Mary Queen of Heaven – Term 2 – Week 3

Thank you to staff and children for their preparation and dedication in putting together the still life depiction of the events of Holy Week.  Thank you to parents, carers and grandparents who attended school on the last two days of term 1 to see the creative display our school proudly presented. Your devotion and support throughout our children’s learning & faith is much appreciated.

As the third Parish school in the Parish of the Good Shepherd we celebrate the Feast of The Good Shepherd.  This year this was commemorated by our year 5 and 6 students traveling down to Good Shepherd Parish where they participated in Mass with year 5 and 6 students from School of The Good Shepherd and St Carlo’s.  It was wonderful to see many of our families at the Mass celebrating with us.

An invitation was extended to the whole school community to attend the ANZAC Day Commemorative Dawn Service at the Glenroy RSL on 25th April. Some of our school leaders, teachers and families attended  to lay an ANZAC wreath at the war memorial as a way to remember those who have lost their lives serving Australia in wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations.  We thank all who made the effort to be there, to represent our school and remember the fallen.

If the weather is still mild, we are happy for students to continue wearing the summer uniform through the beginning of term 2. The students will have until Monday April 29th, to transition into their full winter uniform.  We remind all families that ONLY uniform purchased at the uniform shop is to be worn, please avoid leggings, skivvies etc.

Please be reminded to tie long hair up where possible. This helps children focus on their learning and is a prevention for the spread of headlice.

Families and communities are informed and involved in promoting child safety and wellbeing

There are many examples of the ways in which we as a community promote and inform the community of our childsafe practices. As you enter our school, you will see the Catholic Schools Child Safe Schools commitment displayed. This states we are committed to providing a safe and nurturing culture for all children and young people in our school. This is enacted through upholding the primacy of safety and wellbeing of all children, empowering families and children to have a voice if they have concerns and implementing rigorous risk management and employment practices.

Thank you to all the families who have partially or fully paid their  school fees. As mentioned previously the school has  paid for all of your children’s stationery upfront and prompt payment of school fees would be most appreciated. 

This year, we were excited to implement the Traces of Learning Inquiry Model with consultants from Spark to support our educators to plan authentic and engaging inquiry projects across all year levels.

This model is well researched and supports all children to become confident, life long learners.  In our Prep to Two classes, children are engaged in discovery learning through Inquiry that introduces children to concepts from our History Curriculum and strongly supports the explicit transfer of Literacy and Numeracy skills in new contexts.  We call these sessions “Our Project”.  Each term, the project focus will change and is strategically designed with experienced consultants to ensure children are taught concepts, content, and skills across the curriculum.  Our year Three to Six are also engaging in the History Curriculum through ‘Rapid Cycles’ of Inquiry.  This is where children learn new content within a learning process.  Sometimes children will use the investigation, problem solving, or design process – this term, they are learning through the Research Process.  Ask your children at home how they have been engaging in Discovery or Rapid Cycles in class.

Please see the attached information regarding Cyber Safety.

eSafety

Beacon

Roblox

Our reporting at Mary Queen of Heaven is dedicated to fostering collaboration between students, teachers, and parents to enhance student learning. We communicate comprehensive information on students’ achievements in academics, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual domains. This dialogue helps set future goals and keeps parents informed about our teaching methods. Our assessment and reporting procedures are seamlessly integrated with our teaching practices to ensure meaningful discussions about each child’s progress. Formal reports are issued twice yearly, in June and December, to document students’ advancements across various curriculum areas.

Other ways we report are listed below:

• Meet and Greet conversations at the beginning of the year 
• Written report -mid and end-of-year 
• Parent Curriculum Overviews sent termly
• Program or Integration Support Group Meetings, if required
• Classroom wall documentation
• Weekly School newsletter
• Regular Seesaw posts
• National Assessment Plan-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)
• Celebrations of Learning

We are so blessed to have Mel our resident Speech Therapist working with us two days per week.  Mel has been an absolute asset to our team.  Below is a summary of the difference Mel has made already in her first term with us.  Please be reminded that Mel’s service is not a 1:1 speech service, if this is something you are seeking for your child, please reach out to Loretta O’Dwyer to discuss.

Speech Pathology Term 1 and 2 Update:

It’s been an incredibly productive start to 2024 at Mary Queen of Heaven, with Term 1 going full steam ahead in supporting student’s language development. Throughout term 1, I completed oral language assessments with all the Prep and Grade 1 students. From these results, I formed intervention groups to target specific oral language goals (e.g., expanding vocabulary, using correct tense, using correct sentence structure etc.). These groups will continue throughout term 2. Additionally, the staff at MQH have been passionate to learn, and have been upskilled in the area of oral language using the intervention approach called ‘Colourful Semantics’. This is being successfully implemented across the school to better support student’s oral language development. The staff will continue to be upskilled in different areas, with term 2’s focus on literacy intervention. 

Something to note – my role at the school is to upskill the staff, and provide whole class/group intervention. This means, I do not provide 1:1 support to individual students. If your child requires speech therapy assessment and intervention, it is important to seek this externally. Once you have a speech pathologist, I can support the teachers and co-educators to address their speech goals in the classroom.

I look forward to the rest of the term working with the MQH community!

Melanie Raffa

School Speech Pathologist 

Lunchtime clubs are back!

Please see the attached Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) Information Sheet for Parents, Carers and Guardians.

NCCD Information Sheet

Please find the attached flyer for Early Beginners Child Care Centre Greenvale Open Day. This is a new childcare opening in our local community.

Open day flyer 2024