2025 St Mary's Primary School Newsletter Term 2 Week 10

Acknowledgement of Country

St Mary’s Primary School respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the
Wimmera Mallee area, the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagalk
peoples, and pays respect to the ongoing living cultures of First Peoples.

As partners in Catholic Education and open to God’s presence, we pursue the fullness of life for all.  St Mary's Catholic Primary School  is committed to the safety and well-being of all students.

Principal's News

Dear families,

It’s hard to believe we are halfway through the school year with the last day of school being next Friday week 4th July. Staff are busy finalising Mid Year Reports that will be sent out to families on Thursday 3rd July. This will be the final newsletter for Term 2 and any additional news or highlights can be viewed on the St Mary’s FaceBook Page. I’d also like to wish you all a safe and relaxing winter’s holiday break and may we all pray for further rain.

Congratulations to the Years 3- 6  that recently represented St Mary’s in Nhill for the Lightning Premiership. Our boys football team, proudly representing St Mary's, played in great spirit throughout the day. A special congratulations to our girls netball team for winning all five games including the Grand final. Thank you to Meg Werner for not only her organisation of this event but for all she does in promoting health and physical education. Thank you also to former students Eedie Rowe and Tom Penny for their assistance on the day.  (please read special article below)

Our dedicated staff are continually busy and leading the way in adapting to the needs of students, and I thank them for having the ability to be flexible around additional school events. We had a very successful Learning Walk last Wednesday, welcoming and meeting with current and prospective families, particularly those with kindergarten children. The invitation was designed to see our learning in action across all classrooms. Staff are in the process of organising the end of term Mass, parent conversation times, Parents Support Group Meetings (PSG’s), assessments and preparing for the changes to the Mathematics Curriculum for reports along with going through the process of Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). (read flyer below).

On the last day of term, students will attend a Mass for the Needy (Previously known as the Poor Man’s Mass). The Year 5/ 6 class will be organising this over the next few weeks. We ask families, if they are able to, donate $5 per family in an envelope that was sent home a fortnight ago. Families may also like to donate toiletries such as deodorant, shampoo etc. Monsignor Glynn Murphy will lead us in Mass at 10:00 am in the St Mary’s Church. Members from St Vinnies will be in attendance and we invite families to join us if possible. Following this St Vinnies will be providing a free BBQ lunch for our children and staff.

Julie

Key Dates

School Promotional Video

After two busy days of filming, the school promotional video is now live. You can find the link below.

Our Netball Day in Nhill 🤽‍♀️

The Year 3 to 6 girls went to Nhill to play in the WWSSA Winter Lightning Premierships. This big netball day happens every year in Nhill, and we were really excited to be part of it!

This year, we were lucky to have some girls from Murtoa and Nhill join our team to help us out. We played six games in total! We played against Nhill, Warracknabeal Primary School, Dimboola, Kaniva, and the Lutheran Combine team.

We were so happy and proud to make it to our very first netball grand final! Everyone tried their best and played really well. Sarah Spicer  was our amazing coach on the day. Mrs Werner trained us during our  PE lesson to help us get ready.

A HUGE thank you to Mrs Werner for organising the whole day and helping us learn so much. We are very thankful for all the time and effort you put in to make it so fun. We also want to say a big thank you to Sarah Spicer for coaching us in every game and to Eedie Rowe for umpiring all our matches.

Thanks to everyone who helped—we had such a great day!

St Mary’s Takes on the Lightning Premiership with Grit and Heart 🏉

St Mary’s Warracknabeal recently competed in the Lightning Premiership, and while we didn’t win any games, our students showed incredible effort, teamwork, and resilience.

Our team was made up of boys from grades 3 to 6 and included some students from Murtoa and Nhill. It was heartening to see an improvement throughout the day with each game. Many of the boys on the other teams were taller and older than we were but we tried our best. Even though the scoreboard wasn’t in our favour, we walked away proud of our effort, our attitude, and our mateship. A highlight of the day was when Jai kicked a goal for our team. Thank you to Mr Williams who coached us for the day and to Tom Penny who umpired for us during the day.

Cheers to everyone who played and showed great teamwork for the day.

African Drumming

Yesterday the F-2 Classes experienced a hands-on introduction to rhythm using authentic djembe drums. The children had a great time learning traditional songs and working together to build polyrhythms and sequences.

Next term we wil be introducing the 'Rhytm2Recovery' Program using our own djembe drums. This will support the Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS) initiative as part of the Wellbing Program.

The Aurora Structured Literacy Project

Re: Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

Dear parents, guardians and carers

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

• year of schooling
• category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
• level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

• formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
• consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
• develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy (https://www.education.gov.au/privacy-policy).

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school.

Kind regards

Principal

Changes to Mathematics Curriculum – Maths 2.0

As part of the ongoing updates to the Victorian Curriculum, schools have now transitioned to the new Mathematics 2.0 curriculum. One of the key changes is the removal of separate areas of learning (such as Number, Measurement, and Statistics). Instead, Mathematics will now be reported against a single progression point, reflecting a more holistic understanding of each student’s development in mathematics.

Along with this shift, the "I Can" statements previously used to break down skills into specific areas have also been streamlined. These will now appear under a single heading, rather than being divided into multiple strands.

This change supports a more integrated approach to teaching and learning mathematics, encouraging students to make connections across different mathematical concepts. If you have any questions about your child’s progress or how these changes may impact reporting, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your child’s teacher.

SchoolTV: Special Edition Online Game Fortnite

The current craze sweeping the nation, is an online game called ‘Fortnite: Battle Royale’. Unfortunately, this highly addictive game is impacting negatively on the behaviour of adolescent kids everywhere. Despite it being inappropriate for primary aged children, there are still many kids in this age group battling online and teachers are reporting changes in classroom behaviour.

It has been described as a “gruesome, Hunger Games-like video game” which, as of June 2018, had 125 million registered players worldwide. In the game, up to 100 players battle each other in a savage fight to the death using weapons such as rocket launchers, grenades, assault rifles, cross-bows, pickaxes and shotguns. Disturbingly, many players post their “top 10 kills of the week” on YouTube which get hundreds of thousands of views!

Increasing evidence of young players suffering psychological distress as a result of gaming is of great concern to parents. We hope this special report will prompt parents to reassess gaming allowances and better manage technology usage at home.

We are a BARR school (Bushfire at Risk)

Pleae read the communication below. As a Bushfire at Risk school, on days there is a Catastrophic fire danger forcasted in our district, the school will close. Other educational providers in our area will also close, and there will be no school byses running. We need to receive notification from the Department if Education and also DOBCEL in order to close. The school will always endeavour to notify families as soon as practical. We did have two Catastrophic school closure days earlier this year. 

Please ensure you have downloaded the SIMON everywhere app to receive the first notification of a sudden school closure through PAM, as this is the official school emergency notification platform.

Then emails will be sent to families, followed by a Facebook update. 

DOBCEL Strategy 2035

Please find below a letter from Catholic Education Ballarat Executive Director, Tom Sexton and DOBCEL Board Chair Terry Harney regarding the DOBCEL Strategy 2035.

This letter introduces the new strategy that all DOBCEL schools will be working through over the next ten years.

Child Safety at St Mary's

St Mary's is committed to zero tolerance of child abuse, listening to and empowering children and young people and keeping children and young people safe. We are committed to being proactive in the care, wellbeing and protection of children and young people. Child Safe Standard 11 as below highlights what we as an organisation must do. regarding documentation. If you ever have any concerns, regarding the safety and wellbeing of your child please contact the Principal. Your information makes us more aware of what needs to be addressed and how we can improve. 

For more information please visit this link Child Safe Standards 

Thunderstorm Asthma

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