Bug Boogie” has been a wonderful journey and I think that the end result was a celebration of the talents of our children, and a wonderful opportunity for us to get together as a community.  I’m sure that everyone is proud of the effort that the children put in. It’s also a great opportunity for us to recognise, (sometimes hidden) talents. We know that the children are tired, and we were nurturing them through the week, as I’m sure that you did too. We hold the production over 4 days to ensure that everyone gets a seat. Thanks for coming along, and thanks to everyone who was involved.

This has been a big term, with our successful Primary Years Program evaluation, our great NAPLAN results (we DO need to improve our spelling results – I’ll talk about that below), the opportunity for our students to participate in a range of interschool sports activities, incursions (Meerkats, Science, Western Water), Book Week, Neon Disco (finally), parent webinar series etc. Through all of this, our focus has remained on learning and wellbeing. As I walked down the passage on Friday morning, I passed classes of happy students – some STILL singing the Bug Boogie songs.

We had excellent NAPLAN results this year, but I think that we need to put some extra work into improving our students' spelling. We did not have a single eligible student below expected standard in spelling, but I notice that students from some similar socio-economic schools are getting better results than us. We have decided to address this issue by purchasing a new, updated spelling program that we will implement across the school to ensure that there is consistent delivery in all areas of spelling. Next term, we will introduce the program and children will be bringing home spelling homework to help embed strong spelling habits. This is not an issue of being behind expected standards, but we achieve very high results in all our other areas, and I want the same for our students in spelling.

I’d like to let you know that we have another ill parent at the school. One of our dads has had a very significant heart attack, and whilst the family do not need support via meals etc, we are giving them as much help as we can in other ways. We send them all our love and hope for a quick recovery.

I hope that those of you who are able to take a break, have a wonderful, relaxing holiday with your children. For those of you working on and managing the children at home – look after yourselves!

See you next term.

Kind Regards,

Trish

You may have noticed in the news that the Fire Danger Rating system is changing in Victoria. We are moving from 6 levels to 4. The greatest impact that will have on our school is that the “Severe” rating has now been merged with the Extreme rating. This means that on days of Extreme rating we will be required to relocate to Romsey Primary School. The trigger point for relocation is the same as before, just the name has changed. Please see the attached documents below which explain the new system.

Join us at the Mount Macedon Primary School Spring Fete on Saturday 12 November for a day of family and community fun as we fundraise for a new outdoor learning area to benefit our children and for generations to come.

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/

Hello!

Thank you for registering for our Parent Information Session - Conversations Around Mental Health 2.

Please click here to find the recording of this session:

https://vimeo.com/745230663

We would love to hear your feedback on this session. Please click here to fill in a short survey to help us support our collaboration with Billy and Jen. Our aim is to bring you more relevant and evidenced based strategies to support your child's emotional and social development.

https://forms.gle/aCH1piM6ZWUHycVA7

Thank you!

Olivia Desormeaux

Inclusion Leader - Macedon & Mount Macedon Primary School

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. 

Hello Everyone,

The end of term 3 is rolling in, and the end of the year is within arms reach. At the end of the year, each Grade will move up a year level and the Grade 5's will finally be at the top of the school. The Grade 6's will start high school, after having spent all our school life here.

Term four is approaching and we are all excited for the final term of this year. Grade 6 has our exhibition coming up. We all choose to study one of the global goals, a goal we are passionate about and want to help solve. At the end of our research and learning, we present our projects to our parents and fellow students.

This week we are busy finishing up our work for term 3, and are getting ready for the last term of the school year. We are all excited for the holidays and to rest up for next term.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday and hope everyone comes back to school with a lot of energy for Term 4.

Eliza

 After many weeks of rehearsals, the students finally got to perform Bug Boogie last week  over four great evenings. All the students worked incredibly hard to ensure the performance was entertaining and boy was it a huge success! We are so proud of our students, everyone did a fantastic job and all performances went smoothly. See below for some great photos. We hope you all enjoyed the production for this year.

On Friday, some of our 5/6 students took part in the District Hot Shots Tennis competition at the Gisborne Tennis Courts. 

It was a fantastic day and the weather was amazing. Our Mount Macedon students showed great team work and sportsmanship and it was great to see them having fun out in the courts.

Both teams finished in 6th place  and should be proud of their efforts, especially after such a big production week! 

Hayley Saunders 

After a long wait (for the Foundation students!) the Grade 5/6 students were finally able to share their working games and apps with them.

For those following along, a while back, Foundation students were asked to come up with an idea and designs for their own game or app.

This design was then passed on to their Grade 5/6 buddies to turn into reality - my only rule being, that they had to stick with the idea and recreate the drawings exactly as the Foundation students had done them (this did require a little creative guessing at times)

The results ranged from Fruit Jumping Games, A Unicorn Creator App, (the copyright avoiding) Pokemooon, Jet Games, and Truck Games, to the 'Hugo Saves Heidi' Series.

We had a great class where Grade 5/6 students shared the games for the first time with the Foundation students to play, and the reviews are in:

"Amazing!", "Super Fun", "Brilliant", "1000 Stars out of 5" (well, we weren't doing a Math lesson, so that review can stay)

I thought I would share the games over the course of the next few weeks so each gets a spotlight.

Below is Alfie's 'Top Gun' game, recreated by Darcy.

In the below image, you can see Alfie's design, and if you click the link, you can play Darcy's recreation of it.

Have a great holiday (in the Danger Zone!)  

Mr. Garcia 

Game link:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/720947051/

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.

Below are some of the items we have in lost property that are not named. Please have a look below, and if you recognise any of the items, please collect them from the school office before the end of term thank you.

Wednesday 14th September - District Basketball

Tuesday 1st November - Cup Day

Saturday 12th November - MMPS School Fete

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