Mary Queen of Heaven Newsletter – Term 2 – Week 8

Dear families,

With our school holidays just around the corner and the first semester of Mary Queen of Heaven coming to an end let’s reflect and  pray together calling on St Francis of Assisi for inspiration.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: 

where there is hatred, let me sow love; 

where there is injury, pardon; 

where there is doubt, faith;                                         

where there is despair, hope; 

where there is darkness, light; 

where there is sadness, joy. 

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

May we always remember the values of our school in our interactions with one another.

Love

Respect

Courage

Humility

 

Reflecting on the past 6 months we have so much to be grateful for and so much to celebrate.  We have formed new relationships, new friendships and for some these will carry through for the rest of your lives.  Precious times to be sewing seeds of hope for our future.

Mary Queen of Heaven has celebrated so much as a school community this year.  From our welcome open day at the very beginning of the school year, to our Mothers Day celebrations, a whole school excursion, the sacraments o0f Reconciliations and Eucharist weekly Mass held here in our magnificent sacred space, to opening up additional play spaces and a whole lot more!  We are so grateful for the parents and community support we have received and especially grateful for the amazing students we have, assisting us to build a beautiful school culture.

Next term promises to be even bigger with more opportunities coming our students’ way.  We have plans for a whole school 100 days of MQH, a Colour Run, a Camp experience for our senior students, more excursions, the opening of our grassed ovals for play and the introduction of Mac & Bluebell to assist our wellbeing program.  It’s sure to be an exciting time.

An additional change that we are making based on our observations so far is the morning bell time.  We are finding that for many of our children the 30 minutes from 8:30am before the morning bell is too long and children are becoming dysregulated.  To help support a more calm start to the day, from term 3 the music will play from 8:45 and children can choose to go inside and read or be involved in a calm mindful activity or remain in the school yard (fully supervised).   This provides more choice for our learners and offers them what they need to begin the day.  The bell will then go at 8:55am as normal.  It is really important that families do their best to have children arrive before the school bell so their days begin in a calm manner and they are present for key learning.

 

Earlier this year we partnered with Traces of Learning (https://tracesoflearning.com/)  Traces is a model of Inquiry learning and teaching that focuses on Discovery for P-2 and Projects for 3-6.  We are so excited to be sharing this journey with you and your children throughout term 3 and 4 of this year.  The Traces model with rejuvenate our approach to Inquiry.  It will impact the look of our learning spaces and ensure that our Inquiry is student centered and carries strong student voice and choice.  Our date driven Literacy and Numeracy programs will not change, these are crucial to ensure that we are meeting the individual needs of all learners.

In term 3 we are looking forward to utilising our two large grassed areas for play and the introduction of some additional shade and seating around the school yard.  In addition to this we are welcoming basketball backboards and rings as well as Basketball line marking and some additional line marked games.  

 

We hope to act upon some of the AMAZING learning that has stemmed from our Prep and year 1/2 classrooms this term, seeking a community garden and composting options.  Below you will see that our junior learners worked collaboratively to write letters, create maps of our school, design possible community garden ideas and create posters to remind us all to be Stewards of God’s creation in caring for the MQH environment.  With such passion and drive, how can we possibly not act on these BRILLIANT ideas?

 

 

School Leaders update

 

School Captains

Parliament Prize 2023

Each year, the Parliament of Victoria asks students across the state, from Grade 5 to Year 12, to share what they would say to parliament if you were an MP. This is a chance to talk about the issues that are important to you and your community. 

Children were invited to record their own 90-second Member’s Statement video.

Our School Captains, Grace and Charlene, have taken part in this competition, as well as a few of our leaders.

We with them well as they continue to enact their leadership and use their voice for advocacy and change.

 

Mission and Faith Leaders

 

As the Mary Queen of Heaven Mission and Faith leaders we are committed to living out our value of love.  As such, we have organized a food drive.for the Salvation Army. 

At Mary Queen of Heaven we will be supporting the Salvation Army with a Winter Food appeal. We invite people to bring in non-perishable items such as the following: 

Pepper and salt

Rice

Long life milk

Pasta 

Sugar

Nuts

Canned food

 

This food will be donated to the Salvation Army in Craigieburn to support people within our community that are in need.  We will deliver our items to Colin from the Salvation Army at our assembly on Friday 4 August, which is next term. 

Colin will be talking to us about how our donation will support those in his community.

Starting next week, you can bring these items to school. We will collect these items from your classrooms at the end each day.

 

Many thanks for your support.

Mia and Livi, Grade 5

Sustainability Leader

 

Naledi, our Sustainability Leader, has already led an initiative to gather litter within our community during our Friday walking club.  As part of her next initiative, to support the 1-2 children to set up food scrap collection and start up a composting system, Naledi will be joining the 1-2 children in a visit to the School of the Good Shepherd to find out about how they have set this up in their school. 

Stay tuned for more information about this!

 

Sports and Recreation leaders

 

Our Sports and Recreation leaders, Jake and Amelia, have enacted their first leadership duty to ensure the provision of balls for children to play with at recess and lunch.  Their next initiative will be to design a poster in order to support children in using this equipment safely in modified versions of ball games.

 

Community and Social Justice leaders

(Written by the leaders themselves)

At the Greenvale West Community Centre, we got to meet Iwan Walters the Minister for Greenvale, and had the pleasure to put our aboriginal art work up on their art wall. They gave us a tour of the center and it was amazing. There was so much natural lighting! It was a great experience. 

 

We will be exploring ways we can use the spaces available at the Centre for future Mary Queen of Heaven events.

 

We thank the Greenvale west community Centre workers for letting us have the opportunity to do this.

-Bas and Krystyna

Learning and Teaching update

 

Inquiry 

 

Prep – 2 learners

Our Preps and 1-2 children have been busy scientists as they enact an experiment to see the changes that occur to a bean once we ‘plant’ it!

They have hypothesised (made predictions) and observed and recorded changes they have noticed based on their observations.

Our 1-2 children have also been conducting their own experiment this week, as they provided a chart to record the amount of food scraps that are thrown into our regular (red) bin.  They will collate this data to then make conclusions about how we might solve this problem and better use these food scraps (hint – compost!!)

Next Tuesday, they will visit the School of the Good Shepherd to find out more about how they have gathered and used food scraps to make compost for their community garden! 

 

3-6 Learners

Reconciliation week

To culminate Reconciliation week, the children of the Mary Queen of Heaven created a ‘Bunjil the Eagle’.  The Wurundjeri people, upon whose land we work and learn on, believe that Bunjil is the Ancestral Wedge-tailed Eagle, the creator. Waa is the Ancestral Crow, the protector. They believe that Bunjil created much of south-eastern Australia and the features and animals within it. He also created people, by breathing life into figures moulded from clay.

 

We are so proud of what we have achieved as a community in 6 short months. We look forward to building the MQH community in the second half of this year. 

A reminder, if you do not already do so, please follow us on Facebook and Instagram; we often share snapshots of children’s learning and the joy they experience at school!

Facebook: Mary Queen of Heaven Greenvale

Instagram: mqh_greenvale

Wishing you all a happy and safe school holiday break.

Renae & team