Mount Macedon Primary Newsletter

Tuesday 6th December 2022

Hello Everyone,

This is our second last newsletter for the year. We have a lot of activities coming up, and for the parents who have not been here to celebrate these events, I thought I would give you a brief explanation of them.

Wednesday 7th December - Carols by Candlelight. I put a notice about this out on Skoolbag. This is not a compulsory event, but we would love you to attend. All children who come along are asked to sing with the school. They have been practising songs for this event.

Thursday 8th December - Pupil Free Day. We use this day to plan the entire Primary Years Programme for 2023. Each year we develop a new program, rather than use old ones from the past. This helps us to ensure that the students are continually being challenged to learn.

Friday 9th December - Kidz Rule the School Day. This is a day where the Grade 6 students assume the adult roles in the school (still under our supervision). There will be a student principal, office manager, classroom teachers etc. They are all required to plan for the day. It is a lot of fun (apparently the teachers make great “naughty children”) and a day that everyone looks forward to. The children will do three lessons with their Grade 6 teacher and then school will return to situation normal.

Monday 12th December – Mount Macedon’s Got Talent. Students are invited to perform for the school – any talent that they have. This happens during the day, and we have a panel who votes for the winner.

Tuesday 13th December – Transition Day. For the first hour of the day the children will move to their new classrooms and teachers. I am still currently in the process of appointing a replacement for Simon Dohler (it is looking promising), but the teaching structure for next year will be: -

Foundation/Grade 1 – Rebecca Bowen

Grade 1/2 – Hayley Saunders (three days per week) and Laura Wenczel (2 days per week)

Grade 2/3 -Geni Krajewski

Grade 3/4 – TBC

Grade 5/6 -Joe Flynn

Wellbeing/Inclusion Coordinator – Olivia Desormeaux (2 days per week)

Art – Rowena Glenister

PE -Melissa Anikeev (new to the school)

Digital Technology-Daniel Garcia (fortnightly)

Science – Joe Flynn (fortnightly)

Music – Laura Wenzcel

Language -TBC. I interviewed a Japanese teacher today, so will hopefully be able to put a name in this position next week.

Tutoring – Helen Burgess

Reading support – Little Learners Love Literacy program – Vicki Bryant

Integration Aide – Catherine Noone

Business Manager – Amy Crosbie (7 days per fortnight)

Office Manager – Naomi Trovarelli (7 days per fortnight)

Wednesday 14th December – Picnic at Hanging Rock. The students will leave the school in two shifts between 9.30 and 10.30. You are all welcome to come along. Santa will arrive at 12pm and students will leave from 1pm onwards. It is a relaxed lovely day.

Thursday 15th December – Grade 6 Graduation night. The students will meet at the Trading Post at 6pm for a dinner with their teachers, then they will walk back to the school hall, where they will meet their parents for a graduation ceremony which starts at 7.30pm.

Friday 16th December – Christmas Celebration and Final Assembly. This will be held in the school hall and will commence at 2pm. Each class will sing a carol and we will then farewell students, families and teachers who are leaving the school. A “Thank You” afternoon tea will be held for the parents at approximately 3pm following the assembly. This is provided by the staff to thank you for all that you do to support us. Reports go home this day.

Monday 19th December – school as normal

Tuesday 20th December - school finishes at 1.30pm. and the school gathers at the school bell. All Grade 6 students ring the bell to symbolise they are leaving the school.

Whew!!

On the weekend we had (almost – they couldn’t reach the ceiling in the hall!!) all of the lights in the school replaced with LEDs. We have moved from 100-watt globes to 14 watt LEDs and this will hopefully help us with our yearly electricity costs. Next year we will work on patching and painting the ceilings.

I have discussed with FOS and the School Council the plans to spend the money raised at the fete. Part of the funds will go towards the new outdoor reading room which will commence over the school holidays and be completed in March. The rest of the funds will be allocated to a Solar Panel project, which will see us developing a plan for the next few years to help us to become as sustainable as possible. This will be a gift that keeps on giving over the years as it will save us a lot of money that we currently spend yearly on electricity and allow us to channel those funds into ongoing future improvements at the school. It will also model to our children, the importance that sustainability now holds in our world.

Have a lovely week everyone.

Kind Regards,

Trish

As the excitement of finishing primary school and transitioning to secondary school draws nearer for our senior students, we understand that this can also be an overwhelming and challenging time for them. With this in mind, we have been working with our students in class to prepare and support them through this period of change. Below are some great resources on how you can help students cope with big life changes in order to support their mental and emotional well being.

For eight weeks of this term the Grade 6’s have been undertaking the biggest project of their Primary years, known as The PYP Exhibition. The exhibition is the culminating, collaborative experience in the final year of the IB Primary Years Programme. Students explore, document, and share their understanding of an issue or opportunity of personal significance. At the start of the Exhibition unit, everyone picked a Global Development goal to focus on. The UN Global Goals (https://www.globalgoals.org/) are a bunch of aims for the future that countries, cities, businesses or even just people can participate in. Our fellow classmates, who were also interested in the same Global Goal, became our group to work with. 

With the help of a staff mentor (each group got their own different teacher), the groups wrote their own Central Idea to focus their inquiry on, constructed their own lines of inquiry and questions, then started their research.

Groups used a number of different ways to find out about their Global goal. They conducted research, interviewed people, listened on podcasts and watched videos amongst other things. Each group also went on an excursion to a certain place that relates to their goals to do a bit of hands-on work to find out more about our topics. 

When communicating our understandings towards the end of the unit, people chose to do this in many different ways. Some people used green screens, posters, Augmented reality, slide shows, models, podcasts and much more.

Last Thursday we assembled our Exhibition and showed it off to the students in the school in the last lesson of the day.  On Thursday night we showed our families the result of our hard work. We then gave a speech about what we had done for our exhibition, our thoughts, how our understandings had changed and what we had learnt. Many people spent a lot of time in class working on their speeches. Then before we knew it, the exhibition had come to a close.

A quick thankyou to all our teachers who were our mentors that helped, guided and encouraged us along the way. 

Emily and Poppy

At the start of this term the Grade 6’s started a program called Choosical with the Grade 6’s from Macedon Primary. It's a fun, creative drama and theatre program aimed at Mental Health run by Artists Bridget a’Beckett and Sharni Page who are the founders of an organisation called the Sprouts Creative/ Musical Sprouts . 

The Grade 6’s walked down to Macedon Primary School a few weeks ago for a workshop with the two artists. First we brainstormed a lot of different struggles we all have. Then we chose a few of the most common ones which were; going into high school, not fitting in and getting distracted. We then made a scene based on why it's so scary to us. Group scenes ranged from weddings which portrayed walking into the unknown to video games which portrayed getting distracted. Through exploration we gained a deeper understanding of the different issues and explored strategies for each. Throughout the rest of the day we made sculptures, and played games about emotions. We explored self-expression through music, role play, movement, sculpture and language. Over the next weeks we had occasional meetups over Zoom. Soon Bridget and Sharni had created a song based on our sculptures, scenes and games. It’s a song about ‘New’, how you can either shy away from it or embrace it. In the song 'New’ there is a person who is being used more as a metaphor. ‘Will we embrace it or ignore it??’. The song has  been created by a team of Musicians along with Sharni and Bridget. We recorded ourselves singing and making sounds over Zoom. Last Tuesday we, once again, walked down to Macedon Primary to meet up with everyone. We then started to choreograph and do a little more recording. The dance turned out awesome. Combining everything we had said and danced into one giant dance! The Grade 6’s will be performing it at Graduation. I think everyone is so proud of how the dance and song turned out and is excited to perform it!

Poppy and Emily

Last week students in Grade 3 and 4 went to Boomerang Ranch for our first camp.

We did lots of activities, such as horse riding, archery, games, hut building and bush art. We had a lot of fun and came back very tired!

Here are some of our thoughts on camp:

Eleanor: Horse riding was my favourite part!

Andy: We did hut building and it kept falling down but it was fun.

Ethan: Horse riding was awesome.

Banjo: Archery was incredible.

Chloe: We did hut building and it was a lot of fun!

Ava: We did archery and had to hit a balloon target, it was harder than I thought it would be.

Sofia: The S’mores were delicious!

Sam: Camp was lots of fun because we got to ride horses.

Matilda: The food was yummy. 

Below are some photos from the camp, it looks like everyone had an amazing time!

Last week Foundation students learnt how search engines work by crawling billions of pages using web crawlers. Also known as spiders or bots, crawlers navigate the web and follow links to find new pages. These pages are then added to an index that search engines pull results from (and we also learnt how we could use keywords and more descriptive writing to narrow down those search results)

Now that all sounds fine and dandy, but what is a more fun way of seeing how a search engine works? - Well, that will be seeing how many billions of websites might have the same as us, or as Alfie discovered, finding his dad was an internet celebrity! (or, at least likes a nice deck chair and fishing apparently)

Mr. Garcia

Just a reminder to ensure that students have their hats to wear at school during recess and lunchtimes, as well as any other outdoor activities they may be participating in. It is important that we are all being sun smart and ensuring our children are protected from the harmful UV light that is at it's highest peak during the months of August to April, where UV index levels regularly reach 3 or above. Please also remember to name your children's hats as they quite often are lost, misplaced or left in the playground and it is handy to know who the hat belongs to! Spotted on the grounds were some of our students wearing their hats today.

We have a huge event with 6 hours of young bands on the last day of (public) school at the Macedon & Mount Macedon Community House (Victoria St, Macedon).  The School's Out For Summer Picnic Bash will kick off from 1:30pm and run until 8:30pm on Tues Dec 20th. 

The Community House has a sausage sizzle, food and drink and everyone is encouraged to bring their picnic rugs and enjoy the entertainment.

We're very excited that the huge lineup represents musicians from almost EVERY school in the area -- and hopefully will serve to encourage more young people to get involved in our monthly MR YIM (Macedon Ranges Youth In Music) stage.  See below for more information.

This Saturday,  December 10th at 10.30am we have a beautiful Christmas Puppet Show in the gallery. This is a ticketed event. Bookings: 

The details for both events are on the flyer below.

Wednesday 7th December - Carols by Candlelight 6pm Tony Clarke Reserve

Thursday 8th December - Professional Practice Day -no students at school

Friday 9th December - Kidz Rule the School Day

Monday 12th December - Mount Macedon's Got Talent

Tuesday 13th December - Foundation 2023 Transition Day 4 9am - 11am

Wednesday 14th December - Hanging Rock Picnic

Thursday 15th December - Grade 6 Graduation 

Friday 16th December - Christmas Celebration and Final Assembly 2pm. Parents welcome.

Tuesday 20th December - Last Day of School 1.30 pm Finish

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

2023

Term 1 starts Tuesday 31st January.