St Colman's School Mortlake eNewsletter

Acknowledgement of Country

St Colman’s acknowledges the Girai wurung people as the traditional owners of the land on which our school stands and we respectfully recognise elders both past and present.

From the Principal

Dear St Colman's community,

Welcome to Week 10! The last week of the term.

I would like to thank you all for your ongoing support and enthusiasm throughout this very busy term. From the engaging classroom activities to the exciting extra-curricula events that have taken place this term, it has been wonderful to watch our students thrive. Thank you to our teachers for their hard work and creativity, to our parents for your involvement and encouragement, and to our students for their curiosity and endless enthusiasm. Everyone has certainly earned a restful break these holidays.

Read on to find out what else is happening in our school community. It is always a good idea to familiarise yourself with the key dates section of the newsletter. Please feel free to contact me at any time with any questions, concerns or suggestions you may have.

Have a wonderful holiday and I look forward to seeing you all back for our last term for 2024.

Kind regards,

Janet

Important Dates:

Term 3

16th - 20th September - Meals on Wheels

Tuesday 17th September - Bell's Shakespeare at Mortlake College

Friday 20th September - Footy Colours Day and 5/6 Fun Day from 11:30am

- Term 3 ends (@ 2:15pm)

Term 4

Monday 7th October: Staff and students commence Term 4

Friday 11th October: Whole school Mass @ 11:30am

Thursday 17th October: Grandparent's Day at 10am

Friday 25th October: 5/6 Cricket

Saturday 2nd November: Montgomery Pavilion Centenary Community Event from 11am

Saturday November 9th: Mortlake Rose Show

Saturday December 14th: Bunnings BBQ at Warrnambool

2024 School Camps (with St Thomas’ Terang)

Nov 13^th-15^th: Year 5/6 Dunkeld Adventure Camp

End of Year dates:

Wednesday 18th December: Final day for students

Thursday 19th December: Student Free Day- Final day for staff (2025 Planning Day)

Friday 20th December: Student Free Day- DOBCEL Approved TIL acquittal day

Catholic Identity

Our Diocesan Community

Our Lady of Mercy Parish News

WEEKEND MASS TIMES
ST THOMAS’ TERANG
Saturday 6.00 pm
Sunday 10.30 am
ST COLMAN’S MORTLAKE
Sunday 9.00 am

Community Engagement

The community of St Colman's offers our Learning Support Officer Angela Absalom, our deepest sympathy on the passing of her father, Pat.

Please keep Angela, and the O'Sullivan family, in your thoughts and prayers during this sad time.

Whooping cough

The incidence of Whooping cough cases is continuing to increase across Victoria, particularly among school-aged children.

Whooping cough is a very contagious infection, mostly spread through coughing or sneezing.

Symptoms include:

blocked or runny nose
tiredness
mild fever
severe bouts of coughing, often followed by a ‘whooping’ sound on breathing.

Whooping cough can lead to life-threatening infections in babies.

If your child is unwell, they should not attend school. Please see a doctor if you or your child develops whooping cough symptoms. Early diagnosis and treatment will help reduce the spread of the infection.

Students diagnosed with whooping cough must not attend school

If your child is diagnosed with whooping cough, they must not attend school for 21 days after the onset of the cough, or until they have received 5 days of antibiotic treatment.

You must notify the school if your child is diagnosed with whooping cough.

To further reduce the spread of infection to your child and the school community, the Public Health and Wellbeing Regulations 2019 require that some students who were in the same classroom as a student diagnosed with whooping cough should not attend school.

Your child should not attend school for 14 days after they were last exposed to a person diagnosed with whooping cough, or until they have taken 5 days of a course of antibiotic treatment if they are:

aged less than 7 years; and
not fully vaccinated with 3 doses of whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine.

This exclusion is required by law – refer to the School exclusion table for primary schools and children’s services.

If your child is diagnosed with whooping cough, please contact the school to let us know.

Your support in keeping our students safe and well is greatly appreciated.

For more information about whooping cough, refer to Whooping cough on the Better Health Channel.

Vaccination is the best way to reduce the risk of whooping cough. The Department of Health recommends staying up to date with immunisations, including booster doses. A free booster dose of the pertussis vaccine is covered under the national immunisation program for students aged 12 to 13. If you are unsure about your child’s vaccination status for whooping cough, please discuss with an immunisation provider, such as your doctor.

National Parent Survey

Catholic School Parents Australia (CSPA) is running a parent survey in partnership with the University of New England on Student Wellbeing and Learning and are seeking your perspective as parents/carers of children who attend a Catholic School in Australia.

You are invited to share your views on existing and emerging affirmations and/or challenges in relation to your child/children’s wellbeing and learning.

The survey is anonymous, confidential, and completely voluntary.

Thank you for your support.

For more information about the study and to participate go here.

Michael Grose Parenting Toolbox

St Colman's School is always looking for ways to best support our families. We have signed up to receive fortnightly advice and tips from Australia's most highly regarded parenting educator, Michael Grose via his newsletter; Parenting Toolbox.

What is Parenting Toolbox?

Where parenting meets personal development.

Parenting Toolbox is an online learning manual for parents who wants to accelerate their child’s development, while maximising their own parenting, personal and professional growth. Oh, and enjoying family-life!

Every parent wants the best for their child, but good intentions aren’t enough. The difference between parents who struggle and those that thrive, lies with the tools and know how that you possess.

Unleash Your Parenting Genius In Minutes With Five High Impact Questions.

Book Week at St Colman's

St Colman's celebrated Book Week a few weeks ago and our students would like to pass on their thanks to you for supporting the Book Fair. Your purchase of books from the Book Fair and through your donations of the shortlisted books our library budget has grown by $742.71

We thank the following for their generous donations for our library;

Mercy Regional College, Baulch family, Gus Carmody, Greig family, Van Den Heuvel family, Bassett family, Phoebe and Eloise Draffen, Dale family, Angela Absalom, Herry family, Kerrie and Rob Jewell, Wardlaw family, Janet Cain, Charlotte and Jack Allen, Jane Lee, Smeaton family, Kenny family, Michelle Blain and Imogen Barr

A HUGE thank you to Jenny Stapleton for her amazing efforts in organising Book Week at St Colman's.

Advance Notice- Save the Dates

Term 4 looks set to be another busy term. We have planned a couple of community engagement and fundraising projects and we would love for you to keep the following dates in mind so that you can help to support them in some way.

Saturday November 9th: Mortlake Rose Show. Our students will be entering some of the competitions on offer and we will run a play corner to keep the children entertained while their parents look at the displays.

Saturday December 14th: Bunnings BBQ at Warrnambool. We have been offered a spot in the hotly contested Bunnings BBQ fundraising calendar. This is the first time our school has had the opportunity to run the BBQ at Bunnings and being so close to Christmas it should be an incredibly busy day!

Free Bikes

The following two bikes and helmets are free to anyone who could use them. The pink one is size 20, purple one size 24. Please note that they are in used condition and the purple one has a fair bit of rust on it. They are both in working order though.

Please contact the office if you are interested. First in will get them.

St Colman's Annual Major Raffle

Our major fundraiser for the year, our school raffle, was a wonderful success and we managed to raise just over $8000. We are so grateful for all of the support from our fabulous community. Your generosity means that we are well on the way to securing the funds to build our new playground.

Congratulations to the prize winners for this year:

First Prize won by the Palmer Family -$3000 in vouchers supplied by Mortlake businesses
Second Prize won by Peggy Bannister- $1000 Neighbourhood Benefit EFTPOS card supplied by Acciona Third Prize won by Peter Moloney -$500 voucher supplied by Bates IGA Supermarket Mortlake

A huge thank you to all of the local businesses who have supported our raffle this year. A special thank you to our major sponsors Scott's Betta Home Living, Acciona and Bate's IGA for their incredible ongoing support of our school!

Bell Shakespeare Production

Tomorrow, Tuesday September 17th, we will be walking to Mortlake College to enjoy the Bell Shakespeare Theatre Company production of "Just Romeo and Juliet". The play is based on the classic Shakespearian love story that has been "messed around with' by the well loved Australian author Andy Griffiths.

After an early recess we will leave school at 10:50 and will be back by 1pm. Please hop onto PAM and give permission for your child to participate.

Year 5/6 Fun Day and Footy Colours Day

We will be finishing our term with a Fun day that has been organised by our Senior Students. The activities will commence at 11:30am and continue until lunchtime. Amongst all the fun, we will be raising funds to purchase two blood pressure cuffs for the children's ward at Ainaro Hospital in Timor-Leste. Our Student Representative Council have been speaking to Ann-Maree Convery who has volunteered extensively in this Southeast Asian nation, anmd alerted us to the fact that the paediatric ward at the local hospital did not have a junior sized cuff for their blood pressure monitor. Ms Convery will visit our school on Friday morning and provide some more information about the community over there and how our donation will be put to use. Our school community is highly motivated to raise lots of money to donate to the Ainaro Hospital.

Our Seniors have planned a great day and some of the activities will include;

Guess the number of Jelly Beans competition

Cupcakes and Zooper Doopers for sale

Nerf Gun games

Donuts for sale

How many Skittles? guessing game

Snow Cones for sale

Face painting

Hair Salon

Lucky ducks game

Colouring-in Competitions

Lucky Dip

Bracelet making

All family members are invited to come along and join in the fun!

Children will need to bring money to participate in the activities, we suggest that they will need $5-$10 to spend on the day.

Ainaro Hospital, Timor-Leste

Year 5/6 Excursion to Budj Bim

On Friday, September 13^th, our Year 5/6 students travelled to The Tae Rak Aquaculture Centre to experience one of the world’s most extensive and oldest aquaculture systems, at Budj Bim National Park on Gunditjmara Country, where Aboriginal history dates back 30,000 years.

Charlotte and Sienna share their learnings from the experience......

When the senior class went to Budj Bim we were welcomed to the Aboriginal community with a Welcome to Country by our tour guide Ruben. We learned how the Aboriginals used eels to trade for things that they did not have access to. Ruben told us how they used to cook them and we learnt about the famous Lake Condah next to the reception and cafe. We were face to face with Kooyong [eels] and learnt about how they would breed and be trapped. We had a great day!

Sienna and Charlotte

Budj Bim

Second hand Uniforms

We have collected a selection of 'pre-loved' school uniforms that are available to ALL members of our school community. These items are free of charge, but it really is the 'luck of the draw' if the item you want is there or not! You are always welcome to come into the office to have a look at what is available.

Also, if you have any unused uniform items that you no longer need and are in good condition, please consider donating them to the second hand pile. All pre-loved items can be left at the office. Thank you!!

Story Time on this week

Mrs Moloney and our Junior Class will be walking down to the Library this Wednesday to join in on Story Time. Children will be leaving school at 10:15am if you would like to join them.

Playgroup at St Colman's

We look forward to welcoming back our local pre-schoolers every second Friday, with our next session being held on Friday October 11th.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD WITH YOUR FRIENDS WHO HAVE PRE SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN. EVERYONE IS WELCOME!!!

The ongoing commitment to this project will require support from other members of the school community. If you are willing to help out by going on a roster to help organise Little Colman’s, please contact either the school or Lily.

WE WILL NEED TO PURCHASE SOME GAMES AND EQUIPMENT FOR OUR PLAYGROUP. HOWEVER, WE WONDERED IF YOU HAD ANY OLD TOYS AND GAMES THAT YOUR CHILDREN HAVE GROWN OUT OF AND THAT YOU NO LONGER NEED. IF SO, WE WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE THE DONATION OF ANY PRE-SCHOOL TOYS AND GAMES, INDOOR OR OUTDOOR, THAT ARE IN EXCELLENT USED CONDITION.

WELLLBEING

Congratulations to these wonderful student whose achievements were acknowledged at our last assembly.

SchoolTV Wellbeing Platform

St Colman's SchoolTV Landing Page

RUOK Day

RUOK Day was celebrated nationally last week, so this is the perfect time to read the SchoolsTV Special Report focussing on the importance of these conversations.

"This day contributes to suicide prevention efforts by encouraging all people to invest more time in their personal relationships and building their informal support networks. By having conversations and being alert to those around us, we can help identify signs of distress." Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

R U OK?Day

Full SchoolTV Article

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support is: A multi-tiered framework for establishing the social culture and behavioural supports needed for a school to achieve behavioural and academic outcomes for all students. For the next two weeks at St Colman’s we are working with our students on developing effective learning habits that will set them up for success throughout the year ahead. During that time, all staff will be reinforcing the behaviour expectations as set out in our Behavior Matrix (below).

2024 Positive Behaviour Matrix Latest Version

St. Colman's School is a Child Safe Community

Child Safety Officers

Janet Cain and Rosie O'Connor are our Child Safety Officers.

Contact them on:

Phone: 55992285 or 0490539167

Email: jcain@scmortlake.catholic.edu.au or roconnor@scmortlake.catholic.edu.au

The Child Safe Standards

St Colman's has an ongoing commitment to implementing all 11 of the Child Safe Standards .

Standard Number 5 asks all schools to ensure:

Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.

Watch the clip below if you would like to see an overview of this standard. If you have any suggestions about how we could better in bed this standard into our school community please let us know.

Child Safe Standard 5- Overview

The 11 Child Safe Standards website

Child Friendly Slides

Community Noticeboard

Free Broadband

Our Student Representative Council will be co ordinating our partnership with Cooinda Terang to become a collection point for Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme (CDS Vic).

We will be collecting all eligible empty drink containers and then returning them to the CDS collection point at Cooinda. The 10c raised from each return will go back to the SRC. They will nominate various charities to support as well as using 50% of the funds to upgrade school resources.

So please start collecting and sending in your empties.

Most aluminium, glass, plastic and liquid paperboard (carton) drink containers between 150mL and 3 litres are eligible. You can keep the lids on, we recycle them too. The easiest way to know if your drink container can be returned is to look for the 10c mark on the label, often located near the barcode.

You can help in two ways:

The first is by far the simplest. Just return your empty eligible containers to the tubs in the corridors at school.
If you have a large amount of containers to deposit, you may wish to take them to a Container Deposit Depot and return them yourself. Please download the CDS Vic West App (instructions below). When you return your containers, nominate St Colman's School Mortlake as the charity you want to donate the money to.

Please note, that as we are in partnership with Cooinda Terang, our preferred deposit depot is their Reverse Vending Machine located at 49 Dow St Terang.

Toastie Tuesday

Lunch Orders

LUNCH ORDERS are only available twice a week on Monday and Friday.

Menu and price list below

Out of School Care

A reminder that we continue to have access to Out of School Care in 2024, supplied by TheirCare, at Mortlake College. Registration is made via the TheirCare website. https://theircare.com.au/

Search for Mortlake College P-12

AngliCare Energy Assistance

As part of Anglicare Victoria’s FREE Energy Assistance Program, they provide assistance with energy bills to support Victorians to:

Talk to their energy retailer and get help with debt
Access extra financial support
Check they are receiving eligible concessions on their bill
Find and move to an affordable energy plan
Understand bills and fix any possible errors
Support your child's education with free internet at home

They can provide immediate assistance for clients who are struggling to pay for their gas or electricity bills to prevent disconnection to their property!

The follower two flyers provide further details.

NCCD

Please read the attached information sheet for parents regarding NCCD.

NCCD Information.pdf

Term 3 Week 10 Monday 16th September 2024